Nicole Reinert

My dear, sweet friend from afar, Nicole, Ms. Littleflowers of Etsy fame, is in dire need. Any help you can offer would be greatly and lovingly appreciated.

Please read the following, and if your heart directs you, join the Google group: support for nicole ~

"Nicole Reinert and Jason McGill are in extreme crisis as they both fight for Nicole's survival. They have minimal support from Nicole's family, and need to mobilize friends and community as much as possible right now. For this reason, we have created a Google Group, which you have been added to.

Recently, Nicole, who suffers from a serious disease of the autonomic nervous system (POTS and ME/CFIDS), as well as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, became much more acutely symptomatic due to a mold infestation in her and Jason's apartment. Already in a health relapse for nine months, and barely able to sit or stand for more than a few minutes at a time without provoking unsafe blood pressure and pulse fluctuations, she suddenly became unable to tolerate all food and medication.

Nicole went through a blur of starving for three days, and experiencing dangerous medication withdrawal, as things had reached such a low point that each bite of food put her body into shock: burning tongue and mouth, soaring blood pressure and heart rate, burning ears, extreme full-body discomfort, writhing, convulsions, etc.

She had to be rushed to two different ERs (RI Hospital and Miriam) over the course of 24 hours. On the third day of this situation, Jason and Nicole had doubts that she would survive. They immediately hired a private ambulance and went to Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, which has a renowned allergy/immunology team. BWH admitted her (June 28 - July 4), ran a plethora of tests (results still pending), and prescribed a medication (Gastrocrom, a mast cell stablizer) that allowed her to begin eating again -- still with symptoms, but eating nonetheless.

The hospital discharged Nicole prematurely (such is the "modern hospital stay," as one administrator said), and Jason spent countless hours on the phone searching for a safe place for them to stay, since they couldn't return to the moldy apartment which sent her to the hospital in the first place. Nicole's chemical sensitivities were made astronomically worse from the ER visits and the hospital stay. She now must wear a mask most of the time, and develops the same symptoms of shock if exposed to nearly every chemical: gasoline, scents of laundry detergent clinging to people's clothes, mold, new carpeting -- the list is very long. Exposures also make her autonomic nervous system disease worse, so it's a vicious cycle. Exposures also make eating difficult, despite the new medication, which is still a major concern.

Because of the nervous system dysfunction, Nicole is bedridden, though she can sometimes endure short (1-2 minutes) transport in a wheelchair. Most of the time she has to be carried, especially up and down stairs.

In addition to petrochemically-derived chemicals and scents, Nicole is absolutely unable to tolerate exposure to electromagnetic frequencies emitting from devices such as cellphones, iPods, computers, televisions, etc.

Nicole and Jason are currently staying temporarily with some incredibly dear and generous friends (Niki, Brendan, and Cormac) in Matunuck, RI through Monday, July 13. At that point they will be in desperate need of a clean environment to transfer Nicole to. Their car is packed with necessities and they are living day-to-day. They are grateful that Nicole is still alive, and they are very much in need to folks to really step up and help keep her alive! If you can drive or fly in to help be a part of their survival/support team, now is the time to do it. There will also be a number of ways that you might be of assistance from a distance.

They have already rented an apartment in Brattleboro, VT, which opens on August 1. They may not be able to move on this date, however, until Nicole is more stable, as it will be impossible for the two of them to manage in a new state without the infrastructure of support that exists in Rhode Island.

Nicole and Jason will also need help clearing out their current apartment and getting all of their belongings into a safe storage space (one that doesn't use pesticides, for example--a controlled space such as somebody's home would be preferred for storage.)

The most crucial thing right now is immediate help. Help finding a safe living space, and help supporting Jason, as Nicole is currently completely physically dependent on him as a caregiver while he's also trying to organize a million different things at once just to keep them afloat. They have not been able to set up things like nursing/hospice home care and home IV, as every day has just been a struggle to simply survive and deal with the absurd reality that they are "couch surfing" at such a medically critical time.

This list will have several moderators and be updated regularly. Discussion is welcome, and Jason will be able to see messages (though Nicole won't). Thank you so much for anything you are able to contribute to help in this struggle. Nicole and Jason send love, gratitude, and hope."

By Ann posted on the 'support for nicole' Google group.

For those of us too far away to provide any immediate help, someone from the Google group is setting up a PayPal account to accept donations in order to help with purchasing an organic, mold-free bed for Nicole, to find and pay for reliable medical care, and to help with all the other small but necessary expenses this medical crisis has created.

Please, at the very least, send her your love.

