Monday is New Blade Day, so out with the old Merkur Platinum DE blade in my safety razor and in with a new one (the last one of a pack of ten! Why this makes me happy escapes me, but for some reason, it always does).

Unlike so many other DE blades, I find the Merkur Platinums give great shave right out of the wrapper, and stay sharp for at least a week’s worth of shaving. Other blades I’ve used, even the ones I like and keep using like the Israeli Personnas and the Wilkinsons, have a little too much bite on the first shave, then things are great for the rest of the week. Not the Merkurs — they’re nice and smooth right from the start.

Some shavegeeks claim the Merkur blades only work well in Merkur’s own DE razors, and are too “mild” for a “milder” razor like the old Gillette adjustables and fixed-head DEs. I think that’s just dogma that’s been batted around long enough to become a truism. The Merkur blades are the best I’ve ever used in my Gillette DEs, both fixed and adjustable. There’s no blade I’ve tried that’s more consistently excellent.

Today’s shave was with my current money-in-the-bank rig — Merkur HD razor, fresh Merkur Platinum blade, Vulfix #2235 brush, brushed-lathered Cremo Cream, and Trumper’s Skin Food for the post-shave. As always, it was pure pleasure. My skin hasn’t felt this good in years — it must like being scrubbed with badger bristles, treated with the aloe in the Cremo, exfoliated with the Merkur blade, and moisturized with the glycerin and rosewater in the Skin Food. That, or the pork fat in the spareribs I ate last night is making its way out of my pores as we speak.

The plan this morning was to use Taylor’s rose shaving cream to for a nice, soothing Sunday shave after my defeat at the hands of the Feather DE blade yesterday. I always scurry back to Taylor’s rose cream after catching a beating from some over-aggressive razor, blade, or other shaving experiment. The rose cream always seems to calm and heal whatever skin irritation I’m suffering from.

The weird thing is, I’ve been told the Taylor rose has no actual rose oil in it — that the rose scent is actually synthetic perfume oil, which might as well be red dye #2 when it comes to possessing any soothing properties. I don’t know if this is really so, but I do know that this cream smells great, shaves like a dream, and always helps calm my skin down when I’ve caught a beating from a shave need to take it easy for a day or two.

As I said, I was going to use the Taylor today, but a houseguest was using the bathroom the rose was in, so it was a no-go. So I figured what the hell, let’s see if Cremo Cream is any good at a “shoulder to cry on” shave.

I prepped in the usual way — hot shower, left my face wet — and lathered up with a Vulfix #2235 and a dime’s worth of Cremo Cream. I’d already ditched the Feather blade from my Merkur HD razor, replacing it with a fresh Merkur Platinum blade. The Merkur blades are the sharpest my skin can take without redness, I’ve found.

I usually do three passes with the DE — with-grain, against-grain, and then a bunch of diagonal cutting on my neck and under my chin, to get my billy goat’s gruff as smooth as my cheeks. But today I just did the first two passes, and 86′d the extra cleanup pass. I also lightened up on the downward pressure when I was going over the areas on my neck where the Feather shave left red marks.

This Cremo is amazing. I got just as nice and comforting a “take it easy” shave with it as I usually do with Taylor’s rose cream. My neck looked and felt great. Now I’m thinking maybe I’ve been an idiot all this time for doing that third cleanup pass under my chin all this time, just to get baby’s butt smooth on that patch which nobody else will ever know is or isn’t smooth to the touch. My neck either looks good or feels good — it’s never both. So I either shave it smooth so I can faceturbate all day, caressing my own chin like a demented freak, or have it look perfectly smooth and clean to the world at large. My own pleasure versus not looking like weasels ripped my flesh.

The more I use Cremo Cream, the more it surprises and impresses me. Used brushless as it’s intended to be, it gives a shave every bit as good as when you use a brush and a traditional English cream. Last week I learned that it works even better when you use it with a brush. And today I got the kind of kinder, gentler shave I used to think only came from using Taylor’s rose. If only Cremo Cream didn’t have to smell like a pina colada, and instead came in more traditional scents like rose, lavender, lime, and yes, violet, this stuff could be the only shaving cream I’d ever want to use.

