Yesterday, February 11th was grocery shopping day. And it was a doozy! 4 hours and over $400! And there’s still a few things left to get at a different store.

But, it feels good to have the freezer and storage shelves filled up again. January is always a lean month as we recover financially from the holidays.

And our shopping trip came just in time since a good friend and her 4 kids joined us for dinner. Plenty of food to go around. Might not have been that way the day before. 🙂

Today, February 12 –
More candle testing today and I’m thrilled! We burned the taper/dipped candles we made the other day.

You like my make-do candle holders? We do have a couple of taper holders, but since I didn’t know how much/if these candles would melt all over the place, I decided to use these jars with foil. It worked remarkably well.

The three wicks I used were the 48 hour borax soaked (middle), the skinnier string untreated (right), and the thicker string untreated (left).

The girls wanted to burn the candles they made, as well. I don’t know how many times Flower Girl blew hers out then re-lit it by holding it up to one of the others.

It was immediately obvious that the borax soaked wick was not going to work very well. You can see from this picture the way the crystallized borax builds up on the wick. I don’t know if it was the borax alone, but this candle burned 4 times as fast as the others.

This is after just one hour. The borax wick candle is all but gone. The others, however, are doing great!

I needed my little jars to make some more candles, so I transfered these to taller jars. By this point (3 hour) burn time, all I had done to these candles is trim the wicks at hour 2. You can see in the above picture that the candle on the left (the thicker wick) has a taller flame and even though the candle started out taller, it is now shorter. The bigger wick is burning faster. It also smoked more.

By hour 4 it was just down to the candle with the smaller wick. It lasted a total of 5 1/2 hours. And I only trimmed the wick twice. There was very little smoking with this one, even when the wick was longest.

I think we have a winner!

And, yes, the only thing I did to this wick was dip it in wax. How’s that for minimalist candle making? 🙂

I made five more jar candles to test my theory that the main thing that affects the burnability of these wicks is that they are centered and straight rather than anything they may or may not be treated with. If they are straight, maybe they well stay upright easier. I figured out a way to keep the wicks centered and straight. I also figured out a new wick stand that is easier to use as well as reusable. But more on that tomorrow. For more, I’m tired and off to bed!

Maridy

“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121