Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

[stefrand]

Skin musk, white sandalwood, balsam fir, frozen black berries, cedar, winter rose, and white amber.

ITI: Smells like generic perfume, but like GOOD generic perfume. I can smell the woods and the amber already. I don't think it smells particularly cold, though, like many have said.

Wet: Smells sharp and almost minty. The woods are coming out now...primarily the balsam, which makes it smell too close to pine cleaner. The berries are there, sweetening everything up. It's hard to put my finger on what this smells like to me. I think there are some aquatics in here. I'm not sure if it's this or something else in the box, but I'm feeling a little headachey/sneezy.

Dry: Hmm...very floral, yet very piney. Not getting a whole lot of musk, berries, sandalwood. Mostly fir and rose and aquatics of some kind. I think the rose note in this one is making it weird on me.

Drydown: The skin musk and amber are starting to come out now. I am really not sure about this one. I think it makes me sniffly. Starting to remind me of Nosferatu, which was sour and awful on me.


Final thoughts: "Lines..." is not good on me. It does not smell like what I hoped it would smell like, which makes me sad because I was so looking forward to it. I may try it again, but more likely will swap/sell. Edited December 7, 2008 by Stef

[MeiLin]

This IS very traditional perfumy. I am reminded of something Chanel-ish. I don't think I'm going to buy it, but it's worth keeping the imp.

[marared]

Fir and mint - natural mint like the herb, not the sugared mint in candy and chocolate. I kept wondering why I smelled mint when there isn't any in the notes listed, and thought maybe I'd gotten a bit of Lick It on my finger from sniffing it just before testing this, but obviously I'm not the only one! Fir, mint, and just a whiff of berry. There is a bit of cedar and sandalwood when it's wet - but it fades almost immediately into mint.

[Persephone76]

I'm almost wondering if my decant is mis-labeled on this...? I get a very aquatic generic men's cologne. I guess I will sniff it at will call, but if this is what it's like it is most definitely not for me!

[tartchef]

When the Yules first came out, Lines Written jumped out at me as a possible Lady-Una-in-winter scent...

 

Wet, there's an odd mint/citrus note, like orange-mint toothpaste... drying a bit, it's clear that this is the balsam fir & blackberries - more of an evergreen & tannic berry scent now. The amber & skin musk glide over the top, like a warm breath on a bundle of fir branches & frosted berries. The rose is quiet & demure, perfuming things ever so lightly, but there's a faint soapy edge to it that is unfortunately really distracting.

 

Any sweetness from the rose & berries fades quickly, allowing the drier wood notes to emerge. The final throes are largely sandalwood with a trace of resinous evergreen, the deep tannic twang of the blackberry and the palest musk.

 

Very pretty... I'm reminded of Aragorn's musings on Eowyn, fair & cold... alas, not the Lady in Winter I was hoping for.

[Coldfire]

Decant: Blackberries! Ooooo!

Wet on Me: black berries over musk and sandalwood.

Drying Down: something very clean about this. Could be the

balsam, or the sandalwood, but I get a winter air feel to this…with the berries wafting thru it.

Dry: Almost a masculine vibe I get from this. The berries and fire and

sandalwood and skin musk all blend so nicely. Wow I really like this. I may need to get a bottle of this one!

[theseagrows]

i mostly get a snowy scent with fir and rose. maybe a slight hint of blackberries as well as warmth from the skin musk. i am not smelling any white sandalwood or amber in this. it's a bit sour on me (probably from the rose), and not all that compelling with my skin chemistry. too bad, the description of this one is beautiful.

[zankoku_zen]

*sigh* Such promise disintegrates into nothing. It started out as a bright perfume sort of floral, and has debased itself to roses and pencil shavings (damn you cedar).

Edited December 16, 2008 by zankoku_zen

[Phaedra]

Wet this is sandalwood, amber and a snowy note. When first on this is musk mixed with a cool snow/mint/evergreen blend. This is like an elegant man's cologne. There's a touch of sweetness too. After a few minutes the icy/mint note mellows and the amber and musk develop. After a few hours this is a lovely musk and amber blend with a soft hint of rose. This has become very feminine. On the dry down this is a very soft rose and amber blend with a hint of mint. This is gorgeous!! It's almost like a cousin to Snow White. I'll need a bottle of this one for sure

[fairnymph]

In the bottle: Extremely pale, almost clear oil. Sweet, woodsy, woody-resiny. The cedar and pine are pretty obvious, as well as sweetness from the berries which are otherwise not distinct. A bit dry.

