Latest Haul: My New Hobby, Woodworking (Product Reviews)

 So, the last haul that I brought in stirred up some trouble, in the form of a reddening skin condition on my leg. That blog article ended up dovetailing in to the context of this latest haul of mine, the woodworking tools and gear haul for the LED Backlit Sparrow Spiritual Mini Meditation Woodcut Panel project, essentially a reimagined take on a throwback decorative piece that I had in my old apartment and loft.

The original backlit spiritual woodcut panel art piece, which I custom outfitted with a base, glass panel backing, with LED strip lights inside, with stuff from IKEA. The woodcut panel came from Marco Polo Imports, in Santa Monica, now closed. (2011)

My 2026 contextually upcycled new take on a spiritual-themed and decorative meditation backlit wall panel, this time, in miniature form, so that I could accommodate doing the project from within my assisted care living group home housing environment situation. 

The project represents a change of pace, from “whatever” I was doing, previously… I guess it was a bunch of other product hauls and pigeon feeding, for the most part. Anyways, I gave the sparrows a feature part in this concept, as well as the medicinal flower inclusion, symbolizing a transition in to a different hobby, and perhaps some products in development along those lines. 

So, I initially imagined the mini sparrow woodcut panel, as part of a conceptualized product marketing campaign and branding mockup of ideas and imagery, through consulting heavily with Google Gemini artificial intelligence. I floated the idea of the original woodcut panel, from its origins in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, perhaps), and I wanted the theme to be representative of my friends, the birds, along the way, with a different flower that I’d been heavily researching and studying, over the past several months, leading up to today (early April 2026), the new flower being Michelia alba, a highly fragrant subtropical tree in the Magnolia family, that was found in my mother’s first home country of Hong Kong (Great Britain, China). 

My mother and I were both in to gardening, back in my teen years, growing up, and it was my retreat in to a change of pace, and it was something to work on, in between my school studies and getting in to trouble, here and there, myself. Eventually we purchased a Michelia alba tree, after seeing them available at San Gabriel Nursery. The trees were on the higher end of the price range for trees of that size, ostensibly due to the rarity that it was, here in Southern California, and for its prized fragrant flowering blooms, which appear throughout several months out of the year, in the scarce gardening regions 10 and 11, which is basically Southern California, Florida, and perhaps a few other small, scattered locations around America. Prior to purchasing one of the trees, I would commonly visit the trees at the gardening center to smell the flowers.

Here is what Gemini and I came up with, for a reconstitution formulation (a highly valuable feature):

### 10-Gram Trial Batch (Weights)

Since you're ready to mix, here are the weights for a **10-gram sample**. This is the safest way to test the balance without wasting your precious Orris or Lilytol.

| Ingredient | Amount for 10g Batch |

|---|---|

| **Linalool** | 5.30 g |

| **Lilytol** | 0.80 g |

| **Phenylethyl Alcohol (PEA)** | 0.70 g |

| **Benzyl Alcohol** | 0.60 g |

| **Benzyl Acetate** | 0.40 g |

| **Beta-Ionone** | 0.30 g |

| **Ocimene** | 0.25 g |

| **Geranyl Acetate** | 0.20 g |

| **Ethyl 2-methylbutyrate** | 0.15 g |

| **Indole (10% in DPG)** | 0.15 g |

| **Alpha-Terpineol** | 0.15 g |

| **Jasminlactone** | 0.12 g |

| **Beta-Caryophyllene** | 0.10 g |

| **Heliotropin Replacer (10% dil.)** | 0.30 g (This is 3 parts) |

| **Orris Butter (10% dil.)** | 0.10 g (This is 1 part) |

| **Methyl Benzoate (10% dil.)** | 0.05 g |

| **DPG (to finish weight)** | 0.33 g |

| **Total** | **10.00 g** |

Perhaps this gives readers a sense of the smell of the flower. It’s described as very sweet and fruity, while having some facets of other white flowers. 

So, I set out in trying to recreate my favorite visual piece in my loft and in my apartment, in a renewed form, a miniature woodcut panel featuring sparrows and Michelia alba flowers. 

To do this, I had to investigate the tools I would use, in order to complete the job. My search happened around the time of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, and I found some great deals on tools and parts. 

