But an EdC can actually get too crisp, at least for my taste. I know that my blend is still in the raw, undiluted and immature, but there are some too sharp edges in it that galls me, The citruses and the herbs gang up on blue lotus and neroli and beat them senseless;-) Or more correctly, scentless since they kind of disappear under all these shiny brights. I need something to smooth out these sharp creases, but heck if I know what to use. It would be so easy to add a dash of vanilla or a pinch of tonka bean, but I have been down that road one time to many. I have dipped scent strips into both dark molass and honey tinctures, but they didn’t do it for me at all. Well, time will tell, I have until Monday to have figured it out = oodles of time – neh?

Apart from natural botanical perfumery and quilting, I have a secret life; I am….tadaaaa – married to the Pres of a bikers club!! Yup, it’s true, the love of my life now has his very own bikers club and he will even have an article about him and the club in one of the next issues of the MC Nytt Magazine . http://mcnytt.se/start/
Top that up with him hosting a debeavering party for 5-6 other M1800 in our garage coming Saturday and you can die a happy woman ROFLMFAO. Anyone who can guess what debeavering is and send me a private email Sunday latest, will win a small sample of the EdC or the perfume meant for all of us who rides “bitches” – Leather’n Lace

Type with two RR snuggled up closer than close and see how much you manage to spell right. Thank heaven for spell checks is all I say about that. But since we kicked them (the dogs) of the bedroom at night times (this bed isn’t big enough for the four of us LOL), the girls seem to have developed a strong need to be close the me whenever is possible.

Due to personal”problems” I haven’t been here nor have I been there - in my perfumed studio . But last week I finally got around to clean and reorganize the perfume side of the studio, zapped used pipettes in the zippy zapper to cleanse them and put all bottles where they are supposed to be. Then I brought out the first round of materials for the top part of a classic type of EdC. Of course one needs citruses – a lot of them, but then I had in mind to create some sheer, watery notes for the rest of the formula. Not watery as aquatic (heaven forbid, but calone spring to mind when I think aqua and I’m not particularly fond of that synthetic), but sheer as in chiffon fabric.

My thought was to use a Blue Lotus absolute (in a heavy diluted form) in the heart, along with some Neroli. I knew I probably would want one or two more material as well, but sniffing round my perfume organ left a bit stumped – the pink and white Lotus which I’ve been thinking of, had no sense of liquidity at all, but more a flowering darkness and both are quite heavy.

Now I’m not a girl who’s shy around dark and heavy stuff. Heck, in my perfumaholic days the heavier the better was my motto while browsing small, real real perfume stores. That is not department stores or anything like the heavily streamlined beauty shops of today where all merchandise is the same no matter if you are in Luleå or Ystad. And where new “perfumes” seem to be launched every single month and to me many of them smell pretty much the same and that is….. horrible!

No the perfume stores I remember was smallish, a bit on the dark side and absolutely crammed with high end cosmetics and perfumes, with an additional bijouterie and hair ornaments tucked in between. Ahhh – remember that scent? Powder, lipstick and stuff like Opium, Private Collection and Chanel no5?? When J over at OTA talked about vintage Youth Dew the other day, I just fell into the well of old fragrant memories… and my soul started to yearn to smell scents like Charlie, Halston and Cinnabar - perfumes I used to love with a passion at one time or the other and haven’t smelled in ages.

What Cinnabar has to do with a classic EdC is beyond me, but the brain seem to work in mysterious ways LOL and there have been one or two tadaaaaahs moments happening that might work with that crisp, sheer formula. Of to the perfumed study and beyond!!

PS if you ever was in any doubt what goes on in the darker side of the natural-botanical perfumery world, go here read the post of April 29 and make sure to read through each and everyone of the comments. Surely makes the hair in the nape of your neck to stand up and make you fell happy that you managed to extract yourself from the talons of evil before it was too late. And remember - I did write a word of warning back in January 12th

Love is to drive cross town way out into the commercial harbour to deliver a motorcycle part on behalf of your dearly beloved husband, to a guy who uses a water jet kind of machine to cut out parts in solid aluminium.

Love is also to drive your wife all the way there and back home (over 700km) to buy her new dream “state of art sewing machine” at a “one in a lifetime” price.