No matter how good I get at this whole wetshaving routine, I can’t stop monkeying around, it seems. I’ve been so psyched with the shaves I’ve been getting by using a brush with the brushless Cremo Cream that today I think I went one toke over the line, sweet rhesus. I tried shaving with a Feather Platinum DE blade again, after swearing off of them awhile back.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Feather DE blades. They’re clearly the sharpest safety razor blades I’ve ever tried, and in a good razor, they cut so surgically you can barely feel them mowing your whiskers — they just seem to wipe off the layer of stubble without any sensation of actually cutting.

That’s the good news. The bad news, for me at least, is that I’ve never been able to get a consistently good shave without skin irritation. Even if I pay strict attention and avoid bearing down with any pressure at all on the razor, I still get red marks on my neck whenever I use Feather blades in any of my various DE razors. I love how close and smooth the shaves always are, but the red marks suck.

You’d think I’d learn by now. But my shaves with Cremo Cream have been so amazing that, of course, I couldn’t help myself. Since this stuff is so super slick, maybe it would let me get away with using the Feather blades so I could get those crazy-close shaves without the accompanying skin irritation. I broke open a pack of Feather Platinums and loaded one into my Merkur HD.

Today’s shaving routine was identical in rig and rigor to my other recent Cremo shaves — Merkur HD, Vulfix #2235 brush, Trumper Skin Food after to soothe my freshly shaven skin. The only difference was subbing the Feather blade for my usual Merkur.

The shave itself was super, super close. Even my trouble areas like under my chin feel glass smooth. And I didn’t have to go over these areas as many times as I do with other blades to get that kind of closeness. Just a few quick passes and I had glass.

Unfortunately, I also had some tiny red marks on my neck. I rarely get these anymore unless I’m using a hyper-aggressive razor like the Merkur Slant Bar or the Mach3 Power, or a poorly lubricating shaving cream or soap. As long as I use a good cream and my trusty Merkur HD, I don’t worry about red marks on my neck anymore.

I thought the Cremo Cream’s extreme slickness might somehow let the Feathers skate over my skin faster etc so the shave wouldn’t irritate, or something along those lines anyway. Nope. So I’m giving up on the Feather blades for now. They’re great, and lots of shavegeeks seem to get fine results with them. I’m not there yet, and with my skin, I may never be. I’m not Lee Marvin. I have sensitive skin. The Feathers are too much for me.

Maybe a year from now if my technique reaches the Zen point where I close my eyes and shave with a single, unbroken stroke over my entire face and neck without raising the blade till the last whisker falls in slo-mo into the sinkwater, I can revisit the Feathers and use them successfully. For now, I’m staying with the much more forgiving Merkur and Personna blades in my DE.

Ladies who lunch often enjoy a spot of sorbet to cleanse the palate, and so it was today with my shave. With all this wonder and glee from using the brushless Cremo Cream with a brush, maybe it’s good to check in with an ol’ reliable and make sure I’m not falling for the oldest reviewer’s trap in the game — the dreaded “I Fall In Love Too Easilyâ€? gusher. Oh, it’s an ugly one. You’re surprised by an intriguing product, or you’ve just come off a string of clunkers, and you suddenly find yourself with a thumping heart and breathless prose that will make you cringe a few days later when you come to your senses.

So today I shaved with my old school rig — Taylor lavender shaving cream, Vulfix #2235 brush, and Merkur HD razor loaded with a Merkur Platinum blade.

Lavender is my oldest wetshaving friend. I think it was a tub of Art Of Shaving’s lavender cream that first tipped me that there was something better in the world than Edge gel. So whenever I smell lavender, it reminds of the first wetshaving baby steps I ever took.

Now I use Taylor’s lavender cream, which is of much better quality. The AOS lavender cream is fine stuff — miles ahead of the mass market gels and foams — but the Taylor is better still. Denser, richer, slicker, and purpler. Yes, purpler. Call me crazy but I love the Taylor’s purple color. It turns white when you lather, but it looks cool in the tub when you crack it open in the morning.

My shave with this tried and true stalwart cream was excellent, as always. Smooth, close, comfortable. But I have to say, I think the shaves I got from brush-lathered Cremo Cream were better. My skin was slicker, the shaves were closer, the shaving itself was more efficient, and my face tingled afterward like I’d just had a great straight razor shave.

I’m going to alternate my go-to creams like Taylor rose, Trumper violet, and Proraso with the Cremo, to make sure I’m not imagining things. But so far, I’m even more impressed by the Cremo’s shave after comparing it with what I’ve been shaving with.