 

Wet: Similar. For something so outdoorsy, it's surprisingly smooth. The rose is very light and fresh, almost citrusy. The berries are herbal and not very sweet or ripe, but a bit like Baneberry.

 

Dry: Slow to dry. More floral - and sadly soapy - now, with the sandalwood adding that dry, sharp note and amber some warm powder. The cedar is warm too, but not amping hotly as it often does. The musk is delicious, sexy, sweet, smooth.

 

Summary: Shower-clean and woodsy-fresh yet dry-warm and resiny-woody all at once. Incredibly well-blended and balanced. Gently sweet and floral, and richly musky. Unisex, good throw and decent lasting power.

 

Much nicer than I expected and the first cedar blend that has ever worked on me. Still a bit too shower-gel/aftershave for my personal taste, though.

[Dianora]

Oh, gorgeous! I bought this on a total whim when I read musk, sandalwood and frozen blackberries. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but this is far and away the best scent of the season for me. In the bottle, I smell mint and fir trees, it's sharp and refreshing and very cold. Once I put it on, the fruity berry scent came to the front and blended smoothly with the rose creating a smell that is crisp but still very green and delicious. During the dry down, it mellowed a bit and the sandalwood came in to temper the fir and mint into something a little warmer, but still evocative of that chill winter day.

 

I really feel that I can't do this justice in a review, it is really just that beautiful. If Winter of Our Discontent is a dark and brooding night, then this is the chill, snow swept day after, when the sun glinting off of the snow and the smell of frozen winter berries blows in on the wind.

[rayvn1]

I almost thought I'd mixed up my imps of On Darkness and Lines, because the description listed here is closer to what I got from OD This is sweet, icy and airy. It has good throw, too, and is competing pretty well against the OD on my other arm. There's a hint of...violet? Reminds me of my Lucky Chick violet body scrub if I left it in a snowbank. Yummy with a bit of musk in the background that I hoped would be more prominent. I'll wait a few hours and re-evaluate, but at this point I only need my mini decant. I can see how this would be very popular though!

[MissMercurial]

Skin musk has never disappointed me and continues to delight me. It's a little creamier than white musk on me. Here, it tones done the "cool" factor of the snowy note so that it's refreshing, not biting. Don't get me wrong, it's still a sharp scent. Just not painfully so like disinfectant or summat. Rather, it is citrusy and woodsy like what a real Christmas tree lot smells like. Pretty strong blackberry scent to me later on, not so flowery although the rose is there. Didn't get a CK One experience at all.

 

I'm glad I got an imp of this - it's the closest thing I've found to the Ice Prince bath oil other than Snow Moon

[Argentwolf]

Oddly enough, this is not 'cold' on me at all. Quite the opposite...I get the 'warm' notes of amber, sandalwood, balsam, and musk. There is a hint of pine/fir, sweetened vaguely by berry. It's pleasant enough, but somehow just doesn't do it for me. Alas!

 

I will vouch for the fact that cedar at no point comes out and bullies things the way it usually does. So if you are usually very leery of cedar, you may want to give this a shot.

[kjirstiben]

Initially applied, the scent was strong, cool, and definitely along the "traditional perfume" lines. I kept being reminded of a magazine-fold scent, or perhaps... it reminds me a bit of a perfume I got from American Eagle back in the late '90s. I loved that scent at the time... but it never smelled "like me". Same problem here...

 

It's a cool scent, with a certain juicy edge. Subtle and ever-so-slightly "hip". I can see a young urban person wearing this.

 

For my tastes, it's a little cool and impersonal. This seems a slightly ice maiden-esque scent, instead of the warm and inviting aura I'd like to project. It's pretty, but it's very remote.

[Pika]

First applied, it was a lovely, cool, light conifer scent. Sweet and refreshing. I kept sniffing really hard for the skin musk, and may have smelled it briefly, when I got a sense of a kind of intimacy in the cool woods. In that moment, I think I smelled what the scent *should* be like.

 

After that, it became all ozone-air-freshener on me. I really wanted to love this one, it sounded so perfect, and it just turned into gross dryer sheet nastiness. Arg!

