SOTW: Varied

Weekend!

Saturday night, I dressed like a girl - trumpet skirt, an actual blouse, those girly sandals, and a purse in two different patterns of jacquard fabric, one of which actually coordinated with the skirt. (From these guys. I'm pointing to fashion-related sites. Am I unwell?) Saturday afternoon garb more than Saturday night, but still. I'm supposed to be pulling on a black-washed-until-it's almost-gray cotton skirt and the nearest clean shirt. This isn't normal.

Serge Lutens Un Lys seemed like the perfect scent for that mood, but much to my surprise, it wasn't. I still enjoyed it, but in the summer the grainy almost-edible candylike note outweighs the drop-dead feminine floral. It may only be a fully feminine scent in winter, when I'm wearing soft wooly things instead of linen or silk.

Sunday, I wore Art of Shaving Sandalwood as a layering experiment, because the scent of Un Lys was still lurking, defying the intervening bubble bath. (You can't accidentally perfume your glasses, can you?) The layering failed; both are on the edge of too sweet, and they drowned each other's sharper notes, with a result that fell over that edge.

Later, I reorganized the perfume stash, identifying about eight bottles and perhaps sixty samples to give away. This is relevant because my sample of Carthusia Capri(?) chose to leak all over my hands, so that's what I wore Sunday night. It was surprisingly enjoyable; I'll be wearing it on purpose soon, to see if it was nice on its own merits or only because it was refreshingly sour against all that sweetness.

Image: By Grey Wulf. Wikimedia Commons. 

SOTD: None.

So, we went to Portland and didn't make it to the Perfume House. Also, if I remember correctly, two or three Last Saturdays have gone by with no perfume purchases. I'm feeling Perfume Greed.

I can control it. Really.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Shiseido Feminite du Bois

I love cedar. Cedar chests, or pencil shavings, or even those fake-cedar-scented dry cleaner bags.

I haven't yet found the perfect emphatic cedar scent. Dzongkha and Fire and Cream read, to me, as celery seed instead of cedar. Navegar has a perfect dry cedar, but it's very faint; sometimes I can't smell it at all. Angeliques Sous La Pluie is nice, and I can smell it, but it doesn't come to life on my skin.

Feminite du Bois is lovely, with lots of cedar. It changes at every wearing, and I'm inclined to consider that a good thing. Sometimes it's a nice new freshly sharpened pencil - a childhood smell, just right for September. Sometimes the fruit drowns the cedar; then it seems oddly jumbled and unsatisfactory.

Today, I suspect that it's behaving as intended, the cedar and plum blending together and finding common notes that I never would have suspected were there. Cedar and plum are somehow producing silk - heavy, thick silk. It's making me think of the "curious wadded silk robe" in A Little Princess - always an image that I loved. The theme, for me, seems to be childhood luxury. I approve.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. Oh, and we're back.

So we're back from Portland, relaxed and fatter.

We enjoyed ourselves. Portland is a walking city. It's packed with vintage and used stores. It has lots of food for the glutton. Our timing was great - the weather was lovely, and a manga convention was being hosted not even a block away from our hotel, so we got to admire the costumes of the passers-by.  Sadly, the Perfume House was closed, but that left us with more money to spend on books and weird household hardware and food. Oh, and that's the zoo train. Cool, huh?

We'll be back.

Photo: Mine.

SOTD: Parfumerie Generale L'Eau Rare Matale

Ahhh.

Sweet Tea may be an old friend, but I love this one so much more.

Image: By David Wilmot. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Caron Alpona

We were checking out of the hotel, and I realized that I was on the verge of another scentless day! 

So I sprayed on Caron Alpona.

I like this one.

Um.

That's all.

(The duck? Well, see, I put him in the post before I went away. I sort of promised him. See? So, a duck. Quack.)

Image: By kauan. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. Except for food.

The gluttony continues, along with the traditional remarks (between bites) of "we have to stop eating like this."

For one more day, we're going to keep eating like this.

Image: By Meanos. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Scentless Saturday. And travelling bacon.

We're spending the holiday weekend in pursuit of bacon.

OK, not really. Bacon is available in most cities; we didn't have to get on a plane to find some. But we are trying out Portland for the very first time, and we ate bacon with every meal on Saturday.

Fried chicken and cheese and bacon on a biscuit at the Saturday farmer's market at the university. Plus a crepe with cheese and bacon and onions. Plus a Nutella crepe.

No, the Nutella crepe didn't involve bacon, though that wouldn't be all that unthinkable, considering "lunch" - a maple bacon doughnut from Voodoo doughnuts.

At dinner at Park Kitchen the bacon was tempura-fried and served along with tempura green beans. Then many very good non- bacon things followed, but that would be Off Topic.

Mm, bacon.

(Also, a disclaimer: I'm blogging from my phone. (OK, I chose the pictures and set up the empty draft post before I left. A bacon encounter seemed likely. The other two pictures are of butter and a duck. Where was I? Oh, yeah.) So please forgive any deficiencies in editing.)

Updated to add Himself's take on our bacon adventures. And on the whole trip.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: ElizabethW Sweet Tea. And nonthreatening old friends.

Today I was going to wear the reigning tea fragrance, Parfumerie Generale L'Eau Rare Matale, but at the last minute I decided on ElizabethW Sweet Tea.

This was once my favorite. It's a simple, fundamentally pleasing fragrance. But as I expanded my perfume freakery, simple and pleasing stopped being enough. I need weird. I need mothballs and gasoline and indoles and leather from undiscovered animals.

But I am enjoying Sweet Tea today, and so my thoughts are turning to other neglected old favorites. Should I wear them again?

ElizabethW Rose, for example, has always been in the bath oil repertoire, but I haven't worn the perfume even once since I started this blog. This is in spite of my incessant whining about not having the right rose. Surely it's worth at least one try?

Fresh Lemon Sugar is candy lemon verbena. It's silly. It's goofy. I like goofy. I have trouble actually respecting it, but why should that stop me from wearing it?

Fresh Hesperides, sadly, has lost me forever. Between one day and the next, it shifted away from being the perfect sparkling grapefruit fragrance, to being a vehemently synthetic citrus. It's not that the fragrance changed - it's the same bottle, and the storage conditions were just fine, and anyway, the change was too sudden for that explanation. It's my nose.

There are others that are similarly simple and pleasing, but never had a chance to become favorites, because I first tried them after I had established my taste for weird. Rochas Tocade is a nice nonthreatening rose. Modern Vent Vert is a declawed nonthreatening green. Most of the Pacifica fragrances and many of those from Jo Malone are Perfectly Nice.

I can't decide if a need to pursue the strange and threatening is a good or a bad thing. But it seems to be permanent.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. And then more none.

My brain is full.

Or maybe empty, and sealed up against new thoughts. Or maybe the OS underwent one of those regrettable upgrades when I wasn't looking. Whatever it is, I don't seem to be able to operate it.

Maybe the holiday weekend will help.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.