lady d

i'm a bit confused. i thought i liked jasmine, and i like some blends -- kitsune-tsuki, sophia, siren -- which have jasmine listed as component. i also really like lush's godiva shampoo, a strongly jasmine scent. but when i tried new orleans there was something sharp and sort of tingling in it, that my nose found altogether unpleasant ... i thought it must have been the spice and the 'touch of decay' from the description. but a few days later, i went to a local sunflower market, and was trying out some of their essential oils -- one of which was called 'tunisian jasmine,' and had the same tingling, unpleasant effect on my nose! this thread was very helpful in clarifying that there are many different kinds of jasmine ... but i'm wondering if anyone knows what kind of jasmine is used in new orleans and this tunisian jasmine from the market, as opposed to the other blends i enjoy, so i can try to avoid it in the future?

ah -- ! i find this is all very fascinating, and i, for one, encourage you to keep posting. i hope everything works out well for both parties, and given how drawn the lab seems to be to snakes, how awesome is it to have an actual expert around? mind you, this may not be the best of circumstances for an expert to come under ... but if only some good can come from the bad, et cetera, and i'm impressed by your grace, generosity and tact. i'm also impressed by how much you seem to love your snake and how you came so passionately to this beautiful creature's defense. it would be lovely to see money from the snake pit go to aid actual snakes ... i know the lab's done things for different charities before, and i hope they'll be receptive.

i'm fond of cordelia -- it's a gorgeous, natural scent, very 'real' but still so pretty -- cedar and lilacs with just a touch of sweet tea. ophelia is beautiful, too, if a bit ... distant? sad? i have the habit of attaching personalities to scents, but it's lotus and rose water, delicate and soft.

i think 'white rabbit' is a good sweats-and-sandals scent, myself -- breakfasty and comfortable, perfect for staying in.

... now i want to get a bottle of possion d'avril just for the pretty swirly jellyfish label. it's everything i could ever want! pretty! swirly! fish! must hide my credit card and sit on my hands now. oh -- but thank you for sharing ... !

mrrrrrr. if this scent were a sound (i said somewhere else, that to approach what we mean we have to go by degrees, we have make ourselves a bit synaesthetic and speak as if in metaphor) it would be a deep, rumbling purr. it it were a taste, it would be tea and candy, and rich currant jam still stuck to your paws. it it were a color, it would be purple fur a little like twilight, and something of a lovely, lazy mystery, a softly-grinning dream that flicks it tail to disappear, a little like stars swallowed by clouds. if it were to speak, it would say, 'a dog's not mad -- do you grant that? a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. i growl when i'm pleased, and wag my tail when i'm angry. therefore i'm mad.' then it stretches out, in a patch of sun, and falls asleep. mrrr.

oh, the sheer concept behind this is lovely ... i got this in the same package as alice, and alice put me in mind of a child's tea party, where the cups are full to brimming with milk and cream and sugar (no child would think of taking her tea straight, would she?) and alice is there with a bow in her hair and a clean cotton dress she'll muss by the time the day is over, leaving the table to follow white rabbits with the smell of sweet tea still clinging to her wrists. but queen alice is another story -- or, if we want to be technical, already towards the tend of another story. queen alice is all amber and wine ... she's softly-spiced cider, sophisticated and strange, and suddenly you're at a feast with looking-glass creatures that fill up their glasses with treacle and ink. she's the tenniel illustrations of alice ... alice in pearls and a bustle skirt, a crown in her hair and her head held high ... still utterly sweet, but (trying, at least, to be) utterly adult. but there's no pretense, just grown-up and gorgeous, without ever losing her childlike wonder. it's wild because i don't drink, and i'd always thought i didn't want to smell like anything alcoholic ... but this is the little bit of wine my mother let me taste at new year's, and it feels the way that tasted, intriguing and new and just a bit sharp but nothing coarse or corrupt about it at all. and when it dries down, it's still got the softly-spiced cider i drink every winter, with whipped cream and caramel. it soothes me and i wonder whose dream this is. just ... i love the way the lab's blend tell stories in a way i've never known a perfume could.

i'm having the same problem a little over a month later, and i'm wondering whether or not this was ever addressed ... ? any help would be much appreciated -- thank you in advance.

