It was interesting to learn things. Expanding one's knowledge was always a good feeling, and especially when the subject was of a certain interest, it tended to not even feel like learning. It was just a pleasant process of reading a lot of previously unknown information, or even better, listening to someone knowledgeable talk about the subject in question.
It was also quite amusing how one's perception of learning something changed with the passing of time. The tall, freckled human woman Sasha had found this out the more and more she and her fluffy purple and white vixen-taur wife Buddleia got into attempting new production chains for Butterfly Farm. She distinctly remembered how terrible she used to find going to school, what an aversion she used to have to the lessons, how she felt like she was getting information stomped into her brain and forced down her throat against her will. But now that she was an adult, and she was exploring a number of different, previously unknown avenues of farming and producing products, she found herself being hungry for knowledge, found herself wanting to absorb as much information as she could on her own volition. She wanted to learn now, she wanted to know new things, and the more she got into subjects, the more she wanted to know about them.
The beekeeping was such a subject. Initially Sasha had just wanted to know about what it would take to successfully keep bees, and how to harvest their honey. She had not expected she would be so interested in learning all the additional things that came with it. The first long talk she'd had with the Caspian tiger man Jasper Nicla, the beekeeper in the tiny village of Rolling Hills, had already given her way more information about parts of the beekeeping procedure than she would have thought, or even would have considered learning about. She had also found that one rabbit hole tended to have a good number of branches one could get lost in. The elderberries in their back garden had already proven that; having so much surplus of them had caused Sasha to look into other ways to process them into different end products. Thusly, she had gone from elderberries to wine and jam, then to syrup, which led to honey, and to Echinacea tincture, which in turn led back to growing coneflowers.
And now she had found herself down another side passage of the main rabbit hole of beekeeping. Harvesting honey gave the byproduct of wax. And beeswax turned out to be unbelievably versatile. Jasper Nicla had already told her of just and about two dozen uses of beeswax, from the most well-known application of making candles to using it as a lubricant for cabinet drawers or zippers, polishing wood, bronze utensils or leather, to making balms and salves. And as the crafts store also housed a chandler, Sasha tumbled from rabbit hole right into another.
Not that she was seriously interested in making her own candles. At the long talk with Jasper, she had mentioned that, and Jasper had said she could simply bring the wax she'd get from harvesting honey to the crafts store and give it to the tan and white Mountain Hare woman Kimberly Flores, the chandler, who would give her an equivalent number of beeswax candles in return. But Sasha did find the process in itself interesting enough to at least ask about it.
And so it came to pass that during one of the weekly visits to the village, the freckled human woman found herself in the crafts store to talk with the hare woman. It was a tad surprising that Kimberly was sitting hunched over a workbench in the back of the crafts store rather than in the smaller chandlery building on the side of the main store building, but it was also convenient. It was however the ruddy and yellow and black Norwegian Lemming welder Inga who greeted Sasha upon entering the store, as she was manning the counter.
"Heya, Sasha! Nice to see you, what brings you to our store?"
"Hey Inga," Sasha smiled. "I'm here to ask Kimberly a thing or two about making candles."
One of the hare woman's large ears rotated towards the front of the store, followed by her entire head.
"Well aren't you in luck, honey!" she smiled as she looked up from the workbench. "I'm just rolling some, so come on over here and grab yourself a stool or something."
"There you go, I don't even have to say anything," Inga chortled.
"Thanks anyway, sweetheart," Sasha said with a cheerful grin.
She walked to the back of the store into the workshop area and pulled near a rolling stool, sitting down next to Kimberly.
"So, you want to learn how to make candles, honey?" the hare woman smiled. "Is it because of you talking with Jasper about keeping bees a while back?"
"To be honest; no," Sasha chortled. "He did mention it, but he also told me it's a bit involved and I should render the wax to clean it and whatnot, and frankly, that's all a bit too much work for me to do as a little side-project in between all our farming work. So he told me I could just give you the wax I'd get, and I am also a bit interested in the process, because those candles you gave us didn't really look like any candles I'm used to seeing."
"That's fair, it can be a bit involved," Kimberly nodded. "And you're right, I prefer rolling candles because it's the quickest and least messy way, and that process makes for very distinct candles."
"I imagined it could get quite messy, because you would have to melt the wax first," Sasha nodded with a chortle. "And I also imagined the hazards of spilling hot molten wax, ouch."
"Yeah, if you pour or dip candles, you need fluid wax, and that tends to be hot," Kimberly chortled. "But for rolling candles, all I need is this."