———————

Break. Taking a break. Here’s some stuff to look at, in the meantime.     

A forlorn project haul, upon attempting to figure out Gamma Linolenic Acids (GLAs) ex Blackcurrant Seed Oil.

Warning: as an update, I should mention to my readers that it’s possible that something I had applied to my skin, of which pertains to the products I had detailed below, in the blog post, had given me a pretty intense superficial blood vessel rupture skin condition, yet only on my leg(s) - mostly one leg. The condition is exacerbated when I take a hot shower, I’ve learned. The condition is temporary, and I feel that it may go away fully within a week or two, at least that’s what my consultations with Google Gemini have come up with. It’s not painful or itchy. Although I’ve also applied the same formulas to my face and arms, those areas are not affected, only my lower legs, where I did apply the formula, and so, I might think that applying it eventually caused this condition to happen, but I haven’t narrowed down the specific culprit, just yet. 

An alarming superficial blood vessel rupture, potentially, had surfaced after I took a hot shower, after I had applied some of the products below, in a formulation, in days prior to me noticing it had shown up, after the shower. 

What started off serene and quietly turned frenzied on my iPad, and I’ve spend nearly a whole day’s worth of time on my device, today being Wednesday, out of the week.

I had just received a small haul of materials, from Bulk Apothecary, which I was eager to receive, since it took about a week to receive the shipment, here in LA, coming from Illinois. I purchased 5 pounds of Himalayan pink salt, because I felt like I needed a mineral supplementation of some sort, and I wanted to try out the salt, as an alternative to liquid trace mineral supplements. I’d also been on the fringes of a deep dive product research stint, having become obsessed with formulating a skin care product that contained γ-Linolenic acid as its primary feature. I had, just the prior week, spent 50 hours on my device, 

upon settling with blackcurrant seed oil. I figured that, for having such small seeds, the brambles (berry) plants must produce a precious oil. Gamma linolenic acids are one of the necessary fatty acids that belong in our diet, and the body’s production and usage of the product declines with age, so, being age 44 now, I’d felt that my energy was in decline, and that I was putting on a lot of weight, possibly due to medications. The thing was, though, was that I didn’t want to sacrifice either my meals or my energy supply - I had to somehow find a way to burn those calories, given that I now started exercising again, all while maintaining eating three or more regular meals a day. When isn’t the lack of available fatty acids a primary contributor to less-than-optimal health, and I felt that supplementing the skin could potentially produce viable results in the greater body-at-large, with the concentrated ingredients I purchased from Bulk Apothecary.

Five pounds of Himalayan pink salt, which, like the blackcurrant seed oil, I’m trying to absorb externally. The salt is reputed to contain trace amounts of a full spectrum of minerals.

The problem was, upon receiving the oil, the salt, and some polysorbate 20, for solubilizing the oils in to a water based solution, for the skin care product, was that I found that the blackcurrant seed oil had what Gemini referred to as an “earthy” scent. I fancied, moreso, that it was a fishy smell. It reminded me of sea buckthorn oil, another oil high in fatty acids, which I had sampled in previous years. Upon consulting with Gemini about the issue, we settled upon that the smell was an inevitable product of the virgin blackcurrant seed oil, which, (virgin) would feature the highest amount of fatty acids, compared to a refined version of the oil.

So I went on a product research deep dive on Amazon, and alternately, consulting with Gemini, and it was determined that I could potentially appreciable halt the smell of earthiness or fishiness, by absorbing the smell, in vitro, making use of coconut activated charcoal powder. I was supposed to let it sit in the oil for a couple or a few days. So, I ordered several more products, including a Büchner flask-based hand pumped vacuum chamber that had a draining ceramic container at its top, which would hold the liquid and the charcoal powder, as it was vacuumed in to the flask, with a paper membrane in between the liquid mixture and the drainage holes of the upper receptacle.

Unfortunately, I never received the packages that went with this second haul, on a subsequent week that had started. It was disappointing, to say the least, largely because I had formulated a poor-smelling fragrance cover-up for my first trial at masking the blackcurrant seed oil’s scent. It was a rosy scent, which, all in all, ought not be the vibe I should be going for, so I was worried that production and development time would be lost, and I’d have to order the items again, or something, but I chatted with Amazon about the boxes being delivered somewhere else, and they promptly issued a refund, at my request. 

