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A Sticky Situation

One of the consequences of making things with oils and herbs is that you acquire a collection of bottles and jars.  When you find potential containers for your ingredients and creations, many of them come with unwanted labels.

Image by Roy Hinchliffe, Shutterstock

Removing labels from jars and bottles is a chore.  I’ll return to the subject with some of my techniques, but first here’s a story that has just a passing relevance to the subject.

Internment

During 09 and 10 August 1971 the British Army seized 342 people suspected of involvement with the Irish Republican Army.  These people were imprisoned without trial in a makeshift concentration camp on the site of a former RAF station at Long Kesh, 10 miles West of Belfast.  All those arrested were Irish Nationalists and, with few exceptions, Catholic.  The operation was justified by the Northern Ireland and British Governments as a measure to reduce the incidence of violence in the Province of Northern Ireland.  No Protestant Ulster Loyalists were arrested, although Loyalist paramilitaries also routinely carried out acts of violence.  The arrests lead to mass protests and a sharp increase in sectarian violence.

Internment continued until 05 December 1975 when the last 46 internees were released.  The total number of internees was 1,981, of whom 1,874 were Catholic/Republican and 107 were Protestant/Loyalist.

During the years following 1971 the site at Long Kesh was developed with new prison blocks and a perimeter wall.  In plan the new prison blocks resembled a letter ‘H’.  They were colloquially known as ‘The H Blocks’.  The site was renamed as Her Majesty’s Prison Maze.  By the end of internment many who had been interned had stood trial and been convicted of crimes relating to civil violence.  These prisoners were accorded Special Category Status and held in the H Blocks.

HMP Maze H Blocks – Image from Alchetron

Loyalist Prison Officers contrasted the Special Category Prisoners with what they called “Ordinary Decent Criminals”.  In 1978 a group of Special Category Prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms, claiming that they were political prisoners rather than criminals.  They were denied their own clothes, so wore only blankets.  They refused to leave their cells to wash or use a lavatory, smearing their own excrement on the walls of their cells.  This became known as the “Dirty Protest”.

When the wind changes

HMP Maze. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

I spent 4½ months in 1978 on a tour of active duty in Northern Ireland.  My unit was tasked with guarding HMP Maze.  It was rare that anyone asked what we were guarding against, and there was never an answer to the question.  As we battled the boredom of hours spent in watchtowers we were ignorant of the violence that the Loyalist Prison Officers inflicted on Republican prisoners in the H Blocks.  The level of violence caused the European Court of Human Rights to censure the British Government for “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.  The Dirty Protest was, in part, a response by prisoners to being beaten senseless by Prison Officers if they left their cells to use showers or lavatories.

The stench from the H Blocks was extreme.  A change in the wind direction brought little relief.  When we were not downwind of the H Blocks, we were downwind of the nearby glue factory.  The factory made glue by boiling up animal bones from meat-processing plants.  The smell from the factory chimneys was at least as vile as the smell emanating from the H Blocks, and possibly more pervasive.

Both the prison and the glue factory are closed now.

Which brings us back to glue, and labels, and jars and bottles.

Soaking off the Labels

The glue from the Belfast glue factory was water-soluble.  Water-soluble glue was extensively used on labels, as it was on postage stamps.  Stamp collectors separated postage stamps from envelopes by immersing them in water.  Anyone wanting to re-use a glass bottle or jam-jar could use the same method.  The label normally drifted off the glass and remained intact at the bottom of the bowl of water.

Most modern glues are based on petrochemicals.

Sometimes a simple soaking still works.  It’s worth an attempt.  If it doesn’t work, then I start to work through some other techniques.

Other Techniques

Here’s how I set about removing labels…

Plastic Labels

Plastic labels are stronger than paper ones, so I can often lift a corner and peel off the whole label:

Often there’s a sticky residue left where the label has been removed.  Sometimes the residue covers the whole area that the label covered.  In this case it just leaves a few sticky patches:

The sticky residue can be removed using solvents, which I’ll discuss further down this post.

Paper Labels

It might be possible to lift a corner and peel off a paper label.  It’s rare.  The difficulty arises because the glue holds the label to surface more securely than the fibres in the paper stick to each other.  Instead of the paper coming off the surface, the paper splits internally.  One layer of paper comes away, and the other remains stuck to the glue:

I can usually remove most of the paper by scraping with a knife, but there comes a moment when the effort that I’m expending doesn’t seem to be reflected in what I’m removing.  If I haven’t soaked the label in water before, this is when I soak it for a while and then try to scrape off some more of the paper.

Glue Residues

After a combination of peeling, scraping and soaking there is invariably something still stuck to my bottle or jar.  There is always a glue residue.  Sometimes there’s still some stubborn paper as well:

The solution to removing glue and paper residues is to find an effective solvent.

Solvents

I’ve already used the most readily available solvent – water.  Here are three more to try:

Alcohol

Alcohol mixes well with water (and other things!).  If I can’t remove a residue with water, experience tells me that I’m unlikely to be able to remove it with alcohol.

I still think alcohol deserves a mention here.  Once I’ve managed to remove most of a glue residue, there are usually dull smear marks on the surface.  A little alcohol on cotton wool or kitchen paper will remove the smears and leave the surface sparkling.

I use Isopropyl Alcohol.  It’s cheap, effective, and it has other uses besides polishing up surfaces.  Vodka or gin would work, but they are subject to duty and so they are more expensive.  They too have other uses.

Acetone

Outside industrial contexts, acetone is most familiar as the active ingredient in nail polish remover.  It’s the only ingredient in most nail polish removers.  You can buy 15ml of branded nail polish remover for about GBP 8.  That works out at over GBP 500 for a litre of acetone.  Alternatively, you can buy a litre of generic acetone for about GBP 10.

Acetone is highly flammable.  it is normally very effective at removing glue residues.  However, in addition to its flammability it has two other drawbacks:

While it is safe to use acetone on glass or ceramic surfaces, it is definitely not safe to use on plastic or resin surfaces.  Acetone is just as effective a solvent for plastics and resins as it is for glue residues.

The smell!  Acetone belongs to the family of chemicals called ketones.  It has a smell reminiscent of the sweets called pear drops, but the smell is much more powerful.

Paraffin

Paraffin is my solvent of choice for removing glue residues.

The fact that paraffin is used as a fuel indicates that it is flammable.

Once paraffin was extensively used in the UK as a fuel for domestic heating.  Although domestic paraffin heaters and paraffin heaters for greenhouses are still advertised, I can’t remember the last time I saw either of the iconic brands Esso Blue or Pink Paraffin offered for sale.

The paraffin sold for heating suffers from one of the drawbacks of acetone.  It has a pervasive and unpleasant smell.  Fortunately, there is a version of paraffin that doesn’t have such a pervasive odour, and it’s readily available.

The paraffin I use is sold as lamp oil, for use in decorative oil-lamps.  There are scented and unscented, clear and coloured versions available.  I use the unscented and uncoloured version which I can buy by the litre for about GBP 7.  I’ve been using this bottle for a while:

I find a litre bottle is a bit unwieldy when I only use enough to moisten a small piece of absorbent paper at any one time.  I’ve decanted some into a 50ml laboratory reagent bottle for regular use, and to limit the amount of flammable liquid that I keep in the house:

Paraffin removes most glue residues.  I soak a small piece of kitchen paper with paraffin.  I use that to wet the glue residue and any remaining paper that is stuck to the surface I’m trying to clean.  After that it’s just a case of rubbing with the moistened paper to clean the surface.  The paraffin eventually evaporates completely and the surface is ready for a final polish with a little alcohol.

Other Techniques

I take the attitude that there is only so much effort I’m prepared to expend to remove a label.  If a label won’t yield to my regime of soaking, scraping and solvents, then I tend to give up and find a more productive use of my time.  However, I can imagine a situation when a jar or bottle was just too good to abandon, despite a very stubborn label.

There are a couple of other approaches that have been recommended, and that have some credibility.  I haven’t tried them (yet), but you might find them useful or interesting.

Heat

Glue may melt if it is heated.  So a glue that doesn’t soften when it is soaked in cold or warm water might be susceptible to softening in hot or boiling water.

It may also be possible to soften glue, and particularly glue residues, using dry heat.  I might try putting the jars or bottles in an oven, or I could use the heat gun I use to even up the surface of container candles:

The reason I avoid using high temperatures to remove labels is that I’m averse to burning my fingers.  Once I’d got a label or residue hot, I’d still have to peel or scrape it.  I think that would be difficult when wearing heat-proof gloves.

