At A Glance
Author	soze
Contact	soze@fork-bomb.com
IAM	instigator
When	A week ago

This diary continues the documentation of my stretching journey that I started here. These diaries are intended to be taken as a set, so please read the first part before continuing on, it'll help explain some stuff.

October 9, 2004

Aren't bridesmaids supposed to get prettied up before the wedding?

So my friend's wedding was today. I've been waiting a couple months on stretching up so that I'd have really pretty not-scary jewelry in. But after I got home from the wedding and had a good solid nap to sleep off all the wine and champagne and bridal party shots, I woke up in a pretty awesome mood if you discount the whole hangover headache thing. I was putting away all of my stuff from sleeping over at her parents' place the night before, and when I picked up my jewelry case I just knew it was time to start stretching up again.

I decided that I was going to continue trying the slow circular taper approach as that's worked well for me before. I still have a full Industrial Steel taper set to use with my HCH, but the straight tapers don't seem to be playing as well with my lobes as I'd like. I feel that the talons give me a little more breathing room; sometimes if they're lubed enough, they'll move to the large end of the talon all on their own, stretching themselves.

I did four holes tonight: the first and third pairs on either lobe. The first-- lowest and closest to the jaw, that is-- went to 8g and the third pair went to 10g. I started on the first holes by getting out the circular talons, putting o-rings on the large ends of them, and laying out both 10g and 8g o-rings on the side. I like having the smaller o-rings on hand in case the pierce doesn't want to move far up on the talon enough to ensure a snug fit with the larger o-ring.

I decided to start this evening's session with my left lobe. My lobes like to switch off on which one's going to give me trouble during a stretch, so I figured I'd get the one that would probably be a pain in my butt out of the way first. I got everything all gloppy with Astroglide, and pushed the talon through halfway. Unfortunately, my hands were now all slippery so I couldn't grab an o-ring, much less push it onto the talon. So I ended up screwing around on IAM for a couple minutes with one hand on the talon until things dried out some. Well, I guess I put a little more tension on the jewelry than I meant to because next thing I knew the o-ring on the end was butted up against my skin. I decided to put the backing o-ring on and not ask too many questions. Yep, it went through just fine on the other lobe too. Suppose waiting a couple of months with some lobe massages in there really did help!

I performed the same exercise on the third pair of lobe holes. They decided to argue some afterwards, but they're calming down now. When you're really ready for the next stretch, things really do go more smoothly. Now I just wait a couple days to a week for these holes to settle themselves and I'll put some plugs in them all so they'll have a straighter flesh tube.

Now both of my lobes have that weird post-stretch itchy healing feeling. I usually don't like it, but tonight it's not too bad.

I'm really glad I did this stretch tonight, it's really just put the icing on the cake of a great day. The 10g -> 8g jump has always seemed like such a barrier to me, and I was despairing of ever making it past it. I know it was mostly in my head, but that's where the struggle usually is.

October 10, 2004

I knew there was a reason I don't usually keep my jewelry box within easy reach of the couch. I decided that since my lobe stretch seems to be doing quite well, I'd take the jump and do the first 'real' stretch on my cartilage, to 12g.

Now The Plan doesn't really require much cartilage stretching, but seeing as how I don't currently have health insurance I'm doubly paranoid about destroying my cartilage. I figure I'd go up as far on the 12g circular talon as felt comfortable, and then I'd leave it there for a month or two before going the rest of the way.

Of course I wasn't thinking ahead as usual, and as I don't store my jewelry with the o-rings on I didn't have an o-ring on the large end of the talon. I ended up fumbling around with the o-ring, trying to get it onto the blunt end of this talon, and I feel the talon slide a lot. I freaked. Checked the pierce from every conceivable angle, back and front, felt around on it, but except for a little redness from fooling with it you'd think that it had always been at 12g.

October 18, 2004

The two cartilage stretches are a little finicky, but I've been banging the hell out of them. I toss and turn in my sleep, so I've laid on both sides. The swelling got a little scary one day so I took some Aleves, and it calmed down. They've been feeling better ever since, though they still feel freshly stretched. The cartilage on the left helix has to relax some still, but it was like this for the stretch to 14g too for a while and then it chilled out.

I got some inexpensive single-flared 8g earlets from an eBay seller on Saturday, and switched out the talons in my first pierces to my second pierces, which has been at 10g since August or so. They're only halfway through and have the itch, so I'll work on a more gradual stretch on them.

