Quite the surprise

Some while back, Haus of Gloi introduced a scent, "Haus Amber" as part of their Reverie line. The scent was so popular it was eventually moved to their regular catalogue. It is still available as a perfume oil, bubbling scrub, sugar emulsion and pumpkin butter.

As you probably know by now, amber is one of my favourite notes. Gloi describes this scent as "Rich and sultry amber, our own hand blended accord." I nearly died of joy when I read the description, and, much to my delight, an order I had already placed came with a sample of Haus Amber.

I can't tell you how excited I was. Amber, amber and more amber. Mind you, I'm not crazy about the gemstone amber, just the fragrance note. Some of my favourite scents, including most of my favourite Gloi scents have amber notes in them, so this had to be the ultimate 'smell of awesomeness', right?

Maybe it was too much of a good thing, but I hated it.  Imagine that. I absolutely hated it - which I totally did not see coming. Before I go any further, let me assure you it is not a badly made perfume. Haus Amber is every bit as expertly crafted and blended as all of Britton's fragrances. Clearly I'm in a tiny minority here, since Haus Amber was so popular, it made it into the general catalogue. But, I confess, it was nothing like I thought it would be. To me, amber is a creamy, spicy, warm scent, golden-brown and velvety. This scent was sharp, thick and brackish to my nose. Usually amber smells like it should pour like liquid caramel, whereas this blend should ooze like pitch. Have you ever seen pitch? It's weird stuff, not quite solid, it has give and it's viscous. It's a deep dark black-brown colour and sticky as hell. It smells terrible - nothing like Haus Amber, but the smell of Haus Amber reminds me of the colour and consistency of pitch. If you could fossilize molasses, that would be pretty close to pitch.*

from wikipedia

 Turns out 'amber' as a fragrance accord, usually means a blend including, but not limited to vanilla, Dammara resin, labdanum, benzoin resin, and/or copal, most of which are tree resin products. Naturally derived scents will obviously vary in much the same way honeys and maple syrups vary by year and location of origin. So, obviously, though I never really thought about it, amber, as a fragrance note is as variable as, say, honey as a flavour. I'm guessing this blend is heavy on labdanum, since that note is described by wikipedia and other sites as thick and sticky, 'plastic but not pourable', with a strong, musky scent. Which is what I was trying to describe with the whole 'pitch' analogy.

Haus Amber is also a very masculine scent to me. Again, I'm in the minority here, since it is a fragrance well loved by many women, but I think 'manly' when I smell it. Manly like, 18th c. manly. Tweed, old leather and cracked wood manly. Antlers in all of your decorating manly. This a Teddy Roosevelt climbing Mt. Everest barefoot and fighting off yeti with a salad fork kind of manly. This could be an Annie Oakley scent, or Calamity Jane, but not for me. Regardless of gender, it has a strong air of daguerrotype and antiquity and wild frontier to it. I can imagine Teddy wearing it while posing in one of those impossibly testosterone laden old photos full of large wild animals he's taken down with his bare hands. 

case in point

This scent is not delicate, not floral and not sweet. It's strong, thick and enveloping. If you're looking for a creamy, exotic amber that whispers of sin and silken pillows, try the amber notes in Depravity. For amber dripping with ripe berries, wild brambles and summer sunshine, try The Brier Path. Prefer something lush and sweet with a hint of autumn air? - wait for Hex to come back for Samhain. But, If you like your coffee black and double strong, your chocolate dark and your stilettos steel-tipped, you might want to give Haus Amber a try.

*Take a minute to read about the 'pitch experiment' in Queensland. It's pretty interesting.

As always, all products were purchased by me for my own use. My opinions are my own and always will be. Your mileage may vary.

Lassi Come Home

I can't tell you how much I've been looking forwards to using that line.