Peanut Butter

I don’t regularly keep peanut butter in the house.  If I did I would be tempted to try using it to remove glue residues from glass or ceramic surfaces.  The vegetable oil in peanut butter could be an effective solvent for petrochemical glue, and the ground peanuts would act as an abrasive paste to clean the surface.

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B is for: Beeswax – Part 2 – Wax

Beeswax in the hive

Beeswax is one of two materials that honeybees use to construct the internal structure of their hives.  (The other is propolis, a harder substance that is used to seal gaps and protect the interior of the hive from the elements.)  Inside the hive, worker bees make hexagonal cells out of beeswax.  The queen lays her eggs in some of the cells, and this is where future generations of bees are raised to maturity.  The other use of the cells is for storing honey.  Cells are normally arranged in a double layer with the cells lying horizontally and opening on opposite sides.  The cells where bees are raised (brood cells) are closed with a cap of beeswax when the occupant is in the pupal stage.  Honey storage cells are closed with a cap of beeswax when they are full.

Image Valentina Proskurina, Shutterstock

Worker bees live longer during the Winter, but in Summer they live short, intensive lives.  In simple terms, workers spend:

three weeks developing in a cell from egg to adult,

the next three weeks performing tasks within the hive,

their final three weeks foraging outside the hive for nectar and pollen.

There is a close relationship between the production of beeswax and the production of honey.  Bees make storage cells for honey using wax.  They consume honey in order to secrete the wax to make and cap the cells.  Bees eat eight measures of honey in order to produce a single measure of wax.  There are differing estimates of how much wax is needed to store honey. Most estimates fall in the range of 22 Kg and 30 Kg of honey stored in 1 Kg of wax cells.

I’ve often seen it quoted that a worker bee will produce about one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime.  (I haven’t been able to track down the source of the research behind this estimate.)  If it is true, and a teaspoon of honey is taken to be 5g, then a kilogram of honey is the lifework of around 2,400 bees.  Extending this to wax production, a single kilogram of beeswax is the lifework of almost 20,000 bees.

Why beeswax is so useful

Beeswax is not a single chemical compound.  It’s mixture comprising mostly esters of fatty acids and various long-chain alcohols.  Two of the properties of this mixture make is especially useful.

Firstly, beeswax is remarkable stable.  It doesn’t deteriorate over time through exposure to the atmosphere, to water, or to sunlight.  It doesn’t get attacked by mould or bacteria.  This resistance to mould and bacteria makes it a useful preservative that can be added to other substances.

Secondly, unlike vegetable waxes and petrochemical waxes, beeswax doesn’t melt over a very narrow temperature range.  It gradually softens before it melts, and the changes take place at temperatures that can occur in temperate climates.  At 0 C beeswax is hard and brittle.  At 20 C, often described as “room temperature”, beeswax is solid but no longer brittle.  It can be shaved or carved.  At 37 C it is softer and can be absorbed by human skin.  It softens more as the temperature increases until it is completely liquid above 62 C – 64 C.

Sources of beeswax

Beekeepers render beeswax to remove the dirt and debris that becomes mixed with the wax in a hive.  They put the wax in a pot with water, and then heat the pot until the wax melts.  The molten wax floats on the surface of the water and the solid contaminants sink to the bottom of the pot.  The pot is left to cool, and then the solid wax can be removed.  The cleaned wax can be re-melted and poured into moulds.  Here are a couple of tablets of wax from my local farmers’ market.  One has been more successfully rendered than the other.

Commercial suppliers of beekeeping equipment give credit to beekeepers for beeswax.  The suppliers render the wax and use it to make “bee form” and other beeswax products that they sell.  Bee form is beeswax in sheets that have the outline of cells imprinted in them.  The sheets are fixed into the frames that fit in a hive, encouraging the bees to create tidy frames of cells for brood and honey.  Nowadays bee form is most often seen rolled around a wick and sold as decorative candles.

Refined beeswax in the form of pellets is sold for a range of purposes.  The wax may be yellow, or it may be bleached to a near-white colour.  This is the form in which most individuals and commercial organizations buy beeswax as an ingredient for their products.

Beeswax in cosmetics

Pictures and carvings of ancient Egyptians sometimes show a cone-shaped object on the heads of people.  I used to think that this cone-shaped accessory was an elaborate hairstyle.  More recently, I’ve discovered that they were cones of beeswax scented with fragrant oils.  The perfumed wax melted and ran down over the wearer’s body, masking less fragrant body odours.

Solid perfumes are still in use, and beeswax is still a key ingredient.  I use a mixture of:

30 parts shea butter
10 parts jojoba oil and
4 parts beeswax

                   as the base for solid perfumes.  The beeswax extends the range of temperatures over which the perfume softens and melts.  The butter, oil and wax combination softens and moisturises skin, in contrast to alcohol-based perfumes that can be drying or irritating.

An oil, butter and beeswax combination is the basis of lip-balms.  Beeswax for use in cosmetics is usually food-grade.

Many cosmetic formulations include water-based ingredients blended with oils, butters and waxes.  Water is the best moisturiser for skin, but its effects are short-lived.  Oils and waxes soften skin and help to lock in moisture.  But it is difficult to persuade water-based ingredients to mix with oil-based ingredients, and even harder to persuade them to stay mixed.  To make things even more difficult, mixing oils with water creates the perfect environment for bacteria and moulds to thrive.  Beeswax stabilises mixtures of oils and water because it is an emulsifier.  It is also a preservative, supressing the growth of bacteria and moulds in oil and water mixtures containing up to 50% water.

Beeswax in candles

The most common material used for making candles in the middle ages was tallow.  Tallow is rendered animal fat.  It makes effective candles.  The downside of using tallow candles is that they have a smell when they burn, not a particularly strong smell, but not attractive.  More importantly, tallow candles produce soot when they burn.  Spring Cleaning is claimed to have originated from being able to see the covering of soot left by tallow candles when days became lighter in the Spring.

Beeswax burns cleaner than tallow, with a brighter light.  It has a more pleasant odour.   However it was not as plentiful and therefore it was more expensive.  Supplies of beeswax for candles were appropriated by the Church, and the wealthy.

Image Kyrylo Glivin, Shutterstock

Nowadays beeswax is not such a rare and expensive material for making candles, but retains its reputation for quality.  The most common material for making candles is paraffin wax, a petrochemical.  Vegetable waxes, notably soya wax, are a popular and more sustainable alternative.

I make candles with a blend of roughly 90% soya wax and 10% beeswax.  The addition of beeswax, in my opinion, creates a blend that burns a little brighter and is a little harder than soya wax alone.

Other uses for beeswax

In no particular order, here are a few other uses for beeswax:

As a component of sealing wax.

In polishes used to preserve and beautify wood.

As a lubricant, for example on the runners of the drawers in wooden furniture.

As a modelling material in the lost-wax casting process.

To form the mouthpieces of a didgeridoo, and the frets on the Philippine kutiyapi – a type of boat lute.

As a filler in the joints of the slate bed of pool and billiard tables.

In the decoration of batik fabrics.

Image Ahmad Saifulloh, Shutterstock
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B is for: Beeswax – Part 1 – Bees

“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Jani Ravas, Free Stock Photos

Beeswax appears in many of my cosmetic recipes, and I include it in the blend of waxes that I use to make candles.  As beeswax is an animal product, that means my cosmetics and candles are not suitable for vegans.  I’ve started experimenting with recipes that don’t include beeswax so that I have something to offer vegans, but I don’t plan to abandon the use of beeswax.  It’s just too useful.

For now, suffice it to say that the uses of beeswax include:

      • Emulsifier
      • Preservative
      • Modelling material
      • In casting metals
      • Sealant
      • Lubricant
      • Fuel.

I’ll return to the uses of beeswax in a later post.  For the remainder of this post, I want to explore the relationship between humans and the bees that produce beeswax.

Violetta, Free Stock Photos

Beeswax is produced by honeybees, insects of the genus Apis.  Although enormously useful, beeswax is mostly regarded as a by-product of harvesting honey.

Destructive Honey Foraging

Humans and other predators have been plundering bee colonies for honey for as long as there have been bees.  The story has not been a happy one for the bees, at least not until the last couple of hundred years.  There was no way to harvest honey (and beeswax) without killing the bee colony.

Peter Turner Photography, Shutterstock

Early beekeeping consisted of capturing individual bee swarms in the Spring and keeping them in artificial hives.  The hives used in Europe were made of straw or wicker and called skeps.  The beekeeper would leave the bees to their own devices during the Summer and then smoke or burn out the bee colonies to harvest the honey.