The delivery driver’s photo “proof” of that my packages were delivered, whereas I have no idea where this picture was taken - it obviously, to me, isn’t my home, where I’d sent the packages to.

I started hearing things, in my head, about that the whole deodorizing concept was a majorly tweaked out topic to consider, and that I should feel lucky that the packages never arrived, and that I had to get on chat support with Amazon to get a refund, which was painless, by the way. After all, I was about to spend nearly $100 to deodorize a $17 bottle of oil. My rationale, during all of that though, was that I could establish a workflow, and an edge, over competitors, for going the extra mile, by deodorizing the oil that had started to oxidize, for however long it had been sitting out. 

Meanwhile, for this week’s screen time, I did some more consulting with Gemini, and I conceived of that the scent of earthy-fishiness could be better covered up by a sweet tropical type of scent, with coconut, tonka bean, benzoin, and some of my Eau Pigeonoid-recent formulation of a men’s fragrance that I’m currently wearing and chiseling away at, aesthetically speaking. It turned out that tropical was the ticket, and the second formulation ends up smelling quite mild and pleasant - here, I had highlighted a more relatable earthy scent combination, yet the oxidized aroma as the skin care product I fixed up ages, on the skin, still has reminisces of oxidized blackcurrant seed oil, but not so much that I couldn’t forget about it, for a while; so I moved on to the next thing… figuring out what to do, since I had all of that Amazon gift card money that was returned to me, and I settled upon getting back to a project that would have the subject headers as being “LED-backlit mini Indonesian-style wood panel carving decorative art pieces,” a throwback to my old loft apartment, in which I had purchased a lotus woodcut panel set, and I’d set up back lighting for it. 

I felt like going with the sparrows, for this project, because I felt that they suited the floral decoration aspect more neatly than pigeons would. Now I’m considering various options, after having mega-shopped Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, going between a handheld woodworking tool, and laser cutting CNC machines. Whilst in the process of attempting to create assets for the CNC automated cutting of the wood panels, I spent some money on a 2D to 3D model app, for credits for rendering the 3D images. The app didn’t work, now, by this point (I’d used it previously, and it worked quite well), so I settled upon planning to do a 3D print of the model, yet, I had to come up with the 3D model file, in any case - that, or produce a physical model of the woodcut decoration, somehow, by rote, etc. So that’s where I’m at, in all of this. I think I’m going to end up going with a handheld woodworking tool project workflow. I’ll make sure that readers get updated on the progress.

Update: early a.m., the morning subsequent to this last night’s blog. I ended up going with the hand tool, although I had settled upon getting a rotary tooling setup, rather than the smaller engraving pen options I’d been considering. Apparently, things just aren’t done that way, in such a situation as mine - the engraving pen path, that is. So I ordered some woodworking and carbine burr bits, a Big Spring Sale deal of a $69 rotary tool, that was purportedly 77% off ~$299, supposedly. I thought I’d give it a try - it looked alright, and bargain-y, while being thick enough to hold a reasonably-sized motor inside, for the job, and I ordered some square birch wood panels and some sanding scrubbers. I’ll worry about doing the 3D print a little later on, and I’ll tinker with this woodworking setup, in the meantime. 

September 2025 haul from Perfumer Supply House - Product Review

 Recently, I had a perfumer’s ingredients inspiration strike, after having become fascinated by a product that I had made, out of vanilla beans, for discovering that it greatly soothed my neck and back joint pain, upon application. It was a new discovery, so it was exciting, for me. I started to branch out, in seeking out other vanilla fragrances, and I decided to head over to The Grove, a wonderful Los Angeles landmark outdoor shopping mall, adjacent to Miracle Mile. It features popular shopping destinations such as an Apple Store, a Barnes and Noble book shop, a large farmer’s market, which is one of the most popular draws of the location, with dozens of restaurants and food and snack specialty shops. There’s also a fantastic Nordstrom department store, that I had visited, fondly, several times before. I figured that they would have a good selection of men’s fragrances, that I would enjoy sampling, and I wanted to smell Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, knowing that Tom Ford’s fragrances draw a lot of attention and fanfare, and that they also feature fragrance compositions that highlight singular notes of aroma compounds. 

