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.     

Recipe: chocolate clove (mint) flavored cigarettes.

 With the battering that the flavored tobacco industry took, in California, it's prudent to begin flavoring cigarettes on your own.

On one hand, the industry was very youthful, with hundreds of flavor startups vying for a market share in the smokeless tobacco industry.

Cigarettes just "feel" better (when smoked), with natural and organic flavors added to them.

Vaporizers, while nice, just have a bit of something lacking to them, compared to the enjoyment found in a nice cigarette, especially a flavored one.

USP nicotine is a strongly toxic chemical to wield around, and to entrust someone else, in a youthful industry, to manage appropriately, in vaporizer solutions.

Chocolate clove (mint) flavored cigarettes have a mild, relaxing hit to them, with a pleasurable flavor and experience, throughout. Simply order some simple ingredients online, and prepare your tobacco, upon settling in, for the night, after purchasing a pack - this project does take some foresight. 

Flavor concentrates versus fragrance components:

- some flavor concentrates are dissolved in a solution of propylene glycol, which is favorable for adding to both nicotine salts solution concentrate (vaporizer) mixtures and directly on to cigarettes, alike, although, when working with tobacco, in this case, the residues from the unevaporated propylene glycol, which is a food grade antifreeze, and which imparts the effect of "smoke," when used in a vaporizer, just might be additional fluff, so to speak; unnecessary, in other words, in a tobacco smoking setting. Fragrance ingredients are nearly all mostly volatile compounds - their volatility is actually intertwined with their worth, hence, the fleeting and transient nature of fine fragrance, whereas a lingering scent becomes a headache, in many cases. 

- fragrance ingredient extractions are time-worn and standardized procedures, with some manufacturers and supply chains practicing stringent, internationally and historically recognized, traditional chemistry procedures. Not that this isn't the case with flavor ingredients, as well, it's just that we don't "smoke" inhale our food; food is eaten, drinks are drunk, and tasted, whereas there is a fragrant aspect to smoking which could come in to consideration, in this context.

The Cocoa absolute, being a somewhat scarcely found product, is well-to-do, to be ordered from Liberty Natural. Their ¼ oz. size comes in a good, deep-well container, to which solvent may be added, to make concentrations varying from 50% to 10%, depending on the virginity of the solvent solution. I chose isopropyl myristate for my solvent, which is, essentially (or nearly) a fragrance-free version of isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. In addition, IPM is fully volatile, and it will evaporate completely, while also dissolving a good portion of the fragrant and flavorful components of this Cocoa absolute. Just note that the solution is a fully liquid thing, so dampening your cigarettes, with some slaked-on droplets of solution will make the cigarettes fragile. I recommend doing this project when you're calm and settled down, for some long stretch of time, given a day or more, of productivity, by comparison.

The clove bud oil, which I like, as a throwback to Djarum "cigarettes," (they're actually labeled as cigars), gives a nice, mild and satisfying smoke, when directly applied to a cigarette (white paper portion).

A pack of Djarums.

The oil does not need to dry, before lighting up, but if you add the Cocoa absolute with IPM, I would strongly recommend fully drying out the cigarettes, in front of a fan, or under gentle heat, as inhaling isopropanol-type compounds, acutely, can cause temporary blindness, an unpleasant and hazardous condition to bear. For my choice of supplier: in this case, I went with Whole Foods' Aura Cacia Organic Clove Bud Oil, which came out to around $8.50 or $9.00, or so, after a 28% Amazon Prime member sale discount, from around $11.00-$12.00, or so. Just one or two droplets will do - no need to overdo it, and try to make a saucy, soaking cigarette, here. The flavor and fragrance components, here, are well concentrated, on their own merits.

That's it! As far as a mint flavoring - it would be nice, but I just haven't implemented it, in my flavoring outsets, just yet, so I won't jump the gun and write on it, for now. 

Update: some time had passed, and there was some discussion on the topic of mint, such as:

"I know you know what the best mint is, ... what is it?"

