Back from administrator town

I am back from Brussels, which is very much an administrator town; you can fell it in the metro, see it in the streets looking at the office building’s signs for lobbying organisations that are called briefing organisations in EU terms. Nothing bad about it, it is just different.
Arriving late on Friday, there was not much time to do anything in terms of perfumery which I compensated for over the weekend. Visiting the shop, meeting with Vero, cooking my home made Sauerkraut (which turned out very yummy), working on the leather note, writing my e-mails and thinking about the brochure for the December 18 event of ours.

The leather note: It is coming to a point that I feel comfortable with. Version 15.2 looks very promising and I presented it (version 15.0) to Vero who thinks that the woody base should not be modified anymore. From 15 to 15.2 I made some corrections in terms of head note and middle note, but the base stayed untouched. Tomorrow, I will tell you more about it…..

Coming home from Brussels, after a rather stiff week, also meant bringing home some shirts that needed ironing after a thorough wash. This was yesterday’s task before jogging, 10 shirts, one hour, giving me time to meditate in steam clouds about things to get done. There is comfort in repetitive work that involves only basic functions of our brains and that frees computing power to batch jobs like what kind of presents to prepare for my neighbours and friends for Christmas. Realising that there are scents and molecules which survive even an 80°C washing cycle and are released by steam ironing (Ambroxide being one of them), the thoughts wander from shirts to the French court of 250 years ago where due to missing hygiene fragrances were so important that they even scented the walls with natural musks; some sources say that besides perfuming the intension was also to prevent greedy husbands to visit. I wonder what 250 years ago people would have said about our perfumes. They might well have judged them as being quasi non-existent. Quintessence: You need some deodorised room to wear a delicate, piece of art perfume.
But back to Christmas presents: The ideas are room (spray, ethanol based) perfumes for toilets, scented soaps as every year or scented bath oils. The bath oil is a tricky one, for many people do not like taking baths at all neither do they like oils in their bath tubes, even if it is Jojoba oil, which is wonderful for any skin, being a perfect carrier for scents as Jojoba oil will not oxidise. My favourite here: Bergamot, Rose, Rose Geranium and Patchouli combined. The Jojoba oil joins with the Patchouli, covers the skin with a thin layer, smoothes dry skin and scents the whole body for hours. The room spray might be Incense based with some citrus (Lemongrass?, bitter Orange?) and Lavender. The soaps: Last year’s favourite was red Mandarin with some Lemongrass. But, maybe we should all consider buying our soap at Heather's , (EIEFLUD shop link is here) too, because I know from personal experience that soap making is not easy, and if I read about Heather’s soap making it just sounds wonderful. What I find difficult in soap making: It is very tricky to predict what it will smell like after storage for a couple of weeks, probably due to the basic environment within a soap bar, scents decompose, some notes dominate very easily. A job for the expert! Thus, it’s probably going to be a room spray this year. Mission neighbour’s house deodorisation started…..