A Better Way

The story bee-friendly beekeeping is an international one.  Many of the significant developments occurred in different countries around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  There was limited communication between the pioneers, so there is some duplication of discovery and invention.

François Huber
Wikimedia Commons

François Huber is credited with detailed observation of honeybees and interpreting their behaviour.  His achievements are especially remarkable because he was blind by the age of 15.  He worked by directing and questioning his wife Marie and a servant, François Burnens.  In 1789 he developed a hive in which each comb was enclosed with glass sides, similar to modern observation hives.  The combs were arranged so that they could be opened like the pages of a book.  It was called the Leaf Hive.

Huber’s findings were published in French in Geneva in 1792.  The title of the book (in translation) is “New Observations on Bees” and it ran to 800 pages.  It was soon translated into English and German.  A commentary on this book appears in Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”.

Petro Prokopovych

A retired Ukrainian army officer named Petro Prokopovych became a beekeeper after resigning his commission.  He observed and studied his bees very closely, and developed practices and physical inventions that reduced the damage and disturbance inflicted on bees by their beekeepers.  In 1814 Prokopovych is credited with inventing the first removable frame hive.  His hive made it easier to harvest honey while reducing damage to the bee colony.

Beekeeping in Ukraine

Prokopovych observed that the queen bee in a colony, upon which the colony is dependent for survival, is slightly larger than the other bees.  By using a screen with holes too small for the queen to pass, but large enough for the other bees, it was possible to confine the queen to a separate part of the hive.  Honey could be harvested from one part of the hive while the queen, eggs and juvenile bees were confined to the other part.  These screens are now known as Queen Excluders and appear in modern hives.

Johann Dzierżon

Johann Dzierżon was a Catholic priest in Silesia, in Poland.  He was honoured around the world in his lifetime for his beekeeping discoveries and inventions.  One of his most significant discoveries was known as “bee space” – the gap that bees leave between combs to allow themselves access.  This is used to calculate the spacing between removable frames in a modern beehive.  Dzierżon implemented his discovery in a removable frame hive that was based on Huber’s Leaf hive.

Lorenzo Langstroth

Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was an American clergyman.  He was aware of François Huber’s discoveries.  Langstroth made many contributions to modern beekeeping.  He has been credited with identifying bee-space, but this already formed the basis of European hive designs based on Dzierżon’s findings.

Langstroth is best known for the invention of a top-opening hive containing removable frames.  He patented this design in 1852.  Langstroth hives are still manufactured and used today.  The design forms the basis of almost all modern hives.

Modern Beehives

The use of skeps is limited now.  Some countries have outlawed them.  A few beekeepers still use them as a lightweight container for collecting swarms, transferring the swarm to a modern hive afterwards.

Most modern beehives are based upon Langstroth’s designs.  Hives built to Langstroth’s design are still commercially available.  Two Men and a Little Farm provide my favourite description of a hive, its components and their uses.

Using a modern beehive, a beekeeper can harvest honey without disturbing the comb where the queen lays eggs and bees are reared.  The beekeeper can return the comb to the hive after removing the honey, so the bees can re-use it.  This means the bees don’t have to divert effort from honey production to produce wax to build combs.

Muro, Shutterstock

In return for the honey that they harvest, beekeepers inspect beehives for infections and parasites.  While almost all beekeepers wear protective suits and headgear, many don’t wear gloves (like the beekeeper in the image above).  They argue that this encourages them to be very gently with their bees, minimising the impact of their interventions.

Where possible, beekeepers treat disease or infestations.  In extreme situations they will destroy a bee colony and burn the hive to prevent disease spreading to other hives.  They transport hives to areas where pollen and nectar are plentiful, at the same time ensuring crops are pollenated.  During the Winter, they ensure their bees have sufficient food to survive, providing sugar syrup if the bees’ reserves of honey are insufficient.

Beekeepers are no longer a threat to honeybees.  Their role has turned to protecting bee colonies.  As honeybees have become domesticated, the threats to them from predators, parasites and disease have diminished.   The new threats are environmental, from pollution and pesticides.

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Concentration

What’s in the bottle?

Apart from a cute bottle, what do you get when you buy a bottle of fragrance?  I thought it might be useful to compare the offerings.

A carrier will make up the largest proportion of all the ingredients in a fragrance.  This benefits the seller economically because carrier will be the cheapest ingredient, but it also benefits the consumer.  The fragrant ingredients, whether natural essential oils or synthetic fragrance oils, are highly concentrated.  With very few exceptions, they should not be applied to skin unless they have been diluted in some way.

In the Western world the overwhelming proportion of fragrances are alcohol based.  Oil-based perfumes, including solid perfumes, are much more common in the Middle East.  This may have something to do with religious objections to handling alcohol, but oil-based fragrances can also be better suited to hotter, drier climates.

Alcohol-based fragrances

The alcohol that is used as a carrier for fragrances is normally ethanol.  Ethanol evaporates quickly and does not have a particularly strong odour of its own.  It does not leave a residue on fabrics.  It can be used on hair in cultures that do not normally use oil as a hair cosmetic.

There will typically be about 5 – 10% water in the alcohol base of a fragrance.  The alcohol may be denatured (cut with a very small amount of very unpalatable substances) to avoid alcohol duties.  It may also contain small quantities of other substances, for example to stabilise the mixture of alcohol and the fragrance ingredients.

Commercial fragrances should show the percentage alcohol on the packaging.  It’s normally on the back or the bottom of the box.  This is from a Penhalligon’s fragrance:

Assuming that the base alcohol used in the fragrance will contain about 5% water, in this Penhalligon’s fragrance the aromatic content is likely to be 15% or slightly less.

The definitions of the categories of alcohol-based fragrances do not appear to be regulated.  I believe these descriptions to be representative:

Eau de Cologne

Eau de Cologne is the lightest, least concentrated of alcohol-based fragrances.  It typically comprises 1% – 5% fragrant ingredients.  In this image, 2% of the volume of the bottle has been filled with coloured liquid (red wine):

Eau de Toilette

Eau de Toilette can contain anything from 5% – 15% fragrant ingredients, but I believe the concentration most often falls in the 4% – 8% range.  In this image, 6% of the volume of the bottle has been filled with coloured liquid:

Eau de Parfum

Eau de Parfum Normally contains 15% – 20% fragrant ingredients.  Here 15% of the volume of the bottle has been filled with coloured liquid:

Perfume

Perfume, sometimes called Perfume Extract, typically contains around 20% fragrant ingredients.  The range can vary from 15% up to 40%.

Oil based and solid perfumes

Alcohol-based fragrances make up the majority of the output of Western perfume houses.  These are the brands that dominate the ground floor of department stores and the advertising revenues of fashion magazines.  A few indie perfumers market oil-based fragrances, often alongside a range of alcohol-based offerings.  Of these, some offer the same range as either alcohol-based or oil-based.  Solid perfumes are a still smaller niche of the market.  Solid perfumes are oil-based with the addition of a little wax.

While cosmetics and perfumes are heavily regulated in the West, this is not true in the rest of the world.  In many nations there is no obligation to provide a list of ingredients, and the use of synthetic fragrances is common.  Many of these are stronger than their natural equivalents, and cheaper.

I haven’t found any oil-based equivalent to the Eau de Cologne – Eau de Toilette – Eau de Parfum – Perfume levels of concentration in alcohol-based fragrances.   So I asked four perfume companies a direct question about the proportion of aromatics and carrier oil in their products.  I have examples of the products from all four companies.  They differ greatly, but I like them all.  All four companies answered me very promptly, for which I am grateful.  There is a striking difference between the answers from the Western and Eastern traditions.  I’ll let you form your own opinions about them:

Western

The owners of two indie perfume companies in Europe answered my question:

Francesca Bianchi is based in Holland.  She stressed that her oils were intended for body and hair, containing smaller quantities of concentrates than a perfume for more topical use.  However, many people use these oils in the same way that they might use an alcohol-based perfume.  She gave the proportion of aromatics in her oils as “around 5%”.

Christina Pandolfo Is the owner of Plenilunium Botanica based in Wales, in Bridgend. (Plenilunium Botanica is a very new brand at the time of writing (Spring 2021) and Christina is still trading through the Domina Lunae Apothecary websitesite.)  Christina was concerned to stress the need to dilute essential oils because it is not safe to use them neat.  She quoted a proportion of 6-7 drops in 10ml of carrier oil, which by my reckoning works out at around 3%.

