Solo [The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Kavala philters Witch Hazel, Green Blood, and crafts other numerous well needed medicines.

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Built into the cliffs overlooking the Suvan Sea, Riverfall resides on the edge of grasslands of Cyphrus where the Bluevein River plunges off the plain and cascades down to the inland sea below. Home of the Akalak, Riverfall is a self-supporting city populated by devoted warriors. [Riverfall Codex]

[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Kavala on November 25th, 2013, 9:26 pm

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Timestamp: Late Fall, 513 AV

Kavala was definitely restless. If the baby didn’t come soon, she was going to loose her ever loving mind, of that there was no doubt. And so, along with light duty cleaning and puttering around the house – whatever the children and her family would let her get away with – she was inventorying their stores and stalking them up on common medicines. She’d already went through and checked their inventory in the healing clinic, noting what needed stalking up on and what didn’t. She was particularly concerned with getting things the baby would need that would help both of them make it through the birth and then the hectic time afterwards.

And one thing Kavala did notice was that they were almost completely out of witch hazel. Witch hazel was amazing, at least in Kavala’s mind, because it had all sorts of things going for it that babies and new mothers needed. For one thing, it was great with acne, which while that didn’t exactly fit on her list of needs, Riaris’ young sister was spending a great deal of time over and she was getting to that age. Larik and Cadra were already there, fighting their constantly changing skin. The baby would need the witch hazel because it was great for soothing and healing diaper rash. And all that took to apply was dabbing it on the rash spots and the skin would improve immediately. Witch hazel was often good for reducing bags under the eyes and hemorrhoids around the rear. And interestingly enough, she made the same smoothing cream for both.

The compound was also great for varicose veins relief, which really needed no additional medicinal treatment save soaking a warm cloth in the tincture and laying it on the legs. The various forms of plant contact poisons, like ivy and oak, were soothed by witch hazel. There was nothing worse than the itching and swelling of those contact poisons. The witch hazel helped immediately. Then there were the various poxes that often went around hitting children and young adults. Those were often soothed by witch hazel, especially when the poxes blistered and oozed. Those things were all related to acne as well. That soothing relief took a bit more time though. One had to mix lavender oil, lemon oil, bergamot oil, peppermint oil, carrot seed oil, and aloe Vera extract to the witch hazel and then bind it all together with honey to get that done. Kavala never kept that medication on hand because it had a very short shelf life before it became rancid. Making it ahead of time was all but useless and frustrating when one pulled it out and then saw that it had gone bad. So, rather than waste so much, she often mixed it up on the fly – keeping all the components in the philtering lab separate but ready to be combined.

And though she was a twice marked Rak’keli healer, Witch Hazel did something to the body’s circulation of blood, and that meant bruises and contusions, even flat out contact road rashes healed faster. And that lead to witch hazels’ soothing properties. It cured razor burn, sun burn, and dried skin. It helped stave off infection in cuts, soothed bug bites by removing the itching, and last but not least, it did something to the body so that males and females stopped perspiring. The agent was called Deodorant, and Kavala definitely had plans to make some for the sweaty men at The Sanctuary.

So she decided early on that today would be a day of philtering and herbalism, making some witch hazel, and also some green blood tincture which would go into the deodorant recipe. If she got anything else made during the day, it would be a bonus.

Kavala was lucky too. There was a very large witch hazel shrub Aweston had transplanted onto the Sanctuary grounds when they’d found it growing wild in the fridge forest. With careful maintenance, they’d let it get big in the medicinal garden so it was literally outside the clinic door and hence the philtering lab, for Kavala to access. The woman had always admired the shrub because she saw it as a rebel in the plant world. Blooming in late Fall and well throughout winter not stopping until late spring, it was a gorgeous addition to her garden in a time when everything else had lost its leaves. It had a riotous color show because its leaves turned yellow in the fall and stayed that way throughout the winter, never dropping. The flowers were a four inch long golden yellow burst of color that had petals shaped like banners. Everything about the plant was fancy and to Kavala, a gift because one could never miss the plant nor mistake it for something else. The gods, perhaps even Caiyha herself, wanted mankind to take note of it.

