Lucchesa

Great list, @a_bear! I would add:

Haunted — black musk and amber 

Penitence — frank and myrrh

Sloth — vetiver and myrrh

 Dirty — clean linen

 Squirting Cucumber

 Anne Bonny - Frank, sandalwood and patch (unless sandalwood and patch count as wood)

On 11/3/2022 at 5:08 AM, Missanneshirleyofgg said:

Is there a winter solstice type card swap? 

Yes, I’ll put it up soon!

Illuminati Cotillion starts out as pale incense, dry rose petals, and gentle wood, the latter two combining to give a sensation of rosewood.  Unfortunately, I never make out any pipe tobacco, which is a scent that is always very fugitive on me.  (I would LOVE to find a good pipe tobacco scent that lasted more than 20 minutes on my skin!)  The rose goes a little sour on me, as rose + incense often does, but if the combination works for you, this is a lovely rose/wood incense, perfect for world domination. 

I was thinking Pomegranate might be a good layering scent.  I was wrong.  It is a fully rounded perfume all on its own.  It starts with dark pomegranate, which never goes too sweet on me here, and elegant amber. This feels like a classic, old-fashioned perfume that just happens to have a pomegranate component.  It's rich and sophisticated with good throw, though the wear life is maybe a little shy of average.  I have a burgundy velvet dress that this is going to be smashing with. 

@Greenwoodtree I’ve never participated in 12 Nights of Xmas — I just don’t have the budget or the bandwidth that time of year. 

But I *love* the Yule cat idea, @Missanneshirleyofgg
 

Dark Alice and skyelyric have committed to hosting tacky ornament, which is kind of a Yule swap. And I’ll put up a winter card swap next month.  

I was hoping DL, Bourbon, and Bitter Almond would be 2020’s DL & Scotch, my favorite DL ever. Instead, it didn’t wow me then, and wearing it again today, I was still underwhelmed. Dead leaves and almond at first, more a sweet than a bitter almond. Then I get a kind of sweet husky note that must be the bourbon, but it’s kind of non-specific. The dead leaves fade, the almond fades, the bourbon fades. It’s pleasant enough but just didn’t stick around for long on me, and that’s a 2-year-old decant. 

Hurray for the tack hostesses!

I looked through Dead Swaps. The last three years it’s gone up Nov. 1, 2&3. So right at the end of 13 Nights and in the middle of wolfenoot and Krampus gift gathering. It’s a smallish swap, tack, snack, wearable and book or pastime.  @skyelyric and @Dark Alice hosted last year — are you folks up for it this year??

19 hours ago, twilighteyes said:

Who is doing the tacky ornament swap?  I was looking at Yule Cat and Krampus stuff on this etsy shop and OMG DO THEY HAVE THE TACKIEST ORNAMENTS.

When does it go up usually? I have a rough November but could probably do it if no one else steps up. 

This was kindly gifted to me — ordinarily I don’t do tuberose. On me, it’s bright tangy red currant and lots of tuberose with hardly any dead leaves. In fact this is the least dead leafy DL I have ever worn, possibly because my skin’s tendency to amp tuberose is drowning out any leaves. It’s surprisingly pleasant given how little I like tuberose. And it doesn’t stick around terribly long. 

If the apple note here were stronger, it would smell almost identical to the Dawn green apple antibacterial dishwashing liquid my husband bought a four-pack of on Amazon. And I don't use antibacterial soap.  As the apple note is very faint, this is more like laundry detergent. 

Ooky is mostly a somewhat pumpkin-flavored marzipan on me, with a trace of pumpkin spice.  It's very sweet, from the buttercream, and the lemon zest gives it a lightness and brightness.  It's a total foodie, but not a heavy one.  Marzipan is one of my very favorite foodie notes, so I love this.  The cinnamon is perfectly well behaved and in the background; I do not get a skin reaction from this.  It's the kind of thing I reach for when I'm having a crappy day and just need something to cheer me up. 

I completely agree with z_z on this one. Smoky, somnolent, inky, autumnal. I don’t know about poppy leaves — I get the lab’s beautiful opium note, and this pairs gorgeously with Event Horizon.  Elegant, mysterious, femme f$@king fatale. 

Spring starts out as a whole faceful of spring flowers. It’s hard to pick out individual notes but it seems like there are bulb flowers like narcissi and jonquils, big pink smells like peony, big purple smells like lilac and wisteria — all the flowers, all at the same time. It takes about an hour on me for the incense notes to emerge. Not nag champa, which is awful on me. It’s almost an opium sort of incense, but it’s light enough that it doesn’t drown out the flowers. This scent is very not me, and very not September, and yet I really enjoyed testing it. It’s undeniably beautiful, and if you love florals and lightweight incense, you should have this one. 

