Rambling: Perfume and Other Stuff

Once again, It's Been Long Enough since I last posted, so I'm going to ramble. Randomly. Hopefully not entirely incoherently. Though you never know.

I've been wearing Girl Clothes lately. Linen shirts, skirts, little black flats. Even a piece of jewelry once or twice. (I bought myself a little green rhinestone-speckled frog, for example. Shopping morale.) So I accompanied them with Girl Perfume.

I wore Chanel Cristalle the other day. I always thought of it as a sweeter, lighter, laughing version of No. 19, but this time I could finally see why some people find it stern and hard to warm up to.  Not that I don't adore it, it's just that I can at least imagine that perception now.

A few days later, I wore Hermes Hiris. I didn't consciously smell it after I put it on, but it gave me that well-enveloped well-dressed grown-up feeling.

And day before yesterday, it was Balmain Ivoire, warm tangy very expensive soap. I think that the modern Ivoire, as purchased at discounters, may have the best quality-per-dollar quotient of any perfume. If I'd ever smelled the original I might not feel that way. But then again I found the modern Vent Vert to be merely blandly pleasing even before I smelled the vintage, so I think that Ivoire is indeed impressive. (I should note that I bought my Ivoire two to three years ago; I only hope that the current version is the same.)

For the past two years I've been participating in the 100+ Reading Challenge. This year I'm not, and I conclude that for me, the Challenge was counterproductive. When I'm participating, I feel a pressure to finish books, and to read the whole book, and that feels too much like a job. It makes me choose my books more carefully, and suppresses my usual strategy of picking up an old favorite for a chapter or three when a new book isn't quite what I want at that moment. The net result seems to be that I read less.

The down side is that when I'm not participating, I don't remember what I've read. If it's an eBook (see my guilty post here about those), of course I have a record, but if it's a paper book I tend to lose track. And then I sell the paper book, and I really lose track.

The sewing continues. As I sloooowly get patterns fitted, I find myself thinking more and more about buying a serger. Or an overlock machine. Or whatever it's most commonly called. I like the idea of having a sure-fire pattern that I can just cut and sew and press and wear without a lot of fuss and fitting. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that if it came down to it, I'd find that boring. So I'm waiting a little longer for the serger. Probably.

Remember The Farm? I didn't do a lot of weeding over the winter. OK, I didn't do any weeding over the winter. The good news is that an alfalfa-straw mulch does a startlingly good job of suppressing weeds. The bad news is that we only covered a tiny fraction of the garden space with alfalfa straw. Oh, and we covered some of it with black plastic, hoping to suppress Bermuda grass. But the rest of the garden is distinguishable from a lawn primarily by the fact that the "grass" is taller and has seed heads. There's going to be a lot of fork-and-shake-out-the-clods. Except in the perennials where forking is not an option; there I'll just pull weeds until my fingers fall off. Whee!

But the garlic and potato onions look healthy. Yay! And I'm preparing space to plant the next crop of Copra Onions, this time getting them in before the day that they're supposed to start bulbing. And the strawberries and blueberries are blooming, even if they are crowded by weeds. So we'll be eating.

Uh.

That's all.

Image: By Rept0n1x. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Balmain Ivoire, and soap

I mentioned that yesterday's scent, Hermes Hiris, included a note that I read as soapy. It reminded me of another "very expensive soap note" scent, Balmain Ivoire. I wanted to smell it again, so that's what I wore today.

Divina on Fragrance Bouquet described this aspect of Ivoire (all aspects of it, for that matter) far better than I could, and in fact her post may well be credited with my acceptance of soap as a note to enjoy.

I'm still picky--the soap note has to make me think of a creamy, sudsy bar, or perhaps a bubble bath, rather than a box of laundry powder or a clothesline of drying clothes. Hiris and Ivoire are the "sudsy bar", and Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint bath oil, a favorite, oddly makes a bubble bath smell soapier than the bubble bath itself does. Lorenzo Villoresi Musk, sadly, leans a little too far on the laundry side, though I manage to like the fragrance for other elements. And Kieh's Musk Oil is pure laundry room for me.

Ivoire was as lovely as ever, and I enjoyed the soapy part of its development. One day soon, I may wear Hiris on one arm and Ivoire on another, to compare the creamy expensive suds vibes.

Meanwhile, any suggestions for other creamy-soap scents?

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: By Malene Thyssen. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Hermes Hiris. And negotiating with iris.

I got Hermes Hiris for Christmas! (As stated before, woohoo!)

Iris and I have had a rocky journey. Early on, I found it cold and gritty and unfriendly, and only appreciated it when it smelled like pencil erasers, and that only because it made me laugh.

Later, I learned to appreciate it, but I rarely found it friendly. Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist? Cool and regal and otherworldly and quite possibly a little poisonous. (You know, in a good way.) Parfumerie Generale Cuir d'Iris? Iris and dragon leather--fascinating, but still not a personality that you'd invite over for tea. Parfumerie Generale Iris Taizo? Starts out stern and dusty-dry and a little grumpy, and only after a few hours does it turn gentle and sweet, like that strict English teacher when she unbends at the holiday party.

Now, iris can be a supporting player in warmer, more passionate scents. It's in Chanel No. 19 and Cuir de Russie, for example. They're both fully prepared to extend claws and teeth in a catfight and then, after decisively subduing the competition, settle in an instant back into smooth-furred gracefully posing elegance. But iris is responsible for the elegance, not the passion. Most of the time, iris is a good citizen, stern and with excellent posture. And that's all very well, but what's iris like when it's lounging, comfortably, at home?

Like Hermes Hiris, that's what. This is sunlit, relaxed iris, friendly and off guard. It reflects the best of Olivia Giacobetti's genius, managing to hand me a bouquet of notes that I normally don't like one bit, and make me love them. According to one notes list, it has orange blossom--I hate orange blossom, and I love it here. I'm usually dubious about rose; no problem here. And there's some powder, always a little iffy for me, but in Hiris it's barely there, quietly making the fragrance a little more feminine than it might be otherwise.

As Robin from Now Smell This observes, Hiris is "fresh" without resorting to ozonic air freshener notes. To my nose, I think it's the soap that does this, terribly expensive bar soap with a musky edge perhaps achieved with the ambrette seeds instead of that horrible white musk found in so many fragrances. The hay, too, no doubt adds to that persuasive fresh-air mood.

I can't tease out the the coriander, honey, vanilla, and woods, but I assume that they're draping all of these floral and fresh notes, grounding the fragrance and keeping it from exhausting my nose with too much high-pitched good cheer.

It's lovely. I'm wearing too much today, and I'm not sorry.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and MakeupAlley and Savvy Thinker and Basenotes and Fragrantica and Eiderdown Press and Bois de Jasmin.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.