As it turns out, the men’s fragrance section at Nordstrom, at The Grove, is very spacious and extensive. It goes far beyond a single rack of colognes, with numerous other racks covering a large space to walk through. I was also on the lookout for a fragrance that I had admired, recently, that I had trouble identifying - a powerful and compelling smoky woods fragrance note, that happens to be Ambrocenide, which is one of the aroma compounds I purchased, this time around, from Perfumer Supply House. I was glad to discover that I had found the ingredient I had been seeking out. Here’s a photo of the ingredients I purchased. 

My fragrance ingredients haul of 9 items, from Perfumer Supply House, which I’m very pleased with.

I was pleased to find Ultravanil online, at Perfumer Supply House, which is one of the primary components of Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, and I got to smell the fragrance at Nordstrom; it’s very pleasant, and an alluring vanilla scent, that’s quite beautiful. Being that I could purchase Ultravanil, myself, from Perfumer Supply House, I got to looking around the site for other ingredients that sounded compelling, for throwing together a nice vanilla fragrance composition of my own. 

September 2025 haul from Perfumer Supply House

After I placed the order, I started thinking about what sorts of fragrances would go with a vanilla-based composition, and I thought about rum, which is another common tropics delight that goes well with vanilla. Perfumer Supply House also happens to carry Rum Extract on Crodamol, and it’s a very lovely rum fragrance ingredient. It smells just right, like rum. I took some influence of tropical and sunny types of fragrances to add, such as Melonal, which is a delightfully refreshing melon note, and Sinensal Natural ex Orange, which is a true-to-form representation of orange. I threw in some light splashes (several drops) of each, in to my fragrance composition, and I put a helping of Tonka Bean Absolute in, as well, which complements vanilla nicely. Periploca is a wonderful vanilla almond gourmand type of fragrance, and it feels very familiar, not too spicy or exotic. The floral ingredients that I had purchased, Jonquille and Narcisse Absolutes, are moderately floral fragrances, with a prominent green character to them. I put in just one drop of the Jonquille. 5 drops of Ambrocenide were very powerful, in the fragrance composition I made, so I doubled the amount of Ultravanil to about 21 drops, which balanced out the composition nicely. Cetalox is a nice, pungent, musky compound, and it goes nicely in the mix. 

The fragrance spray bottle I made up turned out to be a very pleasant and fine smelling fragrance, and I feel like I could enjoy this one, rather than buy Vanilla Sex, outright, although the Ultravanil ingredient tip was a good one. It’s a very lovely and powerful vanilla ingredient, and the spray I made smells very nice. The total cost of the ingredients was just over $200 or so, and I feel like this investment is possibly the best selection of ingredients, for the price, out of all of my fragrance ingredients hauls I’ve ever done. This fragrance is very satisfactory. Feel free to try it out, for yourself!

A sneak peek at upcoming developments at iPigeon.institute.

 I’m expecting to get paid, soon, for some project work that I’ve been doing, that’s still ongoing. I’m in a fortunate place in time, and life, where I can make use of a good portion of that money as expendable income. I spoke to my therapist, today, about my numerous fragrance ingredients purchases I’ve done, recently, and we have a collaborative project conceptually developing, involving making candles, at one of our sessions. The conversation ignited my thirst for more materials to have on hand. The thing was, about my conversation with my therapist, was that I told her that I was mostly done with collecting customary fragrance ingredients to have on hand, that I’ve been interested in, and that I was becoming more inclined towards niche and specialty items that I could procure.