The clover note in this trio is beautiful and reminiscent of Passionate Shepherd, but in combination with the fern and wild lettuce it didn’t work on me. One or both is too high pitched here. I mostly got this out of curiosity about those two notes — I’ll avoid them in future.

I rarely wear florals, but for a couple weeks each year when the lilacs are blooming, I want to go around in a cloud of lilac. I’ve run out of Eusapia, and I’m hoarding my last quarter bottle of Cave of Treasures, so this is a very welcome addition to my Lilac stash. Lilac and more lilac. I’m sure the vanilla and amber are supporting this somehow, but the overall impression is exactly that cloud of lilac I’m after, with great throw. Pure springtime loveliness. 

I didn’t even get a decant of this one because the pineapple just sounded weird. But last year in the crone swap I received a whole bottle and learned what I was missing. These notes harmonize surprisingly well with a lovely balance between juicy and bright and dry and earthy. It’s mostly dead leaves and the sweet, tart pineapple with patchouli grounding; the vetiver doesn’t get much play. And wear length was only 3-4 hours on my (dry middle aged) skin, so, reapply! It pairs beautifully with Autumn Leaves & Haitian Patchouli hair gloss. 

Up front, Totality is a whole lot of fig.  As it snuggles in on my skin, I start to get the notes I'm really here for -- the patch, the tobacco, the pitch, but they are all cozied up with the fig, and it's not nearly as gnarly a patch as I expected from "abyss of black patchouli."  Gentle frank and amber are there but lightly, air notes balancing out the earth notes.  This is exactly what I wanted -- the earthy sweetness of fig and tobacco, the grounding of patch, something dark and something golden.  Perfect as the days get shorter.  I can tell this one is going to be a favorite. 

My Il Matto is not nearly as dangerous as starbrow's.  (@starbrow, I think we are scent cousins -- I always find your reviews so informative & fun to read and often your reactions are similar to mine).  In fact, my Il Matto is the ashtanga yoga teacher at the studio that shut down during the pandemic, half my age and adorably intense.  My Il Matto swears by selenite to balance your chakras. He's been smudging his apartment with sage though he worries that it's appropriation.  He smells like incense, sandalwood and palo santo and copal.  He would never defile his body by smoking tobacco but he might purify himself with it (and worry that it was appropriation). The palo santo and copal are the strongest notes on me, so this has a new age shop feel to it.  It's quite nice even if it has less soot and tobacco than I'd like.

Ice Age Baton smells exactly like white chocolate on me.  Which is not like real chocolate at all.  More like a weird simulacrum of chocolate, wrapped in plastic.  The eventual drydown is quite pretty, vanilla and amber and pale tobacco, and it lasts a good long time. 

Lilitu on me is dominated by sweet oud (nothing scary here) and lavender. Typically, the lavender starts out strong, and it even lasts somewhat longer than it tends to on my skin. This is very reminiscent of a beautiful dark lavender oud bath oil I used to have from the Christmas Carol release.  Once the lavender fades about an hour in, I’m left with a perfumy oud. There’s a floral, presumably orchid, but I honestly can’t identify any of the other notes: no leather, no tobacco, no carnation, no tea. It’s one of the better ouds I’ve ever tried, but I do wish some of my favorite notes were able to be appreciated here. 

Forever With Unopened Eye starts out with a sharp, somewhat high-pitched evergreen.  I usually wear cypress well, so I'm wondering if the hemlock might be at fault.  It passes through a stage where it's mostly soil, with evergreen note still quite apparent.  Ultimately I do get some incense but no lavender, which I had stopped expecting, frankly, because lavender tends to start off strong on me and get devoured by my skin within 15 or 20 minutes.  This just isn't working well with my skin chemistry. 

Cerberus'ish is very foodie.  I know, right?  Lots and lots of buttercream and honey up front, with just a hint of chai spice.  Once it dries down, I get roasted (but not scorched) marshmallow in addition to the buttercream, but I'm quite jealous of the people who got the smoke and the stick. 

Little Atalanta is almost entirely dead leaves on me (which I love) which eventually mellow down enough to perceive a softer, sweeter leather note. I was afraid pleather would smell like plastic, but it does not. 

Despite the bitter almond in the description, Eclipse is a very sweet almond scent which opens with the almond-cherry-marzipan confusion common to almond notes. Once it settles down it's sweet vanilla almond -- not as sweet as Hellcat -- which is very pleasant though unremarkable. There might be a trace of frankincense grounding things (this is a very old imp). I don't get any cinnamon, and while I know I killed a heliotrope once, I can't remember what it smelled like.  I quite like Eclipse, but not passionately.  Try if you love almond scents like Hecate.