Her directions from her philtering book were easily followed, so she carried a basket out with her clippers and garden gloves to start pruning the plant. She cut one pound of fresh twigs from the shrug, knowing it wasn’t possible to make the witch hazel brew until the flowers had bursts forth. One never tried to make the astringent substance from non-flowering shrubs.. it did not work, and resulted in a tonic that was very weak and lackluster. So while its juices were flowing, Kavala chopped at the shrub happily, cutting down the twigs into very cartable pieces and dropping them into her basket. When she got back to the lab, she stripped off the leaves and flowers, and set them aside. She then took the twigs and began mulching them with her pruning clippers. Then she placed the chopped twigs in a large soup pot to boil.

She covered the twigs with distilled water from the lab (they had a lot of it as byproduct of all their distilling) and then left it o the hearth until it began to boil. She then pulled it far enough off the heat to where the boil dropped down to a shimmer, and then left it for eight bells. It needed to really get all the water dissolved and evaporated out of it so the mixture would be as strong as possible.

While she was waiting for the witch hazel to cook, Kavala set up the distiller, which she’d put the remaining mixture through when it was time, and moved on to see about creating some some other things in the lab to kill the eight hours she was needing until the witch hazel was done.
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Last edited by Kavala on November 30th, 2013, 6:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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The Sanctuary The Sanctuary Forum Riverfall The Cytali
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Please Note:
  • This pc is maxed out in Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Observation, Rhetoric, and Socialization.
  • Kavala a Master Teacher. Students she is teaching in thread can earn more than the maxium 5 XP per thread.
  • This pc has a Konti Gift of Animal Empathy. She has a superpower from a Riverfall city event that allows animals of all sorts and Kelvics (in kelvic form) to speak clear understandable Common around her.
  • Kavala is a Konti but was raised in the Drykas culture so her accent is entirely Pavi though she can speak Common, Pavi, and Tukant well. She's only conversational in Kontinese.
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Kavala
I am more than the sum of my parts.
 
Posts: 3025
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Joined roleplay: October 25th, 2009, 1:46 am
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[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Kavala on November 30th, 2013, 6:26 pm

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Please NoteGreen Blood is a nickname among healers and herbalists in the real world for liquid chlorophyll. I felt healers in Mizahar probably wouldn’t understand what Chlorophyll was, so the name wasn’t appropriate even though natives have been using liquid chlorophyll for ages. So I’m utilizing its real world nickname for thread purposes.

Ten days earlier, Kavala had been roaming around restless and hit the lab to make some green blood…

Green blood was called thusly because like the living fauna of Mizahar bled red (for the most part) plants bled green. And in that blood, there was a power that most healers were well aware of. They made a tincture called ‘green blood’ that was utilized in all sort of recipes in the philtering lab. And it was a perfect time for Kavala to make some as she waited for her witch hazel to brew.

Before she did that though, she flipped into her herbalism book, looked up green blood, and re-familiarized herself with its benefits.

Green Blood Benefits

  • Helps protect from consumption & wasting diseases.
  • Fight infection
  • Helps skin disorders
  • Cleanses and oxygenates and builds the blood
  • Extracts toxins form the liver and improves liver function
  • Promotes healthy intestinal tracts
  • Helps break addiction
  • Anti-inflammatory
  • A powerful detoxification effect on the body
  • Wound-healing properties


She nodded, having more of an idea of what she was going to make today and what quantity of Green Blood she needed. Thumbing on down in her philtering book, Kavala continued brushing up on her green blood lore, reminding herself of what the stuff actually did.

