kebechet

Seriously, can this month be weirder? Like I said in another thread, even the moon itself is giving me grief. Three things are going to be tackled here: Snow Moon online [both at BPAL and BPTP] and the brick and mortar shenanigans. Snow Moon: BPAL Snow Moon is going to go live on the site tomorrow night at midnight, along with the extra bits of anniversary stuff. Because of the weirdness of the full moon this month, Snow Moon will stay live until just after midnight on the 17th. Let’s say, for the record, at about 12.01am PST, November 17th. We will keep the Halloweeners up until the 17th, too, for simplicity’s sake. The anniversary stuff will be live until December 1st, with the exception of any GE scents that are introduced at that time. Those will, clearly, stay live indefinitely, barring component issues, yadda yadda. You know the drill. I am a MASTER of stating the obvious! =D Go me! Snow Moon: BPTP The Snow Moon tee will go live tonight, assuming that I can get the page to upload correctly. Ftp is not being my friend at the moment. The Snow Moon tee will come down on November 17th. Within a week’s time, the next phase of tees and hoodies will be available. In December, BPTP will begin selling three types of Black Phoenix incense. I sure as hell hope you guys like the incense: I had a massive spilling incident during an over-enthusiastic grind-and-dip session, and now my favorite jeans reek of Dragon’s Blood. Permanently. Heh! The coloring on them now looks a bit like a Rorschach Blot Test. Look at my pants and tell me what /you/ see. Oh, I’m a laff-riot. Beaver Moon: Brick & Mortar Shenanigans Because of the moon’s wackiness this month, we will be open on both Tuesday and Wednesday, from 12pm-7pm. The address is [dramatic pause and drumroll, please]: 5523 Satsuma Ave North Hollywood, CA 91601 ::|:| mapquest |:|:: ::|:| yahoo maps |:|:: It may be a little hard to find. Satsuma looks like an alley, but isn’t. The building itself is a warehouse covered in gloriously strange pale blue aluminum siding. Sexy. We’re on the right side of the building. Mr. Thrifty [our mini-skeleton] will be in the window, and there’s a very obviously half-finished budding new herb garden in the front. If it isn’t totally obvious from my description so far, this is still a work in progress. By Snow Moon the place should be closer to my ideal, but as far as this week goes… well, please be patient. We’re doing our best to juggle this in with the usual late-year madness, and decorating is going to have to be on the back-burner til later in the year! While you’re in the area, you may want to hit up three other shops on our street. There are two wonderful architectural salvage places and a great stained glass shop. Tell them the new freaks down the road sent you. 8) The primary problem that we may have this week [and forever afterwards] is parking. There are four spaces in front of BPAL. =P Ok, now onto the Plan: Unfortunately, our wretched credit card system is still unprepared for retail in-store sales. At the moment, the damned thing won’t even let me log in. Anyway, all in-house sales on Tuesday and Wednesday will have to be either cash, or through PayPal. We will have a terminal set up there for people who want to use the latter. The next bit is almost verbatim from the last Will Call [reiterating a little bit of what I just said, yes, but I’m getting too loopy to edit]: If you would like to place an order for pick-up on Beaver, please do the following: Email us at willcall@blackphoenixalchemylab.com with your order. Payment may be remitted by PayPal ahead of time to willcall@blackphoenixalchemylab.com, or you can pay at Pick Up with cash or using one of our computers as a PayPal terminal. When making your payment, please omit shipping charges. You may purchase any current catalogue oils, as long as we have them in stock, for Will Call pick up on that day with the exception of the following: All Yule LE’s Bess Cobra Lily Ode On Melancholy Yew-Trees Both Blood Moon and Beaver Moon will be available, as we were unable to open our doors on the last Lunacy. Please remit all PayPal pre-payments by 11pm PST on Monday so that we can get your orders together. Some t-shirt overstock from BPTP will also be on hand, but those will have to be in-store purchases, since I'm not positive which sizes and styles will be there. We will do our best to accommodate all orders of 5mls and imps, but sales will be based on availability. Imp Packs will be available, but we would prefer that, if you are going to purchase imps, you pre-order them so we can expedite the process. In all cases, its probably best to pre-order anyway, so we can make sure we have the oils allotted, or will be able to tell you beforehand if we’re out of stock. You get the gist. At this time, we cannot accept checks, money orders, or credit card payments for WC. I am going to try and have a set of sniffers for some of the Yule scents there as a preview, but none will be ready to go out the door. We’re also hoping to have a few sample sticks from the first batch of incense, but I can’t make any promises. Once things calm down a little, we’ll be able to open up to the public a few days a week. For now, though, walk-in is limited to Lunacy Days until further notice. Teddy, Fritz, Forest and I will be rotating working the front. I really, truly hope to see you guys this week! Please direct all questions to answers@blackphoenixalchemylab.com. Sara will do her best to help you out with anything that comes up. I’m prolly forgetting something. Gah! <-- For reasons that will become clear eventually, Happy Sumo Guy has been replaced by Happy Bishop Guy

