Solo [The Sanctuary] Stocking The Medicine Cabinet

[Kavala]

Timestamp: Late Fall, 513 AV

Kavala woke up bright and early rather refreshed even after all the work she’d done on crafting her baby products the night before. It was a good feeling FINALLY having something that she could do that no one came by and took out of her hands. Kavala was used to a physical life where she was doing and cleaning and curing ails. This confinement bred restlessness in her that wasn’t her normal state of being. So when she’d discovered that sitting in the Philtering Lab making things wasn’t disturbing anyone’s sense of what a pregnant woman should or shouldn’t be doing, Kavala got excited.

Her list wasn’t as long as the one for yesterday. And in fact she got to use both her witch hazel and green blood in the crafting deodorant. The Drykas in the group could work up a good smell. And like anyone, bathing out on the grass was few and far between. And even though here at The Sanctuary there was access to plenty of hot water, no one wanted to smell in between baths. So Kavala took care of her people the best she cold. She made lotions, balms, soaps, and yes even deodorant. When she finished the deodorant, she was going to work on some shampoo and then perhaps some basic cosmetics for herself.

But first she needed to get the deodorant done. Kavala gathered the ingredients and assembled them on her workbench. She propped the book on the counter, open to the recipe, and read it out loud.

 

Deodorant Bars

Ingrediants

4 ounces arrowroot powder
2 ounces baking soda
1 ounces green blood
2 ounces alcohol (rum)
2 ounces distilled water
8 ounces beeswax
10-15 drops essential oil (Any kind)

Instructions

Mix all ingredients except wax and green blood in a bowl, stir thoroughly. Melt wax in top of a double boiler over very low heat, remove from heat. Add the other ingredients and blend well. If the wax thickens too much to be workable, heat again. As the mixture begins to cool, but before it hardens, add the green blood and essential oils. Pour into molds. Let harden. Remove from molds. Store in a tightly closed container.

Kavala did as the instructions asked and pulled out a bowl, set up her apparatus, and got the double boiler heating. She then got back to following the instructions. Kavala carefully measured the ingredients on her small scale, moving the weights around delicately until the weight was absolutely perfect. Then she dumped the contents into the bowl and began to carefully mix them. She put the mixture to the side and then set a chunk of wax into the double boiler to melt.

Beeswax didn’t take long to melt and so Kavala stood with it, stirring constantly until the wax was perfect to add into the mixture. Once she quickly stirred it in, working the wax and the dry ingredients together, infusing them throughout the mixture. Just when the wax was totally cool but hadn’t yet started to harden, Kavala added in the green blood and ten drops of essential oil.

It had been a hard decision on what to use, but in the end Kavala had worked up a combination of sandlewood and cinnamon, a musky scent that would work well for both the men and women. Later, when she'd perfected the recipe, she'd make one of lavender and rose just for the women. She picked lavender because it was easy on everyone and a natural antiperspirant.

Kavala got out her small soap molds Aweston had made, and got them ready to receive the mixture. When it was ready she poured it into the molds then set them aside to set up and dry. She knew from experience that it would take about a week to get the deodorant to a place where it could be cut into bars and passed out or stored in a cool dry place with other medicine and toiletries.

[Kavala]

Truthfully the bars of soap would not be enough to support The Sanctuary for long. People were always bathing, always needing to be clean, and the healers in the clinic went through a ton of soap themselves in their own right. Kavala knew that one of the better ideas was to leave the bars of soap set up and make her own castile soap in the liquid form which she could do easily now she had the coconut oil and soybean oils on hand. And setting up a cycle, every forty days… twice a season for soap making… meant that The Sanctuary could stay on a regular seasonal rotation and always have fresh supplies available.

One of those supplies needed to be Castile soap. The benefits of castile soap were that it was made wholly from plant products, no animal products, and that it could be kept around in glass gallon jars forever. One of its key ingredients was olive and coconut oil, a product Kavala had on hand in plenty due to her import efforts and the entire days of rendering coconuts into oils. The fact that she made the soap the facility needed by herself meant that she cut significant costs and knew what was going into her soaps. There were no harmful ingredients and she knew the quality of the clean she was getting.

The other great thing about the castile soap is that it could be used to launder clothing and it would be rare that anyone would break out from it. To Kavala that was important because it was tough balancing all the races and their needs under one roof.

