TWO WEEKS UNPLUGGED! CAN I SURVIVE?

Every fall when I teach a class of college freshmen, I have them do an exercise in which they spend a 24-hour period without their electronic devices. No phones, no tablets, no laptops, no cheating by going to the library and using a desktop dinosaur. About 10% of them typically report that they enjoyed the freedom of not having to deal with their devices and never realized how much time they had when they weren’t constantly checking social media and texting. The other 90% felt emotions that ranged from lonely to panicked – they all felt like something was missing, as if a part of them had been amputated.  I understand.

Now I’m in the same situation, but for a longer time. Husband Michael and I will be traveling in Ireland, no particular plans, just a basic 2-person walkabout. My US phone won’t work there, at least not without egregious roaming charges, so forget the phone. My laptop is clunky and I just spent almost 9 hours in the Apple store yesterday while it was being rescued from a near-death experience caused by some mishap that occurred during the simple replacement of a bad track pad. It has a new, updated operating system (the old one was destroyed), so some things work and some don’t. I think I’ll leave it at home while I’m gone, continuing the restoration activities once I get back to Seattle. I tend to travel as light as possible, so not taking a laptop or phone with me is pretty much typical anyway. 

I don’t mind missing my university e-mails - after all, it's summer - but my business e-mails are another matter. I don’t like to leave customers hanging for two weeks without a response. In preparation, I have put “vacation” messages on all of my e-mail accounts. I’ve also put discounts for free shipping (or partially free shipping for international packages) on the orchid website and the original boutique perfume website to help compensate for delayed processing of orders. I can’t implement this sort of discount on my Shopify website, which looks nice superficially but lacks a lot of the functionality of my cheap iHost ones. That’s a problem that I’ll deal with eventually, when I get back.

I won’t be posting anything on the blog until after the 20^th, when I return to Seattle, but look forward to getting back to regular posting by the last week of August. In the meantime, here’s wishing a happy rest of the summer to everyone!

[All photos of landscapes in the west of Ireland (where we'll be) are from Wikimedia. I won't have any photos of my own until I get home again and replace the utility that I use to download photos from my phone and camera, which isn't working after the repair disaster.]

WHITE CATTLEYA: THE CHALLENGE OF USING LEMON IN PERFUME

Cattleya orchids with flowers in the white-to-green range often have a citrusy scent that’s heavy on lemon notes, so one of my latest challenges has been trying to recreate the scent of a white hybrid cattleya orchid. I’m getting there, but on the way I’ve struggled with the difficulties of using lemon as a perfume note. Unfortunately lemon has been ruined by its gross overuse in functional fragrances for cleaning supplies, almost to the extent that it evokes a conditioned knee-jerk response of “cleaning product” even if it’s in a context that has nothing to do with cleaning, like lemonade, lemon desserts, lemon candies, or lemony colognes. In fact, there are commercial “lemonade” drinks that taste like they’re flavored with the same aroma chemicals that are used in cleaning supplies, further blurring the lines between fruit, food, beverages, detergents, and perfume.

Instead of the standard lemon rind essential oil, I started with an essential oil made from the whole fruit, which has a gentler and sweeter scent, along with a little citron. Natural lemon on its own is a top note, so I added some other materials like lemonile that enhance it and make it last well into the middle section of the scent, if not the end. The goal is for it so smell something like an orchid, so there’s plenty of vanilla in the base. After looking at published analyses of orchid flower fragrances, which are all over the place even for cattleyas, I chose a few materials that are in a lot of flowers’ fragrances, like citronellol, linalool, nerolidol and others. Citronellol and phenylethyl alcohol in particular helped “floralize” the lemon, so the heart of the perfume is not all that lemony, but includes other fruity-floral orchid-type notes. The base also contains some light, high-end musks. Combining lemon with common “laundry musk” would automatically evoke the image of detergent, so the musk component  had to be done some other way, using materials like cosmone, velvione, muscenone, and others of their type.

In analyses of orchid flower headspaces, one commonly encountered substance is beta-ocimene, a simple terpene-type molecule that until now hasn’t been commercially available, at least not to small-scale perfumers. I finally managed to get some, and added it to the white cattleya. It gives the whole composition a very natural, fresh feeling, adding the same kind of sparkle that aldehydes are known for. I’m still working on the formula, but when I return to Seattle on August 20, I’ll send out samples to my testers so that I can get feedback. It’s not quite finished, but it’s getting there. 

[Lemons and Rhyncholaelia digbyana photos from Wikimedia; white hybrid cattleya photo is mine.]