I’ve already recently ordered a few or several shipments domestically, from state-local suppliers Perfumer’s Apprentice and Eden Botanicals, as well as neighboring state Oregon’s Liberty Natural. I’ve also recently tried out Perfumer’s World, based in Thailand, again, and if there was any doubt (there are some sentiments of doubt, in online forums) about the quality of their ingredients, I can say that those notions should be set aside, and the supplier be once again considered for stocking up on materials, being assured of their quality and conformance to organoleptic standards - I had some doubts, here, myself, for a while, but I checked in again, with a repurchase of one ingredient I found to be lacking in quality and conformance, based on a better sample I had received, from yet another supplier, but this time, the material was of high quality, with chemical physical properties I was looking for, that matched, here. I also tried out their Cashmeran, and I found it equal in practically all ways to my former resource for the material, whom had recently raised the price dramatically on Cashmeran, a versatile and go-to ingredient for me.

Now that I have many scents that I’d like to have, on hand, I started to have wanderlust for specialty and exotic ingredients, even if for mostly a reference library of scent-experience that would be rare, and fairly unique, in terms of materials - would exotic and rare specialty materials ever really be viable resources that I might reasonably use, in my product development schemas? Something to consider - working under constraints, rather than indulging overly fanciful ideas for professional aspirational purposes. The supplier that I’ve encountered, which specializes in these rare and exotic materials is Hermitage Oils, based in Italy. Their exclusivity of materials, and therefore, their prices, had previously been prohibitively expensive, but I’ve gotten accustomed to having miniature amounts of materials, as references, rather than as development products, which are cheaper, and more accessible. It’s nice to dream, anyhow, isn’t it, when it comes to fragrance? It’s a dreamy topic, I’d say.

The Pigeon Hermit, pre-viz’d and conceptualized in collaboration with ChatGPT, this afternoon.

Update: a few weeks out, from the initial publishing of this article:

As fate would have it, I ended up not having the amount of funding I had somewhat expected, from jobs I was involved in, leading up to writing this article, and, for fancying trying out this new, European perfumery ingredients supplier, for a haul. In hindsight, I may have been overly optimistic about doing business with them, given some of their prices on things, and there would be a chance that I’d be less satisfied than I had initially imagined I might be, should I have ventured out, and completed a transaction with them. Luckily, in the meantime, I found some other useful recreational things to allocate what funds I did have, in to better outcomes, in satisfaction, perhaps, especially given that I already have an outsized perfumery ingredients collection for my living circumstances and physical space that I can call my own; I’m just “winging it,” and making what space I do have available for my hobby a more humble setting than I had before, when I had my aspirational fragrance organ, in years past, for display. 

Product Review: Geek Bar Pulse.

As far as nicotine vapes (smokeless inhalers) go, a relatively new geeky phenomenon has hit the streets (literally). The Geek Bar Pulse product line is a new, emergent brand that has various special features

A few Geek Bar Pulse vapes, one a Geek Bar Pulse X vape.

New, for Summer 2025: Sophoria (Caliphoria), the latest iPigeon.institute fragrance release.

 The past several weeks have been busy, as far as trying out my purchases in fragrance ingredients, and I’d been allocating a hefty portion of my budget to stocking up on new and former favorite aroma compounds and oils. It wasn’t until this morning that I experimented with my latest haul, in trying on several of my latest purchases neat, but I was very pleased with the rich and exotic sensuous outcomes that zero developing, and I felt that I’d laid the grounds for a new product release, after making use of my recent selections in ingredients. I call it Sophoria (or, Caliphoria). Here’s some of the preliminary work that I did, with ChatGPT:

Fragrance notes:

• Jasmine petals in a milk bath (to capture jasminlactone and lactonic softness)
• Split coconut with ocean mist (for the unexpected coconut nuance)
• Twisted pine or cypress branch (terpenes: delta-3-carene, ocimene)
• Sliced yuzu and bergamot (touches of bright citrus)
• Vanilla bean and benzoin resin drop on driftwood or stone
• Glossy blackcurrants on dewy green leaves (blackcurrant bud absolute)
• Champaca flower or gold-tinted tropical bloom (exotic floral soul)
• Cashmere woods delicately grounds the fragrance (cashmeran)

I didn’t even request to include a pigeon in the marketing image, but ChatGPT threw one in there, for good measure, and I happen to like it.

First impressions:

I tried a second run of applying the ingredients neat, once again, later on, during the same day, although not with as much of the special, homemade vanilla extract (I say “special,” because it was given a very particular course of extraction and processing, far different from creating an absolute). I won’t expand upon the details of that process, just yet, and I was lacking the cashmeran, from my supplies, amongst the ingredients that I’d brought out with me. It came off as a bit cloying, without the edginess of the special vanilla extract, and, lacking the moodiness that comes with a bit of cashmeran, added. 

