Nowhere to ask...

On Sunday, I was doing a rough draft of a long-term budget.

There's the breast reduction surgery I want to get done at the end of December/beginning of January - some 1200 euros plus possibly a little bit more, gotta make detailed inquiry what the listed price includes so that I don't get the band-aids charged extra, especially since I'm somewhat allergic to latex and latex-free shit is more expensive than normal shit.

New camera is needed before the new botanizing season - at the end of February or so. 800 - 1000 euros. Well, not a camera, only the SLR body. I'm not using a soap bar for macrophotography regardless of people saying that the 20x whateverthefuck macro is better than my big honking macro lens, that I'm no fucking pro who would need a SLR, that the SLR is too heavy and impractical to drag around (O hai, dad). I have a small fortune in lenses (they are excellent lenses) and I'm definitly not using the prime examples of applied optics as paperweights. Hey, a few months ago, I got a 77mm polarising filter for better architecture and landscape pics (140-ish euros, FIY).

I will need some money for furniture, as sometime next year, I'll have a craft room and I totally want a hardwood floor there; the parquet under the carpet is reputedly awful.

And small things. One needs shoe polish or paper clips.

I worked hard and long on it, including a discovery that I have two bags of each cashmere and cashmere blend in my stash, plus a bag of black cashmere for that black cashmere sweater I desperately need, so I don't need to search internets for black cashmere blend yarn.

I included a serious weight loss into the savings because I never throw anything away and I have a shitload of undersize clothes.

I failed to decide to block my access to fleabay, mainly because there's a yarn I need for the other half of a sweater... and on Monday, I just browsed stuff. I collect old Lancôme' perfumes and I have always some money set aside for an offer that cannot be resisted.
Well, I was digging in the muddy depths of fleabay and discovered a thing I would love to own but have given all hopes long ago:



Image snatched from Fragrantica

The white doves in black! How excellent that would be among my small collection of objets d'art!

Now... Technically I can afford the thing. I have the money at hand. However, there's a financial crisis, it's a totally useless thing, I have umpteen hundreds of perfumes and I'm generally using only Iris Ukiyoé, a bookshelf would be much more practical, the savings for new boobage will be stalled by two or three months.

I can't decide. Being a magpie of epic proportions, I'll likely go for it but I'll feel awfully guilty.

Don't try to stand between me and my cake

Yesterday I kept ranting extatically about Basala.
I checked the buzz on the internetz, people wrote that it's being discontinued so today I wanted to plunder the shelf. Some damn idiot left the price tag for EdT but they had none and, well, I may be crazy but not that crazy as to buy some after shave stuff. Definitely not before I check what are after shave stuffs made from.
I checked all places possible around the town, including the Shiseido booth at the largest department store - the ladies gave me a very weird look that I want to try men's fragrance. (Same store, YSL booth - I gave an eye to the new Nuit d'un homme, the lady made me to try it - pretty but somewhat flat - and when I showed signs of pleasure, she urged me to buy it, that nobody cares whether it's men's or women's stuff.) I ended up in Profumeria inglese, the nicest shop of its sort which has, among other advantages, qualified and very helpful shop assistants; the ladies spent quite some time phoning places and then sadly told me that the fragrance is indeed being discontinued, that they have some shower gels and stuff but not the edt anymore.
Now, don't dare to stand between me and my dessert. I never claimed to be a good person and when I want something, there is the critical period when I wander around with bloodshot eyes and want. It may settle down after a while, or not, but when I want my cake and you're in the way... well, you were warned.

When in the department store, I checked Chamade by Guerlain which I got on eBay without trying, somehow relying on an overenthusiastic review. I should have been warned by the claimed similarity to Miss Dior, one of the few fragrances that makes me want to throw up. It was this Chamade that waited for me at the post office. Well, the same website that published the overenthusiastic review is populated by Guerlain maniacs so I have five offers from prospective buyers. Olga will set up an auction. I never claimed to be a good person, remember.

After two hours of checking all possible and impossible links to various corners of the internetz, I found several places where they sold the EdT for prices that were totally indecent, very many places that said Out of stock. And the umpteenth website was a rather local store (Lucca or around, I think) that had the damn stuff on stock so I got a lifetime supply.
Ten minutes later, Olga sent me a list (or I read a list) of stuff she wanted from eBay.

I hereby declare that I'm broke. No, I'm not really broke but I have to play broke in order not to buy more things. Or at least to not buy unimportant things.

I hang around the town for a while, I wrung the scarf soaked in Kypre, bottled a few samples for Elena of Perfume Shrine, hung the scarf onto the drying rack and now the whole place smells of iris root. I think it's not any damn chypre fragrance by any means but I may be wrong. I'm often wrong.

Remnant

Some time ago, I got hold of Kypre. The one by Lancome, launched in 1935, in what seems to be the 1930's box and bottle.

Now, the most legendary and most wanted perfume in the internetz is Djedi by Guerlain. I want it too, I read about the re-release and decided that I needed it. It was in 2000-ish and I didn't know that it was something limited so I hesitated. Now it's late, I read on some real perfumista's blog that the last time it was spotted out in the wild was the time when the bottle was sold for over 1000 euros on eBay.


Kypre is indeed mentioned in places. Usually there's the line that 'in 1935, Lancome launched their first five fragrances...' and nothing more. I browsed the perfume blogs and places and nobody ever mentions having it, wanting it, being interested in it. Which leads me to the conclusion that if it exist, then it exists in some parts of the world which use different alphabets than I'm able to read or that I have the last bottle in the world. Should the latter be true, then I must say I feel weird.
I should get a hold of some Coco by Chanel, it seems rather similar but my Coco is left in another country. I have a bit of cold so the olfactory impressions will come someday later. And I'll try to find the darn Coco.