Love is to let your furry gals have a “date” with their boyfriend (even though you are exhausted beyond description from that above mentioned trip) because they are of the same breed and they all love each other. And it warms your heart to see them play, to see Arwen who normally is such a sissy around other dogs (especially males), had the guts to put Lucas in his place .

The photo is of Fiona and Lukas before Arwen entered the scene three years ago.

song.

The guitar solo is enough to send you over the deep “good as a f-k” bend. Ouppssss ;-O
But this one isn’t so bad either.

There is a storm moving across the country and in our part of the country, it’s a class 1 warning, it rains on and of on top of that I went to IKEA in hope to be almost alone, but HAaaa – that was a mistake. I got there just 40min after opening hours and already there were a lot of people – stupid people. I think I have said this before, but either IKEA clientèle belongs to the lower half of the intelligence ladder, or they just leave their brains in the car in the parking lot. But I managed to find what I wanted and at the checkout I was happily surprised – the have installed a self scanning service, so you don’t have to stand in these long, boring queues. So in 5 minutes flat I had scanned and paid for my purchases and was out of there.

I got some new line of office organizers covered in brown of dark purple fabric – got two magazine files and one rectangular flat box in which I will store threads. And I got a small bookcase that will go on top of a cabinet I have in my studio, to keep my ever growing stash of fabrics. At least I thought I bought magazine files, turned out to be more boxy boxes when I opened them. Well, I use them anyway and store my embellishment stuff and sewing notions in them.

Talking of my stash, yesterday the last of my fabric buys in a long time arrived form the USA and happily, one more package that sailed through customs and made the purchase a true bargain. I realized that my fabric buying is very spontaneous, that I mostly don’t buy fabrics for a special project, but just cause I fancy them or in some cases, fall heavily in love with them. Tehe, it’s like going in on group buys of perfumery material, at times I have no clue about how they smell and I just feel a prickle of excitement reading their names and scent descriptions. So some of these new fabrics really tickled my fanny and I can’t wait to get started on a new project; a cover for the headboard of our bed with three Mariner’s Compasses and several borders, all in a blue-white color scheme.

Right now I have the Elton John collection blasting away on the stereo and heck he was/is good!! Can’t help myself but say as Chief Inspector Clouseau, swinging on the parallel bars:” it’s all coming back to me now”. ROFLMAO. Confession time; I also just love the “old” Fleetwood Mac and more than anything; Steve Nicks. There, you have it – I’m just like the headmistress in School of Rock and have all her solo albums. The DH finds this it somewhat amusing, but who is he to talk? I know his darkest music secrets…I just say AHA!!

The DH wanted me to dig out some photos of our pool. Going through the pool file I came across one that made my shed an emotional tear or two, my cutest water animal: John – the kid that was born to swim, taken in the summer of 2002. I know, I said I wouldn’t post photos of my kids, but I hope they forgive me - it was after all, six years ago coming summer;-) Isn’t he just so adorable your heart flips over??

Holy cow, the wind blows in heavy gusts and just a minute it grabbed the roof so the house shook. Thankfully the DH nailed down the roof the first fall after we bought the house and if he’s anything, that is extremely careful, so when he does something you know it will hold like forever.

Now I will go back to something that you don’t normally do in January – finish that Christmas table runner that never was finished in time for Christmas, since I run out of fabric for the binding. Just let me tell you that it takes an enormous willpower to do so, but if it’s one thing I can’t abide – it’s so called UFOs. So grab the glue and starch and on to the ironing table.

Yet another accident by the Hostess of the Mostest: ”Students already pre-enrolled for the Spring class come from as far-flung hometowns as Taiwan and Italy.” I was aware that quite a few Americans have problems with geography outside the USA, but could never in my wildest imagination believe that it was this bad. I mean - when did Italy and Taiwan got to be reduced to mere hometowns? Oh my goddess, has Mr Bush been up to something that the rest of us are unaware of??? Here I was ignorant as ever, under the assumption that they are real countries. ROFLMFAO. I know, I know – I am being verrrrahhh naughty, just couldn’t help myself:-D

And if anyone asks me, 1400USD for a on line course held by someone who isn’t a qualified, certified teacher is a total rip off. I just say as I have many times before – if you want a real education in the art of perfumery – save up your money and go to Grasse.