Eastern

Representatives of two companies specialising in Eastern perfume oils gave answers in stark contrast to the Western perfumers:

Luxury Scent is a company based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the Northeast of England.  The company markets imported perfume oils.  Their response to my question was:

“20/30% is the lowest essence in our oils, most of them are higher than that and some of them absolutely essence.”

Aromatan Cosmetics is based in India, in Mumbai.  It is the office of a perfumery in the Arabic tradition called Dukhni.  Taha Nabee responded from their Customer Service:

“Typically the dilution % ranges between 20‐40% of pure concentrates”.

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Hungary Water

The first Hungary Water that I encountered was produced by Crabtree and Evelyn.  It was launched in 1975.

Basenotes describes the 1975 Crabtree and Evelyn version as “a masculine fragrance with notes of Rosemary, Mint, Lemon and Orange Peel”.  This version is long discontinued.  Occasionally a bottle appears for sale, offered at a price in excess of GBP 200.

Crabtree and Evelyn launched another version of Hungary Water in 2013.  It is described by Fragrantica as an “Aromatic Spicy fragrance for women and men”.  It included notes of Bergamot, Spearmint, Pink pepper, Rosemary, Cypress, Geranium, Amber, Musk and Sandalwood.  This too is discontinued.

A version of the legend

Rosemary Gladstar’s book called Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health was published in 2001.  It includes a recipe for “The Queen of Hungary’s Water”.  (I’ve always thought that name was rather unfortunate, and prefer the alternate “Hungary Water”.)  Anyway, this is how the book introduces the recipe:

“This wonderful astringent lotion has been hailed as the first herbal product ever produced and marketed.  Legend has it that the early Gypsies formulated it and claimed it to be a cure-all.”

My BS detector is starting to register.

Rosemary Gladstar’s recipe for Hungary Water pops up all over the internet.  Some claim very ancient origins for the recipe.  A few quote it as being the original recipe.  Some quote the story that Hungary Water was so effective at preserving the queen’s complexion at age 70 that the 25-year-old Duke of Lithuania asked for her hand in marriage.  (Of course the Duke was only attracted by the Queen’s complexion!)

A few of the descriptions of Hungary Water describe it as the first distilled perfume, but all the recipes I’ve found (with just one exception) are based on steeping herbs in either vinegar or alcohol.

Rosemary Gladstar’s recipe comprises:

6 parts lemon balm
4 parts chamomile
4 parts roses
3 parts calendula
3 parts comfrey leaf
1 part each of lemon peel, rosemary and sage
Apple or white wine vinegar (to steep the herbs)
Rose water or witch hazel (added to the strained vinegar)
Optionally, a few drops of rose or lavender essential oil.

I’m sure that recipe produces a very acceptable skin toner.  I’m less sure that there is anything ancient or authentic about it.

Searching for Authenticity

For something ancient and authentic I turned to my copy of Salley Pointer’s Artifice of Beauty.  Salley is an historian.  When archaeologists turn up a container of something that might have been a cosmetic preparation, they turn to Salley for scholarly insights to their find.  This is how she introduces Hungary Water:

“Perfumes underwent a dramatic change during the medieval period, after thousands of years of oil- or fat-based preparations.  Credited with being the first ‘modern’ perfume (although almost certainly the Arab world was the originator of the first alcoholic extracts of plant aromatics), Hungary Water is alleged to have appeared first in the mid-fourteenth century and is an alcoholic distillation composed mostly of rosemary, with possible additions of aromatic herbs, barks or resins depending on which later text is consulted.”

Salley’s book also includes a longer feature on Hungary Water.  I’ve put it in a separate page to keep the length of this post manageable.

I thought it would be interesting to re-create a version of distilled Hungary Water.

Mindful of Salley’s caution that: “In many countries there are restrictions on distilling alcoholic perfumes at home”, I wrote to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in April 2020 with a draft application for a licence to distil.  They replied the following September.  I answered their questions within a couple of days, and I’ve heard nothing since.

Distillation

Distillation works by boiling a mixture of liquids and condensing the vapours.  Ethanol boils at a lower temperature than water, and the first vapours to boil off a mixture of ethanol and water contain a higher proportion of ethanol than the liquid.  So the condensed vapours (the distillate) contain a higher concentration of ethanol than the original liquid.  Ethanol cannot be completely separated from water by distillation, but a concentration of about 96% can be achieved by successive distillations.

My still has a capacity of 2 litres.  It was manufactured in Portugal and is made of copper.  This design is called an alembic still, meaning that the vapours pass from the top of the still through a downward facing tube where they begin to condense.  It’s a miniature of version of the pot-stills used to distil alcoholic beverages such as whisky or cognac.  A pot still is less efficient than a column still.  Column stills are used in petrochemical refineries.  They are also commonly used for producing vodka.

Production

I collected stems of rosemary, with leaves and flowers, in late summer.  I filled a 1.5 litre jar with them, lightly pressed down.  Then I filled the remaining space in the jar with the cheapest UK Duty Paid brandy I could find, using a little more than one and a half bottles, and leaving a small air space so I could agitate the mixture by shaking it.

By using UK Duty Paid brandy, I am avoiding the most heinous of crimes – failing to pay taxes to HM Revenue and Customs.

In the UK there is duty payable on all alcoholic beverages containing more than 1.2% alcohol by volume (ABV).  The rate applicable to beverages exceeding 22% ABV is GBP 28.74 per litre of pure alcohol (at the time of writing).  That works out as GBP 8.05 on a 700ml bottle of brandy at 40% ABV.  VAT at 20% is applied to the duty-paid price, so the total alcohol tax collected on each of my bottles of brandy was  GBP 9.66.

Between Christmas and New Year, I poured the liquid from the jar into the pot of my still.  I filled the still column with as much of the rosemary as would fit without compressing it.  I set up the still and collected the first 600ml of distillate.  This is my version of Hungary Water.  It’s a clear liquid with the sharp, clean smell of rosemary.

Measuring the alcohol content

Given that my feedstock was brandy at 40% ABV, diluted very slightly with liquid drawn out of the rosemary leaves and stems, I had expected my distillate would be perhaps 50% ABV.  I could have refined my guess by looking up distillation curves for ethanol and water, but I didn’t need to.  It’s possible to buy inexpensive laboratory equipment that will give useful, if not highly accurate measurements.

This device is called a refractometer, and measures the proportion of ethanol in an ethanol/water mixture.  When I checked my Hungary Water with the refractometer, the reading was off the scale!  (The scale goes up to 80% ABV.)

My Hungary Water could be used as a light cologne, or a skin cleanser, or a linen spray.  It could be cut with a hydrosol to make a more gentle astringent – obvious choices would be rose or lavender.  I’m tempted to put some in a pocket atomiser to refresh my mask after use.

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A Mermaid’s Tale

On England’s South coast, near Gosport in Hampshire, there is a rather ugly 10-storey tower block.  On the tenth floor there is a circular swimming pool that is 7 metres in diameter.  Fewer than a dozen swimmers are in the water.  They stop and look downwards through their goggles as one of their number swims to the surface.  As he swims upwards the water is filled with whale-song.

Emma Farrell, Submarine Escape Training Tank, Gosport UK. Image by Fred Buyle.

It’s December 2005.  The tower block is in HMS Dolphin, a British Navy establishment.  The “swimming pool” is the Submarine Escape Training Tank (SETT).  The bottom of the SETT is at ground level, 30 metres (100 feet) below the water surface on the tenth floor.  The SETT was built as a training facility for submariners, to teach them to escape safely to the surface from a submarine disabled underwater.  The swimmers are people learning to freedive and those who are teaching them.  The whale-song is the sound of air escaping from a freediver’s ears and sinuses as he ascends from pressures of almost 4 atmospheres at the bottom of the SETT to one atmosphere at the surface.

One Breath

Freediving, sometimes called breath-hold diving or apnea, is the art of swimming underwater while holding your breath.  One Breath: A Reflection on Freediving is Emma Farrell’s story about learning to freedive, competing internationally, and teaching.

At its simplest, freediving is simply drawing a breath, holding it, and descending below the surface of water.  It is the art of the pearl-fisher, the spearfisherman, or the holiday maker who dips below the surface while snorkelling.

Yoram Zekri, Rangiroa, French Polynesia. Image by Fred Buyle

Emma’s story begins on New Year’s Eve 2000 in the Canary Islands.

“…We met an Englishman in a bar who, shouting over the music, told us he was a freediver.  I pulled him outside into the rain, my eyes shining, and grilled him until I had a list of contacts in the UK.”

