Scents

I am picky about smells.  I dislike commercial perfumes, artificial scents, sweet smells (unless it means actual cookies are baking), over the top fruity-floral.  I like herbal smells, wood, spices, 'green' (things like grass, hay, pine, rosemary, eucalyptus), citrus, natural flowers (except gardenias, jasmine and freesia- way to sweet).  Favorite flower smells are geraniums, daffodils, rose, violet, mock orange- but I like them mixed with some spice or green.  I love the smell of the sea, hot sand, paint, cedar, leather, ginger, linseed oil, curry, garlic, pepper, cloves, fresh cigarettes, burnt matches, tea, coffee- but no thanks to new car, cigars/hookah stale smoke, patchouli, musk, fake apple and most anything labeled 'tropical'- unless it is just plain coconut.  That's great- 

The manz is incredibly sensitive to smells for a smoker- and that is so strange because he picks up things I do not- things that are usually classified as 'bad smell get it away' such as: the doggs, feet, burnt toast (anytime we use the toaster oven he smells burnt toast forever- even though toast was never burnt in it-), some of my art supplies (oh no!  It's the stink ink!).  Odd thing is that Turrello the cat is exactly like him- sniffs like a bloodhound, comes running to smells.  When we come home from everywhere the cat has to sniff us all over along with anything we bring new into the house.  He loves to smell our food (rarely tastes it- just thoroughly smells), is particularly attracted to the smell of certain colors of my paint (blue watercolor is his favorite- he even tries to lick it), but his over the top favorite smell has to be daffodils.  This has gone on since he was a kitten, and his first springtime- since he is an indoors-only cat, we attributed it to 'outside- what is that?' curiosity.  But the next spring it was the same, and this early spring that we are having- I brought in our only blooming daffodil for him on Valentines day.  Joy!  Cat Joy!   Much sniffing- we held it out to him until we got tired, then put it in a small vase on the book shelf where he extended his cat self as much as possible in order to smell it.  When I get up in the morning he has raced out to the studio and must smell his flower first thing.  It's been a few days and the daffodil is dried now- I will go out in search of others today (they are my favorite spring flower).  Never have seen a cat smell like this.

So, in my quest for good smells I am experimenting with creating my own.  We have a candle plate- a small lowtemp hot plate made to put candles-in-glass on.  It melts the wax and releases the scent without burning the candle- lasts longer, no smoke, safer supposedly.  With the bonus bonus that I always have melted wax to use with art~ hooray!  It was awesome at first- during the fall when there are the sharp scented candles like apple cider (which smells not so overpoweringly of artificial apple, but rather apples, woods and spices) and pumpkin.  When Christmas came it became harder- the pine candles usually smell like car-trees, the food scents are to sweet and disappointing when you discover that the cookies/pie/cake/gingerbread are imaginary, and then it dissolved into spring scents that tend to be overly floral sweet or perfumed.  And we've noticed over the years that the scents don't seem to last as long- and we have tried a variety of candles- it has become frustrating.  We also tried the reed diffusers but they tend to be either to strong (especially when the cat knocks it over) or dry out because I forget to flip them.  When I clean, I use Flordia water in the mix (and the rosemary soap when I have it- I am out now, and the only place I can get it is at Enams, which requires a trip up to Grifton.  On pinterest, I read about how to make scented oil lamps using dried orange peels- and I have since been obsessively learning how to peel oranges into perfect bowls and drying them.  It's kinda hard to peel an orange into a perfect bowl, so I also dried all my mistakes- I have a tin of them at home now, and more drying at school.  

What I have done this morning is to gather all of the dried bits at home, cut them small with kitchen shears and then grind/mash them in my mortar.  I added some dried rosemary from the yarden, and have a jar of wax melting on the warmer.  I intend to add this all together and hopefully end up with something that smells good. I did go investigate and sniff various commercial candle scents, but they are artificial, expensive and ....just not what I want.  I could get essential oils- and should like to- but that again requires a trip to Enams or downtown to the smelly-store (which is a wonderful place, but very expensive.  They have all sorts of oils though and do custom blends- that you can then have made into perfume, lotions, salts, whatever- but again, expensive.)  In the meantime, it costs nothing to experiment with what I have on hand.  And it makes me feel happily witchy on this morning of a changing day.  (The weather for this weekend includes: sun, highs above 70, seriously strong thunderstorms with high winds this afternoon, extreme drop in temperatures and a very likely chance of sticking snow by tomorrow afternoon. Go figure.)

As usual, I have an abundance and beyond of school work to do- but right this moment I am feeling domestic and in the mood for making, drinking coffee, writing and cleaning....all nesty.  Maybe venturing out and taking photos, finding daffodils for the cat.  Documenting this day and making lists- I would even be up for a road trip to Enams, but timewise- to much work, and would rather not be on that road in heavy weather.  Besides, perhaps I can find a cool botanical store and interesting smells on my journeys- or in my own back yard.