Anyway, Lassi is one of the spring scents from Haus of Gloi that went live today. This is Lassi's third year in the shop and I'm very excited to see it back. My relationship with Lassi has been a bit odd. I didn't always love her, you see. It's kind of like one of those movies where the hero chases after the high maintainence love interest and then, in the end finally really sees the less flashy one who's been there all along and falls for her.

photo courtesy Haus of Gloi

Lassi debuted originally with Maedwe (no longer available) and Seeress (renamed Selkie) both of which I adored. Lassi was okay but it didn't send me into paroxysms of rapture the way the other two did. Both of them are damp, earthy, wet grass and dandelions smells, the sort of thing that vividly invokes the first fresh, green days of spring. I bought both in every format available. I bought samples of Lassi, because I liked it, but my focus was on her two elegant, dewy sisters.


And yet...both of those smells are so very specific in what they conjure up for me. Selkie is the wetter of the two, "The break of waves, gurgling sea foam, kelp, rain tinged air, sand smoothed driftwood and wild sage" it has an oceanic tinge to it and always makes me think of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,"* where the driftwood marker with Anna's name on it is shown aging to illustrate the passage of time, the ending of winter and the birth of spring, cycling by year after year. Maedwe, on the other hand, was "Pesky dandelions, red clover patches, creeping sweetpea blooms and the dense afternoon haze of blossoming fruit trees." It was the greener scent, a grassy wet spring rain fragrance, like that first day the dandelions start popping up in the grass. Britton only offered it the one year, but elements of the perfume went into both Ploughman and Milkmaid, which she is offering again this year.


And then there's Lassi. "Cool, fresh mango cream, Tunisian orange blossom absolute, black ginger to ground, splash of green tea and a soft squeeze of lime juice." Inspired by that tasty Indian beverage, it smells like an extra-fruity version of exactly that. In the jar, the sugar scrub has the sweetest smell, like a lime SweetTart. Both the lotion and the perfume format have the richest version of the scent, a burst of lime followed by the underlying green tea and creamy ginger scents with just a whiff of mango and orange. It doesn't smell like anything other than what it is, a sweet, delicious, fruity, beverage inspired scent. But somehow, it's turned into my go-to scent.

stock image from somewhere.

It's impossible to feel unhappy when you're wearing Lassi. It's like wearing laughter. It's bright, it's bubbly and it goes with everything. The longer you wear it, the more it grows on you. When I can't decide what to wear, when I'm not looking for anything specific, or when I just want to smell happy, I reach for Lassi. The second year it was available, I bought a large size in everything it came in, scrubs, lotion, perfume, the lot. It's one of the few products I've used up and need to replace, I wear it so often. Much as I like lime and other citrus-scents, I never would have expected this to become the olfactory equivalent of a best friend, and I find myself reaching for it, over and over again. It's not terribly exotic or heady, it doesn't transport me to some far-off place or inspire romantic visions, it just makes me happy. What more could you want from a bottle of perfume?




*The 1947 movie. Go watch it, it's great.

Smell Like Me!

I have donated some of my samples, and a full, unopened bottle of Solstice Scents "Jack and the Devil" to a raffle for a fellow blogger and friend. It's an awesome raffle, and I recommend checking it out.

The raffle is here.

The items I've put in, are the full size perfume and the following samples:

HoG
Red Roan (Fresh strawberry flecked porridge with maple syrup and adulterated with a splash of white cognac)
Brier Path (Sun drenched trail leading to a day dream of ripe berries and woods’ rose, rich forest loam, ozone, dark amber and cream.)
White Raspberry (Tart raspberry and a clean cream accord.)
Sanctum (A welcome respite: Muskmelon, coconut water infused with bergamot flower, kaffir lime, polished ho wood and sticky benzoin)
Peach Mama (2)
Lavender Sugar (2)
Insalata Nocturna
Absinthe
Hex (You’ve been bewitched! Lecherous: brackish amber, aged vanilla bean and three dark fruits, veiled in darkness and otherworldly secrecy )