Things to do on the Day of the Dead! The Olvera Street Procession The Folk Tree 22nd Annual Day of the Dead Altars and Ephemera Exhibition SelfHelp Graphics' 32nd Annual Day of the Dead Celebration Not A Cornfield's Ofrenda

May all your houses remain tp-free. =)

Medea, because that's who I am this year. =) Picking up a Cabbage Patch Doll to butcher tomorrow morning. I'd love to see photos of everyone's outfit next week.

Guess who's back? Antique Lace! Back in her old home in the Bewitching Brews neighborhood.

Things that suck: The Lab is moving. Thanks to the madcap, wacky antics of our local phone company, we won't have phone service until next Friday, and no DSL until the Friday after that. We will be shipping out of our houses [oy vey] and answering emails remotely, and due to the disruptive nature of moving, we'll be shut down on packing for about 72 hours, starting tomorrow. We will do our very best to get the process over with as quickly as possible, but I want people to be aware of the situation nonetheless. Things that don't suck: The Lab is moving. More space means more efficiency, and that means we might be able to speed things up a little bit more. In addition, we've finally got a wee space to dedicate to will-call and the occasional walk-in. In other words, the Lab is finally going to be opening its doors for at least a few hours a week. We still don't have the funds or the manpower to open up to the public full-time, but its a start. When will we be ready? We're aiming for the next full moon, but that's barring incident... ... and there have been heaps of Incidents this month. We'll do our best, and, of course, I'll keep everyone posted. I'm sorry if I've been a little out of touch lately. This moving thing has me twitching and foaming at the mouth.

BPAL’s Big Pink Beaver is up way freakin’ early because my beau’s birthday is on the 17th and damn it, we’re going to Disneyland for two days. From the Shiny & New page: Updated just shy of Blood Moon, 2005. I'm opening this update with a hyooge, squishy public display of affection for my consort, the Great Love of My Life©... my Ghoulie Goalie, Tedwin. Its the big lug's birthday on October 17th. Not only is he my Prince Charming and Knight In Shining PVC, he's also the man in charge of the Black Phoenix Trading Post. Please feel free to send him all the dirty limericks, suggestive photos and crass come-on's that you want in his PM or email box. He's a Libra; he'll love it. We will do our best to see to it that all orders placed before November 15, 2005 get to you in time for Christmas. No offense intended to anyone that celebrates any other winter holiday; I refer to Christmas simply because it’s the primary gift-mania holiday of the season, and a good roadside marker for us, so to speak. Anyway, we will be working a hell of a lot of overtime to see to it that we get everything out as quickly as possible, but look at it this way… if you’re buying someone BPAL for the holidays, at least you’re getting part of your shopping done early. [snort!] Upwards and onwards… Much of the information pertaining to the current LE’s can be found on the Limited Edition page, so I won’t repeat it here. Bess and Ode On Melancholy are new to Bewitching Brews, Baudelaire makes another appearance in Love Potions with Sed Non Satiata, and the Garden has two new sprouts: Cobra Lily and Yew-Trees. Black Phoenix Trading Post has a heap of new items coming soon. Beaver Moon is now live there, too, and later in the week you’ll see the first of their hoodies and the Humane Society fundraiser tee. The first of the lockets will be live later in the year; YES! – the molds are now being cast. Around the same time, the first of the statues should be ready to go live, and thanks to the BPAL Doodle Goddess, more tee designs will go live soon. For the record, BPTP now ships internationally. Please refer to Tedwin’s FAQ for more information. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab will be celebrating its third burf’day on November 18. I have something suitably twisted planned, so keep your eyes peeled. Edited to add: You got it: that's the new Loony Tee at Black Phoenix Trading Post. Smushy chunks of love to Tedwin and Macha!

