Lucchesa

Whoa, that’s sheep milk all righty! Thankfully I quite enjoy that note (Candles Moon is one of my favorite blends). The coconut emerges as it dries, and the cinnamon remains in the background. It is there, but gently. This is omyum delicious and cozy. No throw on me but it lasts really well. So good!

Decant of indeterminate age. This is my first açaí blend, and I will avoid this note in the future. It turns into an artificial berry on my skin and completely dominated the scent. No cardamom, no sandalwood, no smoky vanilla — no Snake Oil even. And unlike every other SO variant I have tried, it is gone after two hours. Not for me.

Himalia is chock full of notes of win for me. It's like getting off the hay ride at the harvest festival and wandering over to the food booths where they're caramelizing nuts and honey in a huge iron pan over an open fire in the chunky autumn sunlight. If you're fearful of vetiver, this is a friendly one, adding depth, throw and wear length without dumping everything into a barbecue pit. I'm so glad I was able to swap for this one.

Lonely and Disregarded wet on me smells just like Al-Azif -- it may be the myrrh that they share. As it dries down I can prise out the notes more, and the resemblance to Al-Azif recedes. The cinnamon is gentle, just a hint, no red hots here, but mostly sandalwood and gentle myrrh with some of the warm, sweet earthiness of fig. It makes me wish I had gotten the hang of BPAL updates just a few months earlier!!!

Ooh, a new GC fave as I learn to love vetiver! Wet, this is all spicy, dark, complex vetiver overlaying a rich, dark myrrh. And it's gorgeous. And it's long lasting. Maybe too heavy for work, but sexy and languid -- I can see wearing this for an intimate dinner out or to curl up on a winter day with a Victorian novel. It reminds me a little of Haunted, another of my favorites, another dark languid scent, and again I am astounded by the fact that Beth can work so much magic with just two notes.

I was lucky enough to get an imp of this, and (sadly, as I'll never find it again) I love it! It's the longest lasting BPAL lavender blend I've encountered -- usually I get a big salvo of lavender and then it fades rapidly, but here it is sticking around. I think that's because it's backed by the frankincense -- I'll need to explore lavender-frankincense combinations. Or maybe it's the thistle, in which case I'm probably SOL. Anyway, it opens with lovely, realistic lavender, herbal, a little sharp, and then gradually the gardenia (one of the few florals that's reliably good on me) begins to emerge, soft with a little sweetness from the pear, although the resins help keep the sweetness in check. The wear length isn't great on me, but that's my skin for you.

I wanted to try Seance to find out what hazel smells like. I didn't really get an answer to that, as I couldn't make it out around the roses -- what smelled to me like dried pink rose petals, and rosewood. If you like gentle rose, Seance is stunning -- it went nowhere near the sour rose territory my skin is prone to -- but it also evaporated in little more than an hour. I'm delighted I got to try it and will pass it along.

Rakshasa is mostly bright rose and sandalwood on me; the patch stays in the background. Like Teamama and gloame, I get a citrusy feel when it's wet, and this is one of those roses that keeps threatening to turn sour on me but doesn't quite. It's funny, gloame would wear this to the botanical gardens; I just came home from the botanical gardens. And Trader Joe's. So I guess I'd wear this to the botanical gardens and Trader Joe's. It's a very pleasant daytime scent but doesn't knock my socks off.

I have what must now be a decade-old decant of Death of Autumn. It's very evocative of late autumn. At first I get amber and dead leaves, which is a note that always has a hint of high-end perfume to me. Then there's a little smokiness from the vetiver and saffron, and I can definitely smell the chrysanthemum. Chysanthemums smell kind of weird, a little musty, and that blends with the other notes and with a touch of spice which must be the clove. Foul weather, crunchy leaves, dark forests going dormant for the winter -- I don't love it as much as I love Samhain, but it is very nice.