It took a while for me to recall the name of this special mint oil, but I knew that it was something good. Rich, fresh, smooth, and cooling. Then, I remembered that I was particularly fond of cornmint, which I had ordered from Perfumer's World, a couple of years back, or so. I believe that Liberty Natural stocks cornmint oil. Yet, even so, someone had commented that an oil of mint isn't all that agreeable, and that menthol crystals themselves ought to be used. This brought up the discussion of flavoring tobacco to a more primary sense, and someone mentioned cigarette filter crush balls, which are akin to the formerly stocked crush cigarettes, which, in southern California, were mainly Marlboro NXT and Camel Crush. I've tried this configuration, recently, in a cigarette butt that i picked up, to smoke, and it came out tasting just like the original crush ball cigarettes. I don't quite recall where I saw the crush ball flavoring pods online, maybe it was Amazon or eBay, or something, but I'm also not sure if the pods can be ordered and sent to a California address, due to the legislation that banned flavored tobacco products such as crush cigarettes.

Update: I traced back my previous browsing find, regarding end-user, DIY cigarette filter flavor pods. I found this machine on eBay for $10, that will insert the flavor capsules in to the cigarette filter, so that the cigarette can be flavored. There is also a link for 2,000 flavor pod capsules, priced at $40.00. I'll definitely try out this product solution, at some point soon, and I'll keep people updated as to how it works out.

The eBay listing page for the cigarette filter flavor pod / capsules installer machine, which has a link to another listing for the flavor pods themselves, as well.

Enjoy!

Some lightly dampened Cocoa and clove cigarettes, drying out, in front of a portable waist fan - an essential step, especially if you're in a hurry.

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!

iPigeon.institute Recipes: iPigeon Udon Noodle Soup - a Curry Ramen.

 I do this one, here and there, as a fancier take on noodles (at least), compared to a standard bargain ramen noodle soup. This one will rate more around a standard Asian restaurant's offering of "some kind" of noodles; I just threw this dish together, with some influences from Thai food, and their hot and curry soups, with Udon noodles, hoisin sauce, which is Chinese, and a splash of vinegar, of your choosing, or selection (I had malt vinegar, which I purchased from Whole Foods, separately, but the rest of the ingredients for the soup are available at my local Ralph's - perhaps yours, as well). 

(Most of) The ingredients in iPigeon Udon Noodle Soup.

Ingredients:

1 pack udon noodles (2 in pack)

Golden Curry: 1/2 slab

Soy Sauce: 2 Tbsp.

Hoisin Sauce: 2-3 Tbsp.

Green Onions: 3, finely chopped, whole bulb and stalk

Cilantro: 1/2 bunch

Jalapeño Pepper: As desired, for spiciness 

Kara Coconut Cream Powder: ~ 1 Tbsp. (Work out 4 servings, per package)

Lime Juice: 1/2 lime, squeezed

Butter: 2-3 Tbsp (I used butter, which works fine, although toasted sesame oil would be more fitting)

Malt Vinegar: 2-3 splashes

It's fairly really simple, just follow the instructions on the udon noodle soup package, i.e. throw the noodles in boiling water, give it a minute or two, while you slice of scissor your greens, break up some curry solids and throw them in to the boiling water, put some coconut cream in there, throw the greens in (note: by this point, you'd want to stop cooking, nearly immediately, so that the greens still have some substantive form left of them), then, add in vinegar, soy sauce, lime and hoisin sauce. Perhaps some salt and pepper.

That's it! 

A tasty late night soupy meal.

Essential Urban Survival Technique - Thwarting an Ether Faucet Attempt.

 Any well-traveled trekker | overnighter of the urban landscape knows the feeling well: 

Having happened upon life, as such, as that sleep becomes unfortunately inevitable, at an inopportune time, in an inappropriate locale; that is, might seem as though it’s somewhat the sufferer’s own fault, for grazing in unfamiliar territory. 

 Even so, don’t be afraid, and don’t be discriminatory in where you set foot, about town; simply go about life as a well-prepared individual, well-resourced, well-packed, and you’ll do just fine. 

I’d not done so well, in previous years, but I’m nearing upon age 40, and I’d say that I’d experienced the vast majority of life experiences that I’d possibly come across, in my time, and there’s not much that could be done to me that I hadn’t experienced, previously, as a well-heeled trekker of the Los Angeles urban landscape. Just this past week, in fact, I thwarted a so-called (nicknamed via my own predilections) ether faucet, which is a classic simple petty theft’s criminal’s doing, or perhaps they’d do worse, to a lady, or something like that. 

