Queen of Hungary Water
Oct. 9th, 2012 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootThe thing about pagan chums is that eventually, someone is going to get herbal at you.
Popular beauty products are never au naturelle even if they start that way. It can kind of put the mockers on 'natural' products, cos while concotions of rosehips and oatmeal sound wonderful, they aren't going to iron out one's deepest corrugations, unlike a forehead full of cow poison, or some surgeon just pulling your face up over your head. Creme de Mer, one of the worlds most expensive face creams, can knock you back a good £800 for a big pot of some patented wonderkelp, leaving me to wonder if maybe I got it wrong in my spirulina chewing days. Maybe I should have smeared it on my face instead of trying to eat it. Anyhoo...
I have a whole bunch of chums who do wonderful things with strange but natural non-animal abusing creams. One friend gave me this pot of stuff that was heavilly rose scented. I quite liked it, even when she warned me not to wear it in day time because of photosynthesis(?) Anyway I did wear it in day time, and got strange white blotches on my skin. Then there was the one that was a fantastic moisturiser, made more interesting by the inclusion of camphor in the mix; this started off with a nice grassy smell that soon devolved to a strange fishiness. Maybe it did my skin good, it certainly did not help my lovelife, cos my boyfriend wouldn't stand within three feet of me while I wore it.
Now an excellent chum has made me some bonafide Queen of Hungary water. This recipe's been knocking around for centuries, and basically amounts to herbs and flowers steeped in alcohol, often brandy. Apparently romany gypsies would drink it, bathe in it, wash their hair in it... certainly it seems to be a light and rather lovely toner. She got the herbs from her own garden, lemon balm and rosemary, loads of comfrey etc, and being a hypo-allergic kind of girl, I don't use it more than 3 times a week. It's pretty good. The only thing is she chose vinegar as the carrier. If I wear it I smell like a salad dressing and again the man hangs back with the signal observation, 'This is one of those things your friends made, isn't it?'
I like this stuff a lot, and might consider trying to make some myself, if I could grow all the herbs. But what to do about the brandy/vinegar conundrum? Vodka perhaps? I can see the benefits...
Popular beauty products are never au naturelle even if they start that way. It can kind of put the mockers on 'natural' products, cos while concotions of rosehips and oatmeal sound wonderful, they aren't going to iron out one's deepest corrugations, unlike a forehead full of cow poison, or some surgeon just pulling your face up over your head. Creme de Mer, one of the worlds most expensive face creams, can knock you back a good £800 for a big pot of some patented wonderkelp, leaving me to wonder if maybe I got it wrong in my spirulina chewing days. Maybe I should have smeared it on my face instead of trying to eat it. Anyhoo...
I have a whole bunch of chums who do wonderful things with strange but natural non-animal abusing creams. One friend gave me this pot of stuff that was heavilly rose scented. I quite liked it, even when she warned me not to wear it in day time because of photosynthesis(?) Anyway I did wear it in day time, and got strange white blotches on my skin. Then there was the one that was a fantastic moisturiser, made more interesting by the inclusion of camphor in the mix; this started off with a nice grassy smell that soon devolved to a strange fishiness. Maybe it did my skin good, it certainly did not help my lovelife, cos my boyfriend wouldn't stand within three feet of me while I wore it.
Now an excellent chum has made me some bonafide Queen of Hungary water. This recipe's been knocking around for centuries, and basically amounts to herbs and flowers steeped in alcohol, often brandy. Apparently romany gypsies would drink it, bathe in it, wash their hair in it... certainly it seems to be a light and rather lovely toner. She got the herbs from her own garden, lemon balm and rosemary, loads of comfrey etc, and being a hypo-allergic kind of girl, I don't use it more than 3 times a week. It's pretty good. The only thing is she chose vinegar as the carrier. If I wear it I smell like a salad dressing and again the man hangs back with the signal observation, 'This is one of those things your friends made, isn't it?'
I like this stuff a lot, and might consider trying to make some myself, if I could grow all the herbs. But what to do about the brandy/vinegar conundrum? Vodka perhaps? I can see the benefits...
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:26 pm (UTC)The alcohol acts as a preservative.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 08:08 pm (UTC)As if by magic..
Date: 2012-10-09 09:15 pm (UTC)A possible solution appears!
If so, this would be the very first time vodka has ever solved anything for me...
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:25 pm (UTC)Brandy would certainly smell nicer and is the base for commercial flower remedies. You could save the vinegar one as a health drink or for super-healthy salad dressing.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 09:19 pm (UTC)