Kavala bypassed the recipe for green blood for a moment, knowing she’d get back to it in a bit. Green blood was in all plants, but some plants had more of it than others. The color, for example, of the plant was highly indicative of how much was in them. In general, the darker the plant – things like kale or parsley or arugula had a great deal of it, while others had very little. And what you made your green blood from mattered. She could in fact make it from grass… and it would be edible and useful. But the healer in that bulked a bit, wanting to actually make it from something she could get in bulk from the market that people already ate. Thus spinach, kale, or parsley would be a good choice. Kavala was sure Cadra had just brought back a ton of spinach so she’d raid the pantry for that in a bit. Running her thumb down the page, Kavala had an ah-ha moment and noted for the future, that wheat grass had some of the highest amounts of green blood so they could grow it in the future greenhouse just for that purpose.

Diet wise, the author wasn’t about to recommend people drink green blood when they could just eat green plants more frequently, but there were dieting considerations and supplemental information to help assist ill people in speedy recoveries by utilizing the green blood in medicine.

So, after the Konti had taken in all this knowledge, she went back to the recipe, reviewed it , and then headed to the pantry to see what she could find. If she had to she could go to the market or send someone like Larik or Aweston in her place. She was in luck though. There was a crate of parsley, which gave Kavala pause, wondering why Cadra had bought that much. She took a bundle of it, walked to the kitchen, and using one of the sharp knives there, diced the parsley up into very fine bits, not stopping until she had about a pound of it. She scraped them into a bowl and carried them back down to the philtering lab. Kavala decided not only would she make liquid green blood, but she’d make dried green blood as well.

The first procedure, for the liquid blood, was easy enough. She just took a clean dry jar and filled it full of witch hazel. The jar was a six cup affair half full , so Kavala added in six cups of diced parsley too in order to bring the liquid even with the top of the jar. She sealed the jar with a lid and set it on a shelf. The recipe called for her coming back every day for a week and shaking the jar. Then, when she was done and ten days had passed, she just strained the liquid from the parsley dicings by passing it through cheesecloth, and discarded the solids keeping the liquids. Now she had green blood, about six ups worth.

But it did cost her the last bit of witch hazel she had, so Kavala added that to her to-do list at the top.

The dried blood was easier to make. She took a carefully measured eighty grams of the diced parsley and then put it on her mortal and pestle to grind into a fine paste. That paste she scraped off her grinding stone and added it to six cups of water. The Healer then whipped the liquid and paste until the water was stained a bright green and the plant seemed well incorporated into the water. Then she poured the water mixture through a fine sieve and into a nice little pot to heat. Moving the pot until it was just on warm heat, Kavala kept stirring it constantly until she saw green particles riding to the surface. She did this slowly until the pass at the top was fairly significant. Then, she quietly sat aside the mixture knowing it had to cool. Carefully she concentrated, drawing res, and pooling it in a bowl. Combining two elements, water and air, was a bit difficult for Kavala still, so she took her time and concentrated until the res in her hands and bowl started solidifying into ice. Once the bowl was filled with ice, Kavala placed the liquid mixture still in its pot into the larger bowl, so the ice inside could cool it.

It took a while and repeated changes of nice, with new ice made, until the mixture had a nice thick coat of something green and algae looking floating on the top. She then poured the bowl’s mixture through a muslin lined sieve and let it drain normally. She didn’t actually want the water left, but what she wanted was the green material left on the cloth. She let the cloth completely dry, then once it was, she scraped off the green material and had two tablespoons of dried green blood. Kavala carefully packed it away in a amber glass vial, and made plans to make her witch hazel a few days after that.

After ten days of shaking her green blood and getting that done, she was ready to start back on the witch hazel.
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Please Note:
  • This pc is maxed out in Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Observation, Rhetoric, and Socialization.
  • Kavala a Master Teacher. Students she is teaching in thread can earn more than the maxium 5 XP per thread.
  • This pc has a Konti Gift of Animal Empathy. She has a superpower from a Riverfall city event that allows animals of all sorts and Kelvics (in kelvic form) to speak clear understandable Common around her.
  • Kavala is a Konti but was raised in the Drykas culture so her accent is entirely Pavi though she can speak Common, Pavi, and Tukant well. She's only conversational in Kontinese.
User avatar
Kavala
I am more than the sum of my parts.
 