It happens as misfortunately as described, just prior: a sudden need to fall asleep at an inopportune time, in an inappropriate place; perhaps a poor part of town, infested with tents, cockroaches, trash, rioting going on - that sort of thing. The police are on top of it, or something like that. People have to rest, sometimes, and letting loose an ether faucet will put the freeze on things, so to speak. 

What is ether?

I don’t really know what, or which - (ether) is the particular ether in question, and I’m not going to look it up, either. For my purposes, ether could potentially be a fragrance chemistry industry solvent, (… eh, I won’t elaborate on it - I don’t own any, myself), and ethers are a particular class of chemical compound, aside from that. It’s the sort of thing that could get somebody some unfortunate attention, perhaps, from the authorities, that is. My purpose here isn’t to educate the reader about ether, the drug: the primitive anesthetic that it is, as a basis. I had first learned about it from the drug-lore film, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” in which one of the guys was playing around with it, and look how Johnny Depp ended up - handsome heartthrob, early on, and well in to his later career, yet he’d been beset with tabloid scandal, in his later years, for living out his acting career roles (ostensibly) to a real-life pitch, in the behind-the-scenes sort of lifestyle that inevitably becomes the duty of the actor, playing the part. The other guy, Guillermo Del Toro, (or something like that; this is all off the top of my head, here), ate more food, throughout life. A bit more innocent, as far as analysis goes. I hadn’t caught wind of any poor press about him. Johnny Depp, on the other hand, had recently hit the scandal headlines, with his breakup from Amber Heard, a model, etc. etc.

Anyways…

An ether faucet. A scum bag tweaker’s crude weapon in assailing a targeted victim who stays out too late, or who ventures off in to an unseemly part of town, without imbibing in drug use (breaking bread) with the locals, who’d like to rob or rape the person being targeted, or perhaps it’s some measure of riot and crowd control, implemented by the authorities, following an outbreak of acute societal unrest, in the civic center area, about town. This was somewhat my experience of things, as I woke myself up, out of the narcoleptic, deadening slumber, which happens to accompany an uncharacteristic chill, to the limbs and body; a noticeably chill wind about the air, and an incapable self, as for getting up, waking up, and getting out of the area, for that criminals could easily thwart the individuals defenses, and gain access to their valuables, or possibly kidnap the person, and commit foul things, for a ransom; for example. 

Fortunately, I was well-equipped with an orange flower absolute spray bottle, 

just large enough to hold several dozen sprays, and yet, orange flower absolute: complex enough, to thwart an aerosol-based attack as crude as an ether faucet. I sprayed one spray, after coming to realize that I ought not sleep it off, and be content, and the tiredness was immediately swept away. 

There were intimations of a mockery of me, coming about, in my misfortune, of “some girl” sitting down, in front of me, where I lay, on the sidewalk, saying stuff like “hey, how’s it going?” 😘

That was my opportunity to get up, and get about, on my way, to my standard haunt, which I won’t disclose. The tiredness came and went, intermittently, throughout various parts of town, but my orange flower absolute reconstitution did the job quite well. I used Poucher’s formulation (Poucher was a noted armed forces scholar, in literature and in photography). Here’s his recipe for orange flower absolute, which can also be further researched through Google Books online. 

  An ether faucet is a horrible thing to burden, but hey, maybe it averted a worser societal outcome, all in all. Being properly prepared, with a complex aromatic aerosol compound is simply part of the technique in appropriately surviving the threat, coming through, with all valuables and reputation intact. It smells great, for that matter, and it’s a unisex sort of fragrance. Take heed, though, certain formulations of an orange flower absolute could be overly simplistic, or detrimental, in the sort of chemistry involved in what ether is, which I don’t quite know, myself, and I don’t really care to investigate it, online, for that matter. Just order some ingredients, and make the stuff yourself. It’ll assist you in embodying a more outgoing and adventurous self, as the cold months to come, ahead, accommodate the sort of robbery tactic that succumbing to an ether faucet would entail. 

Product Review: New Haul of fragrance ingredients from PerfumersWorld.com.

