Bushier and bushier

Happy New Year!

 

What better way to start off the new year than with a big beard.  This is in my mustache growers guide referred to as "The Lumber Jack". A.K.A "the big one", or the wild style, as worn here by Zach Galifianakis.
In this picture the growth is about 2 months, the book recommends 3 months plus, but we get the idea. it's not the first full beard I've grown so we wont dwell upon it, all I have to say is, I like a full beard, it gives the wearer a great feeling of manliness and an urge to be outdoors.

On page 103 we have the "Aeronaut" which is basically the Lumber jack beard with the ends of the moustache waxed. like so...

Simple but effective, and another design ticked off the list.



Once I got to the 3 month mark I booked my self into the very reputable barbers "Murdocks", luckily for me very conveniently placed in London's Covent Garden, right where I work. Now "why" I here you ask, have I lost my razor? am I getting lazy? or was my next design to much for me? no, no & no again, thrice nay I say. The reason I chose to visit the barbers was, one it was Christmas, and close to my works staff party, and two, well I think it's nice to pamper yourself one in a while. And a pamper it was Murdocks is not spit and sawdust joint I can assure you.

So with my beard in the safe and professional hands of David, Murdocks head barber I went for the "Burnside"  named after General Ambrose  E. Burnside. and worn by Emperor Franz Josef , neither of which I had head of. But a lot of people did say Amos from Emmerdale farm when they saw me, altho Amos has gone for a clean shaved top lip, how modern ;-)

Well David was more than happy to oblige, not your normal every day shave I'd imagine? but before we reveal the final results, I did stop off half way and try what the book refers to as the "Barber-Shop" special, which when pictured in the book is very similar to the Aeronaut, altho you do have the opptional variation of having a clean chin like so.  But this was just another style to tick off, we finally stopped at the for mentioned "Burnside". nicely cupped here by David you'll agree. I do have to admit, when choosing this style it wasn't one I thought I would have kept for long, it would just linger briefly before moving on, but seeing it on, I rather liked it, so much so I have have worn it now for almost a month, much to the dismay of my beloved, oh how her patience wears thin. And in this next picture with a fancy filter over it, it gives a distinct western feel to the tash.  Me likey! And so it seems does everyone else. Lots of compliments from people I meet, very nice. So I'll leave you here, I do hope you appriciated the "Burnside" as much as I did? Until the next time when we shall be looking at the Imperial.

 



The Pencil

Hello friends,

so it has been a while as is the nature of this game. Rather like ordering a pint of Guinness it takes a little patience. but rewarding. well that depends actually, last time you'll remember i was a little more than miffed with the results of my Chevron, so almost in an act of spite and defiance I trimmed it right back, shaving it within an inch of it's life, well within a millimeter of it's length really. However never underestimate your mustache, there I was being all smug thinking I had won a minor victory over the unruly Chevron, Go for a nice short and simple Pencil I thought. Still the tash had it's last laugh as my first attempt left me feeling a little disappointed.

So here we have several pencil designs, I went for the first one, nice simple, tight on top of the lip rather like these distinguished gentlemen. 

                       

I've noticed something about myself, that when it comes to changing my mustache I'm always a little careful. this will explain my first pencil being a little too wide. But i soon got it down to a more suitable size.                        

    as you can see the finer 

lined tash is much better looking than the first attempt. With the second attempt I felt much more chap-ish, if i can invent a word there, in fact it's been this very challenge that has led me to ask such a question, "Am I chap?" now obviously I cant attempt to answer that question my self, but I could take a test, so I have purchased a book which hopefully may just answer that question for me. What is this book i hear you cry, well...                    

I'll come back to this a latter stage.

Now I would just like to say a quick word on tools, for with out proper tools I would not have been able to achieve my second pencil design. The pencil with gap, until this design I have simply been 

my normal safety razor but to achieve the gap I needed to use an old style single blade razor like this.  

so with it being Movember i thought in better publish this and and if you forgive for saying, knock a quick one out for the month of "Mo". 

see you all soon.