November 3, 2004

My winter gear has truly arrived! I just got in a fairly large shipment from Glasswear Studios. I bought a whole pile of single flared plugs in sizes ranging from 14g to 8g. Living in Upstate New York can get quite chilly, and seven steel rings in varying gauges in one's ear have quite the radiator effect.

The glass felt wonderful going in, especially in the bitchy cartilage pierces which have been recently stretched to 12g. I hope they won't get torqued around too much due to their length.

It seems that the quartz retainers in 14g are larger than what my cartilage thinks are 14g. I suppose I'll be ordering some PTFE labret retainers for this winter after all.

November 8, 2004

I had some steel 6g talons that I bought as part of a lot on eBay, and it had been about a month since my stretch to 8g on my lowest lobe pierces, so I decided to put them in. I've been playing with my jewelry a lot, and expected this to be an easy stretch. I did not expect how easy it would be.

I set up the talons so that there was an O-ring at the large end, globbed Astroglide onto it, and inserted it into my left lobe. I expected to encounter resistance about two thirds of the way up the talon, and had both 8g and a 6g O-rings ready so that I could put them on the back end of the talon wherever it stopped. I leaned back and watched some South Park while I put gentle pressure on the large end of the talon to push it through. The talon stopped, and I reached down for an O-ring when I noticed why it had stopped. The 6g talon had travelled its entire length, and my lowest lobe pierce was suddenly at 6g! Schweet!

I repeated the process on my right lobe with the same result. How cool, an easy stretch! About three minutes after the talons went in I got post-stretch itchies, but nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe I'm closer to my target size than I feel like I am.

November 11, 2004

Ah poop. I figured out why I had such an easy stretch; the talons are more of a smallish 6g, while the plugs I have here are a largish 6g. How I pine for the metric system.

I decided to switch out the talons for plugs this morning. These talons are 3/4" internal diameter, and have been catching on everything: scarves, my hair, The Boyfriend's nose... everything. They had to go. Fortunately I had a pair of 6g bullet plugs lying around just waiting for this.

It had been a couple of days since the initial wonder stretch, so I figured that my lobes wouldn't complain too much about switching jewelry, especially since I could just follow one through with the other. I laid out the usual suspects: Astroglide, some O-rings, and the 6g plugs. I lubed up the plug, popped the front O-ring off of the left side talon, pushed the talon with the plug, heard the talon clink into the other plug in my lap, and then I felt a bit of "you don't want to put that big ole thing in hyah" pain.

Hm. The talon had pushed out just fine because I have thin lobes that don't require much in the length of jewelry (3/8" wearable length is usually perfect; 1/2" usually overhangs a bunch), but the plug refused to go in any further than the rounded edge. I pulled the lobe a bit so that the hole was straighter through. Nada. I thought the lobe had somehow shrunk a bit while I'd fooled around with the plug, and reset the talon. But when I inserted it, it went all the way in to the large end.

With the talon back in for now, I opened up my jewelry box and compared the plug to a 6g 3" Industrial Strength straight taper I had from my HCH stretch. No, they looked like the same size. I wondered if it was just translational issues; I've always had an easier time putting in curved jewelry rather than straight jewelry, which is part of the reason I've been preferring stretching with talons than straight tapers. It's an easier motion for me to perform, particularly in front of a mirror. (For those keeping score at home, no, I can't put on eyeliner to save my life either.)

So with that in mind I decided to clean off the 6g taper and use it to help guide the plug. I took the front O-ring off of the talon, lubed up the straight taper, and pushed. About two thirds of the way up the straight taper, my lobe protested. Not good at all.

I took the taper out and compared it to the talon. Initially they appeared to be similar sizes, but the engineer in me had a feeling and I took it over to my desk. On a gridded background the talon indeed looked smaller. Crap. In all likelihood, the talon was 4mm while the Industrial Strength taper and the plug were probably both 4.2mm. If I had my calipers I could have been sure.

I cleaned off the talon and reinserted it for the moment while I thought this out. I had two pairs of large 6g plugs, one large 6g taper, and two small 6g talons that had to go. If I downsized to 8g I'd just have the same problem when I wanted to stretch up again. But there was one more option to try.

I'd cleaned every room of my apartment except the bedroom last week for a 2004 U.S. General Election party. While doing this I had found a roll of PTFE plumbers' tape that The Boyfriend had used when putting in our nice Moen shower head, and had placed it on a shelf with the nail polish and hair dye. I went and grabbed the stuff; plenty left on the roll, and it looks pretty thin, too! I ran back to the couch with the open jewelry box on it, and dug around in the pile of plastic baggies for a moment. I found some 8g steel tubes I'd bought months ago but never worn because I'd found some single flared plugs that suited me much better. It looked like Ms. Plugs and Mr. PTFE Tape were going to be getting it on.

