Blips from the Aside

This weekend I trekked out to Yankee Candle to get a bunch of Christmas scents--Christmas Wreath, Home for the Holidays, etc. I went to early because the only Yankee Candle I know of is out in New Jersey, and I hate making the trip, so I decided I'd get it over with (imagine my delight when they told me at the store that there's a Yankee Candle at South Street Seaport in Manhattan now). I ended up getting a bunch of the simmering tarts, in various flavors. It was a productive trip. However, I'll write about those scents later, as I want to post a survey of the different holiday scents out there. So for this entry, I'm just putting up some quick blips about other interesting stuff I found.

While I was at that mall with Yankee Candle in it, I popped into Bath & Body Works to look around. Mostly to smell the holiday scents again and see if I still had the same opinion on them as I did at first. Tree still smells just a bit too cedar-y, but it might work; also, I was right about Winterberry, in that it does have an evergreen note in it. I like that one best. After looking at the holiday scents, I moved on to the Henri Bendel collection. They had a greater variety of scents there than I've seen at the stores in Manhattan. Some scents I haven't seen before were Lavender Leaves, a nicely natural lavender smell; Birch, a really well done light woody and slightly earthy smell; and White Pepper, a pleasant scent. I don't recall if I've seen it before (I don't think I have), but there was also one called White Lily, a really wonderful scent reminiscent of certain floral oils I've smelled before (synthetic repros of orange blossom or pikake), but with a depth, fullness and softness that made it a truly wonderful scent.

The store didn't have the Jeff Leatham candles, which was disappointing. They also didn't have that food-scents line that I saw on their website the last time I visited. I know this because the person I asked about the Jeff Leatham line thought I meant the food-scent line. She mentioned a specific candle from said line that I wasn't aware of: Mashed Potatoes. She said that it really does smell like hot buttered mashed potatoes. Interesting.

The other little blip to mention is a candle I saw at a different store back in Manhattan. I was looking through the scents from The Thymes collection, and I smelled one called Agarwood Incense. I'm not sure if I've experienced this one before; maybe I did and it smells different to me this time around (it happens). Well, I wish I'd smelled it better before, because it had the right type of odor that I wanted to use for my Hallooweegan party. It struck me this time around as very cistus-labdanum, very deep, hay-like, with a hint of a certain leather kind of smell. It would have been nice to use. Alas!

And that's the fragrance beep for now.