[caitilarkin]

In the bottle: Icy balsam (registered as mint to my nose at first) with very faint musk and florals

 

Wet on skin: Yowza, the balsam amps to high heaven and the other notes flee in terror.

 

Dry on skin: This takes almost an hour to bloom on my skin, but when it does...the balsam is tempered by the softness of the skin musk, while the florals and berries are discernable but very much in the distance.

 

Lasts over 6 hours on me, becoming richer and warmer with time.

 

Wintry loveliness!

[nellieburger]

In the decant: A blooming rose spritzed with a light, white musk.

 

Wet on skin: Musk moves into the foreground.

 

Dry on the skin: Slightly sweeter – a hint of black berry with the first whiff, followed by a subtle yet perfect blend of rose with musk. It’s really a lovely, soothing scent! LIKE! I may purchase a bottle!

 

[Suu4LC]

This was my sleeper hit of the yules. Reading the descriptions I NEVER thought I would fall in love with it. But it is SO insanely gorgeous. I am so glad I took a sniff of this at will call.

 

At first it's like a blast of fresh mint, sweet, but not sugary or vanilla (ie Lick it) mint. This first phase is lovely, but as it dries and morphs, it becomes this perfume perfume but not perfume skin scent that is just gorgeous. I normally don't like wood scents at all, but they are so calm and muted here. So complex and mature, but delicate and lovely. Rose-haters, don't worry, it's just barely noticeable, and the amber, which usually goes powdery on me, doesn't go powdery at all. Gah, it is just SO hard to describe this one properly! It's one that melds with your skin so well. So beautiful...

[FallDaze]

Initial thoughts-> I'm excited about this one! Skin musk and frozen blackberries

 

imp-> The cedar is all up in your face. I was not expecting it to be this strong... There is a hint of something else, but the cedar stamps it out so quick that I can't identify it.

 

wet-> At first the cedar amps like crazy, but as it dries it's starting to calm down. The musk and sandalwood are slowly swirlying around and are starting to hedge out cedar for the No. 1 note.

 

after a while-> And the cedar is back! And not in a good way... It reminds me of the shavings we used to line our guinea pig's cage with. If I could just manage to get that scent association out of my head, this would be a wonderful blend for me!

[eyeska]

On me, this is a fresh, woody-with-snow blend, with an underlying sweetness. I'm a little unsure about whether it's a keeper, but it is a very pretty, peaceful scent. I really like the musk in here, as well, it makes it much more a skin scent. I also can't help but wonder how well it would age.

 

It also reminds me of Old Moon, which indicates to me that I amp fir and cedar isn't as much of a big deal as I've been led to believe by other scents.

[obsidienne]

This scent is quite mysterious and gorgeous to me, but I can't quite pinpoint why.

 

I can't do an in-the-bottle snifferoo because I'm at work and don't want to look like a bottle-sniffing-weirdo. I'm already sure people have noticed me sniffing my wrists all the time and wonder how much weirder I can get!

 

On the skin, LWATEH is an odd mixture of perfume and cologne, thereby being quite unisex. Another poster mentioned CK One, and although I can see that comparison, it's not CK One (which I despise). I like this a lot.

 

It's both floral and woodsy, and has a touch of chilly snow. It truly makes me think of walking through wooded hills on a winter's night, the landscape lit up by the full moon (anyone who has ever went camping in a mainly coniferous forest in the winter and has seen how the full moon can light up the snow so brightly that it seems like day will know exactly what I'm talking about!).

 

The Lab's snow element (which is where I get the "frozen" from "frozen black berries") is becoming very familiar to me as it is the same or at least very similar in Snow Bunny, Perchta, this perfume, and another one I've tried that I can't quite remember at the moment. If you liked it in other blends, it's here, but there's so much more going on as well. I wish I knew what that snow element was, mainly because I can't train my nose to appreciate jasmine and I keep thinking it's in there.

 

I can really smell the fir & cedar, amber, berries. The rose is quite subtle. It all combines to make for a lovely, unique scent that would be lovely for both men and women. If you hate rose, it features very subtly here. If you were hoping for the rose to amp, well, it didn't on my chemistry.

 

As the scent reaches far drydown, it really comes into its own. The chilliness and woods settle down a bit and it becomes a more comfortable scent. The amber and rose seem to be a little stronger, and while I normally find amber to be a very unpleasant smell, it's working here.