Have you been naughty or nice? Let the Yule Imps at the Lab decide! Coming next week on BPTP: the Imps Invade the North Pole. [inspiration for the Invasion: the BPAL forum’s bastion of Hello Kitty Justice, Sarah!] The Beaver Moon tees will go up as planned, but there will be a week's delay on the hoodie / tee Humane Society incept date. We want to make sure you have the best garment possible, and we were a bit disappointed with the last hoodie test. It'll go live as soon as we get everything perfected.

Thanks to all of you guys we've raised $1758 so far for Katrina Relief. =) Please keep your eyes peeled for a BPAL tee and hoodie benefiting the Humane Society, artwork by our Macha, on the BPTP site during Teddy's Beaver update!

In response to a heap of questions regarding the Yule update, yes, it will be going up this week... either on Big Brown Beaver Day, or just a day or so beforehand. It will include the Yule LE's, as well as a few GC scents.

As of the next update [date undetermined] we will be rotating the planetary blends from the discontinued Celestials series, starting with Sol. How we're going to do this... is still in the works... more info will be made avail once some decisions are made.

Blood Moon is live, a wee bit early. Logistics demanded it. We're doing our best to get the BPTP update and TAL site ready, and putting up Blood Moon a little bit ahead of schedule helps me out today. =/

I know that this seems like a heavily moderated forum to some people. Most forums that I belong to, or have participated in previously, were really quite haphazard: there were infinite repeat threads, trolls were left to run amok, huge images clogged my screen, and irrelevancies abounded. In many cases, it was almost impossible to find the information I went to the forum to find in the first place. On a band’s forum that I frequent, HUGE images are quoted and requoted again and again, dozens of times, in a thread, and not only is it a bandwidth hog, but it is profoundly annoying to read. I posted a question about something the bassist had on his instrument at a show, and even though three people answered it, I saw the same question posted five times after mine. I know this is somewhat nitpicky, but in the long run it ruined my experience there, and as much as I love the band, I won’t be back. All the rules here on the forum were instituted with the comfort, happiness, security and user-friendliness of the participants in mind. If you’re looking for a review, you find it. If you need to know where to get decanting equipment, you’ve got the info. If you want to share the joy of your latest shopping spree, you know people will be able to jump around with you. If there’s someone harassing you, bailing on trades, or exploding your browser with a high-res, two-billion pixel wide image of Stan Laurel eating a banana, you know it won’t be there to make you nuts in a little while. All of this is possible because of the thoughtfulness and consideration of the forum members, and also thanks to the hard work, conscientiousness and care of the mods here. They work their asses off to make sure that your experience here is as happy, stress-free and fun as possible. If something occurs that you are uncomfortable with, be it with another member or a mod, please talk it out with the moderators and administrators, without expletives, insults, or any tone that you wouldn’t use with your own mother. We all, as humans, don’t always see eye to eye, but we’re mature adults and can discus things in a friendly, open, and civilized fashion. This should be a haven, and a home – for all of us – and the mods, and I, have feelings, too. Please don’t bite the mods. This is a labor of love, and we all deserve the same respect you’d want to be shown, yerself. =) So, let’s group hug so I can get on with working.

