Miss Lynx

Wow -- this is powerful stuff! On my first try, I accidentally put on too much and it was overwhelming -- I had to wash it off, but felt there was a reasonable likelihood that I might actually like it if I put it on much more lightly the next time. So I tried again, about 10 hours later, when my nose had had a chance to fully recover from the onslaught (and having tried the much-gentler Baneberry in the meantime. And sure enough, I find myself liking it quite a lot. Which is odd, because it's (on me at least) a predominantly floral scent and I am so not a floral person. But then, it's not a normal floral. How best to describe this? I guess I'd say it's kind of like a cross between a floral, a musk, and a mind-altering drug. Or maybe an aphrodisiac. There is something seriously intoxicating about Gypsy Queen. It's got that warm amber/musk base that's in Fenris Wolf and Haunted and various others that I like, with some kind of flowers layered over it and yet perfectly blended into it, so that it's hard to pick out the individual notes. And it's also got an incensey quality, and an indefinable Something Else that makes it feel like it's doing strange things to your pheromones and/or brain chemistry. This is one very, very sexy scent, but not in a conventional way -- it's sexual power, or maybe sexual magic. It's the sort of thing you'd wear if you were going to use sex as a weapon, or a ritual. You could case a spell of fascination with this. It almost feels like it should be a controlled substance. After a while, though it settles down to something subtler and closer to a skin-scent, though still lovely. Needless to say, this is a keeper. It's not something I plan on wearing every day -- aside from the sexiness factor, it's more floral than the scents I like best tend to be -- but I have a feeling that very interesting things will happen if I wear this on my next "date night" with either or both of my partners... Grade: A-

A very dark, earthy, woodsy, kind of scent. The kind I thought would be my favourite before I started trying a lot scents and discovering there are other kinds I like better, but still, not bad at all. When I first put it on, the patchouli seemed to rise up and beat all the other notes into submission, as it sometimes tends to do on me. I like patchouli when it plays well with others, and just lends a nice depth and earthiness to a scent, but too often it takes over everything. So I'd more or less decided "Oh well, another blah patchouli scent", but as the day wore on, I started getting little whiffs of a nice, woodsy, slightly incensey scent from somewhere, and gradually realized it was me. The patchouli had subsided a bit, letting the cedar and vetiver have more room to play, but the cedar never reached the hamster-cage-ish level it has in some other scents I've tried (Alecto comes to mind). It's got major staying power, too. So ultimately I ended up liking it, though not loving it. Maybe if there had been more cinnamon, it would have made it to my favourites list, but as it was there was barely a hint of spice. Still, I could see myself wearing it now and then, and in any case, Kettu's in love with it, so it's not going anywhere. Grade: B

I like this one, though not quite as much as I was expecting to. It's very, very fresh and green on me, with a touch of that same poisonous/bittersweet edge that Belladonna and Wolfsbane have. It's actually fairly reminiscent of Belladonna, except with berries in place of the flowers. But the berries actually aren't that strong in here, at least on me, but then my skin doesn't really amp fruit notes. There's a sweetness to it, but it's only slightly fruity, not strongly so. It's also a fairly gentle scent -- I found I needed to put on a fair bit for it to be very noticeable. It's a nice scent, and I'm not sure what it is exactly that made me feel slightly disappointed in it. I guess I was expecting something a little more Bewitched-ish, and it doesn't really have that earthiness that that one does. It's just overall a bit more of a lightweight than I was expecting. But I do like it -- it's got a bit of that scented-candles feel to it that Verdandi and Lampades have, which I enjoy, so I'm definitely not swapping it. But whether I'll eventually want a bottle or not remains to be seen. Grade: B or B+, not sure yet ETA: several hours later, I have to say that this has turned into a dead ringer for Verdandi! That's odd, because fresh, even for the first hour or two, it had only a slight resemblance to it, but around six hours later, what remains of it in the places it's lasted longest is dead-on identical to the way Verdandi wears down on me. The greener notes have mostly subsided, and it's become a lot sweeter, but still with a bit of counterbalancing bitterness from the herbs. Very nice, and definitely pushes it more toward a B+.