Yesterday’s experiment with using a shaving brush with Cremo Cream was wildly successful. I really didn’t expect it to work as well as it did, given its brushless formula, its own maker’s admonitions to use it with my bare hands for the best results, and the fact that this stuff goes on thin and translucent when you apply it with your hands as recommended.

But I was wrong. Using a Vulfix badger brush and treating the Cremo just like any traditional English shaving cream like Trumper or Taylor, the lather I got was thick, rich, and just as opaquely white as a “real” shaving cream — three things it is not when you just use your hands. And if the shave’s great when used as prescribed, it’s flat-out phenomenal with a brush.

The weird but wonderful thing about using a brush to build a lather with Cremo Cream is that the lather seems to grow in both quantity and lubrication the more you use it. Somehow, there’s a bigger, richer head of lather on the brush after three full passes than when you began the shave. The maker says that Cremo’s mojo is activated by adding water — could it be that the water held by the brush’s bristles keeps mixing with the Cremo every time you relather, and continues to create more and more lather as you go? With traditional creams, it’s just the opposite — no matter how much water your brush can hold, the lather gets used up each time you relather, until there’s no more left. Cremo Cream somehow does the reverse.

For yesterday’s shave with Cremo and a brush, I used the recommended amount, about a quarter-sized dollup. But that recommendation is for when you’re just spreading it on your face with your bare hands. Clearly, much less Cremo is needed when you’re lathering it with a brush. So this morning, I used a much smaller blob of Cremo. Maybe a dime’s worth, if that.

A dime, a quarter — apparently Cremo doesn’t care how much or how little you pinch off when you’re using a brush, because I got just as much lather today as I did yesterday. After my customary three passes, I had more lather on my brush than when I started. I could’ve shaved for another three passes, easy.

This is nuts.

So what am I supposed to do here? Use a pinhead’s worth?

But which shavegeek’s hat size should I ask for?

Today I did the unthinkable.

The unbelievable.

The unnatural.

Even, perhaps, the unholy:

I used Cremo Cream with a brush.

And it kicked ass!

Honestly, it exceeded my wildest expectations. Because I’ve tried using a shaving brush with brushless creams like Cremo in the past, and it was always a bust. Most of the modern boutique creams like Baxter’s, Sharp’s, Jack Black Ate No Crack, Kiehl’s, Lab Series, Zyrrrhhhhh, you name it, they’re all designed to be slathered on your puss with your bare hands. The thought being, later wif dat tired-ass horse’n'buggy routine with the brush and the mug and the barbershop quartet! Just use your hands, yo.

Problem is, none of this crap works, yo. Except for Cremo Cream. Thanks to beloved wife, who tried this stuff out on her gams when I couldn’t be bothered to take it seriously, I finally caught a shave with it last week and it knocked me for a loop. Here was a modern, space-age shaving cream inna tube, expressly designed to be used brushless, invented by the guy who came up with the idea for the dry-erase magic marker board for cripe’s sake, yet I’ve gotten some of the best shaves I’ve ever had with it. Better, in fact, than some of the most jizzed-about creams and soaps in the shavegeek pantheon.

But as unbelievable as Cremo Cream is, the fact that it’s brushless gave me pause. Because I like using a brush. No, I love using a brush. As convinced as I am that Cremo Cream delivers a world-class shave without using a brush, I’m not giving up my brush. It feels good on my face. I like using it. I like it, okay? I’m not giving it up.

So the question became: can you use a shaving brush with Cremo Cream and still make the magic happen? Because push comes to shove, if they can’t tango, it ain’t my brush that’s getting the heave-ho.

I called Cremo Central to see what they thought of all this. I also wanted to make sure that the non-standard ingredients in this stuff wouldn’t mess with a badger-hair shaving brush — hey, you never know. Some shavegeeks swear that the lanolin in Proraso and Musgo Real shaving creams gunks up the bristles. But these are the same guys who use “Pip pip!” and “Tally ho, chaps!” online while it’s more like “Care for some butter-flavored topping on your popcorn, sir?” in real life, so take it for what it’s worth.

The Cremo folks told me using a brush with Cremo wouldn’t degrade its performance, but they reiterated that the cream was designed to work best with just a hand application. And no, they said, it wouldn’t harm or coat the brush in any way.

So this morning I jumped our of the shower and grabbed my Vulfix badger brush, soaked in a sink full of hot water, and did my usual wetshave routine except with Cremo Cream instead of traditional shaving cream. I squeezed a quarter-sized dollup of Cremo into my left palm and proceeded to pump’n’swirl the waterlogged brush around and around for the usual 10-15 laps.