… will be available on Harvest Moon at BPAL w/c, $15 ea, on a first-come-first served basis. If you are placing an order ahead of time for pick up, you may request an imp. They were distilled in-house by our own Fritz, who is an alchemical genius. They are of the highest quality, and will be at their best if let alone in a cool, dry, dark area for 6-12 months before use. I have a personal stash of 1oz of this patchouli from last year’s batch, and it is orgasm-inducing. More will be made available over time as it is distilled.

Anthony and Sara were in a car accident last night: 3rd car in a very serious 5-car pile-up on the freeway. Both of them are mostly ok, but will be at home recouperating for the next few days. What does this mean for you? Customer service is on hiatus for a day or so, and C&S will go out a bit slower. Thank you for your patience.

If you would like to place an order for pick-up on Harvest Moon, please do the following: Email us at willcall@blackphoenixalchemylab.com with your order. Payment may be remitted by PayPal ahead of time to willcall@blackphoenixalchemylab.com, or you can pay at Pick Up with cash or using one of our computers as a PayPal terminal. When making your payment, please omit shipping charges. You may purchase any current catalogue oils for Will Call pick up on that day with the exception of the following: All Halloween LE’s All ‘A Demon In My View’ LE’s All Pumpkin Patch oils Baneberry Black Hellebore The Hamptons Jazz Funeral Lurid Shadow Witch Orchid Twenty-One We will do our best to accommodate all orders of 5mls and imps, but sales will be based on availability. Imp Packs will be available, but we would prefer that, if you are going to purchase imps, you pre-order them so we can expedite the process. In all cases, its probably best to pre-order anyway, so we can make sure we have the oils allotted, or will be able to tell you beforehand if we’re out of stock. You get the gist. At this time, we cannot accept checks, money orders, or credit card payments for WC. Will call will be open from 12pm-4pm on Sunday, September 18th. Please direct all questions to answers@blackphoenixalchemylab.com. The Will Call address is: 5042 Vineland Ave North Hollywood, CA 91601 … and unfortunately, since we cannot handle direct sales at this time outside of the Lunacy Days, we cannot accommodate anyone coming by at any other time of the month. There’s really no easy way to put it… but we don’t have the staff at this time, and as much as we love hanging out, there’s too much work to be done during the week. We hope to be able to expand the Will Call option in the future, but there’s no way its going to happen until at least the middle of 2006. Thanks for understanding! <-- Happy Sumo Wrestler Guy

Thanks for posting that, my love. =) The power is back, but we've sent everyone home. Life here will resume its course, as usual, tomorrow. A little Yahoo snippit on the incident. The creepy military aircraft flying over the Lab does add a bit to the ambience.

Never worry about emailing us. That's what Sara's there for. =) We're always more than happy to rectify our mistakes, and we can't solve the problem if we don't know that it has occured.

Black Broom will no longer carry as wide a selection of BPAL oils as previously. They will continue to carry their original selection of 93-some oils and a small selection of Twilight Alchemy Lab oils, but they will no longer host LE sales events on the full moon (including sales of the Lunacy oils.) We plan to provide customers with a will-call service on Lunacy days to fill this need. We'll post details just as soon as we've figured out the best way to handle it.

Just to clarify... A Demon In My View is considered a LE collection, and is imp-free. No samples will be manufactured for that series. <--- pointless pharoah smiley inserted to soften the blow

Oh my God, I can't format all that text again in forum'ese right now. Too eyeball-bleary! Hit the Shiny & New page, guys! =)