So, in continuing with her theme, Kavala dragged out all the ingredients she needed for the castile soap and assembled them in the philtering lab. One thing she was always cautious of was making sure the pots they used to cook food with never mingled with the pots they used to philter with. That was a super important fact that the healer drilled into everyone’s psyche. So she made sure she philtered in the lab and cooked in the kitchen. That was a hard fast rule, and even tea that was drunk in the lab was made in the kitchen.

So… first things first. She’d need a lot of distilled water. It wasn’t that the water from the well was tainted or anything, but when making soap Kavala knew the real test was to keep the soap as pure as possible. That meant one had to use distilled water. It was one of the most handy philtering techniques one could know because it always was able to convert a water source – pure or not – to a potable pure distilled source. That meant that wastewater (like urine), salt water, river or lake water, even swamp water could be turned into clean drinking water. Distilling water removed any small living things that dwelled in tainted water, heavy metals, organics, and particulates. The process even removed poisons. And truthfully the procedure was simple.

One simply heated the water until it boiled and produced a vapor leaving behind any and all contaminate. Once the water was vaporized, that vapor was put into a clean container where it was allowed to condense and cool back into pure water. So while boiling water tended to kill things that lived in the water, boiling it would not distill it. One had to physically vaporize it, and resolidify it. Distillation could be done by magic; of course… any decent reimancer could pull it off. But Kavala liked being in the lab, and didn’t mind doing the work at the same time she was working on the soap. So she didn't need to use magic, but it certainly helped. Kavala simply used a good old fashioned cook fire, and a couple of simple tools.

Why break out the distiller when one didn’t need too? All she needed to do was hang a pot full of well water over the fire, place a round baking rack in the pot, then partially submerged in the water add a glass bowl. The water boiling in the pot should be low enough or conversely the glass bowl in the pot high enough that the boiling water would not spill into the glass bowl. Then, she took the pot lid and inverted it over the pot to form a concave roof. Once that was in place she took another picture of water, filled the concave lid with water, and reached out to touch it with reimancy forming the water in the lid as ice. Periodically as the ice melted she’d have to refreeze it. For that part she only used reimancy so she didn’t have to continually take a sledge hammer to the ice block in the ice box and break off chunks of it.

Then… distilling was very simple. The water in the pot boiled, turned to vapor, hit the cold lid, recondensed, ran down to the bottom part of the lid where the handle was, and dripped back down into the pot to be collected by the bowl. The glass bowl would have the distilled water in it.

Genius.

And so Kavala set that up before anything else and got a big glass pitcher out ready to periodically change out the distilled water bowl inside of the pot so she could keep the process going until she had enough distilled water.

Then she turned her attention back to the soap making. The three main ingredients in her liquid soap recipe were coconut oil, soybean oil, and olive oil. All three things Kavala had in abundance. The coconut oil was by far the rarest ingredient but The Sanctuary had been taking possession of shipments of coconut and turning them into oils for the last year and a half. Their medicine had really improved because of it. So had all their living conditions really, with the personal products Kavala had been able to make with it.

Making soap took four hours and twenty four days of sitting and resting. But the good part about it was that Kavala did this process continuously, so by the time she had new soap formed to sit for another twenty four days it was time to make more soap. So the process was continuous and very necessary. The fact that a lot of their other products depended on Castile Soap did not faze Kavala. She made it by the bucket full when she did make it. Then everything else that required Castile as a base – such as shampoo – was ready to be prepared in record time as well.

So after she had her water distilling, she cleaned the lab thoroughly (to give the water time to finish) and then got out her safety gear. She put on a long pair of gloves made of a sheep’s bladder that created a waterproof barrier between her hands and what she was working on. And then she covered her body with a long leather apron in a surprisingly bright shade of red Rosela had died for her. Once she was geared up for safety, Kavala set to work.

She took the distilled water she’d made… about thirty three ounces of it, and let it set for a moment. Then cautiously she retrieved her lye and began to slowly add about ten ounces of it to the distilled water. It had to be added slowly since the lye was incredibly acidic and could definitely burn right through clothing or skin if it splashed out of the water. Kavala was careful, taking her time, and concentrating on what she needed to get done in order to keep it all safe.