 

Actually! I'm getting a hint of Spellbound or Black Rose effect thanks to the amber, rose and skin musk, with the snowy berries, fir & cedar adding complexity and interest. But it's much more subtle and enjoyable than those two perfumes are to me.

 

So yeah, this really is a morpher. Medium-strong throw. I can't speak for lasting power as my skin eats 99% of everything.

Edited January 20, 2009 by obsidienne

[Bluestocking]

Here it goes: my first review. Hope I'm doing this correctly...

 

In the bottle: Cedar, balsam and blackberries are most prominent. It's very chilly, fresh and woody and green, like standing alone in the middle of a still, snow-covered forest. Really—it has that effect of freezing winter air.

On, wet: Cedar and balsam are still strong, but they're really nicely balanced with the sweeter, rounder blackberry note. The blackberry note is perfect, too; it's nicely fruity without ever taking over and making this a scent that shouts "Berry!"

On, dry: Still very woody and fresh, with a very slightly warmer, gilded effect from the musk, amber and rose, which are perking up. Both the rose and amber are lighter, less sweet than they often can be, and the green balsam holds the sweetness in check in any case. There's still a hint of the blackberries, but they've moved to the background.

Later: Cedar layered over delicate rose, skin musk, amber and sandalwood: sweet, woody, fresh, gorgeous. It sticks close to the skin, but that's just perfect for this one. Really, the early stages were very pretty, but this is amazing.

Overall: This is a subtle, complex, perfect winter scent, like crisp, snowy beauty in a bottle, and it lasts forever. It winds up smelling wonderful and yet very natural, with no single element stealing the show. There's a solitude to this scent that I love; it's poised and thoughtful and solemnly lovely, which is perfect for the inspiration.

 

 

[voodoocatwoman]

I did not think I would like this because it was nothing but cedar when I first put it on. However, once it dried down, the dreaded hamster cage smell abated, the musk, amber and sandalwood took over and turned it into a warm and sultry scent. Disaster averted.

[yeahbutnobut]

Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

 

In the imp: like a fizzy berry drink, with ice cubes. Cold, effervescent and sweetly fruity.

Wet on skin: I can smell the pine now, and the cold notes, the berries and maybe the amber.

Dry on skin: ooh, I like this. If this is blackberry, then it is being very nice on me, not turning to cat pee. In fact, this reminds me, as expected, of my beloved Winter Maiden. Not identical-I’d say this is colder, it has a bit more of that snowy note to it (in here it almost reminds me of a kind of melon sorbet) but underneath I smell that wonderful, sophisticated scent reminiscent of WM, a blend of blackberry and amber and rose. This smells a lot wetter and has a feel of ice to it-I actually find WM a warm scent (maybe due to aging) and this smells of ice.

After a while: the ‘ice’ melts, as in, the cold wet notes fade away, and this becomes even more beautiful. It now smells more and more like Winter Maiden! The blackberries are not turning bad, and the amber-rose-berry-musk combination has gone all warm and rich and has gained nuances reminiscent of expensive perfume. This smells really grown up and dressed up. It’s almost identical to WM now but with one difference-there’s still a hint of wintry pine and a bit of sweet snow. But the WM scent seems to get stronger with time, the amber really showing off as it merges with the cedar and the pine (which now seems to smell like pine sap).

The drydown is a wonderful, lighter version of WM. It’s an airier WM, lots more ice to it, I think the skin musk is acting almost like white musk, adding that gentler, fresher feel to it.

Verdict: this, and it’s sister scent in the bath oils Winter Maiden, are to me the most elegant winter scents. The scent of a beautiful ice princess, rich and complex and expensive-smelling, very mature and classy. This is the perfect winter ‘evening out’ scent. But even though this has a cold aspect, from the snowy evergreens with frozen berries and chilled musk, there’s a warm heart to this blend too, from the richness of rose, amber and sandalwood. These get stronger with time but the ice never really leaves this scent, meaning this is a little more chilly and fruity than Winter Maiden, but the two scents are so close, they could almost be twins. I would love to layer these two scents. I love the way this smells like-and makes me smell like-a million dollars, it’s so well blended and sophisticated, almost regal, but not at all stuck-up, not too mature for me to wear. One of my favourites of the Yule scents.

Emoticon rating:

Is it a keeper? Yes! anything similar to Winter Maiden is always welcome.

If you like this, try: Winter Maiden, There’s a Certain Slant of Light, Moon of Ice, Old Moon