More Transition ~ And a Little Transmutation?

This is the perfumery hutch as it appears today. If you look back a few posts, you'll see how it started out a couple of weeks ago. You see what a few days of digging through boxes and cabinets of perfumery wares gets you? Something else overflowing with precious items. My studio is beginning to resemble an antique store. And this other photo ~ the one with all the little 5ml dropper bottles? That's what a blending bench looks like after a 35lb garage door is ripped from its hinges and crashes down on it ~ I actually cleaned up the broken glass from an antique apothecary bottle (boo hoo) ~ but the rest, the dust, the scattered mess, the tweaked organ -- all that is original post garage door mishap. You don't even want to know what forces caused the door to do what it did. All. On. Its. Own. (Can you hear the music from The Twillight Zone playing?)

It's not the easiest thing to do, cleaning a space like this, when there's perfume to bottle, sites to update, pictures to take (yes!), and studying to do. Spagyrics are on the roster, and I have to admit, some of it is a bit over my head. But I'm the determined sort, so I imagine with a little more focused concentration and a more peaceful atmosphere (five people live in this house and are in and out all day long with their various and sundry daily dramas playing out), I'll work it all out. It's fascinating stuff. My point is, the studio is still in a transitional, yet usable, stage.

I've discovered, to my dismay, that the cats enjoy sipping water from the ultrasonic, even when they have a perfectly clean and full water bowl available; they love climbing over the oldest of books in my collection and batting at the book marks sticking out of them, and generally squeezing themselves into the tiniest of nooks between hutch and cabinet and boxes and scratching and clawing at stuff until the sound is unbearable. At any given time, you can hear me shouting, "Get out!" and see three not even remotely bothered cats sauntering out of the studio. I get them back, though. I take my time chopping up their chicken while they meow and hop and chirp and beg on the floor, and all the while I'm laughing in their fuzzy, pathetic little faces. Cats are an impatient lot.

As many wonderful things as I've rediscovered, some formulations that were done yet forgotten, a few antique bottles, some mini perfume bottles tucked away in a box, I've yet to find the apple blossom concrete I've hoarded all these months ~ I think I used it in a demo box for a perfume workshop a few months back, but I'm not certain. Regardless, I've searched in all the usual places and have yet to find it. It's one of my library pieces and I'm very upset that it's missing. Perhaps I'll find it yet as the studio still holds a few secrets.

Enter to win the Kaufman book a few posts down ~ it's one of the prettiest of coffee table books that actually has usable perfumery information in it. Just drop a comment in the comments section of that post and you're in the drawing. Drawing deadline: January 31, 2010 ~ good luck!