Posts: 3025
Words: 3295757
Joined roleplay: October 25th, 2009, 1:46 am
Location: Riverfall
Race: Konti
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Medals: 17
Featured Thread (1) Mizahar Grader (1)
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[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Kavala on November 30th, 2013, 7:19 pm

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So.. the restless pregnant woman had witch hazel brewing for some homemade deodorant and other products, and had a fresh batch of green blood. She also had thirty pounds of shea butter and a bunch of coconut oil, so it was definitely time to make baby products. The first thing Kavala wanted to stock up on was bum cream for the new child. She wanted plenty on hand, and not the kind she’d made last time with fish oil. That had been a mistake, for all the diapers she’d used had smelled of fish thereafter. And even when they’d been so worn that they’d gone into the rag bin, she still could smell the fish on them. That wasn't going to happen again. Now she had coconut oil and shea butter, so Kavala was going to do it 'right' this time.

Kavala only hoped Tasival didn’t find out she’d skimped on his diapering and was going for the best of the best for the new child. She’d have to claim, and rightly so, ignorance.

Following a recipe in her book Beauty Aides – The Science of Lotions, Shampoos, and Cosmetics , Kavala gathered her ingredients. She pulled out the coconut oil, shea butter, and her arrowroot that was powdered. Then she pulled out her marigold and chamomile flowers. The Healer checked on the fire that was producing the witch hazel, then drew forth a double boiler and set up her burner and philtering tower. Once the burner was lit and the fire was going nicely she adjusted the double boiler’s height, added water to the pot, and began measuring out her ingredients. She needed a half cup of coconut oil, a quarter cup of shea butter, and a tablespoon each of the marigold and chamomile flowers. She added all this to the top of the double boiler Then she set the arrowroot beside the whole affair in case she needed to use it to thicken the mixture.

She carefully melted the coconut oil in the top of the double boiler. Then she added the flowers and kept on stirring it for an hour until the coconut oil started to turn yellow and smelled like the flowers she had put in them. She kept adding water to the bottom because the double boiler tended to burn off a lot, and checked on the main hearth’s fire and the witch hazel mixture too. Then when the mixture was ready, she poured it hot over a filtering sieve with cheesecloth and saved as much of the coconut oil now nicely scented and tinted as she cold. Kavala was careful and inspected the mixture to make sure no flower parts were missed.

Then, when the oil had cooled slightly, Kavala started adding in the shea butter. She had to add in arrowroot as well When it was the consistency she wanted, Kavala took a wire whisk and beat the cream forcefully for another thirty chimes and got it to a very light airy velvety cream texture. Then she loaded the now cool cream into small glass jars and labeled them carefully with the contents and dates.

She stored the jars with her other herbalism supplies and tested the last jar to get sealed up on her elbow… the cream worked wonderfully. And according to her book, could be used for treating yeast infections in women or thrush in the mouth as well. The cream was edible and safe, not needing to be chilled and having a long shelf life.

Then it was on to making baby oil.

That was far easier than the cream, and took the same exact marigold and chamomile flowers as before. The only difference is that it needed a different kind of oil. The recipe asked for olive oil or apricot kernel oil, but Kavala had a ton of almond oil on hand and loved the way it smelled. The konti had taken lessons on using an oil press and subsequently, due to Riverfall’s abundant almond crop, had great quantities of the oil lying around. Substitution in this case was not an issue in the healer’s opinion, so she went ahead and cleaned out the top of the double boiler, added more water to the boiling lower portion, and then started adding the ingredients.

