Only words

I bought a new battery charger, which means that the misplaced one will precipitate in the middle of my table tomorrow. Anyway, there will be pictures and with pictures, more knitting rants and perfume rants and other rants that deserve to be illustrated. Not now, though.

I spent a part of my Giftmas bonus on raw materials and I devoted one afternoon to a bit of alchemy. I got a bottle of birch tar which pleased me quite a bit. Well, after I wiped my ears and nose because it smells salty and sort of meaty. It's an important ingredient for the old-school leather fragrances (I guess that it's banned in all civilized countries because it smells good and someone claimed that it caused him a bit of itch) and I'm a leather fiend. They say Bottega Veneta is a leather fragrance (reviewy rant to follow when I run my camera again, I have a bottle on my table) but it's rather some nice flowers with a bit of what the crowd out there calls leather and I call it chalk.

Anyhow. I also got vanilla absolute which is somewhat leathery too, and tagetes oil which is positively weird, Crithmum maritimum oil - I don't remember how this plant smells but it's broken easily with a typical sound and feel and the oil corresponds well to this. It's somewhat tangy and green and with a hint of something salty.

Etc. The birch tar is strong like hell, I had to place the blotter at the far end of my table so that it wouldn't mess with the other smells but I'm afraid that my room still smells like a den full of smoked meat. The main task was to overshadow the salty smell with something reasonably complementary... or not complementary. I decided to go for the contrast between salty and leathery accords and dry, sweet stuff. Thus fennel, neroli and what else contrasted with said birch tar, vanilla, ylang-ylang, crithmum and tagetes. Plus Siberian Fir to add another eye-watering quality, oakmoss just because and a few other things.

I'm quite happy with the result. It's a dark, suspicious-looking liquid and it came out sort of as I wanted. I need to dilute it first to see how it wears. It's all natural so it may be really different on skin. And, it's called Halophyte Garden. Salty floral - sometimes I'm very simple.


I couldn't resist and made some leathery cologne. I'm afraid that I overdosed it with geranium - it seems that any amount of geranium is an overdose because that drop overshadowed quite an amount of the stinky birch tar and the Siberian Fir which could drill holes in the wall. Well, either I'll make the sample into a candle or I'll add half a bucket of petitgrain. We'll see.


And, well, serves you right. Blame the Illuminati and Universal Jewish Conspiration for these bad stupid internetz that cannot convey smells.