 It's only been two months since I started doing this stuff (again). (I'd previously, back from around 2008-2012 had the budget to do fragrancing, with essential oils from Whole Foods, mostly). This time around, though, it was serious. I'd discovered online retail and wholesale suppliers of fragrance compounds and aroma ingredients (essential oils and absolutes), and I finally had my living situation and circumstances such that I could muster pulling off some mail order purchases, and develop my fragrance-making hobby successfully. My latest haul was for over $1250 and it got me over 70+ quality ingredients, of my choosing, priced by the gram, as the website www.perfumersworld.com does, as their retail fragrance supply basis, as an e-commerce website and organization, based out of Thailand. 

My summer of 2021 Perfumer's World fragrance ingredients haul - over 70 ingredients of my choice, given 2 months of experience and shopping around, at this point; I had my picks, and I got what I wanted, good and all, for the most part. 

This time around, I was interested in procuring mostly highly-prized standards and classics, such as rose de mai, I got jasmine absolute, jasmine flowers, methyl jasmonate, jasmine sambac absolute, frangipani absolute, indole crystals, for reconstituting these flowers, artificially (by design), and many other classics of fragrances beloved, and the well-known plants, herbs, flowers, and trees that provide these lovely fragrances, as well as some fragrance industry insider tricks ingredients, such as Schiff's Base, which is also used to reconstitute flower absolutes. I also dived richly in to the world of classic musks, of the global fragrance research and design houses; a history of musks, that I'd procured, as you would see, from my listed purchases, below. I also decided to experiment, slightly, with hormonal and mood-altering pheromone compounds, such as truffle concentrate, to see how they would affect the fragrance-wearing experience. 

I made a neat-o fresh, minty, cool, phenolic and narcotic rich floral essences composition out of this, after I had spent some time protecting the shipment, once it had gotten in to my possession, delivered by Fed-Ex. The shipment from www.perfumersworld.com took about a week, or so, to arrive, and I had security concerns over receiving it, since I go out, in to town, to feed the birds, during the day, and there were some delays, aside from that, in various stops that the shipment had gone through, such as being held up in Taiwan, and then the package went to Alaska, and Tennessee, even, before it got squared away in the Los Angeles area, finally. I decided to have the package held at a Fed-Ex location, for me to pick up, at my leisure. I didn't play with the ingredients much, during the initial receipt phase, because I was more interested in protecting it, and keeping the bottles sealed. Opening up a haul of fragrance ingredients produces a vastly diffuse aroma experience that spreads in to the extent of neighboring households, and it draws attention to the fragrance maker, and the goings-on of making a fragrance, which is easily an enviable position to be in, given a standard neighborhood, around town. 

All things considered, and that being said, I came up with an appreciably fine(-ish), or notably novel, and "good" fragrance composition, with the inspiration behind mixing which of these purchased new ingredients ought be, being an indole cornmint (I was big on cornmint and hay absolute coming to me), floral fresh narcotic standards of perfumery history-"easy," such as rose de mai, jasmine sambac, and frangipani absolutes being the main fragrance feature components, chamomile, included,  along with a full array of several or more musks, which, this time around, with this purchase, brought a veritable selection of poignant, delicate, nuanced, clean, fresh, and beautiful musks, of the musks of standards established, throughout history, in perfumery - muscone, Macrolide, Helvetolide, Cosmone, Celestolide, Amberfix, and Velvione; I added some Vitamin E, and solubizer, some patchouli, heavy on the pink pepper, and Sugandha Kokila, an Indian fragrance, for some classic and exotic appeal. There was raspberry ketone, ethylene brassylate, phenylacetic acid, lyral, coriander, marjoram, and plenty of oud to it. All in all, I was generally reserved, about how much of each I had put in, and extra-careful, on some of the inclusions. It turned out fabulous. I highly recommend this purchasing list, as a first-resort reference for beginners and aspirants in fragrance composition mixing, and I highly recommend www.perfumersworld.com, for the ingredients purchase. They sell by the gram, and are therefore as economical as need be, while maintaining a high standard of ingredient purity and shipment delivery handling, and customer service. 

The At-Home Parfumerie - How to mix like a semi-pro.

 After procuring a shelf-rack, or so, of fragrance ingredients of your choice and specialty, it’s time to employ “interval-mixing” in to the creative and manufacturing process.

The iPigeon.institute slight return shelf rack of perfumer’s ingredients, essential oils, and aroma molecules.

