Em-

When I received Kitsune-Tsuki as a frimp from the lab, I really did not expect it to work on me. I do love fruit notes, and plum is turning out to be of particular interest, and I am gettng over my latent floraphobia, jasmine and I generally do not get along. In a I don't really like her scent and she doesn't really like my brain chemistry. But, when I tried this, I didn't know that there was jasmine in it, and it did not jump up and start strangling my neurons the way some jasmine notes do. And I really liked it. And was able to wear it for several hours. It is juicy with a floral base that makes it very mysterious and complex, but is not overwhelming. I can see how this would be a good blend for a fruit lover who wants to branch into florals and vice versa. Me, I'm keeping my imp!

Skuld is an example of exactly why the Lab gives out frimps. It was on my wishlist (as is pretty much everything with honey notes) but had never really caught my eye as a must order... I need a bottle of this. Probably with my next order. This is amazing. I tried Skuld today because it floated to he top of the nest of to be tried imps...when I sniffed it, it was heavy and sweet and resiny, but no so much that I thought it would be too much for a hot August day. I actually did not pick out a single note in trying to gander what was in this...I knew it had to be something rich, and I am getting some of the slight wine note that others have mentiond, but not enough that I can't wear it, thankfully. It seems to be staying pretty static on my skin, but I have noticed a tendancy for my skin to amp up musk notes after a few hours, so it will be interesting to see what this does this evening... In the meantime, I feel like a temple goddess. This is really a wonderful potion...

This was laganappe in one of my last lab orders, and is one of those scents I would never have tried on my own because of the jasmine. I think that night blooming jasmine is particularly bad for me. There is a sharp floral note, which I expect is the jasmine, which I just cannot wear. I don't like it. It doesn't like me. Off to the swap/gift bag it goes.

Wow...I really love this. It is sweet and smooky and boozy (without smelling like I've just come off a bender). THis is a scent that is fun as a tropical summer scent and that will be nice in winter as a reminder of sun baked warmth. This scent envelops me. It reminds me a lot of how Perversion reacts on my skin, actually, but with out the sex of the wine and tonka bean, and when my bottle of the big P runs out, Big Mr. E may well replace it, as I think I like this better...

It is hard for me to describe this much beyond "wow, I love it!" because the notes blend so beautifully that I am having trouble distingishing them (then again, perhaps it is just this durn sinus infection)... This is a very rich scent...it is thick and enveloping. Not in an OMG PERFUME way, but in a cloaked in something warm and wonderful sort of way. It reminds me of several of my other favorite scents, Freak Show, Perversion, Elegba, in that it has light fruity notes which are anchored by thick earthy notes. I really really love this.

I wanted to make sure that I jotted down some thoughts on the 2004 version of this before '05 goes up...for posterities sake I guess. This is a lot more floral than I would have expected for a "Harvest Moon", with heavy atumnal flowers blending with apples and other autumn fruity scents. It is very pretty, but it doesn't grab me and shake me and say "you must wear me and order more on Friday...".

Reading the early reviews, I was convinced that I had made a huge mistake in not ordering Strawberry Moon, so I swapped for a bottle the first chance I had. Alas, this blend does nothing interesting on me. The sole obvious note with my skin is the bublegum strawberry note, which is just a bit to sweet and sharp for my taste. I'm really sad about this one, because I was really hoping for an herbally strawberries and cream, but alas. At least I know the bottle will have a good home elsewhere...

In the bottle, this is the scent of boggy summer fields in western Massachusetts. When I sniff this scent and close my eyes, I am transported back to 1997, the end of my first year of law school, visiting my then fiance in Amherst, driving back roads to Springfield to go out for dinner, with the windows rolled down and music blaring and the scent of the land seeping in... Or, if you prefer, our honeymoon, wandering the streets of Salem in August after dark, mist starting to rise from the harbour, the slight eerieness that only the City of Witches can provide... It is an olive green scent...dark, but not forboding. It has a definite herbal freshness to it, but not a soapy clean note, and I spent the entire day the first time I really wore it trying to identify the cardamom (which may remind me of my years in Massachusetts in part because that was the last time I was able to easily get good Indian food on demand. ;-) I really really love this scent. Definitely one for my top ten...

I received an imp of this as a bonus in a swap that got hung up by the post office...which is awesome, because I have been so so tempted by all of the fruitilicious potential, but have been so nervous about the potential for jasmine overload... Turns out I was right to be nervous. I cannot smell fruit to save my life in this blend...the jasmine just crawls up into my sinuses and starts doing the evil things that jasimne will do to me. Amazingly I wore this for almost an hour with no sign of a headache, but I think that may be because I am still getting over a cold, so I may revisit this when the imp wanders back to me as part of the LE circular swap, but based on this try, Mi-Go and me are a no go.

