Perfume: Perfume? Oh, yeah.

So in all this babbling about sewing and other things, I haven't been ignoring my perfume collection. I've been wearing perfume, I just haven't been making a meal of it. And I find that my perfume taste under those circumstances is a bit different.

For example, there's k. hall designs Cypress and Cassis, a solid perfume that I wear so rarely that I tried to give it away. The other day I wanted a solid perfume for minimal projection, and I was bored with Pacifica Tuscan Blood Orange, so I grabbed this one. And after a few hours with it, I've concluded that, no, I'm not giving it away, I'm putting it toward the front of the collection for a while. It has a medicinal edge, probably the cypress, and a "clean" vibe, but it's a clean that doesn't depend on either soapy musk or watery notes. The cassis is in there, but it's so well blended with the cypress that I don't read it as "fruity"; fruity annoys me. The whole package makes me feel as if I smell interesting, and I like that.

If it really were low-projection, I'd claim that as an added advantage; I like my perfume to be largely undetectable until the hug range. Unfortunately, Himself complained about it at a range of three or four feet, so apparently it is neither low-projection nor Himself-approved.

Moving on, there's Balenciaga Rumba, acquired for the "under twenty" series, which I will get to one of these days. Mals at Muse in Wooden Shoes predicted that I wouldn't like this. Having met me, and knowing what I now know about Rumba, I would have concurred with this prediction. But, contrarily, it turns out that I love it. It's sticky and fruity and slightly cloying and fabulous.

Wild divergence: Long ago, I did computer support. Although our customers were employees of our own company, under some circumstances we had to ask to be paid for our work from the customer's departmental budget. A coworker once summarized the attitude of a cat, versus that of a dog, in those terms:

"Ya got a charge number?"

OK, maybe you have to have worked there to burst out laughing, as I did. But in the cat people versus dog people contest, Rumba is definitely a "dog" perfume, eager to please and puffing friendly pungent fumes at you as it drools just a little. It would never dream of asking for a charge number; it just wants to give. I'm a cat person, but sometimes I can appreciate the uncomplicated adoration of a dog.

Image: By Anthony1592. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: k. hall designs Cypress & Cassis Solid Perfume

I'll be spending much of the next few days at the Ashland Independent Film Festival (woohoo!), in full movie theaters where people will be forced to sit near me. Therefore, I'll be spending those few days wearing low projection, easy-to-control perfume solids. I thought I'd get a head start tonight with k. hall designs Cypress & Cassis.

k. hall designs appears to focus more on home products than on perfume - they sell candles, and reed diffusers, and shower gels, and room sprays. And, disconcertingly, soap dishes and stationery. I bought my quarter-ounce solid perfume at a shop that tends more toward bed and table linens than perfume; I like to encourage local perfume availability wherever I find it.

I like it. I love blackberry and currant and cassis, so it gets points there. And it's not oversweet popsicle fruit - there's a nice grounding note, sharp but not sour, that I assume is the cypress. It's totally inoffensive, but not uninteresting. Just about perfect for close movie seats.

Review Roundup: Not a single review to be found, so far.

Image: By BeAr. Wikimedia Commons.