I always smile when I read that.  Emma is at least six feet tall, and I have some sympathy for the English freediver.  I’m grateful to him too, that he coughed up the contacts.

One Breath records Emma’s journey from that moment in Tenerife to becoming one of the most respected freedivers in an international community.  It is beautifully written, drawing on Emma’s experience as a film writer and director.  It is also brutally honest, charting struggles and difficulties that had to be overcome along the way.

“When you surface from a good dive you want more, and the happy memories warm you like the sun.  Surface from a bad dive and it stays with you, a cold wind to chill your confidence.  This dive would now haunt me like a shadow, casting shade on my soul, until I had the strength to go back down into the darkness and banish it.”

COMPETITIVE FREEDIVING

There is a competitive side to freediving too.  The disciplines include:

Static apnea – timed holding a single breath, with face underwater.

Tanya Streeter, Static Apnea Competition, France. Image by Fred Buyle.

Dynamic apnea – swimming horizontally underwater holding a single breath.  There are speed and distance variants.

Pierre Frolla, Monaco. Image by Fred Buyle.

Depth disciplines – the depth to which a diver descends.  There are numerous versions of this discipline, from diving unassisted with constant weight to the “no limits” competition.

Pierre Frolla, 2004, 123 metre world record variable weight dive, Monaco. Image by Fred Buyle.

Freediving disciplines are described on the deeperblue website.  Current records are listed on Wikipedia.

One Breath describes competition in several disciplines.  Emma treats competitions as learning experiences.  She claims no international or national records, but she has the respect of people who have broken freediving records.  Her mastery of breathing techniques has enabled her to coach competitors in different sports towards gold medals in Olympic Games.

Understanding water

This book presents water as an environment that does not yield to force and determination.  Spending more than a few moments underwater, or descending to depths of more than a few feet, requires an understanding of the essence of water and our own physiology.  The book is an introduction to the breadth of that understanding.  It explores how our bodies can adapt to an underwater environment.  While the process of evolution optimises humans for life on land, we have a physical legacy from our aquatic past.

Teaching

We’ve reached Chapter 10 and Emma is teaching.

Emma Farrell teaching rescue procedure at the SETT. Image by Fred Buyle.

It’s as if Emma was destined to teach freediving.  At the age of 12 she was taught to breathe by a Buddhist Monk.  She is a qualified yoga instructor.  She has written and directed short films, so she understands how to present her lessons to best effect.  This can all be learned or inferred from her résumé.  The bit that’s missing from the résumé is Emma’s love of the comic and absurd.  Her infectious humour acts as a reset button when a student faces a personal impasse.  She takes her teaching very seriously.  Herself less so.

“Teaching brings me so much joy.  My own struggles can be turned into learning experiences for others and the memory of my own fears can be used to melt those of my students.”

We are back in the SETT and I’m lying on my back with my left hand resting just below my sternum, feeling my heartbeat.  The fingers of my right hand are splayed across my belly with my thumb resting in my navel.  After breathing continuously for over 50 years, I am learning how to breathe.  It’s the first of many “Ah-ha” moments on the course.  I’ve used what I learnt on that day every day since.  On a couple of occasions when allergic reactions have pushed me to the brink of anaphylactic shock, I’ve been able to hold back the panic by telling myself:
“It’s okay.  You’ve got this.  You know how to breathe.”

Overall impressions

One Breath is a beautiful book.  With just a couple of exceptions, the hundred-and-something photos were taken by Frédéric Buyle.  (The images here have been scanned from my copy of the book, and are not representative of the quality of Fred’s work.)  Fred is an underwater photographer from Belgium.  He freedives to take his photographs.  He uses minimal equipment and natural light.  Fred has held four freediving world records, and he is one of only a handful of people who have dived unaided to a depth of 100m on a single breath.

The endorsements for One Breath are impressive.

The Foreword is written by Tim Ecott.  Tim was a staff correspondent for the BBC World Service when he wrote Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World.  Neutral Buoyancy was published in 2001.

On the back-cover, Tanya Streeter describes One Breath as “Written as elegantly as Emma herself is in the water…”.  On 17 August 2002, petite Tanya Streeter claimed the overall No Limits freediving record with a dive to a depth of 160m, the deepest ever freedive at the time.  Her record has been broken several times by male freedivers, but remains the record for a female.  Tanya Streeter retired from professional freediving in 2008.

One Breath is published by Pynto, ISBN 0 9542315 2 X.  Copies are available (signed by Emma) from GO freediving.

The last word

If you are still here, would you buy Emma, or me, a coffee?

Somewhere along the way Emma and I discovered that we share a birthday.  (We were born under a water sign, of course.)  Recently we’ve given each other donations to the same cause as birthday presents.

There is a sisterhood of mermaids, and one of them needs some help.  Mermaid Reese has been battling Leukaemia for more than five years.  She’s now in her early teens.  Reese lives in the US where there is no state-sponsored healthcare.
Linden is a professional Mermaid, Auntie Mermaid to Reese.  Linden champions fundraising to provide medical care for Reese, and to support Reese’s parents who provide full-time care.

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A Mixture for Winter

I wanted to make a new fragrance by blending essential oils.  I realised that I’ve posted several “recipes” for fragrances, but I haven’t said much about how I select and blend the ingredients.  What follows is a description of how I made a fragrance called Winter.  It blends essential oils with some science, some experience, some guesswork, some inspiration, some process, and just a hint of magic.

The First Step

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

Lao Tzu (Sixth Century Before Christian Era)

There has to be a first step, something that prompts a creative process.  It could be a theme, a memory, a mood.  You might want to re-create something that you’ve encountered.  Smells are strongly connected with memories, so you may want to create something that invokes a memory.

There may be an ingredient that you want to use.  I’ve picked ingredients at random as the starting point for fragrance blends.  On other occasions I’ve picked an ingredient because it connects with a theme I’ve chosen.  I might pick an ingredient for it’s therapeutic properties.  Most often, I’ll start with an ingredient just because I like the way it smells.

Over the course of a couple of years I worked up blends of essential oils, and sometimes other ingredients, to reflect the changing seasons.  I created eight blends and named them for the eight pagan festivals.  During the second pass through the year I created an alternate blend for Litha.  I did that because someone convinced me that Litha “Is all about the Roses”.  That left me without a name for my first Litha blend, so I called it “Summer”.  My slightly obsessive-compulsive mind was disturbed by the idea of Summer without the other three seasons, so I’ve committed myself to creating blends for Autumn, Winter and Spring.

(Those who know me are sniggering now at the idea that my mind is only slightly obsessive-compulsive.)

Inspiration

I had a theme for my new blend.  It would be Winter.

I had taken the Winter celebrations as my inspiration for a fragrance I called Yule.  That combined the traditions of “bringing in the green” with the spices used in festive fare.  I wanted to make Winter a celebration of other aspects of the season.

The Winters where I live are cold and dark and damp.  (The photo at the top of this post was taken in Alaska.)  It’s very rare that we get snow that reflects the natural light, but we do get frosts.  Sometimes standing water freezes over.  It’s a time to wrap up and go out and walk.  You can see further through the trees when the leaves have fallen.  Returning home to make things in a warm kitchen, or to curl up with a good book, adds to the joy of venturing out.

The bitter Seville oranges that are used to make marmalade start to become available in November.  They can normally still be bought in early February.  Making marmalade is one of the delights of Winter.  It calls for two sessions of activity, each about an hour long, with a couple of hours between while the prepared fruit simmers.  It’s a great social activity, because the two hours in the middle can become a long lunch while the house is filled with scent of oranges.

I had my first ingredient for Winter – Orange.

Guesswork

I already had a second ingredient because I wanted to use Wintergreen.

I didn’t want to create a fragrance in which Wintergreen dominates.  It’s a very assertive smell.  Wintergreen is the dominant smell in the Surgical Spirit sold in the US, and in many liniments and muscle rubs.  It’s medicinal, sharp and penetrating.  Any concoction that majored on Wintergreen would smell like the start of the London Marathon.  However, I had a suspicion that Wintergreen could be a dosing ingredient.

There are some perfume ingredients that smell vile if you encounter them in isolation.  Often they include indole, which is a chemical commonly associated with fecal matter.  Civet is one such ingredient. Ambergris is another. Their value in perfumery is that they work a kind of magic when very tiny amounts are added to a blend of other fragrances. These ingredients are sometimes called fixatives. The process of adding one of these ingredients is called dosing.

Process

Now that I had selected two ingredients, I needed to determine the proportions in which to use them.  There are a couple of ways to work this out.