Re-Post: Liz Zorn's Underworld

Because I felt it needed to be.

Sunday, December 09, 2007
Underworld ~ A Natural Perfume by Liz Zorn
Underworld. The name evokes dank darkness and wicked biting things creeping low on the ground -- or under the ground. Slithering, slimy fearful things, all fangs and glowing red eyes. Ok, so I have a very active imagination. Thankfully, Underworld is none of the above.

Instead, it is resinous and oudhy, floral with a soft powdery sweetness that grows in intensity as the 'fume lies on the skin. An anise-like quality twines about this perfume, and is tempered with roses and dark spices. Smells animalic. Not the musty, fusty smell of unwashed fur, but the clean animal smell that floats off the skin of a well-loved cat.

An underlying ambery vanilla chord gives the entire perfume a warm, candy-like feel. And booziness - there's a boozy, barroom-on-a-dark-rainy-night, -blues-playing-on-the-juke-box essence dancing around too.

The gourmandy part of this perfume is luscious. Chocolate and Sen Sen breath freshener, burnt coffee and cinnamon. To top it off, there's also a thread of old leather glove, firewood, smoke and ash.

This perfume is definitely dark. But dark in a way that is alluring and sensual.

*Notes: vetyver, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, ginger lily, labdanum, pomegranate, rose, geranium leaf, birch, vanilla, 'sweet amber', jasmine A., angelica, 'mosses', 'woods'.

Le Parfumeur Rebelle Giveaway

The giveaway for June/July is still underway ~ do yourself a favor and enter. This months' prizes are three bars of luscious handmade luxury soap from Chant by Eleneetha. You don't want to miss this soap, it's beyond vibrational.

Molly Birnbaum in USA Today on Zicam

Taking Scent for Granted.

August Perfume Workshop

The Crazy 8's

Meet Mr's. Oakmoss, Tolu, Galbanum, Labdanum, Olibanum, Styrax and Benzoin, and Ms. Orris (who has had some 'work done', if you get what I mean), the Soluble Resin family of the Vintage Lineage. Ms. Sandalwood of Mysore is camera shy and the only sane one in the bunch. We'll save her photo shoot for another time.

Aren't they just mouth watering?

A Sweet Perfume

Poetry from Dreams of Happiness, 1907

The nosegay that you casually left
sheds sweet perfume about the little room
and all my soul is lost in reverie
of you, my child, and this sweet perfume.
And then I see you lost in reverie
of me, your brow shadowed by a gloom.
The nosegay that you casually left
sheds all about the room a sweet perfume.

Teacher Perfumers ~ Places to Go (On the Web)

Shelley Waddington ~ Carmel-based bridge perfumer, Shelley, utilizes aromatics from both the natural botanical palette and the synthetic palette. Shelley's nearly newly launched blog, Carmel Perfumer, relates blending techniques and interesting perfumery facts.

Lyn Ayre ~ Canadian natural botanical perfumer, Lyn Ayre, is an instructor extraordinaire. Lyn's approach to NBP, in both her teaching and creating, are spiritual and pragmatic. Read through her website, then check out the correspondence course information.

Ayala Moriel ~ Canadian-based natural botanical perfumer, Ayala Moriel, teaches through her words -- her blog, to be exact. Through her website, Ayala offers consultations for custom perfumes, links to news articles and sites offering information pertaining to perfumery, history of perfumes and other related topics. Ayala also offers a well-received natural botanical perfumery course featuring top drawer information within the realm of nbp.

Liz Zorn ~ American perfumer, Liz Zorn, is another bridge perfumer who works within both the natural botanical and synthetic perfumery palettes. Her blog offers excellent tips and tricks for formulating perfume, an insider's view into the world of the perfume making process. Excellent information.

Holding Back

I often wonder if I'd be a better perfumer if I weren't such a paranoid one.

Must work on that. Must try.

Catch phrases and quotes can't touch this.

I think I'll get to work now. Still grinding out the soap.

Does a Limited Vocabulary Improve Scent Description?

A few months ago, when my 6-year-old grandson was a daily fixture in my house, we used to play the ‘sniffing game’ together, better known as the 20-a-day exercise. I was, and still am, greatly impressed with his descriptions as opposed to the overly-wordy and non-descriptive scent descriptions I was writing down in my notebook. He described what he smelled in his own way. Oud Vietnam and oud Cambodian were 'gicky mud' or it could have been 'bug'?; khus attar and vetyver mitti co-distillates got 'dirt' and the most interesting of them all was the ruh khus; his eyes lit up and he said 'mmm, tea!' Who can’t understand these types of descriptions? Simple. Accurate. Maybe in need of a little elaboration, but the point is made, nonetheless.