WINNERS OF KRASNAYA MOSKVA

Two commenters will receive a decant of Krasnaya Moskva. They are:

LARKIN
LAURIE BROWN

Please e-mail azarsmith7@gmail.com with your shipping information. 

LONE PERFUMER ADRIFT IN A SEA OF CHOCOLATE

SATURDAY, JULY 25: I’m starting to write this post on Saturday night, the day my Huernia zebrina bloomed. It looks like I’m going to be the only perfumer at the Seattle Chocolate Salon, which used to be the Chocolate and Fragrance Salon before the organizers decided they weren’t making enough money from the perfume side of it. I’m preparing for a crowd of people who probably have little or no knowledge about perfume, and little or no appreciation for it. Some may even be afraid of wearing perfume.

I’ve tried to design an eye-catching general-public-friendly display that has some items other than perfume - body balm and soap. There will be drawings for live orchid plants throughout the day, and the featured fragrances for both perfume and soap will include Seattle Chocolate and California Chocolate. I expect to do more educating than anything else. It’s not even 9 PM yet, and everything is ready to go! I’ve gotten quite efficient at packing for shows. 

MONDAY, JULY 27: The show is over, and played out pretty much as predicted. The venue was a large, suburban hotel next to a bleak freeway exit in the south end of Bellevue, just across the lake from Seattle. As far as I could tell, it was only accessible by car, ruling out attendance by anyone who did not drive, as well as any walk-in attendees.

Most surprising was the fact that the hotel was undergoing a major construction operation, so the vendors and public had to walk through a maze of plywood and plastic tunnels to reach the so-called “ballroom” where the event was held. Given the nature of the venue, its location, and its condition, I’m surprised that attendance was as good as it was.

The vendors were a mixed conglomeration of businesses, ranging from high-end chocolatiers who had flown in from Florida through Northwest tea retailers, a street-fair jewelry stand, and a financial consultant! I thought I would be the odd business out, but clearly I was wrong. I actually featured some chocolate-themed products that stimulated the chemical senses.

This strategy had its pros and cons. The fact that I highlighted chocolate-themed fragrances made me fit right into the mainstream, but it also resulted in more than a few people asking how to eat my products!

More than the usual number of people informed me that they were “allergic to perfume”. I think there’s a correlation between driving everywhere and being “allergic” to everything. If they really had allergies, I imagine they would have fled as soon as they smelled the moldy carpet in the ballroom, which was hard to ignore. Oddly, some of the “allergic” people asked me if I had scented candles.

As I expected, I sold more soaps and body balm than perfume, although the travel sprays were a popular item. This show was like a typical orchid show in that Red Cattleya was the fragrance preferred by the majority, with many of my other perfumes just evoking puzzled looks. That’s fine. I explained that not every perfume has to smell like walking into a Sephora shop. If even one person’s olfactory horizon expanded by a few molecules, I did my job.

Perfume shows are always good for discovering new types of anosmia, in this case an inability to smell the incredibly strong patchouli in my newly-minted Patchouli Lover’s soap!

Overall, it was an interesting day, not particularly profitable, but an interesting session of observing the people of the Eastside who go to chocolate shows and, with any luck, expanding their horizons. 

[All photos are mine except for the one with the Quantum Demonology book and Devil Scents, which is from the Taste TV Fragrance Salon Facebook page] 

WHO KNEW RECYCLING COULD BE CUTE?

Having two businesses and a day-job provides an opportunity for me to recycle leftovers from one enterprise for use in another. I wrap orchid plants in recycled copies of the student newspaper. I pack perfumes in recycled styrofoam peanuts from my department and from shipments of materials that I receive. I use cut-off paper grocery bags as carry-out boxes for drop-in customers who buy plants from the greenhouse. I shred the ugly advertising flyers that come to our mailbox several times a week to make padding to use in shipping delicate plants.

It recently occurred to me that when I pack perfume boxes in colored tissue paper and trim the ends off to make a neat package, I can save the trimmings and add them to the shredded paper stash that I use to pack the orchids. I drop the shredded tissue in a paper bag, letting it accumulate until the bag is full and then adding it to the shredded advertising flyers. It looks nice and colorful, and keeps the plants safe as they travel.

Little did I know what a treat this bag of shredded paper would be for our big cat, Jasper! He loves to tip the bag over, rake the shredded paper into a comfy bed, and sleep half in, half out of the bag. The more paper there is in the bag, the better he likes it. What could be cuter than a 20-pound cat sleeping in a grocery bag, surrounded by bright-colored paper streamers? I can only imagine what a feeling of luxury it gives him. 

[Photos are mine]