June 28th, 2025: It's Alive!

• Brush: AP Shave Co. - Silksmoke Synthetic
• Razor: RazoRock - Game Changer .76-P
• Blade: Van Der Hagen Stainless (2)
• Lather: Summer Break Soaps - Scholar's Shadow - Soap
• Post Shave: Stirling - Oro Valley - Aftershave
• Fragrance: Stirling - Stirling One - EdT

$discord

Theme: I combined SBS Trouble Maker and Valedictorian for today's franken-shave. Partially because I needed to slot SBS in somewhere. I had planned to use it for The Gift day, but the person who sent me the smushes didn't end up participating in the games.

Both share smoke and rosewood as notes, but their contrasting personalities create complexity. Trouble Maker's dark, earthy lavender pushes against Valedictorian's refined tobacco.

I'm giving this combination the name "Scholar's Shadow." Quite nice, but not an improvement of either scent I'd say.

Challenge: 75% -- better than I thought I would! I also think I got a pretty easy start. If I'd gotten the HoM soap early, I'd have been cooked.

$SELFCARE - Got out for a run this morning even though I really didn't want to. Those are often the most important runs.

$FOF - Stirling One's bright bergamot, tobacco, and warm spices cut through the dark soap base. The cologne's cedar and ambergris blend with Oro Valley's leather and the soap's earthy tobacco nicely. A bright yet mysterious combination.

$ROTY

June 28, 2025

• Brush: Oumo Compass Bonfire 27mm Emperor-2
• Razor: Gillette NEW SC
• Blade: Gillette Nacet (4)
• Lather: Mammoth Barrister - Cup of Joe and a Smoke - Soap
• Post Shave: Elysian Soap Shop - Cherie Tobacco - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Thayers - Cucumber - Toner

2 passes. Bowl lather. Excellent shave.

Today I mixed Barrister and Mann Amazelnut with House of Mammoth Tobcconist. Coffee and tobacco are a time-honored pairing. This was certainly true when I was young and continues today. The Amazelnut fragrance notes do not have a coffee accord, but the scent reminds me of a mug of coffee with cream and a touch of hazelnut syrup added. That slightly sweet coffee aroma would pair nicely (imo) with an aromatic tobacco. Tobacconist has that cedar and stone fruit aroma that you can get as tasting notes in a cigar like a white-label Davidoff. Cherie Tobacco has a pure pipe tobacco vibe. It wasn't the best match for the scent of the soap. Leviathan would have been better in retrospect. Overall, I thought this was a successful Frankensoap.

I took the quiz while doing something else, intending to multi-task. I did miserably because I did not notice there was a timer going. My score was 17%.

It's Alive!: Day 28 of Lather Games

• Brush: Declaration Grooming Washington Blood of Kings B3
• Razor: Thiers Issard Le Dandy (5/8", square point, carbon steel)
• Lather: Dr Djudjenstein's – Nocce di Super Coco
• Post Shave: Mäurer & Wirtz – Wild Ride

Theme justification: I smashed together Vitos' Super Extra Coco with Wholly Kaw's Nocce di Cocco. Vitos soap is an old-school hard soap, so hard that it crumbles to dust instead of deforming, which makes it super hard to sample. WK's soft base to the rescue! If you mash Vitos dust with a smush of WK's, the concoction becomes malleable again and sticks to the bottom of the loading bowl.

Unsurprisingly combining these two solid soap bases provided for a very slick shave. After this wild ride, I finished off with, well...

June 28th, 2025: It's Alive!

• Brush: Unbranded - Marble w/ Maggard G5C Synthetic
• Razor: Chiseled Face - Legacy Ti
• Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
• Lather: Holy Hoggins - Revelations
• Post Shave: Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag - Aftershave

Daily Theme: My shave for today was slightly uninspired, but thought this would be funny to do. I combined all of the The Four Horsemen soaps from Barrister and Mann: War, Death, Famine, and Plague. It smelled about as good as it could considering all of them are pretty non-approachable. FWIW, I got more of a reaction out of the Miss with Stag than I did with my brew. I thought it was gonna be a lot more nasty than it was, but it was all just mud and the shave was great. EDIT: totally forgot to mention thanks to u/whosgotthepudding for hooking me up with the Four Horsemen, you da man!

Daily Challenge: I got a 10/12 (83%) for today's challenge. I really thought I could get all of them, but I got stumbled up on two of them. That was a fun challenge.

June 28th, 2025: Mid-Head Night Wood

• Brush: Zenith - 508A XL/Bristle (B35) (MOAR BOAR) 31mm Boar
• Razor: Chiseled Face Legacy Raw Titanium - (#69)
• Blade: Personna P74 (92)
• Lather: Face Break Saponifications - Mid-Head Night Wood
• Post Shave: Chatillon Lux - Lamplight Penance - Toner
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Leather - EdP

Today was really really fun. I was hemming and hawwing between Rhapsody in Indigo and You & I Will Die Down at the River, but in the end I decided to do something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. Midnight Stag, Gearhead, and Wood Shop are all sort of the same genre to me. They all evoke a similar type of working person, blue collar vibe.

I mixed them together in what I thought would be appropriate ratios based on my perceived scent strenght, so Midnight Stag had the least, and Gearhead and Wood Shop had relatively more soap used. Mixing them together confirmed it -- it's a great idea. Next time, though, I'll use more Midnight Stag. I'll also use more soap in general, because this brush needs it...

What really surprised me was that I couldn't pick out any individual soap - it was definitely it's own thing, but with attributes from each fragrance.

Another thing that surprised me was the scent strenght -- it wasn't as strong as I thought it'd be during the shave. After the shave, I huffed each individual tub (and sample in the case of M.S.) and each one was stronger than the mixed concoction. Weird!

So, did stuff cancel each other out? Was my nose simply confused and not sure what to look for? Below is a table of the individual scent notes that I could find, along with which soaps contain them. Motor Oil is common in all of them, and then there's Leather and Cedar that are present in 2/3, and then there's a bunch that are unique.

Relevant Post Shave and Frag: Motor Oil is present in all 3 soaps, and Lamplight Penance smells like Lamp Oil, a different type of oil. Leather is present in 2/3 of the soaps, so I used Seaforth! Leather.

I took the quiz and got 25%!!!! Stellar! A couple of them were on the tip of my tongue.