The first way is to use perfume test strips.  These are strips of absorbent paper that are typically around 150mm long and slightly less than 10mm wide.  The process starts with writing the name of a different ingredient on each of two test strips.  It’s a good idea to add the time of day as well as the ingredient name.  Then add a single drop of each ingredient to its named tester strip.  If you bend the scented end of the test strip upwards slightly, you can put the strip down without the scented end touching anything.

Hold the test strips so the fragranced ends are close together, but fanned out slightly so they don’t touch.  Wave the test strips around for a moment, then bring them close to your nose and smell them.

If one of the ingredients overpowers the other, make up another strip with the ingredient you want to increase.  Add that to the fan of test strips, and smell them again.  Adjust the number of strips of each ingredient until you are happy with the balance.

There is a time dimension to perfumes.  If you leave the scented test strips for a while and then return to them, you may find the balance has changed.  Then you have to decide whether you want your blend to be balanced at the first encounter, or to mature into a balance later.

Another process

I like using test strips for sampling perfumes, but I don’t use them for working out the proportions of ingredients when I’m blending essential oils.  It can be difficult to put consistent quantities on test strips, and (in my opinion) they don’t always represent the way ingredients will interact.  My favoured approach is to mix up small samples of ingredients in different proportions.

I started mixing samples in test-tubes.  It resonated with studying in chemistry laboratories, and with the mad scientist ethos.  Test-tubes have their own challenges.  You can’t put them down unless you put them in a rack or put a stopper in them. Glass test-tubes are expensive. Laboratory grade plastic test tubes don’t react well with neat essential oils. If you have any doubts about whether you should ingest undiluted essential oils or apply them to your skin, take a look at what they did to a plastic test tube:

I use glass vials now. They are relatively inexpensive, and as stable as essential oil bottles.

As the starting point for working out proportions, I label 5 vials with the proportions I’ll put in them. Using Orange and Wintergreen as an example, I mix up the oils as follows:

1 drop Wintergreen, 5 drops Orange
2 drops Wintergreen, 4 drops Orange
3 drops Wintergreen, 3 drops Orange
4 drops Wintergreen, 2 drops Orange
5 drops Wintergreen, 1 drop Orange.

You can smell each of the mixtures to see which you think is balanced.  It sometimes helps to add a little perfumer’s alcohol to each vial, screw down the cap and shake the vial to mix the oils and alcohol.  Dipping the end of a test strip into a vial is a good way to sample the mixtures.  It’s best to wave the test strip around for a moment to reduce the alcohol fumes before you smell it.

It’s quite possible that one ingredient still overpowers the other in a 1-to-5 mixture.  In that case you might want to mix up some more samples with proportions of, say, 1 to 10, 1 to 15 and 1 to 20.

I was reasonably content with a mixture of 1 Wintergreen to 12 Orange at this stage.

Experience and more Guesswork

In Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, his character Jean-Baptiste Grenouille blends 12 ingredients as the basis of his perfume. Then he doses the mixture with a thirteenth ingredient. Although the total number of ingredients is not a hard and fast rule, professional perfumers will typically blend about a dozen ingredients.  I’m not a professional.  My blends typically contain 5 – 8 ingredients.

I could systematically work out the proportions of 2 ingredients, then having fixed the proportions the first two I could repeat the process to determine the amount of a third ingredients to add to them.  Then I could fix the proportions of the three ingredients and work out how much of a fourth to add.

Life is too short.  I’m sure some apprentice perfumers go through the extended process to work out a blend.  I’m equally sure that most perfumers, professional or amateur, cut some corners based on experience and guesswork, and then make some final adjustments to their blend.

THE PLAN COMES TOGETHER

I liked the combination of Orange with a small quantity of Wintergreen. But both Orange and Wintergreen are Head notes. They are volatile, fading rapidly. A more balanced blend needs some ingredients that are more persistent, that will linger when the Head notes fade and disappear.

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Returning to my chosen theme of Winter, I wanted my blend to be comforting.  I wanted it to bring to mind dark evenings curled up somewhere warm with hands wrapped around a mug containing a favourite hot drink.  There is an essential oil of Coffee, which is a Heart note and smells much as you would expect concentrated coffee to smell.  To add a Base note that would contribute sweetness to the blend, I chose Oakmoss Resin.

My Winter fragrance was coming together. After mixing up a few test samples, the blend comprised:

12 Orange
1 Wintergreen
4 Coffee
6 Oakmoss.

There’s still something missing. It’s time to take a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Arsed Guess) and try something completely random. I add a drop of Camphor …

Camphor is another of those very difficult ingredients, a little like Wintergreen. It’s rarely used in perfumery, like Wintergreen. It just might work …

With the addition of Camphor, I’m almost content with my blend. I eventually conclude that the Wintergreen is just a little too dominant.  I cut the proportion by half (and because there’s only one drop in the original blend, that means doubling the quantity of all the other ingredients).

Wrapping up

Now I can write up the final recipe and rinse out my trial mixture vials into my latest bottle of Frogs Breath.

I can’t use my blend as a perfume until I have diluted the essential oils with a carrier.  In this case I plan to use perfumer’s alcohol and make a perfume at Eau de Cologne strength (1-5% essential oils in perfumer’s alcohol).  I can make an Eau de Cologne at just under 5% by using one measure of the blend and topping up to 50ml with alcohol.  The mixture needs to be left for a few days to macerate.

The final test is to wear the blend, and try to persuade a few other volunteers to wear it too. Perfume works slightly differently (sometimes very differently) with each individual’s skin chemistry.

Perfume doesn’t have to be worn on a body.  It can be sprayed onto fabric or used as a room spray too.  I’ve recently discovered these refillable sprays.  I keep one with my mask to freshen it up between wearings.  Isn’t that a very 2020 thing to do?

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Darkness and Light

“Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee O Lord. “

– Evening Prayer, the Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils,
The Book of Common Prayer and administration
of the sacraments and other rites and ceremoniesof the Church
according to the use of The Church of England.

No, NO, NO!

I’d like to keep my darkness, thank you very much!

It’s early December. The sun set a couple of hours ago. It’s been a day of drizzling rain driven by a cold breeze. The rain has held off since sunset, but the temperature is around 5C. Four people sit around a small wood fire in a patch of woodland. The surrounding woodland softens the breeze, but it’s still brisk enough to make the embers glow. Eyes glisten in the firelight. Soft voices and gentle laughter barely rise above the crackling of the fire. The trees seem to converge above us, just slightly darker than the overcast sky.

Dave Porter Photography/Shutterstock

At this moment, there is nowhere I’d rather be than in this darkness. Darkness sharpens my appreciation of the light of day. The daylight deepens my appreciation of the night.

A rambling story

Route 65M, the road along the Western bank of the Red Sea in Egypt, goes from Hurghada in the North to the Sudanese border in the South. Inland of the road there is desert. On the other side there are beaches and coves, and the Red Sea. About 140 Km South of the airport at Hurghada you can find Roots Dive Camp. The nearest town is El Qoseir, another 14 Km further South.

Roots offers wonderful SCUBA diving in the Red Sea. Other than that, the camp is simple and comfortable. The food is similarly simple, but the chef worked out the causes of Pharaoh’s Revenge a long time ago, so this is one place in Egypt where there is no fear of tummy upsets. Evening meals are normally taken in the camp, but about once a week everyone makes the short trek across the road to the beach for a barbecue.

After one such barbecue, L and I made our way across the road and back to the camp. L looked up and gasped:

“What’s THAT?”

“It’s the Milky Way.” I said. I just managed to stop myself from saying: “It’s the Milky Way, Silly!” because it really wasn’t a silly question at all.

inigocia/Shutterstock

After gazing at the sky in wonder until our necks were sore, we made our way back to our room. Along the way I worked out that this was the first time I’d seen the Milky Way since camping out in Northern Europe in the 1980s. Before that, it had been a common sight in the rural Midlands of England when I was a child. L was brought up in a town on the South coast of England and she had never seen the Milky Way. During our lifetimes, our darkness has been lightened.

Black and White

It’s nice to have certainty. It’s nice to be able to say: “This is good” or “This is bad”. It’s nice to be able to take any set of polar opposites and assign them as good and bad. It’s nice to see things as black and white. White is good; black is bad. Light is good; dark is bad. Positive is good; negative is bad. Four legs good; two legs bad. Right is right; left is wrong. I’m right; you’re wrong. East; West. Female; male. Continue ad absurdum…

“Without darkness there’s no light”

– Peter Sarstedt.