Death Adder is one of my favorite Snake Pit scents (with Western Diamondback). My decant is from the original series, so I think all the confrontational aspects of the vetiver have been aged out of it, and it's just gorgeous, smooth, dark, sexy goodness. And it swaggers in arm and arm with coconut, syrupy opoponax, and vanilla. And Snake Oil, of course. Wait, isn't there vanilla in Snake Oil? So, redundant vanilla. Love it. After about three hours, the vetiver is largely gone, and I'm left with faintly dark, faintly coconutty Snake Oil. Which, being Snake Oil, lasts and lasts. I wish the vetiver lasted longer; I may have to buy a brand new Death Adder and see how it wears.

The ladies of the grindhouse can do no wrong in my estimation, at least the ones I have tried, but Inez may be my favorite. Wet she is all amber, warm, buttery amber, and I can smell the vanilla as well, then the other notes come into play, but they are all the best-behaved, mellowest, sexiest incarnations of those notes. Cedar and red sandalwood can go to pencil shavings on me, but here they gorgeously ground the scent. There is just a hint of spicy carnation floating around the amber-musk-woods. No honey or sugar here, so she's not trying too hard, just natural sweetness, letting the beauty of these notes shine through, and I love it. No throw and average wear length on me, but rich and warm -- work-appropriate but secretly a sexpot. So the question remains: why don't I have a big bottle of this one yet? I keep getting distracted by the shiny and new...

It is fascinating to read all these reviews and realize that no two of us are having the same scent experience. On me, Blodughadda is all patchouli. OK, not totally patchouli; there is amber and dusty saffron, but it's mainly patch. And is oud wood the same as oudh or something woodier? Dry woods, no fig, no clove, very little sweetness. It's pretty badass and matches the artwork well, and I get a little throw (rare for me) for the first hour or so. It takes a full two hours for the patchouli to mellow down enough for the fig to emerge; by then it's a skin scent, but it's a gorgeous one. Still no clove. I don't usually amp patchouli; maybe it's something specific about red patchouli. Anyway, this one is super interesting, but I'm not sure I need to go through this much in-your-face patchouli to get to a fig I adore when I have a bottle of Aeronwen on hand...

The Gaoler's Daughter may be a Yule, but it feels more like a Luper. It's one of those gorgeous soft creamy honeyed florals Beth does so exquisitely. I'm not big on straight florals, but add in the amber, honey, vanilla and cream, and I'm all over it. Gardenia is one of the most reliable florals on me, and I love neroli, so this could hardly go wrong. Wet I get the strongest dose of neroli, a bright, tart counterbalance to the sweeter, creamier notes. I love this, just want to keep sniffing my arm. I canned peaches in orange juice once, many years ago, and am reminded of that. Over the next couple of hours, both the citrus and the peach notes fade down, leaving the creamy honeyed gardenia and vanilla amber. It's lovely all the way through.

I had an imp of Thanatopsis early in my BPAL journey but misplaced it, and I recently acquired a replacement. It's wonderful! Golden Priapus is one of my favorite GCs, and Thanatopsis is definitely a close relation, with musk instead of the vanilla. So it goes on all sharp juniper and pine, but the sharp note is quick to fade. What remains is a soul-filling sweet musky pine that stays true for a long time. I can see using this around the holidays if you like to smell like evergreen boughs. I'll wear it any time I don't want to clash with the great outdoors. I think this would be equally good on a guy - maybe even better!

Titania is pretty as all get-out. It's a sweet, fruity floral - the pale fruits give it a more ethereal feel, so it's not the full-bodied, dripping down your face sweetness of a ripe orange-colored peach but the more restrained elegance of white peach, and the same with the grape. Sweet pea is the flower I can make out most. If you fear rose, I'm not getting a lot of it here. I honestly couldn't tell you what snapdragon smells like. This is a lovely spring-summer blend, but as I have more lovely spring-summer blends than I have spring-summer here in the Pacific Northwest and Titania doesn't last on me like it seems to on some people, it will go to swaps.

I was super excited to try this for the name/concept alone. I was surprised to find it such an innocent-seeming scent, though! I didn't really get any lemon balm at all, and I *still* can't tell you what carrot seed smells like. I was hoping they and the benzoin and ambergris would dirty things up a bit. On me, I get mainly sweet white florals with a little ambergris, but the ambergris that smells like perfume, not the ambergris that smells like kinky sex on the beach. It definitely gets more interesting and complex on drydown, but it's still too floral to win my heart.