She took a cup of almond oil, put it in the top of the double boiler and simply threw a couple of tablespoons of the flowers in along with the oil. She boiled the oil carefully, then once it was rolling, reduced the heat to keep it hot but not boiling for a bell. She waited for the classic tinting to occur as it was a tell-tale sign of the oil being close. She kept an eye on the water level, and took the top of the boiler off the apparatus when she could smell the marigolds and chamomile. Then, she strained the oil to remove the flower bits, and bottled the oil in a large glass oil vial. It would last for quite a while, long enough to get completely used before she needed more…. If, that was, her son put in an appearance.

Next on the list was baby powder. Kavala had used a ton of it on Tasival so she wanted to be more than prepared for the next child. Luckily it was easy to make and the only real labor involved was grinding more of the chamomile and marigolds into a fine dust. Kavala had large quantities of the arrowroot on hand because the perennial monocot was used as a basis in almost all body powders and was heavy and starchy enough that it replaced cornstarch and was far gentler. Kavala also used Arrowroot powder as a thickening and stabilizing agent in food preparations, and was going to try using it in cosmetics. Cosmetics were something she wanted to play with now that Rairis was in her life. The Konti simply wanted to look good for him.

But getting on track, the Konti poured out dried marigolds into her mortar and started grinding them into a fine powder. She worked until she had a teaspoon of them and then cleaned the mortar out and traded the marigolds for chamomile. Once she had ground a teaspoon there, she pulled a small glass jar out of her jar storage. She added a half of a cup of arrowroot to the jar, then sprinkled in a teaspoon of the flowers apiece. Then she put the lid on the jar.

Kavala then shook it violently, mixing the ingredients up inside the jar. Setting it down, she carefully let the contents settle and then took the lid off. Taking the ring off the lid, she laid the inner seal part flat on a wooden bock, and then took a nail and hammered in multiple holes in the lid, thus creating a shaker bottle. She put the whole thing back together, carefully labeled it, and then wrote a date on the label. Kavala added it to a basket she had started that she’d keep next to the baby’s crib.

Smiling, Kavala sat down for a little break and then decided to completely take a nap. She checked on the witch hazel mixture, then fetched Cadra and gave her carefully instructions on how to check on the witch hazel while she slept. Her niece agreed and that freed Kavala up to nap quietly before she got started again.
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The Sanctuary The Sanctuary Forum Riverfall The Cytali
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Please Note:
  • This pc is maxed out in Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Observation, Rhetoric, and Socialization.
  • Kavala a Master Teacher. Students she is teaching in thread can earn more than the maxium 5 XP per thread.
  • This pc has a Konti Gift of Animal Empathy. She has a superpower from a Riverfall city event that allows animals of all sorts and Kelvics (in kelvic form) to speak clear understandable Common around her.
  • Kavala is a Konti but was raised in the Drykas culture so her accent is entirely Pavi though she can speak Common, Pavi, and Tukant well. She's only conversational in Kontinese.
User avatar
Kavala
I am more than the sum of my parts.
 
Posts: 3025
Words: 3295757
Joined roleplay: October 25th, 2009, 1:46 am
Location: Riverfall
Race: Konti
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Scrapbook
Plotnotes
Medals: 17
Featured Thread (1) Mizahar Grader (1)
Trailblazer (2) Overlored (1)
Master Merchant (1) Donor (1)
One Thousand Posts! (1) One Million Words! (1)
Riverfall Seasonal Challenge (2) 2014 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Kavala on November 30th, 2013, 8:41 pm

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When Kavala got up from her nap a bell later, she relieved Cadra from her babysitting duties and checked on the witch hazel herself. Then she checked her to-do list on what she needed done before the baby came and still had a few things on it. One thing she wanted to do was to make some baby wipes. She had a perfectly huge-mouthed glass jar she’d picked up from the bazaar and dozens upon dozens of old soft linen cloths she’d cut into eight by eight squares. These she’d sorted from the rag bin, checking for softness and durability of the fabric.