He had a point. We could not imagine white if black did not exist. I’ve tried to define white without reference to black, and it doesn’t really work. The easiest definition, and the first that comes to mind is “the opposite of black”.

So black and white are different. They depend upon each other for their existence. In the symbol of Yin and Yang they are equal, opposite, interconnected, and each contains a little of the other. There’s so much concentrated in a simple, familiar symbol.

Navitas/CleanPNG
Darkness and Light
Yayayoyo/Shutterstock

The cartoon image of a burglar resonates with us. He wears a striped sweater and a mask across his eyes. He carries a flashlight and a swag bag. He comes in darkness.

Real burglars don’t wear striped sweaters or carry bags labelled “swag”. They realise that wearing a mask or waving around a flashlight is the quickest way to signal their ill intentions. They are more likely to telephone you or send you an email than to attempt to enter your home in person. And if they do intend to break and enter, they’ll probably do it in daylight when there’s plenty of other activity to distract from what they are doing.

We buy Security Lights and use them to surround our property. The association of words, “security” and “light” resonates with us because we still believe in the cartoon burglar. We think the (good) light will dispel the (bad) darkness and all the bad things we associate with it. To a real burglar the security lights say: “Look, I’ve got something you might want to steal. Come back when there’s no-one around, and you won’t trip over anything when you approach.”

More rambling stories – (1) Bonaire
frantisekhojd/Shutterstock

For anyone who has dived on a tropical reef and marvelled at the diversity of life it supports, it’s a real treat to dive the reef at night. The reef takes on a different character at night. Corals bloom, and a different population of fish venture out in darkness. The beam of a torch focuses attention on a relatively small area, and it reflects rich colours that are muted by sunlight during the day. Many of the nocturnal creatures venture out under cover of darkness to escape the predators that hunt in daylight.

Tarpons are large fish, growing to lengths of up to 2.4 metres. They bear some resemblance to mackerel, but on a much larger scale. Two tarpons lived around the dock at a dive resort in Bonaire called Cap’n Don’s Habitat. Nicknamed Charlene and Charlie, they were 1.5 metres and 2 metres long. They would shadow divers on the reef at night, holding position slightly above and behind where the divers couldn’t see them. They used the light of divers’ torches to hunt. It’s a little disconcerting when a fish that’s as big as you speeds past your shoulder in the dark.

Yes, there are predators in the darkness. They pay little attention to other creatures in the darkness. They are looking into the light to identify their prey.

More rambling stories – (2) London

On 24 Nov 17, a Friday at the height of the Christmas shopping season in London, reports of terrorist attacks threw London City Centre into a panic. The stories of attacks centred on London Underground stations. They were all too plausible, especially for those who remembered the attacks that took place on 07 July 2005, the so-called 7/7 attacks. In a mass panic people fled the area around Underground stations and the stores in London’s West End.

L and I were in London on that Friday evening. We heard the news while we were on Piccadilly. Our train home was scheduled to leave Paddington station a couple of hours later. Our route by Underground would have taken us through the areas affected by the supposed attacks, so we elected to walk. We planned a circuitous route avoiding the prime shopping areas of Regent Street and Oxford Street, Liberty’s and Selfridge’s.

Image by Winter Wonderland

Our route took us through Hyde Park. Part of the park was accommodating Winter Wonderland, a combination of funfair and a Christmas market. Winter Wonderland was brightly lit. As we skirted round the market, I stepped off the wide pathway into the shadows of the trees that lined it. Crowding in the light didn’t feel safe. If there was anyone about with ill intent, I didn’t want to be an illuminated target. From the shadows, I could see without being seen. I was with the predators, not their prey.

“Hello Darkness, my old friend”

– Paul Simon

 

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Candles Revisited

Robson90/Shutterstock

In our household we burn about 100 candles a year. That seems like a lot, but we burn 5 in our living room each evening. Each candle lasts  for 5 evenings. That works out at one candle a day from before Samhain (late October) to after Imbolc (early February).

I make my own candles. I pour them into glass jars. The jars are manufactured as single-use food containers. They are heat-proof to stand sterilization for food use. I can re-use them many times. The candle flame is visible as the candle burns down. There’s no dribbly wax down the sides of candlesticks, or over tables or floors. The fire is as controlled, as much as fire can ever be controlled.

As well as making candles for our own use, I make some as gifts. The number of candles that I make at any one time is increasing as I get more practice. At the moment each batch is about 15 candles. During the Winter months I’m going to be making candles once a fortnight.

Here’s my routine for making 4 scented candles, and 10 (or slightly more) unscented ones.

Melting the wax

My first task is to set up a supply of molten wax. Each of my candles will contain 100-125g of wax. Most are nearer 125g. If I’m aiming to produce up to 16 candles, I’ll need nearly 2Kg of wax. I’ve tried using beeswax, in part because I still have a supply from when I kept bees. Beeswax on its own in a container it quite hard and burns a little too hot. Soya wax, on the other hand, burns well but is a little soft. I blend Soya wax with about 10% beeswax as the basis of my candles, and I like the way they burn and smell.

There are various ways of setting up a supply of molten wax. For smaller quantities, you can put the wax over water in a double-boiler and heat it on the top of the stove. (It’s not advisable to heat wax directly, especially over an open flame. The reason we use wax to make candles is that it is flammable!) An alternative is to put the wax in a pot in a low oven (maybe 70C). That works, but it takes a long time to melt 2Kg of wax.

I thought that I would melt enough wax in a year to justify investigating purpose-made wax-melters. Most of the wax-melters available commercially are aimed at commercial candle producers.  They would melt my year’s supply of wax, or more,  in one go. I found a smaller version with a capacity of about 4 Kg of wax on eBay, from a seller in the US. It’s a crock-pot that has been modified by fitting a tap to run off the molten wax. I need a 220V to 110V transformer to operate it, but it works very well. It takes about 10 minutes to melt each 1Kg of wax.

While the wax melts, I warm the jugs I will use for filling the candle containers. I use two. One is a Pyrex jug with a capacity of 500ml. I use that one to fill 4 scented candles. I use the other jug for pouring “ordinary” candles. The second one is made of stainless steel. It has a long lip for directing the wax into the containers. I put at least one stirring rod in one of the jugs, so the stirring rod gets warm too.

Fixing the candle wicks

I buy pre-cut candle wicks with the sustainers already attached. (Sustainers are small, circular metal clips that grip the wick so it can be fixed to the bottom of a container.) I’ve tried using the double-sided sticky pads sold for fixing candle wicks, but it’s almost impossible to remove the residue when the candle is burnt out. I like to re-use my containers, so now I use hotmelt glue.
My trick for positioning the wick is to put half a drinking straw around the wick.

The straw is rigid enough for me to be able to press the sustainer against the base of the container while the glue sets. I can hold the container upside down and see the wick is central as I bring the surfaces together. (Yes, that is a plastic drinking straw. We had a few left over when we made the switch to paper ones for drinks a few years ago.  I’m using them for candles before disposing them responsibly.)

Testing the glue holding the wick

When the glue has had a chance to set, I test each wick by using it to lift the container. I also make sure I have prepared a few spare containers with wicks. It’s not unusual for 2 or 3 wicks in a batch of 15 to come unstuck, and I want to use all the wax I’ve prepared.

Purpose-made wick holders, and cocktail sticks

 

With the wicks glued in place, it’s time to fix the wick so it is held centrally in the container. I have some plastic clips for the purpose, and a few metal ones. Sprung clothes pegs can work, but aren’t so good if the top of the container is less than 6cm across. (The clothes peg reduces the gap through which you will pour wax). You can use two cocktail sticks with small elastic bands to hold them together each side of the wick. Orthodontic bands or loom bands work well.

Cooling the wax for pouring

I use an infra-red thermometer to check the temperature of wax and the oven. It’s cleaner than using the type of thermometer that has to be dipped into a liquid. There’s little difference in price.

Checking the temperature of the wax

When all the wax is melted, I check the temperature. Soy wax melts at around 50C. Beeswax melts at around 60C. By the time it is all melted, it’s normally at about 70C. That’s too hot for pouring into the containers. The most obvious reason is that the hotmelt glue will melt at that temperature, and the wicks will come adrift. Another reason is that the hotter the wax, the more it will shrink as it sets. If it’s too hot, it pulls away from the sides of the containers leaving unsightly cavities.

If the wax for scented candles is too hot, any essential oils that are added to it will cook off. This significantly reduces the extent to which a scented candle ends up being scented.

