Smelly-Good Shit (Feb 9, 2009)

Current mood:cranky

So the washing of the leather jacket was a big fat pain in the ass. Yeah, like your girlfriend.

Initially, I was just washing with soap and water with some odor remover thrown in for good measure, but that seemed to have about the same effect as spraying a skunk with Fabreeze and expecting it to work. So I read somthing online about white vinegar maybe doing the trick. Oh, goody.

For the record, white vinegar makes me retch. Like seriously for real, I almost barfed in the bath tub like 5 times or more. Ew. I used about half the bottle in there. And to no avail.

I dried the coat off by hand as best I could and hung it to dry out the rest of the way, and it still smelled like cat spray. Well, eff. For those of you that have smoked enough pot to down an elephant, that means FUCK.

I read something else online that gave me a little hope. Someone mentioned having the same problem and mixing some patchouly oil in with the leather conditioner and that it seemed to work pretty well. They said it gave the leather smell a sweet scent that masked the cat spray smell and made the jacket smell like "bad-ass."

Well, I'm all about that!! I needed to condition the leather anyway, after it had been dumped in a bathtub and swooshed around for 3 hours. After the outside was dry, I had turned it inside out to dry the rest of it and when I flipped it back right ways, it was about as stiff as a sailor on shore leave.

Its a daunting task, rubbing leather conditioner into every single part of a jacket. You kinda have to do it in small parts, and it takes for fuck-all ever. And your arm gets sore. Its like whacking off to bad pron.

Anyway, with special attention to seams and folds, I finally rubbed every part of that jacket down and it smells fantastic. The patchouly isn't too strong, but it still has that musky smell.  The leather is pliant and good and the whole damn thing looks new. I'm proud of myself. Here in a day or two, I'll likely go over it again with the oil/ conditioner mix, just to get it good and conditioned.

I win.