I figured there was pretty much no way for me not to love this one, given that I adore all three listed notes... The vanilla and honey blend beautifully with the tang of dragon's blood. This is sweeter in the imp than on my skin, but it is a really long lasting blend with a decent amount of throw. The sweetness definitely amps up after a while, but not in a way that I dislike. I put this on about 7:30 this morning and I can still smell it on my wrists, incidentially. How's that for some staying power?

Wow, in the bottle, this is irish coffee, nothing but. On my skin though, within about an hour, the leather and oakiness start to come out and tone down the coffee drink and this becomes the most amazing scent...not for everyday wear, probably, but I really love the leather-coffee-whiskey-oak stage and can definitely see wearing this a lot as the leaves start turning and days start needing something warm to pass the time...

The lust incense of a corrupted Astarte. A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices. Shub is definitely evil gingersnaps. Which is all well and good, if you want to smell like evil gingersnaps. Unfortunately, in the time between ordering this bottle and receiving it, I had the opportunity to try Gingerbread Poppet and discovered that I don't really care to smell like baking gingerbread, gingersnaps, ginger baked goods all that much, although I love the smell in a general way. I was really hoping for a fresh ginger kind of smell, but ah well. The bottle has been swaped to good use.

Oh wow. Freak Show is amazing. Absolutely amazing. It is a cacophony, but a delicious one. I am having a hard time picking out notes here, but I can definitely pick out the fig and what smells almost like tobacco to me (maybe the musk?). The chocolate is blessedly not *chocolate*, but cocoa bean - raw and unprocessed, not a creamy milk confection. And oh, lovely tonka bean... I want to just devour this. I agree with wickedgoddess that this is extremely evocative of Dia de Los Muertos - to me, it is what I had hoped Dia might smell like, stripped of the floral notes that I had to learn to love. Freak Show is the first blend that I want to wear day in and day out to the exclusion of all of the other new perfume in my box...and that is saying something. I am so happy that I have time to buy more bottles!

I had high hopes for Storm Moon, such that I ended up with two imps of it somehow. Unfortunately, it seems that anything vaguely ozone/aquatic starts to turn strong cheap men's cologne on me from the very first second. I have had similar reations to other watery scents, so I think it is just a combination of my nose and my chemistry.

Sigh...I adore honey...everything about it (well, except for the fact that I am scared of bees, but that's another story), so when I saw Honey Moon, I just had to order it, even though my nemisis, jasmine, is one of the listed notes. I was really hoping for something just dripping in gooey, luscious honey. Alas, while the honey is there, mostly I get flowers and pollen. This is a lovely scent, and it doesn't slay me with jasmine, as I feared, but it is not something I will really wear, I don't think. Ah well.

I really liked the idea of Cthulhu, for all of the obvios reasons...but I think that aquatics are a sort of like 'em or hate 'em kind of scent class...or more to the point - a like you or hate you kind of scent class, and I don't think I am on their good side. I am definitely not on Cthulhu's good side. Even in the imp, my decant smelled like a men's cologne...I'm not opposed to masculine scents, in fact I can kind of dig them, but watery scents just don't dig me and they end up smelling like a mixture of Brut, Polo and Drakar, which is kind of missing the point. Phooey.

Hellcat and I should have been perfect for each other, mead, nuts, rum, buttercream...what's not to like. In the imp, I can smell each of these elements, swirled into the most delicious liquid icing and could barely wait to try it (but was afraid to try it on a work day, lest the rum be overpowering...). On, it smells oddly like Gingerbread Poppet on me. Where is the spice coming from? The rum and the mead are gone. It is nutty gingerbread. Which is fine, but not what I wanted, really. I have tried two separate imps of this now - one a decant from a swap which was OMG GINGERBREAD right off the bat, and another fresh from the Lab which held off for a bit before the spices set in. The first was so strong as to actual irritate my sinuses. The second was a little better, but at the end of the day, my imp of Poppet is enough for me. I want more booze!

