New Sandalwood Blends

I was making Knitter's Hand Balm for Knit Purl and a couple of mail order customers last week.
During the process, there is a time when you just have to wait.

In my amazing workspace, waiting is lovely, as I am surrounded by all the most amazing scents and sights, recently organized by the lovely Julia DaRosa. (thank you!)
I found myself thinking about my beloved Sandalwood oils and although they are rare, precious, expensive, exotic and so on, I just decided that it was silly to be hoarding it all like some Grandma with her perfectly embroidered pillowcases in a dresser rather than on her bed.

What am I going to do, carry my sandalwood with me to my grave?
No. (at least not all of it)

I decided then and there to make something with sandalwood. The good stuff. The vintage Mysore Sandalwood.

If you don't know what that means, picture the thing that you covet and cannot afford. That's what it's like.

A wholesale perfumer once said to me when my children were little "ah, just buy a kilo of this Sandalwood and put it away for them and it will pay for them to go to college."

I didn't get a kilo, but I bought as much as I could afford at the time to add to my stash.

I made 5 new blends that day. 4 of them with sandalwood.
One of them was perfect on the first try.
That rarely happens.
They normally need tweaking and finessing over weeks and months.

One of them we love!
So rich and luscious, exotic and layered.

I let go of "saving for a rainy day" and with freedom and feelings of generosity and abundance created "Lakshmi".

The main notes:
Sandalwood offers an exotic, deep, sweet, slightly smoky wood scent.
Rose is beautiful, loving and abundant.
Pink Lotus is narcotic and seductive while remaining a sacred flower in many cultures.

Together, it's all that, with the alchemy of magic, mixing, time and intention making it even more than the sum of it's parts.
It's not quite on the shelves yet as we are still musing over the name, but come by and try some on. The tester will be waiting for you!

Sunday Perfumery

When I make perfume I like to listen to Joanna Newsom. She's odd & quirky and her singing makes me get into a zone that is perfect for listening to the essence of smell. That probably doesn't make sense but it works for me.
However, Joanna Newsom is not the most appropriate retail background music and we are retail even if I am geeking out in the back room.

Today, Sunday, I went in with the intention of working on a blend that I have been thinking about and tinkering with for a good long time, something along the lines of two years, in fits and starts.
In all that time, it has been with me, all of the scents that I dream up live with me. I carry them around like so many small children.
Perhaps that's why Joanna Newsom is so right for the work. She is the perfect serenade for so many small aromatic and at times slightly vexing children.

Today the store's computer crashed and the computer guy (my guy) was fixing that up and Sadie was covering my shift so that I could try to get this blend made up and even with all of the chaos I just gathered my ingredients and started blending. And figuring.
As I always say: "it's mostly math". Don't fool yourself. The magic of perfumery is totally there, but if you don't keep very diligent track of every tiny detail, it's a one time thing.
If you want to recreate something, even if it is just to change it, you have to mark down the measurements and the source of each oil and so on and so forth.
As I was dropping aromatics into tiny beakers, there was a moment in which I was questioning Sadie's choice of music and a split second later I was reminded as I often am of the perfect match of all the lovely people who work and help at Flora and how amazing it all is and how it always works out. Sadie had chosen for this Sunday at high noon none other than Joanna Newsome. Perfect.

The perfume, you ask? Yes, of course.
The blend is in two at this point or it is two separate scents. I am not quite sure.
They are similar and have a kindred nature, but they are each their own distinct selves.

I was going for a masculine scent. One that is warm and rich, that will give comfort and be sexy all at the same time.
I love the femmy scents of rose and jasmine but I also love the earthy and deep vetivert and oak moss.

One of the images for the scent is of campfires, open sky and dusk falling.

I was imagining what an iconic masculine scent would be and I thought of my dad.
The scents that I remember most about him are cigarettes, sawdust and coffee.
My dad was a man's man, whatever that means and the scent I am going for evokes a past that is reminiscent of an ideal.
This is the scent of the Marlboro Man or Don Draper or the dream of being a little more manly than you really are, or of bringing out something hidden in you.
Cicero wrote "A man's chief quality is courage."

The scent has dignity and strength and it smells great on women as well.

One of the scents is a bit sweeter than the other and we are tentatively calling it "bandito nights"
The second is darker and moodier and tentatively named "Middle Earth"

My brother and sister-in-law came into the store later in the day and my sis-in-law asked about the scent on the counter. I let her smell it and she swooned. She had my brother smell it and he seemed surprised by how much he liked it.
She wanted to buy some for him. It was just the in-store tester that we were playing with and trying to set a name to. But what could I say? I poured half of it into a bottle for her to take home.
Even though I didn't give them the story behind the scent, it seems fitting that my brother is gifted in a magical way with a scent inspired, at least in part, by our dad.

California Poppy

Peacock Feather Necklace

We love this necklace!
It's a purple agate with sterling rivets to attach the sterling silver chain. The peacock feather is affixed to more rivets securing it to the agate.
This is made here in Portland, Oregon by the lovely artists at small things designs newest venture Stone & Honey. We always have a few of the honeycomb necklaces available as well. We currently have this large purple agate necklace and a smaller green agate with a different feather and a small honey colored one with honeycomb on it.
Sadie (pictured) has been eyeing this one and finally tried it on. Doesn't it look great with her green tank?
Each piece is completely unique, hand made and one of a kind.

beeswax floating candles

Tiny floating candles made from pure oregon beeswax. They burn for about twenty minutes and smell like heaven.
Available in pairs, packaged in a glassine envelope for $1.50 or 5 in a cellophane (biodegradable) bag for $3.

