The Rose's Grove

It's summer! All of a sudden!

That's right - two days after being cloudy, rainy, nasty and grey, Seattle is now Bright And Sunny and 85 degrees, headed for 90, as if it'd been summer for weeks. This morning was a rush to find my straw hat, my sunscreen (don't laugh... I'm uber-pale and my skin burns easily), my sandals and a tank-top that would work with the skirt I wanted to wear. Oh, and a white blouse to wear over the tank-top. And then to close our blinds so that our living room doesn't bake while we're gone today. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely and beautiful and I'm happyhappyhappy to finally have summer here, but... a little warning or build-up might have made it all easier. Still, it's great fun being outside in it.

Which makes it sad that there is a baseball game tonight, which is bound to balls up my commute so badly that it could very well be past sunset by the time I actually make it back home. And, while I'm nattering about nothings - BPAL has a lovely line of limited edition perfumes themed around varieties of moths and butterflies, and I'm trying to decide which one I should get. My favorites are:

GYPSY - Bourbon vanilla, Egyptian musk, tonka, white sugar, and cardamom.

LUNA - Touareg tea, Asian pear, carnation, lime sugar, green musk, armoise, and thyme.

ROSY MAPLE - Lemon blossom, vanilla bean, huckleberry, sweet pea, rose sugar, acai berry, and candyfloss.

SPICEBUSH SWALLOWTAIL - Brown sugar, sassafras, clove, and wild plum.

I'm leaning toward the Rosy Maple and maybe the Luna, but they all look lovely, and I'm not totally sure about the huckleberry in the Rosy Maple one - sometimes fruit scents overwhelm everything else, and that would make me awfully sad. At least I have until August 26 to make up my mind!

So, the lovely shadawyn gave me a bunch of BPAL she didn't want anymore on Friday night, and one of the imps was "R'lyeh." I'd heard before from other folks that this smelled like grapefruit, and sure enough, smelling it in the bottle it smelled like grapefruit. Weird, but awesome, I thought - I love citrus scents. So tonight I was entering my new acquisitions into my spreadsheet for BPAL (yeah, I'm trying out being organized... sort of), and I noticed that the description doesn't match at all what I was smelling in the bottle.

For R'lyeh, BPAL says: A hellishly dark aquatic scent, evocative of fathomless oceanic deeps, the mysteries of madness buried under crushing black waters, and the brooding eternal evil that lies beneath the waves.

Strange, I thought. So I opened it, smelled in in the bottle again - yup, definitely grapefruit - and then put it on my hand. Took my hand away from my nose for a second. Brought it back and instantly noticed that the grapefruit was fading fast. As in, after a half a second it was gone. It's gone through a few phases that I didn't quite catch (and I have "Fallen" on my other hand, so I can't test again right now), but at the moment it's very aquatic and oddly sweet, almost sugary, with a weird cinnamon-y sort of edge. It's like... something watery with maybe a little cucumber, mixed with cinnamon sugar and... something I can't quite identify but really like. o_O

Anybody had similar experience with "R'lyeh," or should I put this down to a very weird personal chemistry thing?

Bpal says: Thick bitter almond and heady night-blooming jasmine with saffron, cinnamon leaf, red patchouli, river lilies, bergamot, fig leaf and the sacred incense of Inanna.

In the bottle, it's magnificent. Resiny and sweet with flowers and a dry spiciness. I couldn't wait to try it.

Unfortunately, on my skin absolutely everything seems to vanish except the bitter almond. It smells like almonds left to soak for too long, and as much as I like almonds, it's a bit sickening, especially in comparison to the sweetness and excitement of the wet scent.

I'm hoping it's a bad interaction with my hand lotion, so I'll give it one more shot on a spot that hasn't been doused in Burt's Bees lotion, but if that doesn't make a significant difference, I guess this one's all yours, windrose.

Update: And that's the last time I test my perfume on the back of my hand after applying lotion. On the inside of my forearm, the scent retains much more of the incense and other scents. Phew. I'm going to stick with it for a little and see if I can't make it work.

It's snowing. Well... sort of slushing, right now, but there was snow, and I fear that it will turn to ice overnight. Could be an exciting commute tomorrow. :/

Also, BPAL has their Lupercalia scents up. Some of them sound reeeeally fantastic, not least something that sounds almost exactly like the combination of scents that maymargaret and I put together for Romana one night when we were very bored and making up BPAL-style perfumes for pretty much every character we could think of. I... might have to buy it. Wah. Oh, BPAL habit... I sort-of-but-not-really wish I could quit you. ♥