Bland. Bland like a Very Bland Thing. This is about the most featureless scent I've encountered since Incantation. But where that was Lemon Nothing, this is sort Men's Aftershave Nothing. A faint, not very interesting, masculine scent, with really very little to make it stand out in any way. I'm not getting anything sharp or acrid like others have described. It's vaguely green and grassy, but nothing like "scorched, barren fields" on me. It would probably be an OK scent for a guy who wanted a fairly subtle and generic everyday scent, but when BPAL has so many more interesting alternatives, why bother? Grade: C-

Wasn't entirely sure I'd like this. Orange blossom is one of the few florals that's usually pretty good on me, and cherry's not bad - my skin doesn't amp it the way some people's does. But chocolate I wasn't sure about - I like eating chbocolate, but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to smell like it. In general I'm wary of foody scents - while most fruity and spicy notes seem to work well on me, chocolate and vanilla are kind of iffy, and most things that are meant to smell like cookies, cake or candy are right out. Still, I tried it, and while at first I wasn't sure I liked it, as it dried down it got nicer. The cherry settled down a bit, and the chocolate began to blend with my skin in a way that gave it some depth and richness. It smelled almost like there was some kind of musk in it, though as far as I know there isn't. And the orange blossom kept it from being overly foody. The overall impression I got from it was kind of sexy, in an eat-me-up sort of way. The sort of thing you'd dab down your cleavage if you wanted to draw people's attention there and inspire them to get a little closer. I don't think I necessarily want to smell like sexy chocolate on a daily basis, but I could see it being a good special-occasion scent. Grade: B

This was one of several scents I tried today that I had qualms about. Fruity scents do tend to work on me, but usually more when they're balanced with other, non-fruity notes, particularly things that are spicy, earthy or incensey. Akuma's got fruit, more fruit, and floral, and florals are often way too sweet on me, though as florals go neroli's not too bad. So I wasn't sure if this would be way over-the-edge sweet on me. It wasn't as fearsomely sweet as I'd been afraid it might be, but it also wasn't that interesting. A reasonably pleasant scent, but my reaction to it wasn't much more that "Yep, that's fruit all right". It just didn't seem to have a lot of character compared to most other BPAL scents I've tried. If I'd encountered it earlier in my BPAL career I might have liked it anyway, but I think my standards are higher now, and a scent has to be more than just inoffensive and vaguely pleasant for me to want it. Grade: B-

I was a little wary of this one because of the lotus note in it (I've tried other scents where my skin has amped up lotus to horrific extents), but decided I'd like to try it anyway, when the opportunity presented itself. In the imp, it didn't smell bad at all - very much not my usual kind of scent, but not as floral as I'd feared it might be. It definitely didn't smell like the dark depths of the ocean, though - more light and fresh than deep and murky. So on it went, and while I braced myself for a lotus onslaught, it really didn't happen. The three notes (lotus, juniper and mint) seemed pretty well balanced overall, and I started thinking this might be something I would actually wear from time to time, when I wanted a fairly cool and fresh scent. But then the juniper seemed to disappear, leaving just a sweet, slightly flowery mint. And the floral went to, and it was just mint. And that went to. Inside of 15 minutes, the whole scent was gone. *sigh* So this was another like Mantis, Silk Road and Thanatopsis for me, in the now-you-smell-it-now-you-don't category. If it had lasted, I might have enjoyed it, even though it's very different from the types of scents I usually liked, but I'm not about to reapply every 15 minutes. Grade: C+

This is an odd scent -- kind of a dry herbal, with a slight edge of sharpness to it. Initially I couldn't identify any of the specific notes from sniffing it, although there were elements to it that seemed familiar. Having checked the description, I think I was picking up on the vetiver, since that's in a fair number of scents I like. Anyway: not unpleasant, just... different. As it dries down, though, the cedar is coming out more and more, to the point where it's starting to seem a bit hamster-cage-ish. Still not unpleasant, but not really me either. And now, after about an hour, it's almost gone, but the last bit of scent that remains is pretty nice. Not too much like cedar shavings after all, just a gentle woody/herbiness Grade: C+

The Lion definitely fits, or maybe Fenris Wolf. My experience with tattoos (I have six) is that it usually only hurts much at the beginning; then the endorphins kick in and for most of the rest of the session the feeling is more annoying than genuinely painful. But it depends on what's being done and where on your body. Outlining hurts more than filling in, and on thin skin or close to bone hurts more than on fleshier parts. Also, most people tend to run out of endorphins after around two hours or so, so if you're getting a large piece done, you might want to break it into two-hour chunks.