Narcosa (A thick haze of tonka and black vanilla, three jasmines, tuberose and ylang ylang.)
Troika
Lassi (bad label) (Fresh mango cream, orange blossom water, black ginger to ground, splash of green tea and a soft squeeze of lime juice.)
Samhain (Freshly turned earth, wet leaves, and a spectre ridden wind.)
Haus Amber

Sweet Anthem
Nell (Black Tea, Cardamom, Carnation, Creamy Milk, Peach, Rose)
Colin (Amber, Benzoin, Cardamom, Frankincense, Honey, Myrrh)

Solstice Scents
Cherry Vanilla Amberosia
Gehenna
Gulf Breeze
Violet Truffle
Della Morte
Witches Cottage (Warm Baked Goods, Dried Herbs, Sweet Annie, Soft Woods, Fragrant Hearth Smoke)
Harvest Moon
Foxcroft (sOzone, Rustling Leaves, Rich Black Soil, Chimney Smoke & Woods)
Gingerdead Man
Linen and Ivy ( Fresh sun-washed linens hanging on the clothesline in the spring breeze meets crisp green top notes of English ivy and a touch of new green spring leaves.)
Bayberry
Garden Gate (Voluptuous Lilac blossoms in the foreground combine with faint traces of cascading wisteria and subtle, fresh, green grass notes.)

Black Baccara
Absinthe
Mummy

The Morbid The Merrier
Dessert Absinthe 75% full
Saucy Jack 50% full  ( Deep, dark, and resinous... redolent of stained and tattered petticoats, damp brick, and spilled blood in a London alleyway....)
Quoth the Raven

Poison Apple Apothecary
Garden of Graves

 

Snow! Sorta. Maybe a little. Or not.

I've heard a lot of people talk about Demeter Fragrances. Apparently they are one of the better midrange commercial perfumes. They're one of those companies I think I'd like to try every now and then, but tend to forget they exist when I'm actually perfume shopping. However, I just happened to see a display of Demeter holiday scents when I was in Rite-Aid picking up Pepsi the other day, and my little brain went "Hey - don't you want to smell that?" Since one of the bottles was 'Snow', which is on my must-try list, and it was only 5 bucks, I tossed one in the cart.

Demeter describes this scent as "the essence of snow in a scent; chilling, cool, clean and fresh, with a touch of dust (necessary to form flakes) and earth (upon which to rest). There is literally nothing like it outside of the Demeter Fragrance Library." Apparently it also won several major perfume awards.

from Demeter.com

I'd like to state, for the record, that snow doesn't actually have a smell - unless your pollution levels are beyond imagining. There are scents we associate with snow, but snow itself smells like nothing. Even some waters (especially well water) have more smell than snow. Usually snow smells are represented by something to mimic dampness - a melon or ozone-y scent, something we associate with cold - minty scents - to give you that frozen nostril experience, or moist earthy scents. Snow has a hint of dampness from what I suspect is an ozone note, a light earthiness and an overall aroma of white flowers. It's very, very subtle and light, but I wouldn't have thought  'snow!' If I didn't know that was what it was called. Snowdrops, maybe, but not snow. It's definitely got more of a very early spring/late winter feel than a Christmassy, icy, snow-covered ambiance.

It's  a nice, simple scent - pretty, pleasant and unpretentious, but nothing to write home about (though technically, I'm doing just that). I'm fairly stumped why it got so many awards. It's nice, but  not something that jumps out at me and says - keep smelling me! It's also very weak, I had to layer quite a bit to make out the fragrance on my arm. If I'd paid more than five dollars for it, I'd probably have been annoyed.  It reminds me a bit of Haus of Gloi's "Something Hopeful" from Valentine's 2011.* That was an incredible scent, everything Snow wants to be when it grows up. Light, fresh and an absolutely perfect rendition of the first stirrings of spring; damp earth, melting snow, a few hesitant blossoms and the promise of more to come, even though the sky is still grey and ice still rings the lakes and streams. Sadly, Britton didn't bring that one back this year.