I had lather! Real, live, honest-to-god lather. If it wasn’t quite as opaque, thick, or dense as what I get from the trio above, it was much more opaque, thick and dense than what I got from just slathering it on my wet face with my hands. Much more.

The shave, I’m convinced, was even better with the brush than without. It was breathtakingly smooth and effortless. I thought Cremo Cream was slippery before, but wait till you try it with a brush. And the best part is, the Cremo lather kept getting thicker, richer, and more lubricating for each successive pass. I don’t know how or why, but each time I lathered up again, the Cremo got better and better. I did three passes — with-grain, against-grain, and a diagonal clean-up pass under my chin and on my neck — and the last pass was even slicker than the first.

And the crazy thing is, after every relathering, the head of lather on my brush seemed to grow bigger. I’ve never experienced this with any other lather, whether from a cream, a soap, or a shaving oil like Pacific. What else have you ever tried that creates more lather and gets more lubricating the more you use it? Nothing in my experience.

The shave was perfect. Baby’s butt smooth. Not a hint of skin irritation. No red marks on my neck. It was as good a shave as I’ve ever given myself, and it was one of the easiest, too.

I’m sold on this stuff hook, line and sinker. Cremo Cream is plenty good when used as directed, but add a brush to the mix and it jumps to the head of the class. If the Cremo folks could just make it smell like something other than a pina colada, and add a smaller tube to the line for travel, I’d be hard pressed to shave with anything else.

You can order a big 6-oz. tube of Cremo Cream for $14.50 from Ray Dupont at Classic Shaving. Do it. I just ordered two more tubes from Ray, and between beloved wife and me, I know I’ll be ordering more. Highly recommended.

Today I tried QED’s lime shaving soap, to see if it was a better match for my skin than the company’s sandalwood soap.

Even before Charles had sent me his new soaps to try, he’d sent me one of his new lavender shaving sticks along with an order I’d placed awhile back. The QED shaving sticks are made of the same cold-poured glycerin-based formula as the QED soaps that come in the tubs, so I removed the cylinder of lavender soap from the QED push-up stick, put it in a glass mug, and microwaved it for 25 seconds till it melted nicely into the bottom of the mug.

After it cooled and hardened again, I used it just like a regular shaving soap. The QED lavender worked well enough, but didn’t live up to the initial shavegeek hype. Personally, I thought it was no better or worse than the other hard glycerin shaving soaps I’ve tried like Col. Conk, but it sure did smell a lot better — QED’s liberal use of pure essential oils gives these soaps a strong and wonderful scent, especially after you’ve whipped it up into a lather. Still, the shave itself wasn’t as smooth and close as what I get from my favorite creams, so I used the lavender a few more times to make sure my initial take was accurate, and then went back to Trumper’s voilet, Taylor’s avocado and Proraso.

As I said before, QED’s sandalwood didn’t work as well for me as the lavender soap, so I was eager to see how QED’s lime compared with the two other soaps. Well, as far as scent goes, the lime wins hads down — this stuff smells nutty, nutty good. It smells exactly like the Green River sodas we used to drink as a kids at the Sweete Shoppe while sharing a giant porcelain plate of fries. It’s an intensely sweet lime scent, and it knocked me out so much I couldn’t wait to lather up.

Like the other QED soaps, lathering with the lime is a bit of an adjustment if you’re used to the old-school creams from Taylor, Trumper et al. You can waterlog your brush all you want, and swirl it on top of the soap all you want, but you’re not really going to get a properly thick lather from the QED unless you use a mug or (shudder) a shavegeek bowl. When I tried making lather the usual way I do with hard soaps — i.e. soak my brush in a sink of hot water, swirl the tips of the badger hair over the soap about 10-20 times, and then begin lathering right on my face — the QED made a pretty thin and not very substantial lather, and clearly wasn’t ready to shave with.

No, you need to work the QED soap with a mug, really pump and beat that sucker, to get a usable shaving lather from it. This is why I don’t like the QED shaving sticks as much– if I use them the way they’re intended to be used, which is get my face wet with hot water, rub the stick over my face and neck, and then start beating away with my wet brush, it’s just not happening at all. I like the form factor, but this stuff works far better in tub form than in a rub-on stick.

