Gaidig

Note: Mid cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: Faint and hard to capture. Sweet, mossy...

On me: Licorice! OMG LICORICE!

1 hour+ later: The licorice has gone away, and it is now a mild, vaguely spicy, unitentifiable second skin scent. I like it, but I'm afraid to put much on and have to wait out the initial stage.

Note: Mid cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: Pleasantly citrus and... lily? Gardenia? Very fresh. Somewhat as I would imagine the edge of the sea in Narnia with Reepicheep sailing away. "Where the waves grow sweet...There is utter east."

On me: Wet, I get a lemony fresh smell, but that goes away fairly quickly. On drydown, I have a fresh, gentle floral aquatic.

1 hour+ later: Stays fairly true to original drydown. It is rather lovely, not an annoying floral, but it is floral none the less. I don't know how much I will wear it.

Note: Mid cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: It smells like salt-water soaked teak, the smell of a sailing ship!

On me: Knocked back a little -- mellowed. More feminine. Less patchouli. I like this red patchouli much better than the patchouli in Lust. I still get a whiff of the salt spray. It doesn't seem to have changed much at all, in general.

1 hour+ later: Same as when I first put it on. I like this very much, especially since I enjoy sailing.

[Edit] Anne Bonny has proven to me that it is entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. After liking it so much I applied more so that it wouldn't be just on my wrists, and OMG strong & headachey! It took a while to calm down, but by the end of the night it was back to happy pirateishness.

Note: Mid cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: This smells like French double milled soap! The cherry is coming out a lot in it. I am getting the metallic, too. Like wet, fruity, finely milled soap on the side of a steel wash tub, in the cold mountain air, where you poar fresh water over your head from a pitcher.

On me: Cherry is moving back on drydown. Yay! (Why does my right wrist smell totally different from my left? It's cherry +5.)

1 hour+ later: Clean, metalic. I think that clean sharpness is the ozone. The fruit is gone, except maybe as the faintest hint of sweetness. This is a very clean scent on me. Not what I was expecting, but I think it will be good for work wear. Also, it's very light.

Note: Early in the cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: This smells rather perfumey to me. And red. Like Red Door? Or is that just a totally dissociated old scent memory? (Was there red musk in the perfume I used to wear?)

On me: The "perfuminess" is starting to mellow. I'm not sure what it is I don't like. Is it the patchouli? Is it the ylang ylang? I'm not sure I've ever smelled red musk or myrrh.

1 hour+ later: This has mellowed down to a light incensy scent, like old books in a sacred library, or the library at Hogwarts, yes, I think this is a Hermione Granger scent -- at least on me. It isn't the lust I was looking for, though. *tear*

I decided to try O first out of my first BPAL order. Here goes:

Note: Early in the cycle. Imp fresh from the Lab.

In the bottle: This is much sweeter than I expected! Something sharp... but not in a bad way, more bright. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be sweet, looking at the description "Amber and honey with a touch of vanilla." The honey is shouting out here, with a sort of Sweet-Tart-ish tang.

On me: A little mellower, less sweet. The amber is coming out more. The vanilla is just giving it an extra zing. I'm not sure I put enough on to really get a wet stage and a drydown stage. My skin kind of soaked it up before I had a chance to order my thoughts.

1 hour+ later: It still has throw, despite the fact that I only applied a little. I was smelling it a tiny bit as I went about my tasks around the house. It isn't what I expected from other reviews. On me now, it is like warm, aching desire. I'm glad it has morphed into this. Here I go to put a little more on.

No, it's not, as a Russian student.

 

it's a long ooo. OOO-tre-nya-ya. It's like...a the ~ over the n in Spanish, or gn in Italian. Utro means morning in Russian. The Yoo sound, like in our word Ukraine is a different letter in Russian (although in Russian, the Ukraine is spellt with a plain oo.)

 

For Vechernyaya, the first syllable is closer to Vyaych. Like, yay/hey. Vecher is Evening.

 

And Zorya is Zohrya, which means star.

 

In Russian there're 10 vowels. ah/ya, eh/yeh, ui/eee, oh/yoh, and oo/yoo.

The ny is just what I was thinking but couldn't explain! I know that the idea of combining the n and the y was not coming across. I should have thought of gn, being a French speaker. Thanks for the vowel info! It's so hard with place names because you never know how people will transliterate or if they will make up their own totally different word.

As for Vechernyaya and Utrennyaya...I'm probably completely wrong, but I've been pronouncing them:

 

Vetch (like kvetch) - urn - yaya and You - tren - yaya

 

I never would have thought of Vetch...The "yaya" parts are throwing me off. Reminds me of that Ya-ya Sisterhood book.

I was thinking nyaya was a sound more like the naya in Stolichnaya, the vodka. So the n would kind of combine with the y.

I was pronounching it in my head like: Vetch-er-naya and Ooot-ren-naya. Though I see how the U is more likely to be like the U in Ukraine.

Anyone authoritative on the subject?

Back to the topic of silly nicknames for scents...I was having a terrible time remembering the name of "Kajuraho". I kept thinking of it as "that-Indian-temple-with-all-the-erotic-carvings-starts-with-K", until it popped into my head to start pronouncing it "'cause you're a ho". Does anyone know what the actual pronunciation is?

Actually, you're pretty close with "'cause you're a ho." I can't quite explain with English how to pronounce the first bit with the j -- it's like the word "cage" in French. Maybe this will help: Ka-jur-AH-ho

jur as in jury