Not getting a lot of green, aquatic, moss or trees from this - just the hothouse flowers, and lots of them. Yes, it's another death-by-florals experience, and reminds me less of a lush, exotic swamp than of the sort of cheap perfume you'd smell on that overly made-up great aunt with the bad dye job who always smothered you with excessive hugs and kisses when you were a little kid. Even the sparing amount I put on ended up smelling like bad drugstore perfume applied by the ladle-full. I had to wash it off inside of ten minutes. Grade: D

Just received from Sara at the Lab: Awww... They love me! And they're replacing my lost package! Yet more proof of the amazingness of BPAL...

My wife ordered this one from a swap, but she wasn't sure she liked it, due to a fruity note she perceived in it. Fruity scents tend to be oddly good on me, as long as there's something not-do-fruity mixed in with them, so she said I should try it. In the imp, it smelled more herbal than anything, but with a faint veneer of sweetness, though I couldn't tell if the sweetness was fruit or floral. Once on me, I couldn't really get much of a sense of fruit from it -- but within the first two minutes, some kind of high, sharp floral rose up and completely took over the scent. I've mentioned before that my skin tends to amp florals, and it really latched on to something in here. Lotus maybe? Something like that... The whole thing just turned into floral overkill. I stuck it out for a while hoping that maybe the florals would eventually subside, but no such luck, at least not within the 20 minutes or so I could handle before I had to wash it off. Grade: D

I'm guessing they're hiring some extra people to help cope with the Christmas rush...

This is possibly the most unusual scent I've tried yet. I couldn't begin to imagine what it would smell like from the strange combination of notes listed, and yet strangely, it smells more or less like I thought it would -- if that makes any sense at all. On first application, it's very, very, very anise-dominated. Strongly licoricey, but not sweet -- I was reminded of Dutch salt licorice. I could smell some kind of earthy herbal and musk notes in the background, but the centre stage was all anise. But within a few minutes, the anise began to fade, and soon it became painfully apparent that it had been the only thing holding the civet at bay. Civet and I are not friends. It smells like a cross between skunk spray, compost and something out of a cat's anal glands, which come to think of it is pretty much what it is (the latter, not all three). Nasty, nasty stuff, and quickly rising up to dominate the entire scent. I nearly washed it off at that point. And yet... There were still some pleasant notes in there, that I could smell in and around the skunky miasma of civet. Enough that I didn't quite want to get rid of it. I just wanted the civet to go away, or at least to stop beating up all the other notes for their lunch money. Even with the civet, though, it was really interesting. It smelled a bit like tracking some stinky animal through a boggy forest. And seemed weirdly appropriate for its namesake, too. Kind of woodsy, swampy and inhuman. And eventually, after an hour or two, the civet began to settle down, and I was left with an earthy, musky scent that was actually pretty nice. I like it now. But I'm really not at all sure that going through an hour or two of Civet World Domination is worthwhile to get here. Grade: C+/B-

There are a number of scent with an amber/musk base that could work, and amber is fairly close scent-wise to vanilla. Haunted is probably the purest, being nothing but amber and musk, and there's also Imp (adds elements of earthiness and fruitiness to it), Fenris Wolf (adds woodsy notes and a slight sweetness that sometimes seems almost floral but isn't) and Titus Andronicus (adds multiple layers of earthy, spicy, fruity, and the barest hint of floral). I know the latter two tend to be widely considered men's scents, but they don't smell at all masculine on me... I guess it depends on one's skin chemistry.

