Loligo

Hm, which will we find in this blend: good patchouli, or evil patchouli? This note is *so* variable on me.... Ah well, it's evil patchouli. In the first half hour there's a very fresh, juicy peach note that manages to drown out the dirty stank of patchouli, but once the peach starts to fade and get kind of waxy, the other notes are powerless against the hippie reek.

Wow, the initial throw on this stuff is astonishing! I put one drop on my daughter's hand and thenn we went outside to play -- I could smell the scent all over the back yard! This really does smell like a blackberry thicket for the first hour or so: not sweet or foody at all, just leaves and fresh air and tart, sunwarmed, slightly dusty berries. Wow! On me, the berry smell fades quickly after that, leaving a floral & herbal scent that I was *sure* must have wild rose in it. Apparently that's just the heather, which I have never smelled in bloom. Very fresh, very distinctive, and it makes me long to be out rambling through the countryside.

After being utterly and unexpectedly ravished by March Hare (OMFG yum!!), I sought out everything else I could find with apricots. This? Hardly smells like apricots at all. Instead it smells like Hi-C fruit punch at first. Then the florals come out, and the whole thing drifts away into a light, gently sweet fruity floral. Pleasant enough, but I've come to realize that I really prefer bold, in-your-face scents. I got this imp in trade and it's labeled "Old Yerevan" -- I don't know when they dropped the Old from the original Wanderlust scents, so possibly this imp has been around a while and lost some of its former glory.

The cider, pear, and brown sugar notes jump out at me right away, but alas, they don't last long. Pretty quickly this turns into the smell of gardening in the fall on an Indian summer day: dry leaves, dust everywhere after a long dry summer, fall blooms, fragrant herbs, and maybe a little smoke on the air. There's also a slightly harsh spiciness to it. The spices in Snake Charmer were quite harsh to my nose, too, so maybe they'll both mellow with age. Come to think of it, I've never gotten a really spicey blend direct from the lab before this order, only through trades. Anyway, this is a *very* seasonal blend, which is always what I'm hoping for with the Moons!

Wow, I have been having a run of good BPAL luck recently! This is beautiful: rich, sticky honey with something fruity in the background, and just enough musk and resin to ground it. The ylang-ylang is overwhelming at first, but tames down quickly. This is exactly the sort of smell I was hoping for from Honey Moon or Hetairae, but didn't get. And I do think this is an appropriate smell for an Excolo blend, because to me honey is a very, very primal scent, one of those ancient cultural touchstones from deep in the Indo-European past.

I'm having the proverbial "I want to eat my wrist!" reaction. After the success of this and Siren, I will be seeking out the rest of the blends that have apricot notes. I can't believe how true this scent is: the sweet, the tangy, the fuzz... the apricot is all here! Plus I'm getting notes of honey, vanilla, and brandy, even though the ingredient list just says apricot and clove. I've only had it on for about an hour, so too early to tell how long it lasts, but I tell you, I will be heartbroken if it fades quickly, because this just jumped right into my top ten, or even five.

When I first apply it, I get a whole herd of separate notes: powdery vanilla, smoky incense, boozy plum, a hint of coconut, and some sharp medicinal note that's almost like rubbing alcohol. They eventually meld into a dry, spicy vanilla that's not sweet at all. There's always a sharp, nose-tickly element to it -- I'll have to try this again after my cold goes away, because pretty much everything is making me sneeze right now. ETA: well, my cold is gone, and the lingering spices in this blend are still quite sharp and harsh, kind of the way that smoke is harsh. They just don't feel as rounded as the spices in Scherezade, for example. I'm not sure whether to experiment with layering, or sell this to someone who will love this wholeheartedly.