hamlet is one of my favorite plays (perhaps right after its absurdist nephew, rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead) and i've always felt for ophelia -- not long ago, i attempted a painting of her, a watercolor, where her body was made up of shattered bits of images, like a broken mirror (all she can do is reflect, and when hamlet, when her father, when her brother, are gone, she faces reflecting, being nothing at all), and they floated white-and-silver-pale amongst swirling violets, amongst greens and pinks and blues, carrying her down as along a river ... something of too much of water hast thou, poor ophelia (and therefore i forbid my tears) and o rose of may ... i think this oil captures that idea better than my painting did. and that's really all there is to say of it -- it's feminine and detached, it's the lotus in the lake, it's that moment when gertrude sees the girl floating and knows there's nothing she can do for her, that she's already lost in herself far enough to drown and all that's left is the crushed scent of water and flowers. but it's so delicate and so pretty. and that's why artists, and poets, and songwriters, i suppose, can't stay away from ophelia -- for that sad, distant beauty destined to break.

floating mists and flowers i don't have names for -- slim, strange ones in all the colors of twilight, held in the hands of a girl who shouldn't be there. her skin seems translucent, she has eyes you could drown in, everything about her is sweet and unreal, and her lips curl like a crescent moon caught over a lake, carried in by clouds. that's the image i always get from this oil, and it suits the name very well.

one thing i'm beginning to see more and more in the samples i got from the lab is that each oil has its own personality -- its own little life that starts in a vial no taller than my thumb and grows from a drop or two on my skin -- and sometimes it takes me a while to realize just what that personality is, who it is, but it's always there, even shivering and shy, like a bit of dew on a leaf. kitsune-tsuki wasn't hard to find -- she was a girl with hair dyed cotton candy pink and a big, lazy grin that floats like a cheshire cat's. she has little hands and little feet, soft and sweet and lovely, and they move with a kind of ballerina-elegance, but still there's a touch of a mischief in them, and in her. i picture her lying belly-down on the floor, ballerina-feet pointed in the air, and in front of her a bowl of purple plums (stolen from the icebox, as in the poem) that she plucks out one by one, bite by bite, until the juice runs down her fingers and she has to lick them clean. each of her white fox tails wave idly in the air, following her feet, but she is something of a child. she doesn't hide her innocence. also, she makes me smile like a fool.

this makes me think of a beautiful woman with a sharp smile, floating and delicate like tea-leaves in water, each of her tails flickering from beneath her long skirts in a pack of wicked shadows. "what is real?" she makes you ask without asking ("follow me," she says without speaking.) she's half a dream, and she glows with the orange-red light of the last leaf in the fall -- the one that will never touch the ground. and then she disappears. like so many others, i can't seem to catch a kumiho for long -- but i think i love her.

gorgeous. i feel like a lady-dryad in this, a woodland queen wrapped in regal pine and cedar, a crown of lilacs in her hair ... and there's the green tea, and something like cut grass (like spring and outside -- like breathing fresh air --) and though it's been ages since i've read king lear, i can't help but think it suits. this girl is no flatterer with words store-perfume-sweet, but honest, plain and beautiful -- natural. it's gorgeous.

my first order from the labs, and i understand why they call it alchemy; there's an almost-ritual almost-magic to it, a drop on each pulse point and something transforms. wearing this was almost dizzying -- like falling down a rabbit-hole with cupboards floating all about you, whole worlds of wonders on the shelves to glimpse as you drop through. i don't know how to pick out individual notes, but there's something creamy-soft and smooth, a rich, teatime smell that makes me imagine quaint little cakes of licorice and blackurrant, clean white tablecloths crowded with cups of cream and sugar. there are tiny antique plates painted with pastoral scenes, but wonderland-pastoral -- landscapes of living flowers and shifting, maze-like hedges, chess-patterned pastures where gentlemen play croquet and lady-rabbits carrying card-paper-parasols look on. there's also something sharp and startling, perhaps the ginger and the pepper (perhaps scurrying and murmuring o my fur and whiskers -- i'm late, i'm late, i'm late --) and it strikes me whenever i've almost forgotten it (forgotten how i'm falling). it's lovely.