Making a simple “natural” smelling fragrance is not difficult - just purchase expensive and high-quality ingredients. But, in order to attain the scent profile of a higher-end cologne for men, for example, it requires some ingenuity in the logistics of “what’s going on | in” the fragrance. 

My mixing palette | my working process. I tried out what I would call “interval mixing,” which capitalizes on the notions of the deeper underlying chemistry behind the individual ingredients.

On one hand, the fragrance ought never quite completely fall out, from the bottom, itself, in to a poor-smelling thing. If you’d done this, don’t dump it - it’s largely against the law, internationally, and it’s poor morals. Instead, just save the fragmented artifact of manufacture, as a token partial that could be returned to, that might slightly fulfill some future need, even it it’s just drops of the stuff.

On my most current excursion and creation, however, I managed to deftly control the flow of creating a fragrance, with a collection number of ingredients totaling about 100, or so, give or take, without having created a poor-smelling product, which had been how many of my attempts to create a distinctly masculine-smelling fragrance product had turned out. I’d been getting some tips, through nightly searches about the facets and characteristics of ingredients, their expected percentage fill, of the entirety of a composition (fragrance or parfum base - which, in and of itself, take up perhaps 15-30% of the bottle, and the rest is water and alcohol (40-50%) and perhaps the rest of the fill is made up of quick notes, nuances, clean-ups, and touch-ups with essential oils, terpenes, crystals, musks, colors, etc.).

I wanted to do a men’s fragrance that was light-feeling, syrupy sweet, yet rich in savory background, such as that it would entice the olfactory sense’s relationship with the visceral and primal urges of hunger, upon encountering it. Easily gourmand, yet imagining a rich and eloquent debouter of enterprise and establishment to follow - picture a starving population, for example; yet many people refuse to eat, when offered food, or when found asking for charity. What could spark and inspire their neglected self-care better than a timely happenstance passersby encounter, on the street? What better disposition could there be, alongside the context being well-fed, in the American way? (or French, in nature, as I sometimes refer to). 

The secret to my creative process, in this instance, was to come up with a decent enough floral base - I chose Narcissus, in this instance, with 3-4 or so full and generous squirts from the dropper, although just 1, to begin with, in a pool of perfumer’s alcohol, in the bottle. 

Then I started to work my way around the fragrance’s underlying inspiration, which would be a light, crisp, and refreshing citrus assertion, for which I used some terpene ingredients, such as Limonene D. There was kumquat oil, as well. After this stage, I went back to tradition and rounded off the composition, as it was, with Lavandin Grosso. Then I grabbed my powders and crystals, to musky up the scent, and ground it, with concentrated force. I employed Ambroxan to ground out this first stage. 

The next phase I went in to was to add the primary natural characteristics that would shape the quality facets and natural appeal factor of the fragrance, using primarily essential oils, at this stage. I used Ginger CO2 (don’t ever get a ginger that’s not at least a CO2 extraction - my lesson learned), myrrh oil, tonka bean absolute (lots), jasmine tea perfume extract, citron oil, ylang ylang, cedarwood (atlas), and teak (just a little). Here, in this stage, I found that I wasn’t ruining the fragrance, by this point, so I decided to test out employing my crystals, which smell good, in and of themselves, but I’d read up on their common usage recommendations in a fragrance composition, and it’s typically at the 1%, or 0.1% or less. I have Exaltone, by Firmenich, and Ambrocenide, by Symrise, which I used, in this stage. 

Then, my inner animal 🦔 perhaps, started to perk up, and I thought about the ingredients, and their place in fragrance-making, which is largely based on descriptions of the properties, chemical name, and organoleptic properties of the material. I thought about ketones, which I’d read, are sometimes characterizable as metabolite products of the body. (Wikipedia). Oh, yeah. And just prior, I’d put some stuff in to the mix, like anisaldehyde and oud base, one of which had been touted as “the smell of the bathroom, toilet included” sort of thing. I figured, “well, these things have some basis in how they are created, as by-products of microbial, fungal, or plant life (even animals, in the past mostly), 