She pointed at a spool of what looked like off-white twine and opened the lid of a cooler sitting next to the workbench to show a stack of thin sheets of light yellow-ish wax with a honeycomb relief all over. Sasha leaned over to look into the cooler and smiled.
"Do you buy those, or do you make them yourself? And if you make them yourself, how the hell do you get that pattern in them?"
"You can buy them, yes," Kimberly nodded, closing the cooler again. "But as I have a quite steady supply of raw wax from Jasper, I do make them myself." She let go a light chortle. "The pattern is not that hard, really. I have an ancient printing press I bought at an antiques auction once, and it holds a plate with raised edges. Once I've rendered and cleaned the raw wax, I pour it onto that plate. To the top of the raised edges is exactly three millimeters, and once the wax has cooled enough to glaze over, I close the press, which has a stamping plate in the top with that honeycomb pattern. Hold down, one, two, three, four, five, lift, and ta-da, a honeycomb-patterned sheet of wax. I keep them in a fridge set to fifty degrees to keep them cool and solid until I'm ready to use them, and when I'm ready, I take out a stack, let them get to room temperature so they're not too brittle and put them in my large paper cutter to cut them exactly in half nice and straight and clean. One half makes one candle."
"I see," Sasha nodded with a soft chortle. "And then you just roll them up with a piece of string inside, I suppose?"
"Basically, yes, but you don't use just any regular string," Kimberly chortled, taking the spool and pulling out some of the string. "Bella makes this for me; natural, unbleached cotton threads plaited or braided to make a proper wick. See, it's a bit flat, and it needs to be braided or plaited to ensure proper wicking and so that it curls over while burning and the end burns off naturally. Otherwise you end up with a way too long wick and you'll get a flickering and smoking candle."
"Right, that makes sense I guess," Sasha nodded. "Wow, but there's definitely much more to it than I thought." She pointed at the thin, half-rolled wax sheet laying on a sheet of wax paper on the workbench. "That's also much lighter than I thought it would be." She made quotation marks with her fingers. "In Fossil City, there's a store that sells "all natural" beeswax candles, and they're much darker from what I remember."
Kimberly nodded with a smile.
"If they're really all natural, they should be a bit darker, and kind of blotchy. If you buy these kind of sheets, you get them in uniform colors, but natural beeswax is never fully uniform in color. And mine is lighter because it's a mix of beeswax and the tallow Jameson gets from rendering excess animal fats." She leaned back a bit and giggled cheerfully. "See, in ye olden times, beeswax candles were the expensive luxury ones for the rich folk, the poor commoners used candles made from tallow, which burns a bit less cleanly and those candles tend to smoke a bit and not smell all too pleasant. When I first started out, I actually used to make both beeswax and tallow candles, just for nostalgia sake, you know? But boy those tallow candles are not popular, I can tell you. So I tried pressing the tallow to separate the stearin so I could use it as a hardening agent in poured beeswax candles, but that was so involved and gave so little result I eventually decided to just mix the beeswax and the tallow during the rendering of the beeswax. It basically gives much the same result, and as a side bonus, it makes the beeswax lighter in color."
"Really, wow," Sasha said, tilting her head a bit and running a hand over her nose and mouth, slowly grinning a bit. "And here I was thinking candles were just made out of wax, and that's it."
"Well, sure, but there's plenty more than just one type of wax, honey," Kimberly chortled. "Nowadays, pretty much all candles are made of paraffin wax, but there's also palm wax, carnauba wax, heck, even soybean wax."
"Seriously?" Sasha said. "Wow, my grandfolks used to grow soybeans on their farm, but I never knew you could make wax out of them."
"Oh yes, if you process soybean oil further, you get soybean wax," Kimberly nodded with a smile. "Problem with that stuff is that it has a lower melting point, so you can pretty much only make container candles out of it. You know, those candles that come in a glass or a little cup, like a tea light?"
"I see," Sasha nodded, her lips curling into a grin. "So can you also make candles out of, you know..." She lightly pulled on her right earlobe. "...this wax?"
"Earwax?" Kimberly shook her head with a cheerful laugh. "Oh gosh honey, please don't! Haha! That's disgusting! Technically, you could do it, but those kind of candles crackle and spatter and stink like heck! Honestly, why would you even suggest that? Ewwwww!"
They both laughed cheerfully, joined by Inga, the basket weaver Sonya and the potter Ruben when they asked what was so funny. Well, at least Sasha learned a new thing!
