The Shampoo Saga

So this weekend I made two kinds of shampoo and conditioner. I’m still not entirely sure why. My husband clearly thinks this is simply more evidence that I’m a nut-job. It didn’t work very well… maybe I should start at the beginning…

A few years ago I decided that if the organic, hippie, all-natural, Like Mom Used To Make versions of things that you can buy at the store are better than the "commercial" brands, then a home-made version is even better. Right? So I’ve been doing things like sewing and baking bread and growing my own culinary herbs and turning nasty brown bananas into breakfast muffins and reducing, reusing, recycling, conserving, and in generally getting really granola-hippified. Which I think is a good thing. And it’s fun and makes me feel industrious, and generally saves a few pennies somewhere along the line. So in general, "home made" is becoming a big thing with me.

First, a friend I lived with taught me to bake (hi Jane) and Grandma and Mom helped me learn to sew, and that was good, and I was very domestic. And then more recently another friend (hi Sara) opened a whole new world to me, a world where you can make things like lip balm and bath salts and bubble bath, and there are books with recipes for things like lotion and facial masks and soap. And shampoo. And conditioner. Which brings us up to date.

Well, one of the things that I both like about myself and am amused by about myself, is that I seem to somehow believe I am capable of making or doing anything, so long as it isn’t physical and I really want to do it. Can I make a replica of a 13^th century noblewoman’s dress? Sure, I’ll give it a go. Can I make mayonnaise? Sure, why not? Can I grow an orchid? Of course I can. Can I belly dance? You bet your sweet shimmy. Can I make lipbalm? Can’t be that hard. How about shampoo and conditioner? Bring it on, baby, I can do anything.

[Now, as a sidebar, I’m not entirely sure why I have such confidence in myself. My sewing projects are a source of hideous frustration; nothing ever turns out quite right, and is generally more suitable for dimly lit Halloween parties than SCA festivities. My cooking, while nearly always edible, is often odd. I tend to make things I’ve never eaten before and can’t imagine how they would taste, so I’m never sure if I’ve made them correctly and just don’t like the dish, or have fucked up somehow (example: ailoi). And yet I persist in trying. And yes, many times things do come out right, especially food. Just not always. One would think I’d be more cautious. One would be wrong. In my home, I am capable of anything.]

So anyway. I decided to make shampoo and conditioner. I wanted to make soap, but I’m scared about the lye. And I didn’t borrow one of Sara’s soap books, so I couldn’t. I may be reckless, but I’m not stupid. So, what goes into shampoo? Well, in the hippie world, herbal "tea" mixtures, glycerin, essential oils, other oils, and liquid soap are the basic common ingredients. So I made one that was a herbal "tea" version and a crazy "Indian Champo" that’s supposed to be what the people in India were using when those smelly British colonizers showed up and started mucking about in their country. And since I have long tangley hair, I made a Winter Conditioner that was supposed to be ok to leave in your hair after shampooing (as opposed to an intensive, oily, pre-shampooing conditioning treatment thing).

It took about four hours and trips to three stores to get all the ingredients and make everything. The shampoo and the champo came out ok. (I think… again, having never used such products, how do I know if I did it right?) The conditioner, on the other hand, was kind of a nightmare. It’s made of vegetable shortening (read: Crisco) with castor oil and water and vinegar. You melt the shortening and oil together until they’re liquid, and heat the water and vinegar and then combine the two so they emulsify. Like mayonnaise. (Or aioli, come to think of it) Well… my water wasn’t warm enough and it didn’t emulsify properly, and then I reheated the whole thing and it seems to re-emulsify, and so I stuck it in a bottle and called it done. It was creamy and the right texture. The shampoo looked sudsy and smelled good. The champo had bee pollen in it and was clumpy, but after sitting overnight, the clumps dissolved and it looked ok. All was well.

So this morning I decided to test them out. Well. The herbal shampoo, being over half water, was COLD. Like, really fucking cold. You know when you’re out of shampoo, so you get some water in the bottle and shake it up and you have enough for one or two more shampooings before you get to the store, but then you forget the second time that it’s mostly water and it’s so cold you shriek when you pour it onto your head? That kind of cold. But it lathered up somewhat and it seemed to work. But my hair felt weird, a sensation I was later able to identify as "oily but wet." So anyway, done with the shampoo, and while not pleased, not disappointed in the results, I moved on to the conditioner.

Well. If the shampoo was cold, the conditioner was ICY. The kind of icy that makes your nipples get perky despite the steam in the shower. The husband rushed in to see if I had just severed off an arm, and seemed irritated that I had not, with a noise like that coming out of me. It seems that overnight the blend had de-emulsified and was now essentially a vinegar-water mixture with a top layer of hardened vegetable shortening, topped off with oil. And, stupid as I sometimes am first thing in the morning, I proceeded to shake up the bottle and pour the whole thing on my head. Now, to my credit, I did notice right away that it was odd. Not slippery like conditioner. So, in a way that made more sense then than it does now, it seemed logical to scrape out as much of the Crisco as I could off the sides of the bottle and stick it in my hair.

Ok, clearly, I’m not the brains of the household.

I did suddenly realize that Crisco was likely to make my hair just the teensiest bit greasy. So I poured the rest of the –12 degree bottle of mostly water and vinegar over my hair, because I kind of thought vinegar stripped oil from the hair. Maybe it does. Maybe with a gallon or so of distilled white vinegar, I would have succeeded in my plan for normal hair.

Alas, I failed. I got out of the shower, dried my hair, braided it, and ran off to an appointment. Ten hours later my hair still looked like it was dripping grease, so I shampooed it. And shampooed it again, with normal, commercial shampoo. And shampooed it a third time.

And here I sit, a slightly wiser woman, with still slightly greasy hair.

(The aioli saga is at http://www.abattoir.com/~flannel/recipe.html#BAS and scroll down)

Previous day's column (Pakeha)