The first fruit notes I can pick out are plum & melon (like others have said, to me it smelled much more honeydew than canteloupe), then I get some green apple. At first this stuff is strong, strong, strong! Then it goes through sort of an overripe, ferment-y stage, and ends up smelling like a fruity white wine, something you would drink with dessert. Two hours after application, it seems to be fading pretty fast. It's a really interesting scent, but I don't know how frequently I'll reach for it. ETA: This scent gets a second wind! It was getting so faded that I stopped sniffing it, and then a couple hours later I noticed a warm, spicy berry scent on my wrists. There's no throw in this stage -- I had to bury my nose to smell it, but it sure smells nice!

I have this to say to Numb: Violets, yay! Detergent, boo! My Fruit Moon order was delayed, so I've had plenty of time to read the reviews and worry before this arrived. I actually quite enjoy those violet pastille candies, so I was hoping for that. While that note is definitely there, it gets jostled out of the way by the ozone/detergent/soap smell, which I just can't get into. Memo to self: no more buying LEs that don't have scent notes in the description. ETA: This does, however, make a fabulous linen spray. In fact, I don't even spray, just get a teeny dab on my finger and run it very lightly over the sheets before I make the bed. The detergent smell that goes all hot and prickly on my skin stays nice and cold on the sheets! Cool, clean, yet luxurious.

This starts out on me as harsh, raw ginger. As the other notes bloom, it becomes disconcertingly masculine for a while -- I think maybe it smells like some version of Old Spice deodorant that my husband sometimes uses. If I wait out this phase, I really like the rest of the drydown: warm dry gingersnap spices, with just a teeny hint of something vanilla-like to sweeten it (but not *nearly* as sweet and rich as many of BPAL's sweet scents).

Huh, this didn't work nearly as well on me as I had hoped. It starts out smelling like honey, sweat, and burning plastic. Then there's a phase of earthy honey, earthy in pretty much a good way, but then it gets sweaty and stale again, with a faint touch of department store perfume. Away with you, Hetairae!

I'm on the fence about this one. At first there's a burst of minty suntan lotion, which is odd. Then over the course of an hour, it settles into the holiday cookie smell of the lab description, which I like quite a bit. But always, lurking in the background, there's a hint of the weird vegetable/celery note that was such a problem for me in Midway. It's not nearly as strong here -- I don't notice it unless I stick my nose up to my wrist. But I know it's there. I wish I knew which ingredient was causing it, because some of the lab's sugary scents are *amazing* on me (like Milk Moon), but some have this weirdness.

I'm not sure why I like this one. The red musk has an overly earthy funk: it smells like the head of someone who hasn't washed their hair in a *long* time, and they're sitting in the hot sun and that oily human scent is just *radiating*.... And the spices are spicy, but with a bitter edge, like tasting them raw.... Yet there's something so compelling about this blend. When I put it on I just keep sniffing it. Definitely not every-day wear, but it fascinates me.

Smoke, smoke, smoke! Smoky incense, burning candles, and an earthy, musky rose perfume are what I get from this. It is *so* evocative -- this is exactly what a gypsy fortune-teller's tent would smell like. The throw is amazing on me, which is good, because at least for the first hour or two, there's a harsh edge to the smell that makes sticking my nose in it a bit unpleasant.

Gorgeous. The initial smell is like beach grass -- almost like sweet grass, even, which is one of my favorite smells in the world and which I don't think is in any BPAL blends. It smells like the dry dune forests along Lake Michigan, late in summer: warm, sweet, herbal, with a little skin and sweat thrown in. The skin musk definitely gets stronger later, but never too strong. One of the Moons that best captures its intended season, for me.

For the first hour this was glorious -- the ultimate feminine perfume. Sweet, rich, rosy, not too simple but not too complicated... but then the rose went a little sour and soapy. Not nearly as bad as some rose blends I've tried, but it just didn't stay true the way that Blood Rose or Queen of Clubs does. About an hour after that, the soap mostly goes away and there's just a lingering floral honey smell. I'll need to experiment with this one. I want all my lingerie to smell like this.