Then, slowly with a glass rod, Kavala began to stir the lye into the water until the lye was totally dissolved. Once she was sure the powder was gone, she placed the mixture over the heat, and began to stir it constantly while slowly adding in fourteen ounces of coconut oil and fourteen ounces of soybean oil. Once those two oils were well blended in, Kavala went ahead and added just shy of nineteen ounces of olive oil to the pot.


Count: 1,363

[Kavala]

Soap making, truthfully, was something of a hassle. One had to get a number of people lined up because often it took a steady rapid stirring of the soap for at least an hour before the soap began to set up. And if you did not stir it properly, it would never merge together and actually form soap. Once everything was well blended in, Kavala keep stirring, picking up the pace until she was mixing the soap as fast as she’d whip thick cream into whipped frothy frosting to decorate a desert. She kept going, changing arms every ten minutes until a sheen of sweat across her forehead and an ache in her back told her it was time to stop.

About that time, Cadra came in to spell her. And Kavala walked around shaking out her arms and stretching. Then, she went to the kitchen quickly, removing her safety gear, and got a bite to eat. Then she was back to spell Cadra. Once she was tired again, Chalce came to take a turn, then Aweston, and then some of the other guests of The Sanctuary. It made the time go better, faster even, as they spent the next four hours stirring the mixture. About that time the mixture became too thick to comfortably stir continuously, Kavala set the fire up beneath the pot so it was on a medium heat, and then sat down to work on some other projects while the soap cooked for another six hours. She still had to stir it every twenty to thirty chimes, which took a while, but there was a whole lot she could get done while she was waiting and watching the soap.

When the mixture was clear but had the consistency of honey, Kavala took it off the heat. Then she added eighty ounces more of distilled water, stirred it in well, and set the whole pot off to the side to sit overnight. Once she was done with it, Kavala got some rest. Then, when the morning came, she got up, went through her morning routine, and checked on the liquid soap. It was nice, creamy, and had a good soft translucent color. So she bottled it in glass gallon jars and shelved it with a careful label on each container as to the date it was bottled. The containers needed to rest for twenty eight to thirty days or more.

Then, once the soap had rested and aged, Kavala could do all sorts of things with the basic formula. And lucky for her, where she stored the new glass gallon jars of soap, there were older more aged bottles of soap waiting. These were cured, having sat the required time and having been prepared before hand.

So now that the older soap was rested, it gave her a chance to decide what she wanted to do with it. The entire facility needed hand soap for sure, especially in the clinics, privies and the bathing chambers. But there was more a person could do with liquid castile soap. And one of the things that Kavala really needed to make was shampoo and conditioner.

So, hand soap and shampoo/conditioner first.

Kavala took out glass jars the size of small milk bottles and began to carefully fill them with the larger glass gallon jars of aged soap. When she had a dozen little jars filled, she went through her essential oils and pulled out lavender. She added ten drops to each jar and then using a glass stir stick mixed the oil in thoroughly. Once mixed, Kavala corked each jar and set them aside to be distributed to the various storages around the facility where they needed soap. Then she checked her list.

The shampoo had an easy recipe. It was one she could make while she was doing something else. Kavala still had water distilling so she took a cup of that distilled water, added three tablespoons of fresh rosemary from the garden. Then she added three tablespoons of lavender. This mixture she let simmer in the water for thirty chimes before she strained through cheesecloth. Then once she had the strained ‘tea’ she added it to a full cup of castile soap. She mixed them well then sniffed, adding drops of essential rosemary oil and lavender oil to bring the scent up to the level she wanted it to be. This process she repeated several times until she had new and extra bottles for all the private baths and the clinic, adding to the overall general Sanctuary stores.

Kavala’s conditioner was designed to keep her hair from going dull and colorless. She made various kinds, mostly spot treatments that could be mixed up and used the same day. These involved egg yolks and avocado pulp. It did not keep well for more than a day so the only real conditioner Kavala used was her rinse. The recipe was easy… one part honey to one teaspoon lemon juice, to four cups of distilled. It lightened, brightened, and took any build up of soap out of Kavala’s hair and worked wonders. Chalce had tried using it on her dark red hair and it had stripped some of the red out and left it faded like she’d been in the sun too long. So Kavala had adapted one of her perishable hair treatments to Chalce’s needs and made sure she had conditioner when she needed it.