Kavala usually discarded worn and old clothing, but she never tossed them. All fabric was reused either in the clinic or the barn. And sometimes she even restocked the clinic with fabric. Bandage material made for great baby wipes and the stains from blood or infection didn’t hurt their ability to be useful. She left the linens soaking in the liquid. Then, when it was time to change the baby, she would have the square clothes all ready to go making her job a whole lot easier.

So, she cut the cloths, saved them, and had a big stack in the lab. The stack wouldn’t be that big once the baby actually came because half would be in the laundry, half packed around with the baby, and that left the bundle here looking a little thin. So keeping that in mind, she opted to raid the bandages in the clinic again, cut some more wipes from some of the older ones with a pair of sheers, and redoubled the stack in the lab to make sure there would be enough.

Then she got out her wipes recipe and started to review the ingredients. It seemed like Tasi was just a baby yesterday, but the truth was her little boy was growing up way too fast. And when she flipped to the section on the book where her recipe’s were and reviewed the ingredients to make sure she was still okay with them. The wipes had aloe Vera in them because the plant was highly antiseptic and soothing. It also took care of odors. No one wanted odors. It had witch hazel for the soothing and preservative effect it had.

Kavala was glad the witch hazel was almost done. She’d need it sooner or later. There was also a bit of castile soap, which she had on hand from a earlier batch. The soap didn’t burn, dry, or irritate skin. Grapefruit seed extract was an exotic and expensive ingredient that she ordered from the south for the healing clinic. It helped the yeast in the air not to grow on the skin. And the oils and essential oils were for moisturization and to lightly scent the wipes.

She took a moment to stir the witch hazel again, and borrow out a tablespoon which was all she’d need for the wipes. Then she got the other ingredients together and assembled the creation. Once she had the ingredients reviewed, she got out the distilled water and warmed it on the fire. She only used a cup and three quarters, adding to it the tablespoon of witch hazel, and a glob of aloe vera. She then added shavings of the castile soap and the tablespoon of oil she needed (almond of course for that’s what she had). Then she got ten drops of grapefruit seed extract and added that to the mix.



Then she added six drops of lavender essential oil and six drops of orange until the mixture was well scented. She combined these thoroughly and waited or the solution to settle a bit and cool before she tightly rolled as many of the 8x8 linen squares into roughly the same shape as the wide-mouthed jar and stuffed them in. Then she poured the liquid over them, saturating the wipes completely and then screwed the lid on tight. To use them all she’d need to do would be to loosen the lid and pluck the outermost one from the roll. The roll would spin and the wipe would be free and she could launder it and add it to the pile back in the lab for when she needed to restock the wipes.

Checking the baby wipes off her to-do list, Kavala took the witch hazel off the fire so it could begin to cool.

Next on the list was lotion. Lotion was far more complex than wipes were, so she’d have to do the complete project in the lab without wandering about. Kavala never just made lotion for one thing. When she made lotion, she made it for everyone, dividing it into batches and scenting each batch according to who was using it. The men got mint and green tea while a lotion was made specifically for sore muscles that took peppermint wintergreen, and ginger. For the baby she’d repeat the theme she already had going of marigold and chamomile. And for herself, she’d most likely make lavender and vanilla.

Lotion recipes were notoriously difficult to handle. If the temperature was off by a degree or so either way, the lotion wouldn’t emulsify and the maker would have a sloppy mess. So Kavala was careful with her thermostat and to watch the basic recipe. She also had no problems doubling the amount to double the batch and scenting it afterwards. She’d make two types as well… lotion and lotion bars. So the basic recipe was always the same.


Lotion


1/2 C Almond Oil
1/4 C Coconut Oil
¼ C Beeswax
2 Tbs Shea Butter
Essential Oils to taste.