My partner and I got married before we ever discovered BPAL, but this thread got us thinking about what we would have worn if we'd had our current BPAL collections then. We had a pagan handfasting, out on the Toronto Islands, in late May (2004), and were wearing green fairy-ish dresses that a friend of ours had made for us. The dominant colour we had the indoor space decorated in was green; we were going for sort of a Midsummer Night's Dream forest-fairy feeling. We were going to have the actual ceremony outdoors and then move inside for the reception, but it rained so we had it all indoors, albeit with a really pretty view of the woods and lake outside through big windows. So: I asked Kettu what she would have worn, and she got a thoughtful look, which turned into a worried look, and then she went over and began looking through her collection, and finally said doubtfully "I guess Queen Mab... Or maybe Crossroads... Everything else I like has to do with death, doom or anger! I mean, Nemesis? Alecto? Dance of Death? Omen? I think Queen Mab is about as auspicious as it gets...." My own choice would be a little easier, since my collection is larger and less, um, deathly. Fae would have been appropriate, I suppose (and complement Queen Mab nicely). Or maybe one of the Love Potions I like, like Vixen or Desire. But I think overall I'd have to go with Bewitched. It's the most "me" of all my scents, and would have been very appropriate for a witchy handfasting with the lady who bewitched me!

OK, I'll wait another week or two before deciding it was lost... So I guess about six weeks from shipping date is the maximum time it might reasonably take? That's partly what I was trying to get a sense of... How long I should wait. My previous two Lab orders, and most of my swaps, have only taken a week or two, so that's why I was worried. Hmmm, maybe I was just lucky before! Though I did once have a swap I sent to someone in the US take three and a half weeks. But I haven't had anything take this long before.

I don't use CCNow -- I don't think they support Canadian orders. I order with PayPal, so the shipping notice was directly from the Lab. I'm not panicking yet, just getting mildly nervous.

I'm getting a little worried about my Carnival Noir order. I received a shipping notice on Oct 9, saying that the order had been shipped out on Oct 5. Now, I am in Canada, so I expect things to take longer to get here, but it's going on 4 weeks now. Not since it was ordered (that was two months earlier), but since it was supposed to have been shipped! I sent an e-mail to the lab a few days ago asking about it, and wondering how long I should wait before I start getting seriously worried that it's been lost in the mail, but haven't heard back yet (then again, it may be that they don't check e-mail on the weekend; I think it was Friday that I sent it). Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever had an order take this long to get to them, or an order not show up at all. What happens if it just doesn't come? At what point does it get written off as lost, and what happens then?

I was sort of a goth fairy at the Halloween party I went to last night, in a long, black lace-trimmed skirt, Chinese brocade corset with a pattern of pink and purple flowers over black, sheer black lace bell-sleeved top, and black wings ornamented with purpley-pink glitter, and a black lace mask shaped like a butterfly. I suppoe Fae would have been the most appropriate scent, but it didn't seem quite festive enough, so I went with Carnivàle, because to me it smelled like the colours on the corset and wings.

Wow - could it be? A floral that actually works on me? OK, I know many people would not call Burial a floral. And indeed, the earthy side of it is very strong -- the dominant notes I'm getting at first seem to be myrrh and patchouli (I get nothing piney at all from it, unlike a lot of people, it seems). But there's also a very strong floral note -- rose, I think. And given how much my skin tends to amp notes like that, this is turning into an almost perfectly balanced floral/earthy blend. I'd originally thought maybe Rakshasa would be the perfect rose scent on me, and on the first try it almost was, but on repeated wearings it seemed like my skin amped the rose more each time, or maybe I just noticed it more. Burial is more like what I wanted Rakshasa to be. Of course, this is only a first try, too, so it may be that it well change on repeated attempts. But so far, so good. It smells like lush damp soil strewn with rose petals -- not the fetid, rotting soil of Zombi, but fertile earth that things could actually grow in. And as it dries down, it settles into a really nice patchouli/rose mix. Anyway, thus far, I like it. We'll see if it holds up on repeated wearings. Grade: B+ P.S. My 100th review! Yay!