So, while Kavala was checking things off her list, she mixed the honey, lemon juice, to the water and bottled those up labeling them neatly with contents and date. Then, checking her list one more time, Kavala realized the one last thing on her list for hair care that was needed was dry shampoo. The rest was cosmetics Kavala wanted to learn to make.

The last item was Dry Shampoo. The idea behind dry shampoo was that wetting and washing one’s hair was dangerous sometimes depending. If it was in the frigid winter, no on wanted to get their hair wet until they could afford to linger by the fire and let everything dry thoroughly. Carrying bottles of shampoo in saddlebags wasn’t always the easiest either. Containers could break. So sometimes, being Drykas, Dry Shampoo was the best alternative because it came in a powder. All one had to do was powder one’s hair, work the powder in down to the scalp, and then shake out ones hair and it was often left clean without having ever gotten wet.

So Kavala’s family recipe for Dry Shampoo consisted of ground orris root, ground rosemary, and arrowroot. Many people and cultures used corn meal or baking powder or soda, but Kavala’s people didn’t have access to maize or corn easily. The orris and arrowroot were good substitutions. Arrowroot was a big source of balsam and that in itself was a good conditioner while the orris root soaked up oils and dirt like crazy. So Kavala got down equal measures of the orris, rosemary and arrowroot. She then laid out the powders in the proportion of one cup each. She spread them out on a baking sheet and placed them in the philtering oven letting the powders dry out extra evenly. Then, once they’d dried, she mixed them all together thoroughly, put them through a mortar and pestle again, and placed it all in one large glass jar that had a tight seal on the top. That she labeled carefully and stored away with the other Sanctuary stores.

Cleaning up the philtering lab, Kavala decided it was time to take a short break before she worked on any other projects and went to check on the children and make the rounds in the clinic.


Count: 1,286

[Kavala]

The next thing Kavala wanted to make was Glycerin. The substance was a sweet syrupy alcohol obtained by saponification of fats and oil. Saponification was just a fancy word for the process of soap making involving the reaction between fats and lyes. Glycerin was something Kavala could widely use in pharmaceutical formulations and natural philtering. The Konti could also use glycerin conserving preserved fruit, as a base for lotions, to prevent freezing in almost anything like salves applied to her chicken’s combs, to lubricate molds, in some printing inks, in cake and candy making, and sometimes to preserve scientific specimens in jars for her lab.

But best of all, Glycerin could also used to make clear soaps. Highly glycerinated clear soaps contained about 15% - 20% pure glycerin. Kavala had heard nothing but good about them, being very easy for a person to work with in crafting. Plus, they melt at about 160 degrees, and solidify fairly rapidly so they were FAST to make. Because of their high glycerin content, the soaps are very moisturizing to the skin and that made them perfect for tender skin and children.

Kavala had a lot of children on her hands.

And because of all of the above, Kavala had plans for glycerin use in her everyday apothecary work. The list was endless. She would definitely try it food preservation, skin care products, and various medicines due to its unique physical and chemical properties. But another less known use was for sweetener. Some people used it in place of sugar and sometimes sugar was hard to get. But fortunately Kavala always had animal fat and lye on hand so it wasn’t hard to get a handle on what she’d use it for. Storing it wasn’t an issue either. It kept for long periods of time so she could make large batches.

Her notes, which she’d made from her book on philtering, had more notes.

Glycerin's ability to absorb and hold moisture made it somewhat perfect for use in many household goods. It could irritate in its pure form, but diluted with water it was very gentle. Many soaps, hair gels, facial scrubs, lotions, and shaving creams were made with glycerin. That gave Kavala the great idea to perhaps make some shaving cream for the Drykas that so carefully wanted clean faces. But she could also make shampoos and conditioners as well as toothpastes and liquid mouthwashes.

Medicines also included liquid glycerin for its natural antiseptic and lubricating qualities. It is especially useful for things that needed soothing like sore throats. It could be made into cough syrups and expectorants for that purpose.

Some healers even speculated that tinctures and herbs could be sealed in glycerin and made into tiny candies to be swallowed whole which would then dissolve in the stomach and deliver medicine quickly or in a preserved measured way over time. They could even be made larger and inserted in ones rectum as a suppository when someone needed medicine fast or could not swallow. Glycerin also provide lubrication to dry membranes and when fed in large quantities could be utilized as a sort of laxative that ended up irritating the colon which in turn caused obstructed or compacted bowel movements to cut loose and flow freely.

