Hi! I’ve been extremely tired this week and nearly forgot that I was hosting one so I’m writing this last minute! I couldn’t think of anything so I’m going to write about one of my hamsters who is not Biggs; Meredith

Meredith was another hamster of mine from a few years ago during the early days of COVID, and she was the absolute sweetest little creature I had ever met. Very friendly, very gentle. She loved exploring anywhere I put her into and never bit me okay she did once ever. She was an absolute sweetheart and bundle of love and was with me during some of the rougher parts of my life

She unfortunately died very suddenly out of the blue one day at a terribly young age showing no symptoms of anything wrong with her prior, which breaks my heart to this very day

I never had her as long as any other hamster of mine but I don’t think I had any other hamster touch my heart in quite the same way. I miss you, girl

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  • AntifaSuperWombat [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    15 hours ago

    I have sensitive skin too and before delving deeper into this topic, I could only shave once a week. Now I can pretty much do it every single day, with a recovery day every once in awhile. So I cannot stress enough how important a good lather is.

    big wall of text

    If you’re overwhelmed by too many options, then I have some good news: You can ignore almost all of that. Canned foam, gel, conditioner, etc… all have subpar performance. What you want instead is a good shaving soap.

    What I do is take a guitar pick to scoop out a little bit of soap, press it down on the bottom of a small bowl and use a wet shaving brush to whip up a nice lather. The amount of water is really important. So start off with less and slowly add more until you have the right consistency, which can be up to your preference. In general you should aim for a yogurt-like consistency, but experimenting is important here. There’s also the possibility to load up the brush directly on the soap instead of scooping it out, and you can also skip the bowl and lather it on your face.

    Now to the face prep: It’s always good to soften up your beard hair with warm water before the shave, so shaving after taking a shower is never a bad idea. Using a gentle face cleanser is also advisable, as is gentle exfoliation (might want to skip that depending on your skin).

    Now the final step would be gear: There are special shaving bowls and other stuff that you can buy, but a cheap metal bowl does the trick too. Of course you also need a brush. Traditionally, they’re made with badger, boar or horse hair, but nowadays you can get really good synthetic ones that are also a lot cheaper. They come in different knot sizes and handles, and there’s differences in softness and backbone of the fibres. I managed to get a Mühle Silvertip Fibre for pretty cheap, which is very soft, so it’s perfect for my estrogenized face. Other people prefer really stiff ones. Again, it’s up to your preference.

    And of course you need a good soap. There’s massproduced classic ones that you can get for pretty cheap, which have great perfomance, like Cella, Arko or Tabac. But if you really want to get the best performance possible, you have to take a look at artisan soaps. I wish I could recommend Southern Witchcrafts to you, which I am using, because their vegan soaps are absolutely amazing and I love them, but they recently closed their business. So instead I’m just going to say that Barrister and Mann is currently regarded as the best-performing soap by a large part of the community, and if you live in Europe, you should take a look at Saponificio Varesino.

    This reddit thread might help you a bit: https://old.reddit.com/r/wicked_edge/comments/1ed6okv/honest_2024_shave_soap_tiers/