I’ve read descriptions which boggle the mind, and most of them were my own. What does “floral” smell like exactly? Or “fresh”? “Sparkling”? We can somewhat understand “green”, but which green? The green of river moss, or the green of violet leaf? The green of galbanum, with its touches of cigarette butt and scratchy throat, or the breath-stealing, chilled green of cilantro? See? Even these descriptions aren’t entirely accurate.

How does one describe jasmine sambac to someone who has never smelled jasmine sambac, or its smell-alike counterparts? It’s much like describing color to someone born blind. Do you really think telling someone a perfume smells richly indolic will inspire them to rush out and purchase said perfume if they read the scent description for the word indole? From Dictionary.com comes this luscious gem:

Indole ~ –noun Chemistry; a colorless to yellow solid, C8H7N, having a low melting point and a fecal odor, found in the oil of jasmine and clove and as a putrefaction product from animals’ intestines: used in perfumery and as a reagent.


Mmmmm, yummy!

Here are a few of my favorite scent descriptions that I’ve “collected” over the years:

Cumin ~ sweaty dude pits and crotch
Oudh ~ butt crack putty
Tuberose ~ boiled weenie water
Jasmine grandiflorum ~ old whore
Cognac ~ rotten egg
Valerian ~ sweaty feet

Some of these are dead-on accurate, others a little off the mark. All I know is that when I’m really stumped by a scent, one that truly eludes me, I grab the kid and shove the scent strip under his nose and let him rip into it.

“What’s it smell like, Odie?”
“Smells like toenails, Grandma.”

Coming Soon ~ Khamsa eau Fraiche

Finally -- finally! -- got this formulation worked out, and discovered, quite surprisingly, that Khamsa extrait dilutes to fresh water state without any significant loss of character, and with only tiny adjustments to the composition -- teeny, tiny.

So within the next few weeks the very first eau fraiche presented by The Scented Djinn will go on sale. The best part, aside from how clean, fresh and lovely it smells, is that it is presented in a 100 ml spray bottle. One hundred mls! And the price will surprise you too, but I'll leave that for the big reveal.

Khamsa ~ a distinctly fresh, lively scent featuring a blend of sparkling citrus, cool cilantro and shining silver patchouli.

Kit Kit Dizzee

On etsy I am selling small bags (3 grams) of the kit kit dizzee aka mountain misery aka chamaebatia foliolosa I've been going on about. If you're interested, check it out here.

Chant by Eleneetha ~ A Review Link

LPR is giving away three bars of soap from soap mistress Anastasia Crabtree, who now sells through Etsy under the name of Chant by Eleneetha. So we did a little review of Ana's stuff ~ here it is. If you're so inclined, enter the giveaway and try for these exquisite soaps for yourself. You have nothing to lose but the dirt.

Cafe Press Pulls the Rug From Under Millions

LPR used to have a Cafe Press "site" for t-shirts, mugs and a couple of other items. Though it never really generated any significant amounts of money for our organization, it was a useful medium for getting our non-perfumed goods out there. Now, according to this blog post by Sheryl Karas, owner of Mama Love Perfumes, Cafe Press has literally stolen the livelihoods of millions of artists.

Carrots and Condiments

Summer's here and the house is packed to the rafters with --with--with-- kids! It's been a flurry of sleep-overs, kick-backs and hang-outs since school let out last Friday. And it's been a pain in the you-know-what, too! These kids are like packs of wild, hungry dogs. I go to bed with a full refrigerator and wake up with a living room covered in empty bags of chips, at least a million empty soda cans, and then there's something sticky on the kitchen floor, and the only thing left in the fridge are carrots and condiments.

Ah, summer. Truly the season of bah humbug.

Finally made it up the hill the other day, dragging along a handful of kids whose prime objectives were to eat, swim, and generally drive me crazy(ier). It took a significant amount of hunting to finally find that big patch of kit-kit dizzee -- I just followed my nose. I also found a mother lode of oakmoss, but saved the gathering for another time. I've still got some left from last year's harvest. The trick with oakmoss is that you have to let it age before tincturing it. Once harvested from the forest floor, it needs about 5 to 6 months of "resting" time before the distinguishing mossy scent presents itself. I store them in a paper bag with the gathering date written on the side, and then toss the bag into the darkest corner of my supplies' cabinet until I need to make up another tincture.

