patina

I get strong memories of the GC Darkness, though this has no opium at all. Maybe the gardenia is just that close to narcissus. I'm also reminded of a somewhat less dirty GC Sheol, which makes sense because I believe Sheol had gardenia. Simple, sophisticated and a little ominous. The medicinal qualities appear at first but then die down. Then again that's what labdanum does on my skin.

I get lemon honey cake and cream as advertised. The honey is going a little waxy and I can't believe I'm saying this but this is just a little too sweet for me. It's good but sort of overwhelming. More candy than cake.

Snake oil's spice and depth is present, but the Bordello-ish plum is strong here. The plum has a bit of a waxy note, like lip gloss but it's powerful and pretty juicy too. Right now I'm wishing I had a Sugar Plum Goblin sample to compare, and to see whether the patchouli there blends better with the plum than these spices do. Don't get me wrong, it's good and I'm sure it'll be amazing after some aging.

Cherry? Plum??? Dragon's blood? I don't even know where I'm getting those notes from but that's what this smells like. This honey smells crazy fruity to me. After drydown it changes into a recognizable brown musk but that was crazy for a while.

Anyone know a good sandalwood and honey or patchouli and honey scent they can recommend, with maybe other notes like amber? Or hay? Or cacao? I am missing Thrice Plowed Field.

Today I put on an aged Drink Me and wondered why I'd ignored it so long. Without looking at notes I get apple cider, caramel, coconut, and butterscotch, but blended in the best way. Looking at notes: okay yeah, there's the cherry that usually blends with the cider and occasionally rears its head as a medicinal smell. Otherwise, this is delicious. I could see pineapple being here too. Not my favorite fruit to smell, but hey. It doesn't stand in the way of the absolute cake party that is going on on my wrists. TLDR: Cake party!

It's a three way custard fight between cherry, chocolate, and pumpkin flavor. I don't know who's winning. Probably not chocolate. But I smell great.

First sniff: It's leaf. I don't know what I expected. Specifically it's the dead leaf note from Dead Leaves, Red Musk, and Neroli. This is softer than that scent though. A skin test brings out a soft red musk and the woodsmoke. Not perfumy (at least yet) This might be considered masculine by some because of the smoke and the patchouli darkness.

This is everything I hoped for. Right now, in its fresh state I get mostly fresh woody Cathedral with a slight background of sweetness and sugar. It's sort of a burnt or brown sugar incense. Edit: I just remembered what this reminded me of: Halloween in Innsmouth. Not the fishy part, but the incense plus baked goods.

Violet smells clean to me. Like shampoo without being soapy. Spanish moss is far more airy and than oakmoss. It doesn't have much of a presence yet but it may be giving a faintly green edge. Put them together and you get something light and fresh that nevertheless would feel eerie on a rainy day (at least to me.)

The inky black part is gorgeous. It's got a soft brushed by a raven's wing feel. The sense of purple fruit is good too. This is very perfumy, surprisingly perfumy for a Lilith. It must be the champa that makes me think there's jasmine here. It doesn't smell like jasmine exactly, but it's close enough. Also I think my chemistry might not be playing nice with the lavender. Boo It's still gorgeous, just a bit "scratchy." Now to age and see how it works. The comparison to The Elephant is Slow to Mate is apt, though this is somewhat less over the top. That one also threw me off a bit with how very perfumy it was. Edit: If I didn't know better I would swear up and down that there's vetiver here. There's no char but the patchouli may be standing in for vetiver. Months later: Much better. Before it was screaming perfume, now it's Violet jelly with soft roses and maybe a hint of woody patchouli. Of course dark resins and black musk turn to candy on me.

Where Hinzelmann had been standing stood a male child, no more than five years old. His hair was dark brown, and long. He was perfectly naked, save for a worn leather band around his neck. He was pierced with two swords, one of them going through his chest, the other entering at his shoulder, with the point coming out beneath the rib-cage. Blood flowed through the wounds without stopping and ran down the child's body to pool and puddle on the floor. The swords looked unimaginably old. The little boy stared up at Shadow with eyes that held only pain. And Shadow thought to himself, of course. That's as good a way as any other of making a tribal god. He did not have to be told. He knew. You take a baby and you bring it up in the darkness, letting it see no one, touch no one, and you feed it well as the years pass, feed it better than any of the village's other children, and then, five winters on, when the night is at its longest, you drag the terrified child out of its hut and into the circle of bonfires, and you pierce it with blades of iron and of bronze. Then you smoke the small body over charcoal fires until it is properly dried, and you wrap it in furs and carry it with you from encampment to encampment, deep in the Black Forest, sacrificing animals and children to it, making it the luck of the tribe. When, eventually, the thing falls apart from age, you place its fragile bones in a box, and you worship the box; until one day the bones are scattered and forgotten, and the tribes who worshipped the child-god of the box are long gone; and the child-god, the luck of the village, will be barely remembered, save as a ghost or a brownie: a kobold. Shadow wondered which of the people who had come to northern Wisconsin 150 years ago, a woodcutter, perhaps, or a mapmaker, had crossed the Atlantic with Hinzelmann living in his head. And then the bloody child was gone, and the blood, and there was only an old man with a fluff of white hair and a goblin smile, his sweater-sleeves still soaked from putting Shadow into the bath that had saved his life. The luck of the tribe: black pine pitch and gouts of blood, darkness and bonfires that cast long shadows. In the vial this is a Big Woods smell, smoky and mysterious. On it becomes more simple: pine and smoke. I keep thinking I smell juniper too. The pine isn't super sharp but it's undoubtedly pine. I don't get blood, or maybe that's what makes me think there's juniper here. I'm reminded that pine resin and juniper were both used for mummification. Both pine and smoke are well balanced but I wish the scent was a little more complicated. Layering this with a chocolate scent is very good, by the way.

