Yesterday afternoon, Jessi flew back into town from Vermont. She’s been accepted to grad school at SCAD, so she’s enrolling there again this fall, so she came back down to get a job and an apartment lined up. The apartment should all be squared away in the next couple days – she and Wendy have been coordinating with a guy in Savannah and Jessi and Justin went over there yesterday to work on the paperwork. They’re going to finish that up tonight? Tomorrow? I’m a little lost on the timeline, actually, because it was originally supposed to happen today. But it’ll be before Friday, anyway.
Saturday, we’re going to go over there and clean the whole place up and move Jessi’s stuff from our house and her storage shed and get her settled in there.
Wendy is trying to fly down sometime soon to help Jessi get settled, but we aren’t really sure about her travel plans just yet.
So we have a house guest for at least the next couple of days, possibly longer, but plans are still very fluid.
And other than that, it’s been a quiet couple days at home. We’re working on seasoning the cast iron skillet that we picked up from Home Goods on Saturday. We’ve never had one, so we’ve been doing a lot of research. Justin found info that said that the pre-sale seasoning that was put onto the pan wasn’t going to be very good, so we washed it all of (and that was a trick) and then did research on how to put good seasoning back on.
We’ve been following the advice of a website that recommended putting flax seed oil on the pan because it’s a drying oil that gives a great sheen because it’s high in the omegas. We couldn’t find any flax seed oil, so we went with the next best thing I could find: grape seed oil.
And it’s been an interesting experience. We’ve got two coats on it so far, of the at least six we hope to eventually have on there. It takes time because I warm up/dry the skillet on the stove for a little bit before putting it on a paper towel on the counter and pouring oil on it, working that in with my fingers. I really need to remember to not let the pan get too hot or just wait a couple minutes before doing the oil because it’s HOT. Anyway, I rub oil all over and into all the crevices and give it a good coating. And then I rub all the oil off with paper towels until it looks completely dry. And then I put the skillet upside down in the cold oven and turn on the oven to as high as it’ll go (550* F). Once it reaches top temperature, I set a timer for 1 hour. After that hour, I turn off the oven and leave the pan in there for at least 2 hours, but it’s been overnight the two times we’ve done it because it’s bedtime by the time it’s done with the hour of heat.
It looks pretty good so far! It’s definitely taking on a better color than the dull gray that it was once we washed it the first time. It got a bit of brown on it earlier, too, though whether that was rust or the previous coating, we’re not really sure. But it’s starting to get a nice black coating on it. It’s still not the smooth, glossy coating that we’re hoping to end up with, but it’s definitely looking better. I kind of wish I’d taken a “before” shot with my camera, but I was so interested in starting the process that I didn’t take one. I’ll have to show you what it looks like in the end, though. Hopefully it’ll be beautiful!