I'm not sure I'd try another Demeter fragrance after this one. Well, if it's cheap enough. It's possible that I just hit a particularly underwhelming scent with Snow. It's not amazing, it's not unique and it's not very snowy. It's just...kinda nice.


*Perhaps the first stirrings of the spring to come. Warm sakura blossom green tea with the tiniest droplet of plum juice, red mandarin and crystallized jasmine essence.

 All products were purchased by me for my own use. My opinions are my own and always will be. Your mileage may vary.

Cherries and Chocolate

So tomorrow is the day before Cheap Chocolate Day, otherwise known as St. Valentine's Day, where we celebrate the torture and murder of some old Roman guy by passing out little heart shaped pieces of paper. Or by shooting mobsters, but only if you live in Chicago.

Winter and Valentine's is probably my least favourite smell season, as I'm not crazy about fir and piney scents, and far too many Valentine scents overdo the rose base. Too much mint, too much pine and too much chocolate rose for my taste. Well, for my sense of smell that is. 

Anyway, I'm hesitant to admit to this, for fear of having my second X chromosome revoked, but I'm not actually that crazy about chocolate. I'm good with a chocolate/other flavour combos, like filled chocolates, or chocolate drizzle on a cheesecake, but as far as eating just plain chocolate, not so much. I prefer white chocolate, which isn't chocolate at all, or caramel, or toffee. I do like the smell of chocolate, though. Like coffee, it's one of those things that I prefer as an aromatic over a flavour. 

Sadly, not too many companies do a decent chocolate fragrance. Most of them smell like cheap chocolate flavouring, as opposed to the scent of genuine cacau products. Solstice Scents is one to the exceptions. Last year, I picked up two of her V-Day fragrances, Violet Truffle and Cherry Vanilla Amberosia.

from Solstice Scents.com

Violet Truffle is, obviously, chocolate based. The official description is: "Dark Chocolate, Violet, Violet Leaf & Vanilla Absolute"  Now, in my book, you can't go wrong with violets. They're my favourite flower and one of my favourite smells. I don't think I would ever have thought of pairing it with chocolate. It works, though. The initial burst is a deep, powdery dark chocolate smell with just a hint of sweet violets. In fact, if I didn't know it was violet, I might not have been able to pick it out, it blends that well.  It stays like that for quite a while then slowly morphs, as the chocolate fades into the background and the warm, creamy vanilla scent picks up, with just the faintest earthy edge of violet leaf. By this time, the violet is clearly identifiable, but muted, so it fits smoothly into the undertones. This particular blend is sweet, but not unbearably so, as the additions of dark chocolate and violet leaf give the mixture a nice, earthy bottom note. It's odd, but quite wonderful in its own way. I've never had an actual violet truffle, that is, a chocolate with a either a candied violet on top or with violet syrup* inside, so I can't say if this is how it would smell, but it is nice, sweet, and feminine, but not in a little girl way. Something like a box of expensive Petit Fours, or a really high-end chocolate candy, the kind served on a silver tray with a real lace doily. You might like this scent even if you don't care for violet, but you definitely need to like the smell of chocolate. If you love the smell of chocolate, you should absolutely check out this perfume. Solstice Scents is one of the few parfumiers that can truly capture the scent of chocolate in all it's complexity.

from chocolate.com

The second fragrance I got was Cherry Vanilla Amberosia and it is, indeed, very ambrosial. "Sweet Cherries, Rich Vanilla, Amber & Mandarin Orange Slices".  The vanilla and ambers make up the base of the scent, like a rich, creamy custard, while the maraschino and black cherry add a tangy punch to the mix. The scent maintains itself for quite a while, just until you think you've gotten everything it has to offer, then the orange sneaks in for a last minute twist. It's a warm, buttery-luscious scent with a dark, sexy fruit edge to it, like a puddle of golden velvet dripping with pearls and sprinkled with rubies. It's intense and exotic and sweet and not at all child-like. It's sexy and dangerous and delectable all at once. It smells delicious without smelling like a candy shop or a dessert tray. Wearing this on a frosty-cold night out would be amazing. Wear a dark red dress with it.

