Please – Restrain Yourself!

Today – well, yesterday at this point – The Toronto TNG hosted our first non-munch event of 2012; and our first ever skill share!

We ran the skill share in Open Space format – and yes.  Yes.  I’m just going to stop arguing this point.  Yes.  It’s like a GrUE — except shorter, and more focused.

If you aren’t familiar with open space at all; let me give you the quick and drity:

Take 1 group of people who are into creating an experience for themselves.  Give them a chunk of time to come up with things they want to talk about, and what they want others to talk about.  And there you go.  The key factor in open space is that you’re responsible for your level of engagement/participation, so if you find yourself not into what’s going on around you, you need to take yourself to something you will be engaged in*

The topic of today’s skill share was: Restraint.  A nice broad topic – covers everything from corsetry, to chastity, to mental bondage…. Ropes, cuffs, gags, masks, pallet wrap  we went with a wide birth.

We were a small but engaged group today.  It was a good mix of experienced, intermediate, and novice kinksters, and I do believe that everyone walked away with something they didn’t know before today.  Ironically though, it may have had less to do with restraint and more to do with water sports – but hey, who doesn’t love the occasional tangent?

Here’s what we came up with in our create an agenda/outline/schedule time:

Sessions:

1. Riffing with Rope:  Elements and Aesthetics, Teachincal and other wise
2. Hair Ties (Quickie!)
3. Anatomy for Bondage/Restraints (muscles, nerves, positional and pain vs pleasure)
4. Fashionably Wasited; why bustiers are not corsets, and how you can fix that
5. Handcuffs
6. Roundtable Discussion: Psychological Bondage & MindFucking
7. Objects of Restraint – Ropes & Not Rope.

Wish list:

• Pyschological Restraint
• Bondage Risks
• Bondage Materials -> Pros/cons
• Bondage Furniture
• CBT
• Blindfolds
• Safe Suspension Points

So all in all; not bad for our first swing at this ball.  We’re going to have another one of these in a few months when the weather warms up, the topic?  Impact  Why wait til it warms up?  Because then we can take the whips outdoors to swing    If you want to be sure to you don’t miss out on hearing about this; join the Toronto TNG FetLife Group – all the info winds up in there first anyway.

Hope to see you at the next one!

*But that if you aren’t feeling anything?  That happened to me once, and while it’s not something I’d want to do every weekend, it turned out okay.  But this Open Space stuff?  You really are responsible for your own experience.  If you can’t see yourself dealing well in that atmosphere, it may not be the right experience for you.

Building a Basic Bootblacking Kit – Part 2

Now that we’ve gotten the polish boots taken care of we can move onto the more fun ones; more commonly known as oil tanned­ boots, or greases  (consider that my admission of personal bias).  These boots don’t take a shine, and they aren’t meant to.  Instead they’re kept matte and well conditioned with products like Huberd’s, Obenauf’s, or Aussie Leather Conditioner.

In Canada, this will probably be the harder of the two kits to put together since leather conditioner is strangely hard to come by…but it will double as a care kit for all your leather clothing (and furniture!), so it’s worth it.  And just like with a polish kit, this is something you can spend years building up, so start with the basics and then use very trip stateside to build up your stash.
Speaking of the Basics:

• Saddle soap or pure glycerine soap.
• A small spray bottle.
• A soft cotton towel.
• Horsehair Dauber.  With Grease kits you really only need one to clean with (confession time:  My cleaning dauber for polish boots and grease boots is the same brush)
• Horsehair Shine Brush – this you really do want to keep separate from your polish shine brush.  Polish and grease do not play well together.
• Leather condition of choice.  Huberd’s is definitely my local standard, but bootblacks online seem to be just as happy with Obenauf’s and many with Aussie Leather Conditioner and some with Chelsea Leather Food too.  Pro-Tip So far the only place I know in Souther Ontario that carries Huberd’s is Dimar Shoe Repair in Geulph.  If you know of another – please let me know!
• Dubbin

Again, I’m not going to be able to provide you all the goodness you could pick up by joining your local bootblack community….  but I will say (because my google fu has failed me) , the process of cleaning and caring for your oil boots is much like polish boots.  In fact, the first steps are all the same, but instead of applying polish, you apply a thin coat of grease/conditioner, wipe off the excess with your shine brush, apply a thin coat of Dubbin, wipe off the excess and you’re good to go.

One more thing – although is can be really tempting to clean and condition your leathers all the time because of how good it feels to be running your greasy hands all over them, over-conditioning your gear will actually weaken the fabric and shorten it’s lifespan.  Conditioning should really be more of a quarterly activity.  If you find it getting dirty, clean it, but skip the conditioning step; soap and Dubbin only.