health and safety in kitchen chemistry

Last weekend I invested some time in kitchen chemistry making soap, towards Christmas gifts. It wasn't quite as smooth as working with a confident soapster like thorngrove last year, but I came away with two batches complete, and still enough materials for another batch.

I'm waffling over buying more supplies - I enjoyed the process, but don't know if I need Yet More Stuff (tm) in the crafts closet. thorngrove had stocks of excellent superfatting supplies like mango butter and ethical palm oil which could round out a basic batch of soap, where I'm trying to keep to things we can eat (olive, almond, and coconut oil) if I get bored of soaping.

My craft supplies also show my biases towards medieval themes - I don't have any 'modern' oils or scents or colour powders for variety...so everyone is getting plausibly medieval smellies.

I did have fun assembling the 'Spanish leather' scent paste, following Sally Pointer's example, which used generous amounts of the most medieval scents, to rub into squares of leather, which later get stitched into pouches. I hope they don't make any recipients break out in hives.

I'm hoping I can also grind up the last of the medieval scented powders that the splendid Lady Ynes made up, and give them out - they won't keep forever, and better we and others enjoy them.

I've debated donating smellies to the coronet or crown, but I don't want to trigger anyone's allergies - still thinking about it.

My safety tip from the weekend: don't start the project by smashing a mercury thermometer on the linoleum floor.

Not only are you down one useful tool, you then have to look up the instructions on how to clean up mercury without poisoning your household.

Fortunately, I work at a public health agency that has written guidance on this very subject...

The really, really important tip: do not try to vacuum mercury! You'll just end up toxifying your vacuum cleaner, and turning it into a device for making mercury droplets airborne.

Now we have to find out how our local council disposes of small quantities of toxic waste, as per the instructions.

Grumping at the optician's

Last week I went to the opticians - I'd noticed I was stuggling to focus at the MoL and NPG when we've been to exhibits recently, bouncing back and forth between looking through my glasses and peering under them.

I tried a different branch of the opticians this time, b/c the local one was so crap - poor service, clumsy efforts at upselling me at every opportunity.

The verdict: I have a small change in my Rx, and perhaps I'd like to try varifocals.

I waffled, went back to reprice them...and balked. Nearly £320 for two pairs of glasses, or £250 for a single pair, with varifocal lenses and a moderately priced frame.

The 2-for-1 upsell pricing irritates me; for 'only' another £70 you can get a second pair! which suggests that the first pair is not worth £250, but closer to £70...or possibly nowhere near either price, who knows? There's no easy way to see the markup on lenses and frames.

There are certainly specialist materials and skills involved in grinding lenses, but I suspect the process is now all done mechanically - if, as the pricing suggests, it's just as easy to get 2 pairs done at once as one pair, then they're not being ground by hand.

The frames are certainly not created by hand, except perhaps in assembly and fitting.

I cannot see what separates the expensive frame from the cheap ones, other than ugliness, and designer names. Only in a few cases there are extra features like hinges to prevent you from snapping the arms, or special materials like titanium. You can get expensive plastic frames as easily as cheap ones, and just as ugly.

So - buggerem. I walked out. I don't need the Rx change; my close vision is fine, though I had hoped that there would be an option to improve it; my current glasses aren't broken.

Buggerem.

Next step: better lighting for winter crafting and scribing.