from SolsticeScents.com

Both of these fragrances are wonderfully indulgent and rich, just the thing for when February has you curled up in the fetal position begging for something not covered in snow. Currently, Violet Truffle is available in rollerball perfume and 4 oz. body ganache, and Cherry Vanilla Amberosia is available as rollerball, 4 oz. burnishing glace and 4 oz. body ganache. Both scents are available as perfumes in the general catalogue, but were originally released for Valentine's Day last year, so they are listed along with the other Valentine's releases this year.

*chocolate.com sells them, but I'm not that adventurous.

< 24 hours to drape yourself in beauty

Gorgeous, eh? Remember that kitty I told you about earlier? Well this amazing necklace from Whimsy Beading is being auctioned on his behalf:

"Kelly Graves
In the course of my work with Grey on the Awesome Box, I created two custom pieces. One the Indie Style necklace, which you can see here: http://tinyurl.com/isnecklace

Two, the Indie Style Star earrings, here: http://tinyurl.com/isstar

After all the information broke, I had planned on taking these items apart, due to the negative associations people would have with the Awesome Box, but the poor innocent colors themselves never hurt anyone, so I haven't done it yet.

Instead, I've decided to let them do some good. As some of you know, Victoria Luna, the brilliant mind behind Persephone Minerals has taken in a diabetic foster kitty, Ghost. Caring for a sick kitty is not for the faint of heart of light of wallet, and she needs help. http://persephonespassion.blogspot.com/2012/01/urgent-help-needed-for-diabetic-kitty.html

So here's the deal. I'm putting these two items on auction, with the proceeds, less the Paypal fees and materials costs going to Victoria. If I were to sell the earrings and necklace in my shop, they would cost $40 retail, including the shipping, so that's the starting bid.

EMAIL your bid to 

whimsy.wearables@gmail.com

with the subject line "Ghost Auction" with your bid on the set.

Terms: The bidding closes at 9 am EST (Eastern Standard Time) tomorrow, Friday 1-20-12, and ONLY email bids will be accepted. In other words, don't post here and expect your bid to count. I have to have it in email, partly to protect us both. Once the bidding closes, I'll Paypal invoice the highest bidder, and that bidder has two days to send payment before I go to the next bidder. As soon as the payment clears, the money will go on its way to Victoria via Paypal.

I will only sell this necklace and earrings as a set, and this is the only set that will ever be made in this colorway, EVER.

Because I know tensions are still high and people are afraid of being burned, I will answer any questions you've got, and I'm almost always within reach of email or Etsy convo. But know this - if I fail in my responsibilities to send the auction funds on to Victoria, the God of Cats will take horrible revenge on me, probably by having Henry Monster Dammit pee in every pair of Danskos I own. I've got a lot to lose here if I don't see it through."

Kelly's Shop is here You can message her on FB here

The Pretender

Before you read thus post please go here and read.  It's the blog of a friend of mine, Victoria of Persephone Minerals. She is fostering a cat who had turned out to be diabetic and his care is getting very expensive. The fostering agency can only help her so much, so saving this poor kitty's life is turning into quite a burden. She's asking for donations - not much, but if you can help, please do. Even a few dollars can make a difference.

I'm not going to talk about perfume today. I know I've been gone for a bit, but the holidays were madness for me, as I imagine they were for most of you. But I have lots of stuff I'm going to sniff out for you in the coming year, and hopefully my sinusses won't cut of my sense of smell again, the way they did for pretty much the entire month of November. Spring is not so far away, and I can imagine the gentle aroma of damp earth and daffodils already. Or is that just wishful thinking?