The very first time I wore Perversion, it was like pulling on an old comfy leather jacket...you know, the kind you wear out to the club that gets all smoky and sweaty and starts to soak up the accumulated scents of the booze and the incense and the cloves...it is warm and comfortable and feels like a second skin. Like coming home. I'm not exactly sure what that says about me, but that was what Perversion was for me. I loved the thick headyness of the tonka and the rum and the leather and the light hint of wine and tobacco, all blended together to make something that made me feel sultry and pretty and like I wanted to eat my arm. It was also the day of an update, so a 5ml jumped into my cart without a second thought. The second time I wore Perversion, it was a very different time in my cycle (mid-flow, as it were...sorry 'bout the TMI, but just in case it is relevant) and it was like someone had stripped out the cozy quilted lining of my favorite leather jacket that I've had for 15 years and tossed back something that was a shell of its former self. Instead of the thick, warm headyness, I got light, thin wine with faint hints of everything else...I really hope it was a cycle issue. I really really do. Because the first time I wore it, I had found a signature scent. There's not much left in the imp (it was a Cat's ear to begin with and had been around the swap boards, methinks), so we shall see...

Chimera is an absolutely luscious, playful, sexy combination of cinnamon, raw honey, and vanilla. In the vial I just want to lap it up... I have had mixed luck with cinnamon scents, so I was a little nervous about Chimera, and applied sparingly the first time...I needn't have bothered. It did not turn candy on me as I feared, but stayed a light sharp spice note mixed with the honeysuckle (which may just have become my favorite floral note) and the other notes... I want to try it out a few more times before deciding on whether to get a bottle, but I think an imp will need to be a constant companion...

I was really looking forward to this, as I like fruity and boozy scents, so apricot brandy sounded perfect. Unfortunately, the brandy evidentily got a little soused and didn't feel like partying when my vial was mixed, so it was all apricot, all the time. On me, this is pretty apricot perfume. No booze, no souse...nothing much other than some apricots. Don't get me wrong, I *like* apricots, but I prefer the March Hare "twisted tart with clove" apricot to this one, and really, there are only so many apricot scents a gal needs...

In Hermetic alchemy, brimstone is one of the Three Heavenly Substances, one of the primary alchemical Priciples. It represents the strength of will and the vigor of passion, and it is a symbol of the process of fermentation. A smoky, gritty blend, husky and gray. First reaction in the imp: Ouch. The smell literally hurt my sinuses it was so strong and intense - very much the scent of fire...like the precurser to the ashy note in Kweku Anansi almost, but with out the herby woodyness. On my skin: Ouch. The scent doesn't change and is not really my cuppa. I wanted to give it a fair shake, but after about five minutes, it literally started burning my skin (first time one of the Lab's oils has done that to me...and apt one, I suppose!). So, alas, I had to scrub it off...the burning didn't subside until I'd bathed my arm in rubbing alcohol...

A scent aflame with rage, swirling in the red haze of hatred: dragon's blood spiked with black pepper, clove, and cinnamon. Reading the description, I really expected to love this one, as I have liked every Dragon's Blood blend I've tried and I love the other noted. Reading th reviews, I would expect to love this one. Alas, starting in the vial, Wrath smells...off to me, sort of plastic, but sharp in an unpleasant way. I cannot smell the Dragon's Blood or any thing other than plasticy red hots. On my skin, burning red hots (which someone else used to describe this) is very accurate, exept imagine that the candy coating actually is plastic...burning, cinnamon plastic. Not so good. Ah well...

I cannot help but wonder, reading the reviews, if perhaps I have something else in a bottle labled Azathoth? It is amazing how we all process things differently... To me this scent is lovely - very fresh and clean with a hint of the same boggy base that makes me think of marshes in western Massachusetts that has been in all the SIA scent's I've tried (not MiskU, yet, to be sure!). I don't know enough about vetiver to be able to pick it out of this mix, but to me this is not an overly masculine scent at all..it is mossy and woody with just tiny little hints of the saffron and tangerine to make it fresh, but not enough to stand out. I don't think I would seek out another bottle, but I'm definitely glad to have the one.

I was realy looking forward to the musky fruityness of this one, but all I get is sandalwood. Really strong sandalwood. No mandarin. No mango. Not even much musk. It took me a long time to try this because it smelled very harsh in the vial, an it just doesn't work with my chemistry.

Ordered as part of the 13 update...I was trepadatious about this one, but decided to go for it anyway, because it just sounded, well, lovely. In the imp, I was a little nervous, because it was very sandalwoody and I have since discovered that sandalwood doesn't work so well on me and it was a little bitter. Frankly, I was not terribly enamored. But, I tried it anyway... All I can say is wow. What a transformation. On my skin, the spices and fruits bloom and the sandalwood retreats back where it belongs (IMO) and the rose is just enough to soften the whole mix...