  

So my dear furry fanciers,

we come to another update and recording of transformation. Since I last wrote I have changed from the "Natural" tash style to the "Chevron". Looking at the design in the book I thought they were quiet similar in style and size, lending it self to a seemingly smooth transition, or so I thought.

previously the feeling I had towards my facial hair has been care free, spontaneous with out too much  consideration, but now I find my situation changed, by deliberately going for a particular design, then photographing, analysing and documenting it, I feel it has become in philosophical terms or that of physics, by my observing my self, I have created the Schroeder's cat of mustaches. Meaning that when I am not looking at it, it is by all means a fine mustache. But when I am looking at it, it becomes a thing of curiosity, of frustrated imperfection.

what I'm trying to say is that, where as before I would chop and change my designs with out too much forethought or concern, but never being sloppy in my shaving. The final result must always be presentable, after all you do have to walk around and present your self with it on your face the whole time. It is most certainly not one of those play full finger tash stickers i found for sale that you can chop and change with whimsy.You must have conviction to cultivate, and pride to wear your tash.

Now that I am deliberately trying to design my mustache I have realised the pressure I am under, grooming is not a task to be taken so lightly as perhaps I may have done in the past. No sir, one slight wrong move of the razor and your whole look may have to drastically change.you may find yourself with eight to ten weeks of growth on your face, loving & carefully meticulously even tided, and one wrong move and you'll find your self in the regrettable or unavoidable position of having to completely change your design and style, or worse, shave it off completely and start again. very frustrating. My mustache is right and wrong, alive & dead at the same time. by all means it is fine, well presented and well received but to the critical eye may be it has become a dead fish in the water, a humiliation surfing across my face. No I'm being too hard on my self, lets run with folly.

Why all this doubt? Well I'll explain, as i started to mention before i have changed from the "Natural" to what is meant to be the "Chevron". Now as i saw it in the picture the chevron could be achieved by simply combing the natural in a different direction, but i wanted to grow it in, so i trimmed the main body of the mustache back to allow easier re sculpting, then shaved the sides in a slightly downward angle, as the book instructs you to, but i ended up with something that was more somewhere between the pyramid and the paintbrush. what do you think?

 

when it should look like this. As you can see a small wrong angle of the wrist and the side of the tash has a slight edge in it. still I'm not going to let it bother me. Onwards to the next design. 

Hello and welcome back,
Glad to see you're still with me, this blog may not be expertly written, my spelling and grammar may be a little off but hay time is short and life is fun, if you make it so. Now on with the bushy business of facial hair cultivation. This morning I had a horseshoe, (see pic) Now this was suggested to me by my girlfriend,

and i have to say it was a fun style to wear. At first I got a lot of homosexual remarks, like Y.M.C.A, Village people etc, this was of little concern but I thought lets keep count and see if the gay remarks out weighed the straighter, chopper, Holk Hogan type remarks. I'm glad to say the straight far out weighed the gay, and the tash remained. Here are some famous horseshoe wearers.

At first I wasn't sure how thick to set it, but if you're going to do it then go for it I say. Another thing I hadn't counted on was that my tash was to be tri coloured. My top lip is of a slight blonde sandy colour, the rest is more dark brown to black, but now i'm of an age there's a little salt mixed in with the pepper, so the ends had a kind of cool frosting of white. The only thing I missed from having  a beard was having somthing to stroke, altho after a while once it got thicker you could give each end a little fondel he he. 

Any way as fun as the Horseshoe was it's time to move on, so armed with a new book, "The Moustache Grower's Guide" by Lucien Edwards my trusty beard trimmer, comb, nail sissors and razor i set about the move to "The Natural".