The first time around, additionally, I had also done second and third rounds of neat application, for some of the ingredients that got buried in the mix, during the initial application, and I felt that I’d done well in balancing things out, for applying them in neat fashion, rather than that I would try to concoct a liquid composition of it - a full bottle, of whatever size it may have otherwise been. The smell was more compelling, the first time around, and I had a good day with it, in essence. 

There were some notable seeming side effects of mood-lifting/stabilization, almost stimulation, as well as seeming nootropic effects, as I was more motivated to create higher-quality work, at my job. 

New, for Spring 2025: Yuzu Delight, A Citrus Elixir Fragrance

 

As I’ve been working on refining the bottled version of Eau Pigeonoid, a newer fragrance, which I detail, here, on this blog (the fragrance smells great “neat,” or, applied directly to the skin, although translating that olfactory experience in to a bottled spray product proves challenging), I’m noticing some nice fragrance notes that are coming out of the woodwork, as I work to simplify the formula. Notes like “orange delight,” one of my favorite childhood treats, which I now encounter as a citron/lemon variant (it’s essentially a thickened, sweet jelly of citrus in a bite size, chocolate-covered bar).

It reminded me of a former, although recent attempt at composing a fragrance, one which took on a rich theme: a citrus elixir, with a bouquet of citrus ingredients, headed by yuzu essential oil, following with grapefruit and mandarin, with light floral effects of magnolia, over a base of Tonka bean and cocoa, with some black pepper, for spice, and blackcurrant bud, to enliven and freshen the scent’s mood and profile.

The original conception of iPigeon.institute’s “citrus elixir.”

In my latest purchase, I revisit the citrus elixir theme, as a reconstitution, and, as a refinement. For example, this time around, I have a much more well-resourced set of ingredients. I’m using yellow champaca absolute instead of magnolia, so I’m excited to see how this take on a citrus elixir “Yuzu Delight” will turn out, with much of the skeleton of the fragrance, otherwise, remaining the same.

An Autumn Equinox Eve Hydrosol Elixir (Fragrance Recipe)

 

An Autumn Equinox Eve's Hydrosol Elixir 

This composition is for a 2 fl. oz. spritzer.

The starter oil was a bottom-of-the-bottle ring of leftover oil from a trefle magnolia citrus hydrosol. It had an impression of a fresh shampoo.

I added, to begin with:

2 drops of patchouli oil

This shifted the composition to heavily woodsy. I wanted to make a light, feminine, playful floral citrus fragrance, out of it, with a touch of spice:

6 mL IPM

50 mL water

14 drops magnolia

¼ mL Calibrian Bergamot BF

½ mL 10% Tonka bean absolute in IPM

¾ mL 10% Cocoa absolute in IPM

⅛ mL 10% blackcurrant Bud Absolute in IPM

5 drops Rose Otto

2 drops Carnation essential oil

7 drops cashmeran

⅓ mL coniferan

¼ gram Ambroxan 

¼ gram Exaltone

⅓ mL Limetol

¼ mL Fixateur

4 drops Anther

⅛ mL Canthoxal

1 slight drip vetiver oil

2 drops Cinnamon Flavor (maybe try 1; I used 2, and it's a bit prominent)

½ drip Black Hemlock Absolute

⅙ mL Rhubofix

2 drops 10:1 Water to Lavandin mailette Absolute Oil

⅒ gram Prismantol

⅓ mL Coumarex DB

This composition was fairly satisfactory and nice smelling, perhaps a mellis fragrance, citrus fresh, with rich, sweet, and sensuous floral effects to it. I found that spraying it a sensible amount didn't quite feel like enough, so maybe it has some stimulating and addictive features to it.

After carrying the fragrance around for a couple of hours, the fragrance oil, which had grown from ¼-⅓ band of oil on top of water, in to the ⅔ band of milky emulsified lipophilic layer, in water, as pictured.

If you get around to creating this fragrance, yourself, enjoy!