Beaten to a properly thick and rich lather, the QED lime worked much better with my skin than QED’s sandalwood soap. I didn’t suffer from any of the drying or irritation I have from other lime shaving products like Trumper’s and Coates’s lime shaving creams. There was still that same razor drag on my face I experienced with QED’s other soaps, but this is the hallmark of every hard glycerin shaving soap I’ve used — the blade “squeaks” on my skin (especially sgainst the grain) instead of gliding over a smooth layer of lube. With the best of the glycerin rounds, which I’d rank QED’s lime and lavender soaps right at the top based on scent alone, I can usually get a decent, and occassionaly a very good, shave, but it takes more time, is less effortless and enjoyable, and my skin always feels just a wee bit tighter and drier than is good for it.

For what it’s worth, my face feels the same way when I wash it with glycerin facial soaps like Neutrogena and the othwerwise wonderful South Of France bath soap I use in the shower — while the rest of my body does just fine with the glycerin soaps, my face is much happier with Cetaphil cleanser. Maybe oily skin just isn’t a good match for a hard glycerin soap when it comes to creating the slipperiest surface possible for the best shave.

QED’s lime soap is my favorite of the company’s three scents available in tubs. If it didn’t give me as good a shave as I routinely get from my favorite creams, at least it didn’t cause any skin irritation or razor burn, and the scent was among the very best I’ve experienced from a shaving product. In fact, it was so wonderful, I finished things off with Trumper’s Lime Skin Food and Taylor’s No.74 Lime cologne for the full-on citric acid trip. Cue the Anton Karas..

Still suffering from the cruel lashings at the hand of that irritating cad Sandalwood, I let myself fall once again into the waiting arms of Taylor Avocado. Moist, slippery Taylor. Always there to salve my wounds, soothe my skin, and pleasure me as only a gentleman’s cream can.

He covered my face and neck with soft, silky lather, his scent an intoxicating mixture of avocado, rosemary, and lavender, his touch hot on my bare skin.

There would be no bodice ripping, though had I been wearing one, I shan’t doubt it would have been dealt with as such, given Taylor Avocado’s reputation as the misunderstood rogue among the Taylors of Old Bond Street. There would only be the shave. A smooth, flawless, moisturizing shave that did wonders for my face which had, only a few days before, seen the back of that cruel blackguard Sandalwood’s hand and still harbored memories of its sting.

And I was reunited once more with my beloved old flame Vulfix Badger, now that my return to Cremo Cream was put off another day or so. Denying myself the pleasures of the brush is, I’m coming to feel, the only reason I may never be able to swear allegiance to the wondrous Cremo.

As heavenly as my shaves with this brushless cream have been, I can’t help but confess to a deep longing for my precious Vulfix, and the tingle of his soft yet firm touch on my face. If dear Vulfix and fair Cremo cannot share sweet embrace with me together, I fear I may come to a crossroads, with the romance of the brush and the science of the lube presenting two divergent paths, only one of which can spell eternal shaving happiness.

But dare I even think such thoughts while Taylor Avocado’s milk-white cream still soaked the matted patch of hair at the base of my Vulfix? For now, I could only think of the romance and pleasure of a brush and a cream meant to be enjoyed forever together.

And with that, I surrendered to Taylor once more, with a final pass under my chin that left naught but bare, lamb-pink skin in its wake.

Yesterday’s shave with the QED sandalwood shaving soap left my skin feeling a bit more raw today than usual, especially on my neck and under my chin. There were some red marks on the base of my neck as well — this is sign-language for my neck saying, “Please go back to the Proraso shaving cream and stop dicking around with all these different products. You’re a grown man, not a demented kid. Enough with the guinea pig routine already — just use what you know works best and be done with it, you @%#$ shavegeek!”

I was planning to try the QED lime shaving soap today, but my neck needed some TLC. And when it comes to shaving, that means one thing and one thing only: Taylor’s rose shaving cream, that most maternal of all wetshaving products.

Same brush, same razor, same shaving routine. But today’s shave couldn’t have been more different than yesterday’s. The Taylor rose builds to a much thicker and more dense lather than the QED sandalwood’s, but that doesn’t really matter when it comes to shaving — Cremo Cream goes on thin and transparent, and barely registers as a “lather” at all, yet it shaves incredibly well.

What does matter is how well a lather lubes your skin and lets the blade glide over your face without skipping, catching, or dragging. In fact, it’s the only thing that matters. It’s why you use shaving cream, instead of simply shaving on a wet face.