I wonder how literal Beth got with this one. I know she usually uses a great deal of poetic license, but there is definitely rose in here, and I'm thinking lily too, and an aquatic note -- anguish moist and fever dew? Could the green note everyone mentions be a sedge of some sort? I was hoping a scent "rife with mystery and foreboding" would be a little darker, not a pale aquatic floral with the rose a little sharp, but it works with the poem. Perfectly, in fact. A previous reviewer thought it was close to the Waterhouse, but I think it captures the feel of the Dicksee study:

Some Heraldry, when it first hits my skin, is high-end soap for at least ten minutes. I'm not sure which component is behaving that way -- incense ash? That's one I'm not familiar with. Eventually, though, it settles down into a lovely unisex blend. I wouldn't call it masculine on me; it's right in the middle of the continuum and I think would be equally nice on a man or a woman. I agree with Joyleaf_ that it's difficult to prise apart the notes. Both the tobacco and the leather are mellow; this is not a scent with a lot of sharp edges. It does wear close to the skin, but I think it will age nicely.

I don't love the way Somnus smells on me (jasmine?), which means that it's not my first choice for a sleep blend, as there are plenty of BPAL options that smell marvelous. For my sole test, I did get to sleep quickly, but I had intense dreams. I am going to try sprout's sock trick, and if that's not effective, this one goes to swaps.

I'm a huge fan of Wrath, which I feel perfectly captures the feeling of righteous anger. Rage, on my skin at least, doesn't seem to match its name nearly as well. It's very fruity, a little floral. Dragon's blood always has the potential to turn cloying on my skin. I love the combination of citrus and rose geranium, but neither note is very distinct here. And it's very faint after 90 minutes. I'm very glad I got to try this one, but I don't think I will wear it.

An ancient formula that inspires unrepentant decadence, lechery and debauch. Y'all are pretty convinced that there's gardenia in here. Gardenia is one white floral that is consistently good on me. This... isn't. So, if there is gardenia in here, there's also jasmine, or tuberose or ylang-ylang or some flower that reads as cloying on my skin. There may be some brown sugar or molasses and spices from a souk somewhere wafting in on the breeze. After an hour, this was finally a scent I was comfortable wearing, a kind of sweet vanilla floral with a touch of spice. I'm delighted I got to try it for the name alone, but I'm going to pass this along to someone whose skin chemistry will love it wet and dry.

I bought a partial of Palmyra in hopes that it would be a spicy leather incense scent and was disappointed. I couldn't make out any cinnamon at all, and the leather, frank and myrrh were all faint on me. I retested today before putting it on my swaplist and decided to think of it as an amber-sandalwood blend instead. I slathered, and I got good throw (for me at least) for a couple hours, and it lasted the rest of the day as a skin scent. Palmyra is much closer to Jacob's Ladder on me than to any of my leather blends -- kind of a masculine counterpart to Jacob's Ladder, which is quite feminine on my skin. By focusing on what I was getting (amber and sandalwood against a quiet background of resins, vanilla and leather) instead of what I wasn't getting (cinnamon), I appreciated the scent a lot more. In fact, I enjoyed the heck out of it today. It's off the chopping block.

I love Blood and Judgement. I'm not getting any of the sharpness some reviewers mention; I think it may simply have aged away. There is a lot of almond at first (which I love), but it is also the first note to fade away, leaving a snuggly blend of well-worn leathers, tonka and amber. I don't get any throw from this, though it lasts a while as a skin scent. Super comforting.

Have you tried RPG Neutral? You could layer it with a favorite honey scent.

In the imp, this was all about the jasmine. I gritted my teeth and applied it anyway and was pleasantly surprised because on my skin, New Orleans is really interesting. I get more of the honeysuckle keeping the jasmine in line, and I get a fair amount of spice reminiscent of the Lab's bay rum note. I don't actually make out any lemon, but it may also be reining in the jasmine. I quite like this one and will definitely keep the imp.