The bookholder was a gift from The Brother-In-Law, who’s handy with tools and woodworking. (He built his own house.) It’s a lovely (and useful) piece, and the prop that holds it up folds flat for storage.
And resting on it, in lieu of a book, are my RazoRock Amici shaving brush, Ototko Organics shaving … compound? (it’s not actually a soap), Geo. F. Trumper’s Coral Skin Food, and the Fendrihan Mk II stainless-steel razor (this one bronze coated) — ingredients for a fine shave.
I wet the Amici’s knot well under the hot-water tap and then shook it as dry as I could and began brushing the Otoko Organics puck. The brush immediately began loading, and after adding one small driblet of water to the brush, I easily finished loading and worked up a good lather.
I did add one more driblet of water as I brushed the lather on my face, more or less from a sense of duty than from actual need. I do like Otoko Organics.
The Mk II did a great job — it’s a fine razor — and I very much enjoyed the feel and fragrance of the Coral Skin Food, which has been absent from my routine for a good while. That was an oversight, and I’ll be using it more often. I didn’t feel that this aftershave needed the Hydrating Gel, so I skipped it.
My skin following this Otoko shave does not feel quite so soft and nourished as when I use one of the high-fat premium soaps, like one of the Grooming Dept formulae, or one of the Milksteak or CK-6 soaps. It’s still a fine shave, but those soaps do indeed seem to bring my skin to a better state of softness.
And more snow seems to be falling on top of what we got last night. Fortunately, yesterday was a day of going store to store, loading up with groceries and such. I even got a 1.5-L widemouth canning jar for a batch of giardiniera, a nice project for a snowy day.