She lives! This update might as well be dubbed “Beth Flips Out on the Incense and Leather Update”. Consider yourself warned. New in the LE department… LIMITED EDITION BEATRICE -- "Am I awake? Have I my senses?" said he to himself. "What is this being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?" A scent inspired by Beatrice, Rappaccini’s delicate, beautiful, innocent and deadly daughter. A fragile, winsome, poisonous blend of rare, precious and graceful flowers, rich blossoms and spicy perfumes that passes heavily, as a broken heart, across the borders of Time. Carnivàle Revisited, and the whole Carnaval Noir series, will be available until September 1, 2005. Beatrice, also, will be available until September 1st, and when she passes, our new scent category will come to life in the general catalogue: Rappaccini's Garden. There will be a little bit of scent shuffling as we move the black and blood flowers and some of the other flora-themed scents into their new home, and several new scents will be introduced on that day, including Baneberry and Black Hellebore. Also new in the current update: BEWITCHING BREWS DEE -- John Dee: master of science, alchemy and magic, Hermetic philosopher in the schools of Rosicrucian Christian Mysticism and Platonic-Pythagorean doctrine, and Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, advisor, cryptologist and spy. With Edward Kelly, he created a field of study and work in Angelic Evocation, and isolated the Angelic language: Enochian. His scent is soft English leather, rosewood and tonka with a hint of incense, parchment and soft woods. SIN & SALVATION LES INFORTUNES DE LA VERTU -- A pain-tinged, pleasure-soaked blend of leather, oakmoss, orange blossom, amber, and rose with a breath of virginal French florals and a hint of austere monastic penitential incense. EXCOLO THANATOS -- One of the horrible, painful, cruel, brooding, mocking and malignant children of Nyx, he is Death Incarnate, and is seen as a willowy young man, accompanied by a butterfly, bearing an inverted torch and funeral wreath in his hands. In modern thought, thanks to Sigmund Freud, it is the Death Instinct: love of death, destruction and decay, and the desire to embrace the quiescence, silence and peace of the grave. Dry white sandalwood and soft Siamese benzoin over a lugubrious blend of myrrh, Moroccan rose, mastic, tomb moss and a thin whiff of Greek incense. And that, friends and neighbors, is all you're going to get outta me til September!

I will be going under the knife on Aug 4th, and will be convalescing for about a week. Brian, Tone, Sara and the rest of the crew will be hard at work while I'm incapacitated, so there shouldn't be much of a hold up with anything other than correspondence on my end.

This is what we use to keep track of everything. =) - - - Originally designed for use by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, Apothecary Keeper is a full-featured recipe and inventory management software program designed specifically with the apothecarian in mind. Perfect for storing recipes of incenses, oils, soaps and more, Apothecary Keeper is easy to use and feature rich. Automatic Inventory management is built right in to Apothecary Keeper; press the "Make Recipe" button and the ingredients in your recipe are automatically converted and deducted from the Inventory. Doubling your recipe is a simple task as well; Apothecary Keeper will accurately multiply or divide your recipe by any number! Courtesy of Blue Moon Design! Also available at: The Black Broom 5050 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601 http://www.theblackbroom.com