I think every one of has imagined now and again what it would be like to run away from our troubles and start over as someone else. People have been pretending to be someone else for, well, probably as long as there have been people. There are a lot of reasons someone might want to walk away from one life and start a new one somewhere else. Some are good - some aren't. But it's a lot of work getting a new, real-life identity. Not on the internet, though. On-line it's so easy to be someone you're not. Someone taller, or better-looking, or more interesting.

In so many ways, the internet can be a giant RPG. Safe in our own homes we can escape the everyday and be anyone we want to be. Maybe your daily life is stressful and you need an outlet. Maybe you're part of a gaming guild or a group that encourages alter-ego role-playing on various boards and such. And do you really want to tell them that you, Rashkarl Bloodfang the Omnipotent uber-Dwarf, are actually 13 year old Suzie Watkins in Omaha?

Or maybe you wonder what your life might have been if you'd made a few different decisions? If you weren't middle-aged, married with kids and ordinary. You might be perfectly happy with your life, but sometimes it's nice to log and be someone else for awhile. The interesting, care-free twenty-something you used to be. I'm not talking about cyber affairs, just creating a you that's in a different place in their life, more idealised than the person you are now. Different friends in different places where you can talk about things other than kids and husbands and house-cleaning.

I like to think that this is what happened with Grey. At least in the beginning. When she logged onto her computer as Georgiana Grey, she was the woman she was before the kids and the husband. Or the person she might have been if she'd led a life that was a little more eclectic, a little less ordinary.

We experience the internet through a little box and a screen. It's so easy to forget there are other people, real people behind all the chats, the posts, the IM's and emails. Real people with hearts and souls. When you spend a long time in the same groups on the web you tend to form bonds, and some of them are as strong as the bonds you form in real life. That means that, just like in real life, you have the power to help people or hurt them by your actions on-line. When you're truthful about it, that's okay. No one cares if you don't use your real name on the web. Most people would be understanding if you say, 'hey, this is who I am on the web. It's part of me, but not all of me, and I like to keep my day-to-day life seperate." As long as you're not trolling for under-age girls in chat rooms, by and large, most people would be willing to accept your persona knowing that there's more to the story, it's just not relevant here. The web is like that.

It's pretending to be someone else for fun and profit that gets you in trouble. Scamming people. Pretending to be ill, or worse, to garner sympathy and cash. People who do this are, at best, deeply troubled or, at worst, manipulative and dangerous. Sometimes it starts out with just wanting a little attention, a little sympathy or love and it escalates out of control. Let me tell you something: When you get to the point where you are considering faking your own death - I mean really considering it, not just jokingly, but with thoughts towards putting it into practice - Stop. Just stop, right there. Unless you are a witness in a high-level Mob trial and in terrible, legitimate fear for your life, do not cross that line. That's a ticket for a first-class compartment on the Crazy Train and it will not end well.

Because the Internet never forgets. Your past is part of you, always. Like a shadow it follows you wherever you go. No matter how hard you try to hide it, sooner or later, people will see it. That's when people get hurt. Innocent people who loved and trusted you. People who admired you or called you friend. You'll be riding that Train at full speed and it's running over everyone in sight and it just won't stop.

And it won't. You are the only one who can stop it. You have to get off the train, face the mob with their torches and pitchforks and say, you know what? I screwed up. Bad. I'm sorry and I want to fix it. Here's the thing, though. You've got to mean it. And you've got to accept that it will hurt and it will be bad for a long time before it gets better. That's called life; it's the same on the web and off.

If you don't? Well, then I hope you enjoy looking over your shoulder. Because you'll be doing that. Always. That paranoia and that worry at the back of your mind - those will always be there. How many times can you re-invent yourself? How long before it stops being fun? How many times before you run out of places to go? People will find out. They always do, sooner or later. You can't hide your shadow. People will be hurt, and people will be angry. A lot of people will be angry. They'll have a right to be. Especially if you have preyed on them financially or emotionally. People who thought they knew you. And guess what - some of those people are even crazier than you are.  Think about it.

My opinions are my own and always will be. Your mileage may vary.