I’m not only a former perfumaholic, but a readaholic as well – that is I love to read books, always has always will. From the day I learned how to, I’ve ploughed through thousands and thousands of books, did weekly visits to the library in Umeå
(as well as the school ones where I did a lot of volunteer work), dragging home bags after bags and drowned myself in the adventures of Sister Cherry Ames as well as the naughty Bill (don’t remember who wrote them), Biggles and the Mumin trolls. At the age of 12 I had gone through every readable in the childrens department and found myself to eagerly wait for my 13th birthday cause then I was finally allowed to get into the adult department all by myself. Happy day, is all I can say:-)

Sorry for rambling, so let’s get back to the real topic – quantum physics in a ordinary day of my life; so these last years I have been enjoying novels that related to quantum physics one way or the other and the theory of several parallel universes
Novels like the Phillip Pullmans trilogy “His Dark Materials”, Timeline by Michael Crichton and Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson are among them and not only time bending, but mind bending as well and make you want to believe that there might be some truth in these theories. You know how you are dead certain that you did put something in a certain place and then – boom, when you look for it, it’s no longer there. And today made me believe in these parallel universe happenings more than ever; bored mindless over taking one of the four routes we walk me and my dogs, I heated up the little Jazz (Fit for the rest of the world) , stuffed the dogs in the boot and of we went to a (for us) new place to walk
There was some other dogs in the parking lot when we arrived, so I attached the leashes to be safe, but when confirmed that they was boys - of leash, trying to keep the leashes, my shoulder bag, the car keys and myself in order. My lofty girls found these naked (furless except on head and paws, but not Chinese crested) boys soooooo uninteresting, Arwen even told one of them of (she is not that kind of girl LOL), so of we walked on leash as required. In the middle of the walk Fiona decided that the machine hammers she heard from the building sites in the distance was gunshots and now was high time to get back to the safety of the car. Let’s say we didn’t see eye to an eye on that matter and as much as I tried to do my very best Cesar Milan impersonation, every second ten meters she did a test again. Needless to say, we wasn’t exactly friends when we got back to the car after taking the route I decided on, I was hot, flustered and in a veraahhh bad mood. Muttering under my breath, I started to search for the car key – in the trouser pocket I always put it, in all the coat pockets, in the bag, in the other trouser pockets, over and over again but no friggin car key anywhere. Standing at large, muddy and icy parking lot with the deepest potholes anyone ever seen, panting dogs wondering what that stupid woman was up to not opening the back door, panic was on the rise. Of course I could call the DH and ask him to come and pick us up and go home getting the spare key – but you can imagine what he would have to say about that?? Going through all pockets and the bag again, I decided to backtrack to where we had started of, in case I accidently had dropped it when I put the girls on leash. The dogs looked like I lost my mind, but must have thought AHA – we do one more round!! Let’s strain on our leashes again, to get mom yet a new real good workout I got so fed up with them, feeling the sweet of panic trickling down my spine, that I looped their leashes over a pole so I could go and scan the grounds in peace. And then at that very moment – the car key materialised in the left front trouser pocket:-O??? I can swear on my kids (and dogs) heads that it wasn’t there 5 minutes earlier and now, there it was!!! How?? Why?? If anyone knows, feel free to tell me. All I know right now is that it’s time to start on dinner – homemade pizza – yummmmm

But I never got around to post this until later. Later LOL.

Right now the so called primary election is held in New Hampshire where the outcome is very significant for Hillary Clinton. Hearing on the radio that at this moment Barack Obama is in the lead and this made me start think about good or even great leadership, how to behave and not to when you are “the leader of the pack”. How hard I might try, I simply can’t imagine Hillary stamping her little well shoed foot, calling Obama a thief for stealing her voters. At least not in public LOL

As I told before, I’m employed at one of Sweden’s largest commercial banks with over 10,000 employees worldwide. Our CEO for the last couple of years is a woman bit younger than myself and I know her from back in the “good ol’ days” in the TCM trading room. This girl was a bitch with a capital B back then, one who never hesitated to shout and rant at the poor back-office girls for mistakes she made herself. But as the leader of all 10,000 of us, that isn’t a trait she could very well keep up, at least not in public. Honestly, can you see any leader of any sort of company, organisation or department getting any credibility behaving like a hysterical screaming witch?? No matter if you run a 20 person group, a 1000 people IT department or “the largest of anything” on Yahoo, you simply don’t point fingers or name names in public, if you want to maintain any dignity or get any cred at all.