I cut off the stretched-out excess on the roll that The Boyfriend had left from having home repair fun at an angle so it would not slide as much on the steel. I pulled two layers of PTFE tape onto a plug to start; after cutting the PTFE from the roll I worked the plug between my fingers a while to smooth it out. I put an 8g O-ring onto the taped plug, lubed it up, took the front 6g O-ring off of my left talon, and pushed.

Bingo, we have a winner! I repeated the process on the other plug, this time wrapping the tape around it four times. I compared the plug to the 6g talon; it looked smaller, but only by a touch. I lubed this plug up generously, as my right lobe hadn't been knocked around by stretching mishaps today. With a bit of trepidation I placed all of the O-rings appropriately, and pushed the talon a bit with the plug. It went right in. As I was putting the back O-ring on the taped plug, I started to get those post-stretch itchies in that ear. Cool.

I went back to the left plug, removed the old tape, and put on four layers of tape like the plug currently in my right ear. I lubed it up and popped it in; sure enough, I got the itchies as I was putting on the O-rings on this one, too.

We'll see how this goes over the next couple of days. I hope my plugs don't get stuck like I've heard some peoples' do with the PTFE tape. But, we'll see.

November 13, 2004

This is the first time I've ever tried the tape wrap method. And now I must say that I may have to consider bondage tape instead. The PTFE got really grabby on my ears, and it took an entire Babylon 5 episode to work both of them out of my lobes. My holes didn't feel damaged at all, just reluctant to give up the plugs. I bathed everything on my lobes in Astroglide, and that helped to encourage them. I certainly wasn't going to force them out; I didn't need sore lobes because I'm DJing tonight.

After pulling out the plugs I put in those smallish 6g talons as placeholders while I took off the old PTFE, washed the plugs, and wrapped new PTFE around them. This time I went for six layers; comparing them to the Industrial Strength 6g taper I have, they now look to be a perfect intermediary step between the four-times wrappped plugs and a full 6g. The six-times wrapped plugs popped right in with plenty of lube, though the O-rings got a bit bitchy as they were being seated on an uneven surface.

November 15, 2004

There's Astroglide all over everything. Cool.

I'm sick right now with a righteous case of pink eye, so I didn't really want to sit down with my jewelry box, but I knew that if those taped plugs were difficult to get out two days down the road it would really suck trying to get them out after three. So I got myself together with a bottle of Astroglide and got to work lubing up my left lobe. Once I was sufficiently lubricated, I pulled off the O-rings on either side and got to work gently pulling. After some minutes pulling forward, the plug hadn't budged. I started to worry a bit, having heard stories of people having to pry PTFE off of the plug while it was still in their ear. I gave it one more college try and this time started gently pulling the plug through the back of my lobe instead. Finally we had movement! I wiggled it a little back and forth, and heard the soft seal the plug had made with my skin break. It moved gradually out after that without pain.

I lubricated the smaller two thirds of a 3" 6g Industrial Strength steel taper and stuck it through my freshly vacated pierce halfway, letting it hang back like a subang on its own weight. The friction of the largest, unlubricated part would stop the taper from sliding all the way through. With a placeholder in my ear, I looked to consider my options.

I held the still-taped 8g plug up next to a proper 6g single flared steel eyelet. The taped plug looks to be just a smidgen under 6g. Time to try this out, then.

Firstly, I globbed Astroglide onto the eyelet. I slowly pulled the taper out of my ear, gave my lobe a quick massage to calm it down a bit, and then tried pushing the eyelet in. The pierce promptly complained and stuck on the O-ring groove. I groaned.

I really, really did not want to do another two days of taped plugs. I wanted these holes at a proper 6g, I wanted them healed, and I wanted it all now. Despite my aversion to proper tapering, I decided to lube up the Industrial Strength taper and give it a good shove. I got the taper two thirds of the way through, held my breath, and pushed slightly. I encountered some resistance, and then just felt my ear open up and let the rest of the taper slide through fluidly. Overjoyed, I quickly grabbed the goopy eyelet and pushed the taper through with the non-flared end. I got the O-ring on the back and moved to repeat the process on my right lobe.

The final stretch to 6g was slightly easier on my right pierce, probably because there had been less screwing around before tapering. They certainly look more proper than taped plugs.

I think I'll be staying here at 6g for a while. Someday perhaps I'll shoot for my final goal of 4g, but these lobes need some rest, and time to accumulate plenty of jewelry.