Kavala grinned. Being a Healer was a whole lot of fun.

Getting out her book, Kavala checked her procedure and recipe and then went ahead and got started, gathering her ingredients. She also smiled a little as she noted that if one had a good quality glycerin, they could make exceptional watercolor paints with them for both adult quality and children quality. Kavala thought that might be a neat present or reward for the kids.

So... her list. Kavala would need twenty four ounces of rendered tallow, a half ounce of sea salt, three point forty nine ounces of pure lye, and eleven ounces of distilled water. She’d need pots and pans for rendering, and from there it looked as easy as soap making. So she clattered around happily in the philtering lab and got started on her project. Kavala calibrated her scales and got to work putting together the soap.

First she brought two ounces of water and the sea salt to a boil and created a brine. Following the directions, once the water boiled, she stirred it well and then set it aside to cool. Next, getting ready to work, Kavala put on her long elbow length gloves and her thick leather bib. She liked all the uses lye had, but she didn’t like how much it burned holes in her skin and clothing when it splashed. Then she poured nine ounces of water into a separate container, after weighing it and zeroing her weighing container, and then began to slowly add the lye in. She knew better than to add the water TO the lye since it would cause the lye to have a violent reaction… one always had to carefully dissolve the lye INTO the water that way. She watched the lye and water gets super hot and backed off a bit while still using a glass stir stick to keep the mixture in motion.

She let it cool.

The next step was easier. Kavala added the tallow she had to a large steel pot and put it over a fire that she had banked slightly until it was only medium hot or slightly under. Once the tallow was heated, which caused it to melt, Kavala added the lye mixture to the liquid tallow, pouring slowly and being very careful not to splash any of the lye mixture anywhere. Then she stirred the philter for fifteen chimes or according to her directions until the mixture "traces." Tracing was hard to explain… but when one lifted ones spoon out of the mixture and started tracing the drippings across of the firming up mixture, the drippings would leave ‘traces’ on the surface of the mixture like a path… you could almost paint a picture before sinking back down into the mass. She stirred as well until the mixture looked like thick pudding or custard.

When that was done, Kavala added the brine mixture to the lye and tallow philter. Then she stirred briefly until it was well combined and then placed the whole mixture in her ice box right on top of the block of melting ice so it could rest overnight. She’d come back in the morning, after chores and patients were seen to and remove the hardened soap layer from the top of the pot. That would get used as rough soap to wash clothing in. The clear layer beneath was the unrefined glycerin. She would carefully handle that because it was a bit caustic. But from there it could be boiled to remove any excess water and make it more pure.

It could be strained to remove impurities and then used in all the things she’d planned on making that she’d read in her book. That would be what she did for the rest of the day if she had free time between clients. She wasn’t sure what to do first, but she knew the possibilities were endless and now she had the glycerin to get creative.

Her first batch, the very first one, went into a gallon glass jar and was left in the philtering lab sealed to be dealt with in the morning.

Count: 1,232

[Caela Dorin]

Grade Awarded Kavala Experience Skill XP Earned Herbalism 2 Philtering 5 Planning 2 Lores • Lore Earned • How to Make Deodorant Bars • Herbs to Use to Scent Deodorant Bars • Philtering: Careful Measurements • Distillation: Handy Philtering Technique • Creating a Makeshift Distiller • The Uses of Castile Soap • Lye: Should Be Added to Water Slowly • Safety First When Philtering • Soap Making: A Long Process • Creating Dry Shampoo • Saponification: The Reaction Between Lye and Fat • How to Make Glycerin • The Uses of Glycerin Additional Comments The detail in this thread was exceptional. A very informative thread but written in a way that holds your attention rather than putting you to sleep. I'd say that the medicine cabinet should be well stocked now! I gave you the maximum in philtering because you used many of the philtering processes and the equipment involved and your descriptions were detailed enough to be worthy of it. I gave you some points in herbalism for the references to the significance of using particular herbs. If you believe that you should have gotten more then by all means PM me with your reasoning and I'll review it. Other than that I didn't think there was a lot to give in terms of XP. The fact that she was always looking ahead for the use of her products earned planning. Just so that you understand my reasons. An enjoyable thread! Please edit or delete your grade request and PM me if you have any questions or concerns about your grade. x