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one -- it had some notes I like, but the sassafrass worried me. I don't even like root beer to drink, much less to wear. But I thought it was worth a try. It smelled intriguing in the vial, and not too root-beer-y, so on it went. And very nearly, off it came. It was an exercise of will not to run to the washroom and wash it off immediately. Aaaah! Root beer hell! With a special pungency that seemed to burn the inside of my nose, like I'd actually physically snorted root beer up there. But I persevered, and thankfully within about 5-10 minutes it had mellowed right down to a warm, spicy, woodsy scent that was actually quite nice. There's still a faint touch of root-beer-ness to it, but it's subdued enough not to be much of a problem. Not sure if it'll be a keeper or not -- if the beginning root beer assault wasn't so awful, then definitely, because the drydown is very warm and comforting, and particularly seems like it would be a good scent for fall, but man, those first five minutes or so... Well, we'll see. Grade: B

I was a little apprehensive about Nosferatu, because the description made me think of Zombi, which I intensely disliked, plus the wine note that can often turn candy-sweet on me. In the imp it smelled indescribably weird, so that didn't help. But as it turns out, while it's not something I could see myself wearing regularly, it's not that bad. There is a certain Zombi-ish element to it, but it's not nearly as heavy or cloying as that one -- kind of a toned-down Zombi. The wine note, if it's in there at all, is very subdued. And it's got a sort of herby greenness to it, almost medicinal, and something vaguely aquatic, as well as a touch of floral. It's an interesting blend -- kind of earthy/watery/floral/herbal. Not unpleasant, but not really me either. Grade: C+

Devilishly playful: white peach, amber, golden musk and patchouli. Oh, this is really nice! It's got that warm, sensual amber/musk base that Haunted, Fenris Wolf and Titus Andronicus all share (albeit with variations in the type of musk), with just a touch of patchouli earthiness and then lush, sweet peach overtop of it. Of those, it's most reminiscent of Titus, but still has its own distinct character. It's also a bit like Depraved, which I tried for the first time yesterday, and quite liked, but this is nicer. It's Depraved with the patchouli behaving itself and the amber and musk rounding everything out and giving it warmth and fullness. The musk in it seems to be a lighter kind than some of the others, and the patchouli fairly gentle, so while a little on the earthy side, it's not heavy at all, and comes off as kind of a "skin scent" -- like something that could be a slight amplification of one's natural scent. And it's really perfectly balanced -- it's not too sweet, not too earthy, just a very harmonious blend that smells warm, soft, a little fruity and a little incensey. The only drawback is it seems to fade fairly fast. But maybe I just need to put it on a bit more heavily. If I can get it to last, I could see this becoming a favourite everyday scent for me. Though if I do end up getting it in the bottle, I suppose I'll be sacrificing the irony of having an imp of Imp. Grade: A

I wasn't entirely sure if I'd like this one or not -- it has a number of notes I like in it, but it also has jasmine, which tends to be troublesome on me. It's not that I dislike it exactly, but my skin tends to amp it up incredibly so that it's never just jasmine, it's always JASMINE! Still, I figured it was worth a try. But sadly, the jasmine did indeed rear up and stomp all the other notes into submission. I could faintly smell the vetiver and incensey notes in the background, but they were pretty much completely blown offstage by Diva Jasmine. Maybe if I liked jasmine more than I do that would have been OK, but as it stands, I only like it in moderation, and moderation is hard to achieve with jasmine. After an hour or so, though, it did settle down some, and began smelling more like a nice manageable jasmine, with the other notes a little more present and noticeable. Kind of like nice jasmine incense in an Asian tea shop. It's reminiscent of the way Crossroads started to smell for a little while, but in Crossroads that phase only lasted for about five minutes before the whole scent faded. Here it sticks around for a while longer, so did end up enjoying it for a bit. Still, that initial jasmine overload is hard to take, so I'll probably end up swapping it, especially given that I have Peitho, a jasmine scent which actually does behave itself and smell well-balanced, for those times when I want to smell jasminey. The Caterpillar would probably be very nice on anyone whose skin doesn't amp jasmine to the extent that mine does, though. Grade: C+