... because I am too sick to pull another all-nighter at the Lab. =/ Verbatim from the Shiny & New Page... - - - Happy Thursday, all! My head is foggy from summer flu fun [yes, I'm sick again] and the monstrous weather, so I’m going to make this update on the update brief and to the point. Black Phoenix Trading Post will be introducing a few new tees and a Carnaval Noir poster [images courtesy of the fantastic, the inimitable Jennifer Williamson] within the next few days. We had hoped to have both sites update simultaneously, but due to logistical issues, this is not possible. The elemental blends [Gnome, Sylph, Salamander and Undine] will be live on the BPTP site when the new tees and poster go live. We’ll keep you posted. For reasons too numerous to mention, Carnaval Noir will remain up and whirling until September 1st, 2005. Bad news: Glitter has been discontinued due to a component issue. New at the Lab: LIMITED EDITION FRUIT MOON -- The bountiful, bright and vivacious prelude to the Harvest. A horde of wet, ripe fruits: green apple, apricot, blackberry, black cherry, black and red currants, cantaloupe, English pear, guava, lemon and lime, orange, mandarin orange, kiwi and mango, passion fruit, papaya, Georgia peach, raspberry, plum, tangerine, pomegranate and strawberry over a luminous blend of lunar oils. NUMB -- I don’t know about the weather where you’re at, but here in L.A… it is brain-frying’ly, grr-stickity hot. This icy blend was something that we were saving for the upcoming [not soon enough!] winter months, but since Brian and I watched the thermometer slap 107 today, we decided that there’s no better time than the present to introduce a singularly chilly, delectably ice-rimmed perfume. Revel in the gelid polar frostiness that is Numb, and forget about the heat for a moment. This scent is extremely limited, and will be available until all the bottles are spoken for. BEWITCHING BREWS BLACK OPAL -- A play of geological darkness and jagged brilliance. Soft and luminescent with flashes of black fire. THE BLACK TOWER -- Say that the men of the old black tower, Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds, Their money spent, their wine gone sour, Lack nothing that a soldier needs, That all are oath-bound men: Those banners come not in. There in the tomb stand the dead upright, But winds come up from the shore: They shake when the winds roar, Old bones upon the mountain shake. Those banners come to bribe or threaten, Or whisper that a man's a fool Who, when his own right king's forgotten, Cares what king sets up his rule. If he died long ago Why do you dread us so? There in the tomb drops the faint moonlight, But wind comes up from the shore: They shake when the winds roar, Old bones upon the mountain shake. The tower's old cook that must climb and clamber Catching small birds in the dew of the morn When we hale men lie stretched in slumber Swears that he hears the king's great horn. But he's a lying hound: Stand we on guard oath-bound! There in the tomb the dark grows blacker, But wind comes up from the shore: They shake when the winds roar, Old bones upon the mountain shake. A sepulchral, desolate scent. Long-dead soldiers, oath-bound; the perfume of their armor, the chill wind that surges through their tower, white bone and blackened steel: white sandalwood, ambergris, wet ozone, galbanum and leather with ebony, teak, burnt grasses, English ivy and a hint of red wine. EPHEMERA -- 'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids, Because our love is waning.' And then She: 'Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border of the lake once more, Together in that hour of gentleness When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep. How far away the stars seem, and how far Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!' Pensive they paced along the faded leaves, While slowly he whose hand held hers replied: 'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.' The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once A rabbit old and lame limped down the path; Autumn was over him: and now they stood On the lone border of the lake once more: Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes, In bosom and hair. 'Ah, do not mourn,' he said, 'That we are tired, for other loves await us; Hate on and love through unrepining hours. Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.' The scent of loss, love and the echo of time without end: sorrowful violet and chamomile with muguet, white geranium, calla lily and tea rose with a hint of autumn leaves. FUNEREAL OILS ASPHODEL -- The grey and ghostly flower that fills the fields of Hades. WANDERLUST BENGAL -- A sultry and unruly blend that emulates the ambient scent of the markets in ancient Bengal: skin musk with honey, peppers, clove, cinnamon bark and ginger. VERSAILLES -- Grand, courtly and robust: a glittering, golden scent that would do Louis XIV proud. Gilded red and gold citrus with amber, ruby roses, jasmine and orris. EXCOLO AL-SHAIRAN -- The enemy of God, also named Iblis, He Who Despaired of the Mercy of God. Al-Shairan is the leader of the Jinn, a tempter who whispers false suggestions to men enticing them into evil and perfidious acts, and is the sworn enemy of all of Adam’s children. His scent is fiery, bright and thick with sweet sinfulness: clove, peach and orange with cinnamon, patchouli and dark incense notes. OLD SCRATCH -- Old Nick, the Devil himself, as seen through the eyes of Victorian New England. A jaunty, dapper scent, deceptively genteel: a lavender fougere with tonka, amber, rosewood and a whiff of diabolical patchouli. PANACEA ELIXIR VII: SAFARI -- A travel blend. Calms nerves, alleviates tension, soothes jetlag.