Thank you to everyone who participated in the Monkey Monday Smelly Commute contest of the week. You all did a great job guessing (Exotic Green Tea - how many cups of green tea did Elizabeth Arden have to brew before realized the tea bag run out of flavour?!), CK Summer (one among many CK flankers, that I cannot possibly keep track of), Hugo Woman and JOOP!

But the correct answer, which was Lindaloo's (also the first commenter - are you a mind reader?!), is Allure Sensuelle (2006) - the flanker to Allure (1996), a rather flat, linear and colourless floriental that they tried to make more raspy and throaty by marrying it with their accidental best-selling flanker Coco Mademoiselle (to Coco).

But two flankers do not a masterpiece make (or even a bestseller). Allure Sensuelle, I regret to say, was rather disappointing to me even though it had a lot of promise at the time. The patchouli and vanilla base sure were refreshing when fruity gourmand florals were still at their height (if they are ever going to not be, we'll all be better off). It had that rancid aquatic fruity top note (supposedly melon or lychee or both) that really works bad with patchouli and vetiver, but seems to be the mark of sophistication for perfume users who don't know any better (yet).

And now I will stop my rare anti-perfume rant and ask Lindaloo to send me your snail mail addy so I can send you a package of samples from the SF Sniff and 1st Artisan Fragrance Salon. I hope you will find something to your liking among these artisan perfumers' creations!

Last week (and all summer thereof), I had to use the car co-op to drive my daughter to and from summer camp. I'm certainly learning to appreciate the no commuting required the rest of the year, and mourn the 2 hours lost to traffic each day. Certainly does not make for a very productive work day (in contrary to what I remember commuting to be...).
Anyway, as I was using the same car every day for the entire week, and as I was trying different perfume samples from those given to me at the Artisan Fragrance Salon, I was alarmed to sense a scent of a certain unlikeable perfume around me, and kept wondering where it came from: is it from my wristwatch? My ring? My hair?

It took me a couple of days to locate the source of the undesireable perfume emanate from the seat belt. Some car-sharing gal went all perfume-spray-happy for her car co-op errands (which I'm rather thrilled about - Vancouverites wearing scent are a thing of rarity), and completely contaminated it with her scent. If it wasn't that particular one, I wouldn't be complaining about it (and booking a different car for the following week).

But, my loss is your gain: If you guess correctly which scent it is, you will win your very own free sample of it (just kidding! just kidding!). No, no, you will win a bunch of samples from the SF Sniff, plus a couple more that I've added by perfumers who presented at the salon last weekend, including Sonoma Scent Studio's new and beautiful Forest Walk.

Here are your hints:
1) Released in the 2000's
2) Not a celebrity perfume
3) Was never reviewed on SmellyBlog
4) It's a flanker for a rather popular scent from the 90's. It was released exactly 10 years before the "original".
5) Last but not least: It's not a niche, hard to find fragrance. You should be able to find it in most if not all department stores and run of the mill parfumeries and drug stores.

As usual, the contest will close by Friday at noon, by which I will do a lucky draw via random.org.

There was a CBC morning show called "Sounds Like Canada" which is no more, but along these lines, I'd like to dedicate Monkey Monday's post to what Canada smells like, to me. Well, the little bit of it that I had a chance to sniff.
Maple syrup of course comes to mind at first, and it's especially fragrant when incorporated into baking, or fudge, or better yet - tire sur le neiges (taffy on the snow), which is prepared in the dead of winter when the maple syrup harvest begins. They also sell it at farmers markets in Vancouver year around (although we're nowhere near maple-land). The scent is divine. It's amazing how much aroma there is this, with nothing else added. Not even vanilla.
And then there are forests. Endless coniferous forests of citrusy Douglas firs, crisp spruces, red cedars. Oh, and elderflowers, with their sweet berry-like aroma; and balsam poplar buds - honeyed and ever so slightly medicinal. Oh, and cotton trees, so thickly sweet you think someone is making cotton candy around the corner.
Other scents are sentimental and bizzare but only remind me of Canada, as nowhere else have I experienced them before visiting my dad's home in Quebec - musty basement, plus the Tide dryer sheets that are what America considers to smell "clean"; and the fungus-infested cylo, as well as nearly any wooden house in British Columbia, where the rain never stops. Wet woods and fungus was the first thing that greeted me arriving in Vancouver at the end of October 1998. You get used to it after a while, but it's not my favourite.

For those who missed it - our weekly giveaway is of Immortelle l'Amour mini; to qualify for the draw, please leave a comment either her or on the previous day's post about Canada Day. I will do the draw on Friday as usual. You may comment about what Canada smells like to you; or if you happened to experience perfumes by a Canadian perfumer (there are not too many of us, admittedly), than please share with us too and let's celebrate Canada Day for one more day (the banks are closed, so we might as well...).