Happy May Day - May Wine

I have often been called the Queen of Cups and yet I'm more recently thinking of myself as the Queen of Spring Tonics.
Spring tonics make my heart sing.
I like them as simple as can be.

May Wine
-how to make-
On or near May Day (May 1) harvest tops (all that is above ground) of Sweet Woodruff Gallium odorata.
Buy a bottle of white wine.
Open the wine, sort the less than lovely parts of the Sweet Woodruff from the lovely and put the lovely parts into the wine.
Let sit for 30 minutes or so, then pour little sips and toast to May, the May Queen and springtime. Make another toast for yourself and for what you wish for in the coming spring season of new growth and wonder.Sweet Woodruff is a modest May Queen. Perhaps a May Princess.
Realted closely to Cleavers Gallium aparine.

The remainder of the May Wine can be stored in the refrigerator and sipped as your heart desires. The tiny bit you have sipped can be replaced by more white wine. It can be topped off as often as you like, depending on how much herb you have in the bottle. It's a bit like making tea in that the first steeping is fragrant and delicate and as the tea steeps longer it becomes full and imparts the deeper notes of a tea, sometimes bringing out the bitter notes. If you add more water to the same tea, it can be lovely still, but different.
This May Wine is like that.
The first day, right after I made it, the taste was delicate and flowery. Now, 3 days later the taste is richer, more full and has a distinct vanilla aroma.
I will sip it strong like it is until the weeks end and then top it with more wine and put it in the fridge. Of course I will offer some up to the May Queen.
Do what you like and trust your instincts.

There are a bit more complicated recipes for May Wine, but I like simplicity.
Try multiple recipes if you like, and let me know what you think.

This is a favorite spring tonic for making the heart joyful.
What could be better.
Enjoy!

Finally!

The perfume box set is launched

Fall

What does Fall mean to you?
How does it make you feel?





Fall is many things, obvious things like carving pumpkins, leaves falling from trees, a certain cast of light that comes and goes quickly. Fall is about baking and putting up medicine and food for the winter. Fall is about friends and potlucks and saying goodbye to a good many things. Saying goodbye to all the windows open and to a low heating bill, it's about saying goodbye to the sunshine, about mourning the loss of long days.

Not to sound morose, but Fall is about decay. About death and rot and letting it all go back to the great beyond.

Doesn't it feel good to, after obsessing about the perfect tomatoes and basil all spring and summer, all the tending and the care, to just rip them out and toss them into the compost? Making way for the cold dark time? To prepare for quiet, invisible renewal? I love it. I love the power of the dark and the quiet. Don't get me wrong, I am so in love with spring it's not even funny, but fall offers the same kind of intensity that spring brings. Everything happens so quickly. In summer and winter you get there and then it just is. It's cold and dark or it's hot with long days. Spring and Fall you never know what you're gonna get.

The edginess of a season, that's what gets me going.

We went on a hike this weekend. A walk really. Two of us had a cold, so we meandered and took lots of photos.

Mostly on the hike (walk) I saw death everywhere. Salmon spawning, the last gasp of their lives to return home, many of them literally dead in the water.
The beauty of the decomposition, which I did not photograph, was a marvel; really amazing and really awful at the same time.
I stood with my daughter in silence as we witnessed the end of their lives.
We moved on and were both taken by the blackberries.

Our northwest abundance of blackberries is so taken for granted. These are amazing plants.

I realized that they were flowering and had fresh, new, green berries.

It seemed so sad, I wanted to say you waited too long, you don't have enough time, you should've started earlier. But I knew that this was just such a deep hopefulness that there was enough time for a second harvest. Only the blackberry is so good as to want to give so much all over again.

Really that's not true, but it's how I felt at the time.

I saw it again and again, the hanging on and hoping for something that would never come. Maybe it's just too human of me to be thinking about outcome all the time. Perhaps it's just the moving along, being in the now that the plants and animals were experiencing.

Perhaps I, too can be in the now and know that even if I'll never bring fill-in-the-blank to fruition doesn't mean I shouldn't move along toward being in the now with whatever it is that may or may not come together.

What do you want to bring to fruition in this darkening time of year?
What happens if it doesn't become what you thought it would?
Does it still have value, the reaching towards, the hopefulness?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

I'm off to carve pumpkins.
xo

Empowering Potion

Everyone loves the Empowering Potion.
It's been by far the most popular of our sprays but sadly, we've been sold out of it for months!
It's tricky to make a sun infused, sun inspired Potion in Oregon.
Each of the potions have their very own needs and desires and the Empowering Potion needs and desires Sun and lots of it.
7 plus days of as full sun as possible.
It's a hard feat for most of the Portland year.
I also need to have the space set up just so and have all the ingredients on hand before brewing.
For everyone who has been coming in each week asking about the potion and the girls at the store asking me when I'll be making some more already?
Well, it's finally happened.
Summer Solstice was a clear and auspicious day to brew and now it's already bright and hot at 9am, with tomorrow expecting to reach near 100 degrees, this will be a powerful batch.
The last time everything aligned for this potion was in August of 07.
It looks like the next many days will continue to be perfect weather, but I'm glad it's already made, because I'll be in herb camp all next week and any potions being made will be with the children.
xo