I pour (or scoop) 300-400ml of wax into my stainless-steel jug. I check the temperature and put it on one side. I’ll pour this wax into containers when the temperature is 50C or less, and the wax is just starting to go misty.

I take the second jug out of the oven, and check the oven temperature. The control on my oven is labelled OFF—0—100C at the lower temperature range, so it’s difficult to set it to a temperature below 100C with any accuracy. Using a thermometer to help me, I aim to get the temperature as near 50C as possible.

The second jug is for the scented candles. I put a small amount of wax dye in this jug (about 4g), enough to just tint the wax. Then I top up the jug with between 450ml and 500ml of molten wax. I stir it to distribute the dye, then put it alongside the first jug of wax to cool to around 50C. Meanwhile I measure out 25-30ml of my chosen essential oil or blend of oils.

Pouring the candles

 

When the plain wax cools to 50C and starts to mist a little, I start to pour it into the containers. I fill containers to a depth of no more than 2cm, reserving 4 containers for the scented candles. Then I refill the jug and set it aside to cool again.  This process is repeated, adding no more than 2cm of molten wax to an empty container, or to one in which earlier pourings of wax have set.  I continue building up the levels of wax until all the containers are filled to about 1cm below the top.

When the dyed wax has cooled to 50C I add the essential oils and stir them in. I pour wax into the reserved containers to a depth of 2 cm, then put the jug of wax in the oven to stay warm. By this time I should have the oven temperature at 50-55C. I don’t want it any hotter because higher temperatures would cook off the essential oils. When the wax in the containers has set, I top it up by another 2cm, again returning the unused wax to the oven.  I continue topping up until the containers are full to about 1cm from the top, or until I’ve used up all the scented and coloured wax. If I’ve judged things correctly, I meet both conditions at the same time.

Finishing off

When all the wax has set, it’s time to trim the wicks and make the candles presentable. I remove the wick supports and trim the wicks with sharp scissors so that they protrude 5-6mm above the surface of the wax. I doesn’t matter if I make gouges in the surface of the wax in the process because the next step fixes that.

Heat gun

The final step is to melt just a few millimetres of wax on the surface of each candle so that the surface sets smooth and even. I use a heat gun. I think of the heat gun as a hair-dryer-on-steroids. Heat guns are sold in DIY stores for drying paint or varnish, or bending plastic pipes, or welding plastics. They work really well for melting and levelling the surface of candles, or wax based cosmetics such as lip-balms.

Tidying up

I allow unused wax to cool and set in my wax melter. The jug used for plain wax goes in a fridge for about half an hour so the wax sets and shrinks. It’s fairly easy to chip the wax out of this jug into the wax melter ready for the next session of candle making.

I try not to have excess scented wax left. Unless I can think of a way of blending it with other fragrances, I discard any excess. Hot wax can be wiped out of the jug with kitchen paper. If there is too much for that, any liquid can be poured into an empty yoghurt or cream carton to set before being discarded.

Minor spills of wax can be scraped off hard surfaces. Very hot soapy water will remove the rest. Alternatively, small smears can be removed with a little paraffin oil (lamp oil). The lamp oil will evaporate quite quickly afterwards.

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W is for: Wintergreen

A rambling historical introduction

Germany was occupied by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. In 1949 Germany was divided. The Federal Republic of Germany was a democracy known as West Germany. The German Democratic Republic was known as East Germany and was largely controlled by the Soviet Union. It wasn’t quite the same sort of democracy as its neighbour. By 1955 West Germany had joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and had re-armed with the blessing of its allies. NATO forces remained in West Germany, but their role switched from occupation of a defeated nation to deterring aggression from the East.  There were 55,000 British military personnel stationed in West Germany from 1955 until German reunification was formalized on 03 October 1990 .

I first saw the Inner German Border in the late 1960s. I was one of the 55,000 for a total of about 8 years across the 1970s and 1980s.

A cold day

Sometime in the 1980s I was preparing for a small-scale military exercise in the region of Germany called the Eifel. The Eifel is a range of hills between Belgium and Germany. On the Belgian side it is called the Ardennes. It was the site of the Battle of the Bulge, the last major Nazi offensive of WWII from 16 Dec 1944 – 25 Jan 1945. Our base for our training exercise was a military camp called Vogelsang (Bird Song) that was built as a training camp for Hitler Youth.

On a very chilly day, 3 of us walked the terrain we planned to use for a map-reading exercise. (Paper maps. No GPS. No satellite images. And no mobile phones.) Sometime in the afternoon we took refuge in a Gasthof (pub) to wait for our ride back to camp. Our host took pity on us. While we waited for our glasses of beer, he poured us each a shot of clear spirit from an ice-encrusted bottle he kept in a freezer. I won’t ever forget that experience.

Revisiting spirit from the Eifel

I didn’t identify the liquor from that pub in the Eifel for another ten years. It turned out to be Eifelgeist (literally, Eifel spirit). According to the distillery, it is made with 42 hand-picked herbs, spices and flowers. The distillery doesn’t divulge its secret ingredients, but I’m sure the dominant herb is Wintergreen.

For the last 25 years I’ve kept successive bottles of Eifelgeist and a couple of shot glasses in the household freezer. The bottle is retrieved just 2 or 3 times a year to work its warming magic.

Wintergreen essential oil

Wintergreen essential oil is extracted by steam distillation from a genus of plants called Gaultheria, the most common of which is likely the American wintergreen Gaultheria procumbens. The aromatic component of Wintergreens is methyl salicylate. As well as being extracted from plants, methyl salicylate is synthesised.

I looked up the entry for Wintergreen essential oil in Julia Lawless’ Encyclopaedia of Essential Oils. Among other things, this is what it says:

ARMOATHERAPY/HOME USE None. ‘Avoid both internally and externally.’

The WebMD entry for wintergreen oil includes:

Wintergreen oil is POSSIBLY UNSAFE to take by mouth. Taking wintergreen oil can cause ringing in the ears, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (US spelling!), headache, stomach pain, and confusion. As little as 6 ml (a little over a teaspoon) of the oil taken by mouth can be fatal.

When is a poison not a poison?

“What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.”

– Paracelsus (1493-1541).

Wintergreen, or more accurately synthetic methyl salicylate, is ingested in large quantities overall, but mostly very, very small amounts at a time. It’s a favourite flavouring for toothpaste, chewing gum, sweets and soft drinks, particularly in the USA. It’s one of the flavouring ingredients in Coca-Cola.

Medicinal Uses

Wintergreen oil is present at 3.7% in Olbas Oil, an “Inhalant decongestant” and topical muscle rub.

Methyl salicylate is chemically similar to aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). 1 ml (20 drops) of oil of wintergreen is equivalent to about 1860 mg of aspirin, or almost six regular-strength adult aspirin tablets. Wintergreen is normally used in muscle rubs and liniments. It is one of the ingredients in the version of Surgical Spirits sold in the US. In most over-the-counter muscle rub creams the content of methyl salicylate is around 30%. In some it can be as high as 70%.

While topical muscle rubs containing Wintergreen are generally safe, the dosage is critical. The Naturopathic Doctor News & Review notes “In 2007, a 17-year-old cross-country runner died from excessive and long-term applications of topical muscle creams for pain relief. The medical examiner determined that an abnormally elevated level of methyl salicylate in her body was the cause of death.”

Perfume use

During the afternoon of 29 May 1969 a naked woman carried a cross across the floor of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. The action was designed to illustrate the story of Christ driving the merchants out of the temple. It was staged by Bjørn Nørgaard and performed by Lene Adler Petersen. The photograph is a modern icon (which I can’t include here because of copyright issues, but you can see on Bjørn Nørgaard’s website). The action became known as The Female Christ.

While interesting in its own right, The Female Christ became relevant to a discussion of Wintergreen when a perfume company called 19-69 launched a new fragrance earlier this year (2020).  They called it Female Christ.  It is one of very few perfumes  I could identify that includes Wintergreen. Fragrantica only lists two. I picked the one described as “unisex”. This is what Fragrantica says about Female Christ:

“Female Christ by 19-69 is a Woody fragrance for women and men. This is a new fragrance. Female Christ was launched in 2020. Top notes are Patchouli, Eucalyptus and Pimento; middle notes are Rhubarb, Red Thyme, Geranium and Wintergreen; base notes are Benzoin, Amber, Cashmere Wood, Vanilla and Cinnamon.”

It’s an intriguing fragrance, but my non-professional nose is challenged to detect the Wintergreen.  I do plan to attempt using Wintergreen in a fragrance at some point.  I won’t be attempting to emulate The Female Christ.