The essence of the most debauched hunger encapsulated into a perfume. Desire beyond love, anguish beyond sanity. Nutmeg, sassafras, black poppy and myrrh. I see I am not the only person who thought "Opium den!" right away. This is *such* an evocative smell -- heavy, smoky, medicinal, spicy. I was prepared to love it (though I can't imagine wearing it very often), but then the smell actually started nauseating me. I washed it off with soap, but I could still smell it. I washed it off with rubbing alcohol, but could still smell it. And actually, the post-alcohol smell is really quite nice -- it's got the good aspects of the scent without the sickening ones. I would love an elegant vintage wool coat that smelled like this version of the scent. Hmm, I may play around with sachets....

I have Essay 28's imp of this, and I can definitely see the "diaper" comparison. There's like, an earthy funk, and a strong, grating floral over it, like an air freshener in a diaper pail. If I hadn't read all these other reviews, I would have suspected this imp of having gone stale (it is pretty old and battered looking), because there's an off note to it, just like this endless bottle of massage oil that I used to have that finally went bad after 5 or 6 years. But I see lots of people mentioning weird notes with this blend, so maybe that's just how it is. I washed it off with soap, and when I smelled that spot seven hours later there was a beautiful spicy, smoky orange smell. If only the perfume smelled like that at first! But there are too many other great blends out there to keep one that you have to wash off and then wait half a day.

Jasmine -- why did it have to be jasmine? (Note to self: in future assume that unspecified "night-blooming flowers" means jasmine.) It the beginning, the harsh "perfume" thing that jasmine does on me dukes it out with the beautiful violet. About half an hour later, they both recede, leaving a very powdery floral incense with hints of grape Kool-aid. Not by any means a winner, but I had to try it -- some of my very favorite BPAL blends are rich, over-the-top scents that I would never have guessed would work.

When I first put this on, there was a sweet floral scent that reminded me of some of the notes in Pink Moon. But then almost immediately, it turned into horrible astringent soap. Mentally, I was writing this blend off, but then I went to a meeting and didn't get to smell my wrist for an hour and half -- when I smelled it again, it had gone back to a pleasant, sweet light floral that reminds me of Beltane in its dry-down phase. I'm not sure whether I need to keep this or not.

Hmm, I'll definitely have to try this one again when my allergies aren't acting up. From start to finish, this was pure strawberry daquiri on me -- sweet, boozy, fruity in a way that's sort of real but sort of fake, but not necessarily an unpleasant fake. I would never have guessed there was amber or musk. I liked it fairly well, but I think I might get a lot more out of it on a second try. Edit: Wow, what a difference a day (and a functioning nose) make! The musk & amber were all over the place this time. The rich base notes say "elegant" and the slightly-fake strawberry says "sleazy" -- this blend is like a Hollywood starlet with big fake boobs, wearing a designer evening gown. It's a fun combination.

Midnight starts out as an intense, somewhat sweet blend of unfamiliar flowers -- the only note I was able to pick out was probably the night-blooming phlox, since there's something in here a little reminiscent of Pink Moon. Half an hour later, it smells like a completely different perfume -- incense-y and masculine, and then it keeps getting drier and more astringent and soapier until it smells like sandalwood soap. Bizarre. Oh well.

I don't have much luck with any sort of evergreens -- the cypress and juniper make this smell like cat litter. Mostly like fresh litter just poured out of the box, but there are occasional whiffs of cat pee. Over an hour or two, it slowly morphs to soapy rose. But never any chamomile, and that's the one note that I was hoping for!

Ah, *now* I see why people are always comparing lotus to bubblegum! I do see the resemblence, but on me, this is like the most sexy and sophisticated bubblegum ever. It has sort of incense and caramel edges to it. I love it! (And many thanks to Nineveh for the frimp!)

Damn you, jasmine. For the first half hour, the primary note for me was the harsh "cologne" smell I get from jasmine (which smells nothing like the actual flower). Hiding behind that was a light floral & pollen scent. Once the jasmine mostly burned off, there was a nice phase with warm thyme and a light honey scent, but the whole show was over in about two hours. I was really hoping for a richer, heavier, more edible scent.