but, continuing forward, though, given that the ingredients had an appeal, on top of that I was creating this composition, as my main aspiration, and meanwhile, the fragrance base hadn’t turned bad on me, just yet, I figured that it was time for me to try and encapsulate the essence as it was, in this stage, so I added some musk ketone powder, for the sake of the fact that it (ketones) affect biological processes; I imagined that the oud base, or the dimethyl anthranilate, or pyralone (it was all of these, perhaps, in the end, to be honest; a modest amount of each of them) - these components, and the bacterial sorts of processes of interaction, reaction, or metabolism, of the energy products available, based on the richness of the ingredients, in and of themselves, much different, and more natural-smelling, since I was employing essential oils, mostly, at this stage, (some farnesol, also), and I’d formerly tried to employ these ingredients, of the [toilette] - means to an end (like, eau de toilette), and the mixture would end up getting worse and worse, the more I added to it, from here. 

Now, I didn’t actually add orange flower absolute, but I did do an ad-hoc Schiffs base, although I added the hydroxycitronellol in an equal amount to the iso butyl quinoline (pyralone), because I wanted to emphasize the citrusy character of the composition, and because the source and main composition was so rich in material, to begin with. All in all, at this phase, I threw in a small (mini) scoop spoon’s worth of musk ketone, in to the mix, because I figured that the ketone element, added in to the composition, would detract any ongoing (and eventual) free-radical occurrences from proliferating, and, in turn, I end up with a garbage composition. The musk ketones would keep the developing energetic processes distracted, and meanwhile, I have the buffer of these expensive crystals as the basis of what the mixture [could] eventually smell like, if needed; although it still hadn’t turned bad on me, which is important. 

Then I threw in some Iso E Super, after gently gyroscope-rotating the mixture around, and making sure that the crystals became well-incorporated in to the existing mix - 

Oh yeah! I forgot, at first, I started out with some very primary facet components of many to any type of fragrance composition - rose petals, jasmine sambac absolute, neroli oil, from Morocco, (at some point, in the composition; perhaps later on), and santalol, in modest amounts, each of them, yet somewhat only at the time being, of how small my beginnings were, in creating this mixture, and these ingredients, for having been expensive. (They still are expensive, for that matter, yet they’re quite essential in a fragrance composition, for how the smell’s purpose and character become modulated in to a new olfactory experience, at the command of the hand of the perfumer.

Some small vials of expensive essential oils and rich absolutes.

Having taken on this new, and progressively (intervals-bounded) methodology in manufacturing a fragrance composition, which I’d found somewhat difficult to do, for men’s sorts of fragrances, in the past, I now felt more at ease, in applying more ingredients, such as gurjun balsam, rhodinol, lauryl acetate C-12, para cresyl isobutyrate, nectaryl (to peach sweeten things up), beeswax absolute (for even more, and long-lasting sweetness), as well as two scoops of ethyl vanillin (with the small flat scoop).

Every invested gourmand would understand, as well, the fascinating combination and compelling novel effect (which I called “mooshy-moo”) that black pepper oil has upon a richly-established vanilla, as the “latest thing.” It’s a quite comforting and warming sensory experience. 

I didn’t want to leave any trails unmapped, so to speak. In intervals, I had planned to do the dump of crystals, such as Nerolin bromelia, as last-stand additions to the mix, yet I ended up tossing some in, a bit before I finished, since the perfumer’s alcohol works fast, yet I gyroscope-rotate the mixture, at this stage, to speed the musk ketone reactions up.

Then I thought, 

Hey, I have some celery ketone, as well! How about that, for the gourmand floral fragrant citrus (petitgrain got it’s own intervallic development ketone-assisted cycle in on it).

That’s about all, for now. 

Except for the onion skeet skeet - just 4 drops, (not of pure onion oil - significantly diluted, a few drops to 2 or so fl. oz.) - for the acrylates (thanks, Calvin Klein, for that tip off [context]).

Oh, yeah, there was Cetalox, as well. Benzyl Benzoate, and I topped off the composition, once I was fairly satisfied with it, with benzyl alcohol, to have a solvent base to incorporate the insoluble oils and water (also added at the end) together in to a miscible solution. I put some Yellow (Lake) and Basic Fuschia (2 drops), for color. There was trans-2 decanol, a tiny bit of humulene, and several drops of cinnamon bark oil. I put a drop of Geosmin into it, as well.