By March

The first time we did Swapmania I’d wrung my hands for weeks prior, came up with eleventy-jillion rules, and figured maybe nine people would show up and play.  By the end we had more than 1,200 comments, and when we did it again last summer I think we had something like 900 comments.  So: I think we can call it a success.

Today, I, March the Maleficent, decree the start of our Winter/Spring Swapmania, and this post will stay up and will run through Tuesday.  We moved it to a Friday start date in response to requests.  I’m going to do an abbreviated set of instructions below.  If you are new to this and have no idea what I am talking about, and/or you want to see the “full” list of instructions and how it actually worked in comments, click here for a link to the first Swapmania.

Today you are invited to list, in comments, your swap bottles of perfume, partial bottles, minis, decants and samples.

Please include:

• a brief description of each item you’re offering – such as oz/ml size, concentration (EdT, EdP), and any other info you think might be of interest (vintage/partial/used/boxed…)
• the country you live in (so people can take that into consideration for customs and shipping expense)
• whether you are open to receiving NON-PERFUME ITEMS in exchange, or whether you really would prefer only other perfume items.  FWIW people ended up swapping for all sorts of amazing things, including hand-knit scarves and hats, chocolate, tea, etc.
• You can also say if you are looking for a particular bottle of something(s) to swap for –hope springs eternal!
• Go ahead and list your contact info up front if you want to, that seems to be working.  Don’t just type your normal email address in there, though (see #2 below.)

Clear as mud?  Here’s a sample of what a swap listing might look like:  “Hermes Jardin Sur le Nil, 1.6 oz. EDT, half full, boxed.  I live in the US and am open to swaps abroad.  Willing to swap for perfume or other items. email me — jane doe at gmail dot com”

What can people offer to swap in exchange for your perfumes?  Other bottles/partials/minis/samples etc., or things.  When offering for a swap item, please say what country you’re from so they can take that into consideration.

This will work best if everyone keeps an open mind – let us practice and presume honesty, good intentions, and respect.

Someone posted the helpful detail that you can search comments on a PC by hitting CTRL + F (think “find”.)  This makes it easier if you’re looking through massive comments for a particular fragrance and/or your swap offers.  If you’re on a Mac, try (if you are in a browser like Chrome) hitting Edit, Find to search.

The fine print:

1) Caveat Swapper.  This is not eBay, and I am not your mother.  I will not be mediating disputes. If anything went horribly wrong in the last Swapmania, I never heard about it.  I think most everyone had a blast.  But if something goes wrong with your swap, that’s between you and the other swapper.  Perfume Posse and I are not responsible or liable.

Patty wrote this in a post this week, I’m pasting it here: “The best rule I have, make sure the entire swap is complete and both parties say they are happy before you open and start using. If you swap for a fragrance and for some reason the fragrance you were sending in the swap becomes unavailable because of breakage or something wrong with it, don’t guilt your swappee into taking something they don’t really want so you can keep The Precious. If you want it that bad, and they don’t want something else you have, just offer to pay them the going rate for it or send it back and cry yourself to sleep over the loss.  If you’ve been using it with wild abandon and have to send it back, do offer to compensate them for what you have used if it’s beyond just a couple of sprays.”

2) You and your swapper are responsible for figuring out a way to get in touch with each other to exchange details (mailing address etc.)  Many of you already have gravatar IDs that link to your websites, etc.  You can use MakeupAlley (MUA,) FaceBook, LiveJournal, email, whatever.  PLEASE DO NOT type your email addresses into comments; they are collected by spambots.  If you do so, spell it out:  chris dot smith at hotmail dot com  

3) When you have completed a swap, please go back and mark your item as taken.

4) Please remember to behave yourselves; often, two or more people are making offers for the same bottle of Cuir de Russie, and only one person is going to get it (unless the owner wants to split.)  Last time there was some fairly intense competition on certain bottles, and that’s the way it works.  Let’s treat our fellow swappers with kindness and respect.  Once you’ve agreed to a swap and exchanged mailing info, etc., please don’t back out if you suddenly see something pop up that you’d rather have.  The karma fairies will turn all your Guerlain into vinegar.

5) Send your swap in a timely fashion. Once you’ve agreed to do this, send your side of the swap.  If you’re not going to be able to do so until April, you need to tell your potential co-swapper ahead of time.