The Taylor’s rose cream has never given me anything less than a superbly slick, highly lubricated, yet extremely soothing and comforting shave, and today’s shave was no different. This cream, moreso than most I’ve tried, is just plain a pleasure to shave with. It smells great, it lathers great, it shaves great, and it helps your skin recover from whatever beating it’s taken elsewhere. It’s the cream I always come back to when I’ve strayed with an untested cream, razor, or blade and I need to recuperate.

My skin already feels and looks better. If it looks fine tomorrow, I’ll give the QED lime a go. As I said, I’ve already gotten good results from the lavender QED soap, so I know this stuff can work well. I’m eager to see if the lime version is a better match for my skin than the sandalwood.

Yesterday I said I’d try using the Cremo Cream with a shaving brush, but I say lots of things. Charles at QED sent me some of his recently launched shaving soaps to try — lavender, lime and sandalwood, as well as a really intriguing shaving stick of an anise/lavender mix — so I figured I’d take a break from the Cremo and try these new QED soaps which have become the toast of the shavegeek forums.

Actually, this wasn’t the first time I’ve shaved with QED’s new glycerin-based shaving soaps. Awhile back, Charles had sent me a lavender shaving stick to try, and since the soap’s the same in the sticks as it is in the tubs, and since I’m not really down with the whole rubbing the stick all over your wet face before you whip up the lather with your brush thing, I removed the hardened soap from the plastic push-up stick, put it in a vintage Old Spice glass shaving mug, microwaved it for 25 seconds, and waited for it to cool down and harden again.

The lavender QED soap gave good shave, but the most impressive thing about it was the scent. It’s made with real lavender essential oil, and quite a bit of it, from the smell of things. If you’re an old lady like me and you love lavender, you’ll love this QED soap, if for no other reason than it throws up a pretty intense lavender force field around your head for the duration of the shave.

As for the shave, I have to say that while I like the QED soap, I don’t share the prevailing shavegeek sing-along that it’s the best shave lube on the market. It’s good, and the scents, all derived from essential oils, are extraordinary. But I don’t find that the shave I get from the QED soaps are better than what I routinely get from Taylor, Trumper and other traditional creams. And while I haven’t used the Cremo Cream long enough to really decide whether it’s really the best shaving cream I’ve ever tested or simply a case where something new and different gets you excited and all jizzed about it, I definitely got better shaves with it this week than I’ve been able to get from the QED soaps.

One thing I do know, though, is that I strongly prefer the lavender QED soap to the sandalwood, which I tried today. The sandalwood irritated my skin a bit, and, strangely, smelled more like patchouli to me than sandalwood. I realize that many “sandalwood” colognes like Taylor’s have additional notes along with the sandalwood, and I also know that QED uses very expensive, pure sandalwood essential oil in its shaving soap. Maybe every other sandalwood scent I’ve smelled has been mixed with other stuff, and pure sandalwood really does smell like a guy in a dancing bears t-shirt playing hacky sack. It’s a nice scent, if you like patchouli, but I guess I was expecting something that smelled more like Taylor’s sandalwood cologne and shaving cream.

It’s also possible that glycerin shaving soaps work better for some skin types than others. On my face, which is very oily, the QED doesn’t slick up my skin so much as get squeaky. The same thing has happened with other hard glycerin shaving soaps I’ve tried, as well as when I’ve washed my face with a glycerin soaps like Neutrogena. The only way I can describe it is that my skin almost squeaks when I rub my hands over it.

The problem is, so does a razor. And when you’re shaving with a sharp double-edge blade, that’s the last thing you want. What you do want is slick lubrication so the edge of the blade glides smoothly across your skin. On my face, hard glycerin soaps like the QED make the blade pull and even stutter a bit at times. Even a new blade feels like one that’s a day past its due date. I can adapt to this and get a decent shave, but I can’t really get the kind of super close, super comfortable shave that I can with the traditional English creams. Even the inexpensive European creams like Proraso and Musgo Real are a better match for my skin type than hard glycerin soaps.

Clearly, other guys are getting much better results from the QED soaps than I’ve gotten — some shavegeeks have even claimed they dumped their other creams and soaps because the QED soaps are the best they ever tried and they’ll use nothing else. I wish I could get as excited about these soaps, but so far, I haven’t been able to get the same results. I will say, though, that the lavender did work better than the sandalwood, and I still want to try a few shaves with the lime, and especially the anise/lavender, before I put a period on this line. So tomorrow I’ll try both and see how they stack up.