She assembled the ingredients and then got ready to make the lotion. In the case of the lotion, rather than a double boiler, she made it like she would a potion with the burner and a pot of water, heating the lotion in a glass flask that was suspended into the water but not touching on an apparatus via clamps. Kavala set up the system, filling a large flat pan with water to boil then suspending the flask over it.
Kavala combined the ingredients in the flask and then watched the ingredients melt. The first batch was for the baby, so that one got chamomile and marigold. She took the time to shake the flask occasionally with a cloth designed not to burn her as she touched the hot glass. She simply watched it melt down. Once she had the first batch well under way, she got out her small eight ounce lotion jars and began wiping them to remove dust and opening them to prepare them to receive the lotion. Then, when the flask was ready she poured the jars out. Kavala cleaned the flask out and started the process again. The second batch was for her – lavender and vanilla – and she soon had that made as well. When she was done, all in all, she’d made 48 small jars of lotion, six for her, Twenty jars were for the clinic – half sore muscles half jut for the men – and the rest were scented various way according to who was here and what they liked in terms of scents.

Kavala put up the witch hazel, carefully left her jars alone to set up more firmly, and promised herself she’d take a break for the rest of the evening and take on the deodorant issue tomorrow.
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The Sanctuary The Sanctuary Forum Riverfall The Cytali
Reverie Isle Wolf Creek Training Course
Please Note:
  • This pc is maxed out in Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Observation, Rhetoric, and Socialization.
  • Kavala a Master Teacher. Students she is teaching in thread can earn more than the maxium 5 XP per thread.
  • This pc has a Konti Gift of Animal Empathy. She has a superpower from a Riverfall city event that allows animals of all sorts and Kelvics (in kelvic form) to speak clear understandable Common around her.
  • Kavala is a Konti but was raised in the Drykas culture so her accent is entirely Pavi though she can speak Common, Pavi, and Tukant well. She's only conversational in Kontinese.
User avatar
Kavala
I am more than the sum of my parts.
 
Posts: 3025
Words: 3295757
Joined roleplay: October 25th, 2009, 1:46 am
Location: Riverfall
Race: Konti
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Scrapbook
Plotnotes
Medals: 17
Featured Thread (1) Mizahar Grader (1)
Trailblazer (2) Overlored (1)
Master Merchant (1) Donor (1)
One Thousand Posts! (1) One Million Words! (1)
Riverfall Seasonal Challenge (2) 2014 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Kavala on November 30th, 2013, 9:20 pm

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The next morning, Kavala was up bright and early and eager to get her lotion bars done. Lotion bars were different than actual lotion and something the Drykas used frequently because they didn’t have the luxury of carrying glassware around or cumbersome liquid products they had to figure out how to store. They traveled a great deal better than glass jars. Kavala liked to keep them on hand because tradition was tradition, and though she was living as a Kuvan, she really didn’t want to loose her Drykas heritage. Besides, they were convenient for horsemen and women as well, even if they had a solid stone home to go to at night.

Kavala thought the bars were fun to make and the recipe was flexible so she could have endless variations. The recipe was as simple as possible now that she had the coconut oil and shea butter. On the grass different things were used and the bars were harsher, but Kavala liked the luxury she could afford in Riverfall and the availability of ingredients that only a city who traded offered. So her personal recipe called for one part coconut oil, one part shea butter, and one part beeswax. She could make any amount she wanted and it worked out. Sometimes she’d go for a cup each, but now that she had the shea butter and coconut oil restocked, she made a large batch all at once.

The only problem with large batches was that she had to set up larger apparatus’ and make the burner burn longer to heat the ingredients. She did so gladly, swapping out the set up from yesterday’s lotion building exercise to a hard core heavy duty lab extra large setup today. She was going to use 4 cups of each ingredient, and that meant a larger double boiler. She scented the lotion this time with just a nice sandalwood so everyone would like it, preferring not to scent the lotion bar for the baby because she had already softer more liquid lotion for him.