Therefore I’m struck by the behaviour and outbursts that continues to sprout out of FLA; the same harking like uncounted times before, the same accusations, the same harassment – only different targets. And this is from someone who calls herself a hostess “of a friendly group” and a president of a certain (oh how I hate to take this word in my mouth) guild.

Chew on this citation from a recent blog post: “learning that some people are just desperate enough to steal what they cannot build themselves. On a related note: two months after I announced “Slow Scent” as the Guild slogan (6/1), a group member registered slowscent.com and slowscent.net (8/1), and heck, she’s now in bed with the group list thief. It’s so true - there’s no honor among…. XX (the name of that girl show up when you move your mouse over it) and her kind” Unquote .

While you contemplate the accusations of stealing and register websites, please take in consideration that this is a person who has grabbed the following Yahoo group names, just to make sure nobody else in the field could use them: Artisan_Perfumery, BotanicalPerfumery, BotanicalPerfume, Artisan_Perfumes, Botanical_Perfumes, Artisanal_Perfume, How many websites she might have parked for the same reason, is beyond my need of knowledge.

I’m currently reading “Quilty as charged” by Spike Gillespie
with great relish and inspiration and once again I’m struck by the fact that quilting and botanical perfumery shares more traits than one could ever imagine. Not only do you need a lot of the same skills to pull them of, but the world of Quilters and Natural Perfumers seem to be full of people who like me have the built in need to create new things, to strive for perfection and when we are smart enough, enjoy and take pride in the outcome. But both worlds are also full of divas, hpw-to-do-it-right self appointed “police” and those who try to tell you that you are an amateur, not artistic enough, just to be able to put you down. Well darlinkhhhssss - the word “artisanal” can be read two ways and one of them is: art-is-anal as a friend so aptly pointed out the other day. Thank heavens I didn’t had anything in my mouth except for my teeth and my tongue LOL, or I would have spit all over the keyboard reading it. Stay warm, stay tuned and as the great Swedish Professor Stefan Einhorn says – it feel good to be nice

Sorry all, but I think I will keel over and die from mirth:
“character of the group as a pubic, progressive, educational resource.”….. Heck I get away with these mistakes as being a Swede and English is not my first language, but Ack och ve, but when you are soooooo large (hahahaaaaa) and soooo famous, you ought to be able to spell better. Or at least use a spell check.

A pubic resource????? Gawd I don’t want to know what that might be;-)

It’s the “Annandag Jul” here (= actualy it’s the 3rd day of Christmas) and a wee bit hung over I do want to sew a bit, but have no driving force to do so. My perfumery study looks like the city dump after having been used for “Christmas cleaning getting unsightly stuff out of the way”, so I can’t even get in there to start packing up the stuff. Noooo, I’m not quitting botanical perfumery, but we will have this change-of-rooms turn around during the week to come and my studio will move upstairs in that process. But for that to happen I need to pack everything away to clear the area for the DH to tear down old wallpaper (ugly as sin) and put up glass fibre wall covering and paint the whole thing in a colour of my and Sam’s choice.

So I fire up the unruly laptop (which has to go back into the repair shop due to umpteenth of BSD and other weird disturbances) to read up on boards and blogs, watch some quilt shows that a generous friend have burned on a DVD for me, browse through quilting magazines and found this

The hints showed in these videos are probably old news to most seasoned quilters, but to me there was a clear dawning moment watching the one on foolproof double bindings…so that’s how it’s done!!! Talk about a serious AHAaaaaaa moment LOL. And the “how to press, not ironing” getting the seams to interlock and/or just behave…. And here my fingers start to itch to venture downstairs and to bring out the sewing machine and try my newfound knowledge the hard way. I had planned for a Christmasy table runner to be finished in time for the Christmas Eve traditional lunch, but that never happened. I confess that it feels a bit stale to continue on a Christmas project today, but hey – Christmas lasts until Easter as the old Swedish Christmas song goes LOL

Have a continuous wonderful Holiday!!