 

Now the book say's that this has a diffculty rating of  half a tash, 3 full tashes being the hardest. It can be warn wild and untamed or trimmed neat like a privitt. I've chosen the 'Natural' slightly bushy. I think it will, with a little carefull trimming lend it self as a good base for other styles like the 'Toothbrush', 'The Painters Brush'. or 'Chevron' and 'Walrus'. These will all be presented to you over the next few weeks. So I will leave you here while I go and agonise that my left side is slightly out of kilter with the right, I feel this is going to be an on going problem.

G

Let us start at the beginning, my first beard. It was while I was on summer holiday with my father and younger brother (3 years). We were staying in a backpacker hostel in Newquay Cornwall around 1992. My brother just quite casually said one day, "I think you should grow a beard". Alright I thought why not, so I grew a goatee. This was soon paired with some rather long pointy side burns which too this day I take full credit of inventing. (ok so may be not inventing, but at least in my small world at the time I had never come across anyone with burns like mine!) . Here you go this is a picture of me with my friend Fiona and my first beard. (and yes my hair is blue, told you I liked to be different)

 

This beard lasted for for some time, I'm talking a good three years or more, I died it blue. It faded to a not so attractive urine yellow (don't). Then the shape changed, I narrowed it down, took the side burns away. These actually brought it against themselves, I became so frustrated with them not being even, one pointed more down than the other etc. Then came the chin strip, this grew for a while as  you can see.


But these where early days, i wasn't until i grew my first full beard that it all changed, well i changed. My yogi girl friend wanted to do a detox, now I don't know if any of you have ever tried a detox? there are various different types out there but we went for what seemed to be the most extreme. We chose to cut out pretty much everything. I'm talking about firstly you know all the bad things, stimulants, caffeine, alcohol, then meat, sugar, dairy. We also removed from our diet, wheat, gluten food additives & preservatives. You may ask what did we eat? Well plenty really, pasta made from rice flour, or vegetable flour, fruit, veg, nuts, seeds, pulses. Now I don't want to go on about the pros & con's of detoxing but let me say those three weeks felt a long time, there was constipation along the way (sorry but i had to include that, it's a kind of warning) and the only high light was when we found out that goats cheese didn't count as diary. So it may come as no surprise that at this time i thought, well if I'm going to give up all this i may as well give up shaving as well! Think i was kind of throwing all my toys out of the pram. So i grew my first full beard.
                                            I have to say it felt good, something changed in me, i felt more manly than id ever felt before. It was a bit strange, i urge you if you have never tried a full beard give it a go, you may just find it liberating. It not only made me feel differently about myself, but things started  to happen, my life changed. Because of the beard i got randomly chosen to be an extra in a film! I wont go into the details but if you pause the film in just the right place you can see a shadowy figure in a church in "The Da Vinci Code".

I digress, forgive me. Enough back ground this can filter in along the hairy trail. The next post will be back on track with some serious tash grooming. G

First time for everything

Well hello there, my name is Giles and this is my first ever blog.

So what am I going to write about and why?

Well since the age of 18 and thanks to the suggestion of my younger brother I have had a beard (I'll go into more detail about this later). Now 18 years on I have become a bit of a facial hair fan. before, it was more just for fun, you know, I was young and none of my other friends had beards.I like being different, who doesn't? Well obviously some of you, I understand that but I like to be different. Any way a colleague of mine brought me a book, (BEARDS A spotters Guide, by C.Frost-Sharratt). I then pondered the idea of trying all the different styles out, then another friend suggested that after I tried out a new style I should blog about it, she kind of called my bluff there so here I am.

Now it appears that beards and mustaches are very en vogue at the moment, it seems to me that where ever you look you'll fine a tash design. here are few examples I've found.

This a corkscrew with a tash

 

 these are clips that you use to seal food bags.

 glasses with tashes on.

 these are finger tashes, novelty stickers you put on the inside of your finger, then hold up too your top lip.

It doesn't stop there, you can sport a fetching tash or beard on a trendy T-shirt.

So with all this new focused attention on beards & tashes, and having already tried a few designs myself, I launch myself into a follicle world of adventure. I hope this will be fun and interesting and that some of you will follow me on my adventure. until the next time.
G.