sugar wax!

well, we had a truly fantastic time at the wickerman burning, and i will definitely post more about that later. in the meantime, i wanted to post about something useful that i discovered before we left: sugar waxing. sugar wax is basically a product that you can easily make at home to remove unwanted hair. yeah, that is boring, unless you need something like this, in which case it is great!

i think of course that it is totally fine to not remove your body hair if that's what you feel like doing. i waffle on this issue, but i sometimes enjoy being hairless, and find waxing to be highly preferable to constant shaving. unfortunately, it's also expensive. i once tried a commercial waxing kit from a drugstore, and just ended up with my legs and floor covered with gummy, hard to remove wax. that's why i found sugar waxing almost impossible to believe in. but it works! and, it's nearly free. here's the recipe:

1 C sugar
2 T lemon juice
2 T water

mix these ingredients together and cook them over low heat for about ten minutes. my directions said to cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball state, which means that if you drop a bit into cold water it forms a soft ball. mine never really did that, but after it had boiled and bubbled for several minutes and managed to not get burnt, i decided it was done enough.

let the mixture cool to a touchable temperature. it should become thick and sticky as it cools. you have to work fast, because if it gets too cool it hardens completely (although you can reheat it). brush it liberally over the area that you want to remove hair from, and press a scrap of fabric on top of that as though you were gluing it down. pull your skin tight in the area using your extra hand, then quickly rip the fabric in the opposite direction that the hair is going (for example, pull up from the bottom on your leg.) you may have to repeat this process to get all the hair, but i was really impressed with how well it worked.

oh, and i think you could possibly wash and reuse the fabric, but unfortunately not the lemon goo, which happens to be delicious.