She combined the ingredients in a large glass bowl over the double boiler and started a fire in the burner. Kavala waited for the water to start boiling, and melted down the ingredients until they were nice and smooth. She then removed them from the heat, added in her sandalwood, and gently stirred until the mixture looked and smelled completely infused. Bypassing the soap molds Aweston had made a bit ago when she was making the castile soap, Kavala instead headed for muffin tins she used to create muffins with in the kitchen. She liked the size of the rounded bars because they fit in the palm of the hand and as the lotion was rubbed off and the circles got smaller and smaller, they just looked neater than the long awkward ‘traditional’ soap bars. Besides, the lotion bars could be told apart from the soap bars because of their shape.

In a household filled with herbalists, healers and animal husbandry folks, quick identification was important.

So giving them one last stir, Kavala divided the lotion into the bottom of multiple sets of muffin tins until she had them all full. Then she carefully set them aside to dry for a day or two before the lotion soap could be popped from the tins and gathered in baskets to be stored until such a time as someone claimed one and used it.

Kavala did a quick clean up, checked lotion and lotion bars off her list, and then checked to see what else was on it.

There was a lot to do, but Kavala knew there was a need for all of it. She scanned the list and decided the next thing she wanted to tackle was the Chamomile tincture. The herb, in Kavala’s mind, was a wonder. Chamomile was naturally calming to babies because it tended to settle their upsets be they mental or physical. It could reduce gas or colic in babies safely and was definitely great for teeth and gums during teething. In larger people Chamomile could be calming as well. It induced sleep at times, eased cramps of all sorts, and softened out headaches. Crazy human women also often used it to lighten skin (they loved being konti pale) or to turn their plain brown hair blond. Kavala had to laugh at them, but she still sometimes got requests of that nature.

Tinctures were easy to handle and luckily all Kavala had to do was drag down the dried chamomile flowers (as if it hadn’t been down off its shelf ten times already these last few days) and fill a jar half full of it. Then she scooped out a cup and a half of boiling water from the hearth, glad she had the foresight to put the water kettle on the fire as soon as she walked into the lab. She added one and a half cups of boiling water to the jar, then finished it off with a cup and a half of clear rum. She put the jar on the top and tightened it down good. Then she shook the jar vigorously, holding it carefully with a towel.

When she’d done that, Kavala left the jar sitting on the counter to cool down. When it was done cooling down to room temperature, she tucked it on a cool dry shelf away from the fire and let it set. It would sit there for a quarter to half a season and infuse the alcohol and water with the herb essence and be ready to be strained when it was time to take down. The tincture Kavala was making today would replace all the lost essential oils and tincture’s she’d used of chamomile in the previous recipes she’d made over the past few days.

And it would definitely be ready for when the baby was teething. All she’d have to do was rub a couple of drops on their sore gums and a miracle would happen.
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The Sanctuary The Sanctuary Forum Riverfall The Cytali
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Please Note:
  • This pc is maxed out in Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Observation, Rhetoric, and Socialization.
  • Kavala a Master Teacher. Students she is teaching in thread can earn more than the maxium 5 XP per thread.
  • This pc has a Konti Gift of Animal Empathy. She has a superpower from a Riverfall city event that allows animals of all sorts and Kelvics (in kelvic form) to speak clear understandable Common around her.
  • Kavala is a Konti but was raised in the Drykas culture so her accent is entirely Pavi though she can speak Common, Pavi, and Tukant well. She's only conversational in Kontinese.
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Kavala
I am more than the sum of my parts.
 
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[The Sanctuary] Of Witches And Green Blood

Postby Caelum on December 6th, 2013, 3:03 pm

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Thread Award




Kavala



Skills
Herbalism +5
Philtering +5
Plant Identification +1
Planning +2
Writing +1

Lores
Medicinal Benefits of Witch Hazel
Medicinal Benefits of Green Blood
Philtering: Diaper Cream Recipe
Philtering: Baby Oil Recipe
Philtering: Wipes
Philtering: Lotion Recipe
Philtering: Chamomile Tincture




Notes


Nicely done as always. Please edit your post in the grade request thread to reflect completion and do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.
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Caelum
The best way out is through.
 
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