A new salve, saffron and rhubarb

Remember THIS post about a skinproblem-salve for a dear friend? Well, I finally made the salve yesterday after waiting for almost 2 weeks for beewax (they didn´t have it at the store). Like I planned, I used lavender-ssential oil, because I didn´t really like the smell of it before. I´m happy with the result, since it makes your skin really soft and hast a really nice scent. My friend got it yesterday and was excited to try it out - I´m excited myself, to see what effect it has on her skin.

The herbs:

the salve:

Yesterday I met some really nice knitting-friends. I was so happy and really surprised when Rodprjonar and G. gave me some saffron they bought in Spain and some rhubarb to dye my wool with - what a nice thing of them to do! :-) Now I just can´t wait to try to get some colour out of those things! I love the scent of saffron and how nice would it be to make something out of wool, that might have the smell of that spice and reminds me of a really nice evening with some knitting-friends?

Salve for a dear friend

One of my best friends, has got Psoriasis. That´s why I´ve been searching information about what herbs and plants can help her with that. I found out, that birch (birki), Iceland moss (fjallagrös), Rumex longifolius (Njóli) and yellow bedstraw/Galium verum (gulmaðra) are recommended for Psoriasis.
I was really lucky to have some dry Galium verum and Iceland Moss at home, but I had to go out and get some birch and Rumex longifolius - I found both in a beautiful place called "Heiðmörk".
The plants have been lying in olive-oil since 25. mai, so I have to wait for at least one more week to make the salve out of the herb-oil.

This time, the oil has almost no smell at all. I was hoping the birch would give it a nice scent - but no. I´m thinking of using some ssential oil to "fix" that. I think lavender might be the perfect choice because:
1. It is supposed to have a calming effect and because of that, it´s recommended for skin-problems
2. Just love the smell, who doesn´t?! :-)

This is what the oil looks like at the moment:

Chamomile-/fjallagrasa-oil turnes into salve/lotion

The big day has come... no, I´m actually not talking about prince Williams and K.M´s wedding - even if it was really beautiful... I´m talking about my herb-oil that I could finally turn into a salve/lotion. I´ve been looking so much forward to doing this!

This is what I did:
1. I started by filtering out all the herbs
This step was a real mess but the smell of chamomile and oliveoil was so nice and it was such a great feeling, having those herbs in your hands and squezzing the oil out!

This is how the filtering looked like:


and some more filtering:


and some more filtering:


2. Melting the beewax in a saucepan.
The smell of the melting beewax is really special!

3. Finally I mixed the oil and the beewax together - and my curative and healing salve/lotion was ready!



I decided to call it "Seiður" (seidur) - this word was used to describe an old way of nordic magic, that people believed to be very powerful (you can read about the meaning here: http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiður)

What am I going to do with this: maby I´ll give some lucky friends a little bit on their birthday, I´m going to use it on my boys dry and sensitive skin - for my own hands that often get too dry and my husband is going to use it for his very dry hands and feet - I'm sure it will be useful for some other things too - we´ll see. One thing is sure: I´m going to make a lot more of this kind of thing, in different versions, out of different herbs, I just love doing this!

A really good blog with infos on homemade cosmetics (and a lots of other things) in icelandic is this one: http://seidkona.123.is/Blog/Cat/3683/

Progress on chamomile-/fjallagrös-oil

My chamomile/fjallagrös-oil has been standing in the kitchen window for over 2 weeks now, so I opened the jar for the first time to see what has happend in those last 2 weeks. It was really exciting to find out , that the oil has a really mild and pleasant smell of chamomile and when you rub it in, your skin becomes really, really soft! So the experiment seems to be a full succeed! I just have to wait for 1 week now to make my salve and other exciting things out of it!

Treasures of nature

I´ve always been interested in the healing-power of wild herbs, especially the icelandic ones. Since I´ve got the time to do different things now, I started some experiments with herbs, after reading a lot about the healing-power of herbs, homemade balms, creams and oils on the internet. My first thing to do was to mix up some dry chamomile with olive oil in a glass jar, which I then put in my kitchen window, since it´s the sunniest spot in the flat - now I have to be very patient (so hard!) for 2-3 weeks and after that I can mix it up with some other things to make a balm and some other things out of it! This is so exciting!