6) MUA peeps – you can’t just say “go see my MUA list and see if there’s anything you’d swap for.”  Lots of folks on here aren’t on MUA.  Also I’m not thrilled with people pasting in their entire, lengthy MUA wish/swap lists … because that’s what MUA is for, right?  But I won’t flame you for it.

Okay, kids!  This was a huge blast last time, and people got some amaaaazing things, including extras in their packages.  So go have fun!

First, winners from last week of the Caron L’Accord 119 – mary and cheesegan.  Click on the Contact Us over there on the left, give me your address and remind me what you’ve won, and I’ll get it mailed out to you!

The last half of this year has brought on some of the worst flibbertygibbet OCD I’ve had in a while.  I’ve gone from stained glass (which I used to do) to fused glass to burning out material to researching perfume-making again to making spangly caftans – my lastest fascination, sorta like those on the left.  Well, pretty much exactly like the Camilla Franks one on the left.  I fell in love with caftans in Morocco and brought back a few of them, one of them this gorgeous nighttime jade green spangly thing that’s pretty amazing.  I should have taken a picture.  So then I find a couple of Antik Batik caftan shirts, and it dawns on me that these are the easiest thing in the world to make unless you get fancy with them. Found a vintage pattern that’s almost exactly like the Antik Batik one, found places on line for sparklies and how to get them on the fabric permanently, and now I just need to find some material that I love.

I’m guessing there’s about 3,000 steps I’m missing. It’s been decades since I sewed, and I’ll be working with silks and more sheer fabrics for this, which can be more difficult than doing a nice cotton dress or tea towel. Oh, I’m kidding, I did more complicated stuff than that. But I’m feeling vaguely like I might wind up bedazzling my caftans.  But if the seamstresses out there – and I know there are some because our darling readers are incredibly talented at so many things – want to throw me a tip or two before I ruin expensie  material, beading, crystals, etc, I’d be grateful!  I do know how to sew, I swear, I’m just an impatient sewer.

Annick Goutal Mon Parfum Cheri, Par Camille.  I’ve got the EDP version, which isn’t being distributed in the U.S.  The non-blond goes over the differences in her post. I haven’t smelled the EDT, but now I want to.

The scent is patchouli, plum, iris, violet, heliotrope, and if you’re thinking you’ll be getting a darker Mandragore or Hadrien or one of the other Goutal scents, well.  no.  not at all. If you think more along the lines of Eau du Fier, you’ll be closer.  It is rooty smoky plum. Iris root is there all the way through, giving the scent its depth, embedding itself into the earth.  And, as Denyse says, it is purple.  Given the mainstream public’s tastes, it would surprise me if this were a big seller.

I’d be surprised if even the perfumista crowd loved it in droves.  It’s a highly individual perfume taste thing. I love it because it is different and unafraid and uncompromising.  It is Film Noir Woman interesting – when women wore tight sweaters with pointy bras and pencil skirts and aprons and pearls over it – but not of that time, just glancing backwards at the scents women wore that were interesting.

It won’t be for everyone, and if you don’t like the edp, it sounds like the edt might work.  I’m fully in support of it as an effort by a mainstream’s perfume line to go in the direction they want – following their own purple drumbeat.

Hey, let’s do a draw for 3 samples of this to 3 commenters – well, one sample apiece. And it’s my birthday!  And my birthday present to myself is two tattoos, which I’ll unveil next week or the week after if they are healing slowly.  So drop a comment to be entered in the drawing!  You can talk about whatever you want – how you’re coping with the holiday season so far or the cold (brr!  here after almost a week of off and on snow and frigid temps) or birthdays in general.

Patty

First, winners of the de Profundis samples – MaureenC and Homura-chan.  Just click on the Contact Us over on the left, send me your address, remind me of what you’ve won. Make sure I give you a quick response so you know you didn’t drop into my spam filter thingie.