There is soap to be made today. I'm praying the kids will stay out of my hair so I can get it done. The scenting materials were blended over a week ago and two of the four smell like perfumes, to the point that one is the subject of restructuring for a fall perfume. Let's just say I found a use for that mountain misery. The scent of mountain misery is one that is distinctive and invasive, it is like nothing found in natural botanical perfumery today. It feels very foreign to me used in this way. Yet the scent is so familiar and comforting, full with memories.

I read part of Pouche's Perfume's Cosmetics and Soaps, volume 2, the section pertaining to fixation, in bed last night. I lead an extraordinarily exciting life, don't I? So, yeah, the fixation -- pre-fixation, blending, final fixation -- it's work, man. For example, he writes, "Final fixation is probably the most delicate operation in preparing a good and distinctive perfume, as it is this part of the process which gives distinction and "life" to the finished product." This term "life" really caught my attention as quite a few of my earlier experiments had none, and I hadn't the experience to figure out why. He goes on, "This step consists of three operations: -- (a) The addition of some animal perfume, such as small quantities of musk, civet, ambergris, or castor, which will impart "warmth and life" and at the same time improve the aroma by softening down the harshness caused by the presence of synthetics." This is a huge problem for me. I just don't feel comfortable using animal perfumes in my creations. And I've figured out ways to give my creations warmth and life without harming an animal by additions of its juices or excretions. And I don't use synthetics, so it may be a moot point anyway. "(b) The addition of a small quantity of a substance, such as verbena, bergamot, or bois de rose, which will produce a sweet and pleasant effect." and "(c) The addition of a suitable quantity of natural absolute, having fresh and glowing characteristics, such as jasmin, rose, mimosa, or tuberose, which will give the predominating flowery note to a perfectly harmonious mixture. The finished perfume should be neither too animal nor too chemical if these points have had careful consideration." Sounds simple enough, yeah? Animal smells, sweet smells and flowery smells make a nice perfume. Simple? No. Not at all.

Too Much Yin, Not Enough Yang

According to Mr. Avocado, my shen is deficient. The laws of attraction don't work on sick shen. It's my understanding that my shen only comes into existence when I'm dead, but hey, who am I to challenge someone attempting to make a point?

So I'm taking my sick shen, me, two of my offspring and two of their friends up the hill for a little shen-dig (ha!); build up the yang, man. Going to pick some mountain misery (now that sounds like it'd make my shen very sick) for some folks who I promised to send samples. It's a bit cool, so I won't be attempting swimming across the lake, besides, my shen's being a drag, it'd probably drown me or force me to eat lake weed. I'd rather hang out with the manzanita fairies on the dry beach, thank you very much.

Time to pack it up. I wonder if we'll all fit in the car? My shen may end up riding in the trunk.

On an off note (a little perfumer's humor there), I found the most exquisite book ~ Cassell's New French Dictionary, French-English AND English-French published in 1905. I was going to use the pages as background for labels, but changed my mind when I began reading the darned thing! Enchanting, or should I say it in French? So, anyway, Shelley, 'abattoir'? Definition: (simply) slaughter-house. The French, or at least those involved in this dictionary, are very frank, no pun intended . . . okay, maybe a little.

Fragrant Botanical Waters

When I first began distilling botanicals, I'd assumed my greatest pleasure would be derived from a) Creating my own oils, b) The oils themselves, and c) Creating product with the oils I made. Little did I know that the by-product, the waters, aka hydrosols, would capture my imagination as they have. I no longer look at a botanical and think, "How much oil can I get from that?", but, "How nice would THAT hydrosol be?"

Over the years I've been gifted with large apothecary and liquor glassware ~ one and two liter glass stoppered decanters, big corked jugs, decorative hand thrown earthenware decanters, and a few monstrosities -- old gallon Gallo jugs with screw lids. I remember thinking 'what the hell am I going to do with this?' a time or two. Some were too pretty to mess up storing finished perfume or compositions; others too big. Now nearly all are filled with hydrosols. They took some cleaning, those jugs and bottles -- hot soapy water baths, boiled in big industrial pots, swirled with alcohol. The one major setback to creating hydrosols is the issue of sterility -- if the containers aren't properly cleaned the hydrosol goes wonky. Basically, little microscopic creatures begin to grow in them and render them useless. And they need to be refrigerated. Nothing feels quite so nice as a little shot of refrigerator-cold botanical water on a hot summer's day.

Today the still is taking a break. There are lemons to distill, but the timing is off. It'll wait until tomorrow. And I'm in the process of inquiring about violet flowers to distill. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell I'll get even a drop of oil, but that's not what I'm after. The hydrosol may turn out smelling like rotted garbage, but I won't know until I get it done.