The peculiar-looking man was of average height, but of an odd shape: Shadow had heard of men who were barrel-chested before, but had no image to accompany the metaphor. This man was barrel-chested, and he had legs like, yes, like tree trunks, and hands like, exactly, ham hocks. He wore a black parka with a hood, several sweaters, thick dungarees, and, incongruously, in the winter and with those clothes, a pair of white tennis shoes, which were the same size and shape as shoeboxes. His fingers resembled sausages, with flat, squared-off fingertips. "That's some hum you got," said Shadow from the driver's seat. "Sorry," said the peculiar young man, in a deep, deep voice, embarrassed. He stopped humming. "No, I enjoyed it," said Shadow. "Don't stop." The peculiar young man hesitated, then commenced to hum once more, his voice as deep and reverberant as before. This time there were words interspersed in the humming. "Down down down," he sang, so deeply that the windows rattled. "Down down down, down down, down down." Thick, tangled, and strong: ash and oak, elm and pine, reaching down, down, and deeper down into earth. In decant: Root beer? It smells like there's birch in this. On: Ooh, that's a nice deep resin scent. The pine is not overwhelming everything else, nor does it smell like pine sol. It's more of a dried Christmas tree note, but well balanced with the other woods. I can't tell whether "earth" means a dirt note but this is spicy to my nose. If dirt's there it's vetiver based like the one in Badger from The Wind and the Willows scents. I've smelled a men's cologne a little like this before. Dior's original Fahrenheit maybe. Or maybe not that one. Light in strength and little throw, I'm afraid this one may disappear altogether in a few hours. Edit: Better strength than I'd thought. Far over the misty mountains cold, through dungeons deep and caverns old we must away before break of day...I don't mind smelling like a dwarf king.

Ahh. BPAL's luring me back once again with my love of frogs and green musk. First applied, this is a bright, lemony spring green. I can certainly smell bamboo and all the other stuff too. It gives the scent a deeper cologny edge and doesn't let the green musk turn to drier sheets...at least so far. Super refreshing, aquatic and a little foresty. This is a green musk holy grail so far.

Waffle cone? Wafflecone! Also thick mint cream and chocolate. I can occasionally get a slightly lemon green tea but it's very faint. This is really fairly sweet for me, but the green tea tones that done.

I get alternating dirt and dandelions, though there's more dirt. There may be cumin in the dirt but it's not overwhelming on me. Also there's more blood than I expected, but my nose is very good at picking up the Lab's blood note. Fairly simple, pleasant and spring-like.

My impression of the original Smut was simply dark sweetened musk. It's the sort of thing I like, but it's a bit flat. Licorice Smut isn't very much different. The licorice is strong and adds more complexity, but ultimately it fades too far in the background to give this much dimension. Oh well. It's not bad at all.

Damp melony, cucumbery grass. This is very different from my Easter Egg Hunt Grass Stain SN. Far less sharp and more gentle. I want to say there's a floral here but I have no idea which one it would be. Maybe there's sage? Probably spearmint. I get no dead leaves. Green scents often don't work on me but this one does. It's lovely.

in the imp I get the bell pepper note I sometimes get from leaf blends. On me it's almost...lemon? There is cinnamon here but I'm wondering if my decant was labeled properly. I seem to get a bread or pastry note at a distance, so maybe? Will update. Edit: leaves turned to dirt eventually then disappeared. In the morning I got something a bit like cinnamon King Cake. I love King Cake but I'll stick with that one.

Freshly applied this is sawdust and raisin cinnamon toast. I don't amp cedar so while it's certainly around I don't get a whole lot of it. I do get piles of cinnamon though. To me this is (appropriately) a prop carnival haunted house just off the midway rather than a stately manor that happens to be filled with funnel cake. But also there's a lot of cinnamon.

I get something medicinal. I can see how some people would get something a bit like licorice. But on me it's medicinal in a pleasant way. I do get black tea and traces of tobacco staining wood. Wood often goes very faint on me so I'll have to return to this review later, but for now my impressions are that this is relaxing and would be perfect for a dark rainy day. EDIT: I really love this one, actually. I suspect the woods are teak and oak. They work well with the tea and ashy tobacco. It doesn't have super wear length, but it's probably my favorite "creepy house" scent.

Cherry is always very loud on me, but here it doesn't overwhelm the cream and (later, on drydown) a buttery crust note. I said that Pumpkin Pie Musk was my favorite of these, but this is a very, very close one. I don't get wax per se, but there's maybe amber?

Butter! And caramel sweetness. Amazing. Unfortunately the leaves make it smell a little plasticy and burnt on drydown. I'm sure this sample will find a good home elsewhere.

The oud here is not rich enough to have an indole smell. It smells dry, a bit like old cardboard boxes, with some sugar (not enough to be truly sweet) and a toasted note. At first when I put it on it almost smelled soapy but that passed quickly. This is nice, overall but then I like cardboard box oud.

Pumpkin Pie. Sweet, very Pumpkin Spice and I can't separate out the musk. This may be my favorite of the three pies.