I loved the discussion on the perfume. Well, not the perfume, but the “de Profundis: part – Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Dante, the Psalms?  I think the answer is mostly Wilde and Baudelaire as far as Serge’s inspiration. But the theme crossed all of them, and I agree that it is one of hope.  If you spend too long thinking about your daily drudgery, endlessly toiling, worrying, sacrificing, over and over, it’s overwhelming, yet most of us hang onto that refracted joy that we glimpse sometimes in a child’s laughter, a thoughtful gesture, seeing love where you least expected it.  Yes, I do mean refracted. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes from one substance to another.  Most of the joy we get is bent from one person to another, one moment to the next, from a happy memory recalled in the present or a hopeful expectation from the present to the future.

And it is that refracted joy that gives us hope that what we do matters, that we are all  worthy of redemption – either in a religious or humanitarian sense – and capable of more than who we often are.  I think the crying from the depths is ourselves wanting more, hoping for more – for ourselves, other people, the world, or maybe it is crying for love or companionship, understanding, to not be completely and utterly as alone as we all are.

Which led me to my favorite question – what would you do if you weren’t afraid?   I keep facing that question in my life over and over in the last 3-4 years. My answer is simply there’s nothing I won’t do, fear isn’t a factor I consider.  What’s your answer?  My answer used to be “sniff that Humanity thing again Mugler did” and then I decided it wasn’t fear that stopped me but revulsion. I think fear and revulsion aren’t the same?

So I think I need to buy that big-ass kiln to fuse glass in at home, especially since that stupidly expensive cardigan I thought was shipping this month got canceled.  Right?  I know I need a 40 watt breaker, but if I just plug it in in the basement where the dryer goes in, never run them at the same time (obviously!), it should work, and I won’t blow up my house.  And if I do, I’ll probably have some really cool blown-up fused glass all over the block for my  neighbors to appreciate.

Patty

I’ll admit, I’ve made a whole pile of mistakes over the past few years, the most galling of which has been trusting a certain individual to have my back during a very difficult period. Without wearing that one down to a nub, I do claim responsibility for it and all the others. However, I did something really stupid a couple of weeks ago and I’m still feeling the effects of it.

For the past 3 years, I’ve been taking a certain medication just to take the edge off. For the past couple of months, one of my big projects has been writing extensively about this type of medication and how its side effects can wreak havoc on those of us who have been taking it since it was introduced about 20 years ago. I think I know the details better than a physician at this point, including the names, manufacturers, side effects, everything.

Speaking of side effects, I got it into my head that I wanted to stop taking this medication and decided to wean myself off of it on my own. I made the mistake of thinking I knew enough to do it, but alas, I knew nothing.  The first week was not bad, but after 10 days, I was just about ready to swallow whatever was left in the prescription bottle. The side effects were prolific: dizziness, nausea, insomnia, inability to concentrate, and a general sense of dread that washed over me like sewage. Oh – and the destruction of my sense of smell. I think that side effect has shaken me up worst of all.

My schnoz is recovering slowly but surely. I actually had to take a break from any and all things scented, including shampoo and shower gel. Anything stronger than Ivory soap was an assault on my senses, and I’m still not able to sniff certain scents yet. It’s funny because this happened to me once before: when I was supposed to move to Toronto back in 2008 and was nabbed by the Canadian Border Mafia for supposedly attempting to “immigrate illegally” from the U.S. As much as this ailment alarms me, it amuses me that when the going gets tough, my sense of smell shuts down. How weird is that?

So, a little advice from me to you: never, EVER attempt to wean yourself off anything without help from a trained professional. I was so incapacitated at one point that I placed a call to my family doctor back in New York and cried to her about what an idiot I am. She was always really great to me, especially when things got tough. Talking to her made me feel much better, even though she was the one who wrote me my first prescription. It has helped me tremendously, but now I’m scared to death about what’s going to happen when I do try to properly stop taking this stuff.  I’m going to need many hands to hold, that’s for damn sure.

Here’s a Friday question for you (I won’t call it a poll because it probably doesn’t apply to everyone): Have you ever done something, or gone through a traumatic event that affected your sense of smell? My re-focused, inquiring mind wants to know!

I had every intention of getting out there this week to do a sniff…but by the time I thought I had time to do it, it’s now. And I got nothin’.

I was even right across the street from Holt Renfrew on Monday, but I was heading to a meeting and didn’t have time to go in.

I will try to be back this weekend, but I can’t promise. If you don’t see me, I will surely be back in the saddle next Friday with something new. I’m curious about a bunch of scents; I just haven’t had the time to try them on.

In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend!