Contempt 2009
This year, Contempt’s anniversary has a masquerade theme, so I created a very melodramatic, moody scent to complement the evening. Aged Port wine with crystallized corks, a blend of vanillas, sensual Hindu musk, opoponax, Cedarwood, a touch of patchouli and coffee bean CO2.

Part One:

Ant (common black ant Lasius niger)
The uninvited picnic guest making away with the best of sweets. Caramel custard, white chocolate cake, peaches and angel’s food cake.

Atlas moth (Attacus atlas)
Most noble of moonlight creatures. A blend to equal such grandeur. North African amber, sweaty tree bark, humid dirt, sandalwood, green myrtle, cinnamon leaf, vanilla oleoresin, mushroom absolute, anise, vertiver, lavender, juniper berries and moonflower.

Damselfly (Ebony Jewelwing Calopteryx maculate)
Opalescent and glittering, nature’s little daytime firecracker. Dandelion, lily pads, white tea, crisp green apple, white grapefruit, blue chamomile, white ginger and sparkling watery reflections.

Fly (Musca domestica)
Shoo! Vanillaed marshmallow and fruit punch cocktail.

Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)
A bouquet of nectar filled blossoms; honeysuckle, lilac, apple blossoms, gardenia and a basket full of honeyed strawberries.

Inchworm  (Inchworms are the caterpillars of geometer moths or Geometridae such as the Common Pink-barred, Rhodostrophia vibicaria)
Fuzzy, wee and charming. A blend of two ambers, daffodils, neroli, green tea, gentle rose petals and white jasmine blossoms.

Ladybug (Coccinella septempunctata)
Crawling across fresh washed linens hanging on the line with the air filled of peonies and the strawberry garden.

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)
Velvety wings, warm sunshine and feelers covered with sugared nectars. Magnolia, sunflowers, heliotrope and the air of warm and sugary- hued resins.

Praying mantis (Tenodera sinensis, the Chinese mantis)
Regal, mysterious and oddly Buddha-esque. A blend black coconut, matcha tea, white ginger and sweetened, moist woods.

Cicada (Cicadidae Magicicada)
Glittering, chirping, zzzzing, sweltering iridescence. Blackberries, honeydew, white grapefruit, lime, geranium, raspberries and candied ginger.

Cricket (Acheta domesticus)
This spring-loaded insect is just as likely found making his way down your hallway as he is in the lawn. Shiny black carapace, deep dark plums, neroli, lettuce, bergamot mint, spearmint, and a whoosh of unexpected leapy-ness.

Earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris)
Amnesty was taught early on by the cook, that earthworms love to roll around in old coffee grounds in addition to rich, moist dirt. So, she would often brew more coffee than anyone could possibly consume in one day just to add more coffee grounds to the compost pile for the worms. This is a very lush blend of sandalwood, earth, vanilla oleoresin, coffee beans, Arabian musk, labdanum, peru balsam, osmanthus,  a tiny leaf of thyme and a wee sprig of coriander.

Garden Snail (Helix aspersa)
Quite obviously not an insect, but most commonly found in many a garden. A beautiful, radiant bouquet of garden herbs and blossoms, and a sticky, glistening trail of honey.

Lightning Bug (Coleoptera Photinus)
Blink. Blink. ……………………………….Blink……………………………………………..Blink. A warm summer nightwafting with the scent  of with over grown alfalfa filled with little, flickering lights, white tea, dandelion, copal, honeysuckle, lemongrass and ginger.

Little Yellow(Pyrisitia lisa)
Wee butterflies dancing and congregating near little ponds, river banks and puddles. A most playful scent of white amber, delphinium, pink grapefruit, lemon, king mandarin, sweet grass and sugar.

Water Beetle (Acilius sulcatus)
Silently diving and cruising among aquatic plants, roots, turtles and other fearsome beasts. The water beetle’s scent is a watery blend of cool musks, cattails, cucumber, lotus, lime, cypress and lily pads.

 Walking Stick (Ctenomorpha chronus)
For stillness and strangeness can be beautiful, this is a blend of teak wood, copal, almond, anise, ho wood and cocoa.

Academic Absolute
This is Blooddrop’s first gentleman’s fragrance. It has been named in honor of my scholarly male friends, regardless of their field of study. It is a handsome, elegant scent with a blend of classic ingredients: amber, vetiver and lavender.
 
Wood & Stones
Requested by a good friend, this gentleman’s fragrance is inspired by the scent of the forest. Wood, stone, earth and cool shaded air. Two mosses, vetiver, spruce, wild rosewood, cedar wood and a good handful of rich loam.

Apparition
A ghostly feminine presence. Chilling rustles of silk and petticoats wafting a faint breath of slightly sweetened florals of a well-traveled lady. Her scent is as mysterious as her veiled presence.

At Denny’s After Rocky
The usual food trip after the RHPS brings a group of all sorts: some Goths, some SCA-ers and Gamers, the really odd old guy who still might live in his mom’s basement and that really hot guy you’re too shy to talk to. The selection of meals ordered was just as bizarre as the people, but one favorite was blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup and maple syrup!

Au Bout du Monde
Far away, at the end of the world for whatever type of escape one may need. Bird of paradise, white ginger, soothing amber, rice milk and exotic greenery.

Bisou
Crème de Cassis, crème brulèe, vanilla bean and brown sugar. This is a bit hard to resist.


Blessed
Not to be associated with a particular sect or religion, but the sense of simply feeling graced with one’s self, being and place in the world. An overall sense of gratitude and well being. Perhaps a feeling of having been pardoned. Appreciation.
Gentle Nepalese amber, soy milk, ginger, ylang ylang, opoponax and rosemary.


Bûche de Noël
A traditional French desert for le Reveillon de Noel. Insanely decadent and delicious! Hazelnuts, Grand Marnier, genoise, vanille and chocolate.

Bonne Nuit
A soft gentle bedtime scent. Powdered blossoms, spun sugar, lavender and a kiss of vanilla.

Broomstick
Sweet summer apricots, crisp early fall red apples, moist spice cake, clove and brown sugar. Just some of the things any good witch will have in her pantry!

Café Zazou
Incredible dark and smooth French roast coffee with whole milk and two sugar cubes, a piece of dark chocolate and a petit gateau sec au marrons. Café Zazou is the perfect response for a little afternoon rest in between visiting Montmartre and Le Centre Pompidou.

Citrouille
Pumpkin, complementing spices, creams and fresh autumn apple.

Dandelion Wine
A twinkling path to rolling in the grass and intoxicated delight!

Diabolique
A wicked little core glossed over with a misleading bat of the eyelashes. A blend of richly spiced woods and ambers, red musk, vanilla musk, cinnamon leaf, dark patchouli, ginger, vetiver, honey galore, allspice, myrrh, almond and golden herbs.

Delicieuse
Thick and sultry honey and vanilla with a sassy kiss of peppermint.

Devonshire Cottage
A quaint stone farm house with a view of the wild ponies. A bountiful bouquet of herbs from the garden, creeping ivy, and a gentle base of clotted cream, sugar and condensed milk.

Dollhouse
Eeerily dainty and charming. There is oddity in rendering the life-like so small.
Bush-plucked raspberries, vanilla oleoresin, pink grapefruit, calendula, bergamot, palma rosa, and gurjum balsam.
 
Dust
A truly enigmatic dusty scent with a touch of crispness.
Layers of dust, black tea leaves, dried bouquets of chrysanthemums, French cypress and cucumber.

Eiffel Tower
Amber, fig, peach, caramel and oak moss blended to create a very chic, glamorous and elegant scent preferably while wearing heels.

The Emerald Dragonfly of Whisperting’s Bridge
It is said that if you spend time on Whisperting’s Bridge with a tired and heavy heart, you may see a giant emerald dragonfly darting and hovering over the lily pads and among the cattails. Call to it and it will come to you; to grant you one wish that is honest and true to mend your broken heart. Egyptian musk, green tea, honeysuckle, king mandarin, and litsea cubeba.

Frida
Red wines sweetened with fruits and a branch of mimosa to tuck behind your ear.

Happy Birthday
Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting! Great little scent to offer as a birthday gift to a friend. If specified and time allows, I can personalize this bottle to say “Happy Birthday, (insert name)!”

I had a Pony
Fresh and crisp apples, carrots, sweet feed and a flake of hay.

If Wishes Were Horses
For every girl whomever dreamt of having her own horse and whether or not the wish came true.  A blend of pears, linden blossom, tonka bean, bergamot, lime zest and a soft mane.

Josephine
My little tribute to the fabulous Josephine Baker and her banana skirt. bananas, French vanilla (mais oui!), giant yellow sunflowers and exotic spice.

Killing Time in Taipei
Not quite cold enough, but better than nothing iced tea with a plate of strange, other-worldy fruit.

La Tasseographie
The fine and historical art of reading tea leaves to see into one’s future.
White porcelain, a blend of three different tea leaves and accompaniments.

Le Palais
The radiant scent of a glorious palace.
Illuminating spices and tea leaves, milky white scents, and bright, singing garden herbs.

Les Madeleines
Really, these should be France’s national “goûter” cake. Madeleines are little vanilla cakes infused with orange blossom water. They are baked in a special pan that forms them in the shape of little shells. My husband fell in love with them when I took him to visit my family in Brittany.

L’Shana Tova
May your have a sweet new year! Apples and honey.

Luna Moth
Giant, nighttime butterfly in all her iridescent and ethereal beauty against a full moon’s glow. Luminescent whites and the palest green shimmer. Bamboo, lettuce, a white trio of tea, ginger and musk plus a sliver of lime.

Medusa
Green, deadly and beautiful.
White tea stained green with sea moss, black patchouli, benzoin, pink lotus, labdanum, amyris, vanilla oleoresin, palma rosa, German chamomile, amber and a wind blown black voile gown.

Melancholia
This is the scent of sadness driving you to incalculable amounts of chocolate and alcohol.
Blackest of the blackberry liquors, darkest of the chocolate absolutes, creamiest and booziest of the chocolate cakey, lady fingery deserts,  and a tiny touch of iron distilled patchouli for the sake of the woe-filled heart.

Mourning Dove
Gentle, grey feathers nestling and cooing. Sweetened cream, vanilla musk, rice milk, broom absolute, spring's grass, and a nook in an aged, maple tree.

Ooh La La
Devilishly playful and certainly not naïve! Frangipani kisses, Anjou pear hips, bottomless heliotrope eyes and a sexy, intoxicating breath of white cognac.

Peau
Sun-kissed, fruit-kissed and earth-kissed skin. Mango, ginger, aloe, noix de coco and papaya.

Ruffles, Bustles & Corsets
A gathering of ladies for an afternoon tea. White orchids, sprigs of lavender and petite vanilla butter cream frosted lemon pastries.

Said the Spider to the Fly
A lovely unsuspecting scent. Gardenia, apple blossom, aloe, and China musk.

Soleil
A light, fresh sunshine scent with peach blossom, tangerine and sunflower.

Star Light, Star Bright
A bouquet of white scents. Milk, cala lily, noix de coco, chamomile flowers and white angel food cupcakes.

Sultrylicious
This is one sweet, sexy, heavy scent! Black coconut, passion fruit, rice cream and patchouli.

Translucent
Clear, clean and transparent. White musk, white tea, Lily of the Valley, an  inkling of cucumber and an even slighter inkling of raspberry and lemon.

Unlikely
Moonflower, cucumber, lily asiatique, fig and wisteria. Gentle and fresh.

White Pumpkin
The ghostly vegetable in your garden! Pumpkin with white tea and coconut.

Yellow Kimono
Bright and fresh. Tea, yuzu, pink grapefruit, lemon and a wee bit of pineapple.

The Zodiac Club
I absolutely loved the Zodiac Club in the movie “Bell, Book and Candle.” My husband and I said if we ever opened up our own club, that’s what it would be called. So in honor of the bar we probably won’t ever open, I’ve created this scent. A melange of the esoteric and bohemian: ginger, peppercorn, a backdrop of smoke and sweetened clove cigarettes.


The First Congregation of Our Lady of the Most Vivid Turpitude
Where the depraved and bold debauch meet to praise their sanctified Mother. The church is a bit idiotic.
Golden spiced milk musk, bananas, narcissus absolute, Egyptian myrrh, Frankincense, and Spikenard, holiest of holy herbs.
 
The Ungraciously Gratuitous Guild of the Gilded Gown
What happens when ladies in very fancy dresses get together and drink a bit too much.
Vanillaed musk, carnation, heliotrope, ramekins of crème brulée and glasses upon glasses of unnecessarily sweet rosé wine.
 
La Duchesse Haute de Nez’s Maison for Reforming Trollops, Tarts and Strumpets
It is most difficult to reform any character when it truly doesn’t wish to be reformed.
Pomegranate infused vanillaed musk, North African spice infused honey, blood orange, cinnamon leaf and davana.
 
The Catatonic Mischief Makers Society of Lower East Brumblybucket
It is amazing this society even got its beginnings, but it did. Since then, not a whole lot has happened, but one can only imagine the shenanigans of such a group!
Lethargic and heavily sweetened sticky yeast buns with a side much of black tea and rum just in case it helps wake anyone up a bit.
 
The Satanic Symposium of Licentious and Licksplitty Songwriting and Poesy
Nowhere else in the world can one learn such talents in defaming your enemies and the disliked with verse and tunes!
Devilish pumpkin embellished with vanilla bean, dark patchouli, vetiver, evil woods, smoked tea, bloodied orange and cassia.




Dixie Elouise Adelaide Deschamps’
Perfectly Legal and Innocuous Kissing Cake
Miss Deschamps was always a bit of a sassy girl. She’d hang upside down on the monkey bars so that her shirt would fall a little on its own revealing a young girl’s blossoming chest or shirts a bit too racy for school. But she was a kind heart and good to her momma and poppa even though they got tired pretty quick with her little romantic antics with the boys and with the phone calls from school and even with the occasional call from the sheriff. When Dixie wasn’t getting in to trouble, she’d spend some of her time in the kitchen making some mean baked goods. And there was also the other things she’d do upstairs in her room with a candle and some herbs she’d gathered from the next door farmer’s field. But, to be honest, no one knew about those things. A few years ago, Dixie baked a particularly delicious cake for the county fair which stirred a bit of a ruckus. Anyone who ate even the smallest bite of the cake later felt flushed, woozy and a-bit-more-than-usual amoureux. You can better believe she swore all up, down and to the left and right that there was absolutely nothing unusual about her cake. It was made with old fashioned love and local ingredients, yessirree! But, again, there could have been a little something said over the oven when she was baking it and maybe a little something said over the pan before putting it in the oven and maybe a little something rubbed on the pan before pouring the cake batter in it. Of course, she would have never done anything harmful to the townsfolk. Only maybe a little something to loosen up their tight belts. And just because her initials were D-E-A-D, well, that didn’t mean anything.
Some of the finest, ripest strawberries, the fluffiest and sweetest angel cake, the creamiest butter cream frosting and some davana to make the experience unique.


Empress Ming Li Zho’s Sparkling Infusion for Happy Brightness
In a former life as a Zen monk some good 528 years ago or more, I lived in a very, very small region of China. It was a very lush and peaceful place that had a very, very dainty Empress to govern the land, which as I mentioned was very, very small and did not extend beyond the two mountains that cradled the valley of the region. Empress Ming Li Zho was an only child and her parents passed away when she was very young. Although she was raised by kind hearted people of the court, Empress Ming Li Zho missed her parents dearly and named a pair of red pandas after them. As she grew up, but not very much since she was very, very dainty and hence quite petite in size, she paid particular attention to other children who had also lost their parents (or other beloved things) and were having a difficult time smiling or knowing joy. She inquired with some local healers who sent her to the nearly coo-coo old man who did not live in a cave, but in a hole in the ground, who then sent her to talk to the yellow birds in the blue trees who, in turn, chirped a little song about happiness. The Empress translated a recipe from this song. It was the Sparkling Infusion for Happy Brightness. She shared it freely with all and sometimes used it herself on days when she felt she could use a little cheering up: a blend of two gingers, a few pressed leaves of mint and a very, very small piece of crushed lemongrass.

Frau Von Schtinklestein’s Partially Completed Barvarian Love Essence
Yes, it is true that Frau Von Schtinklestein never finished completing this recipe due to her unexpected passing with a bout of scurvy that her husband brought home with him after his long trip on the cold dark Arctic waters searching for the elusive Long-Haired Snowy Whale. In fact, she was creating this Love Essence as a means to keep him closer to home, instead of on the high seas that would hold on to him and his ship for months, sometimes years, at a time. While she did very much enjoy having the stone manor for herself, she found she would also be fraught with anxiety on odd numbered days with no one to tell her jokes to. Her three Guernsey cows never said much, but to chew their cud and the daisies in the garden. A young niece came across Mrs. Von Schtinklestein’s notes and decided to make this oil available anyway. Even if it worked halfway, it was better than not at all! A dessert lovingly made for two: pears poached in vanilla and then caramelized in brown sugar.

Lady Poppycock’s Peculiar Tincture of Questionable Origins
The origin of this oil is a long mystery filled with doubts to its beginnings and how the exact recipe came about. However, it claims to bring bright cheer and the tiniest swell of good luck to the wearer as well as to those who treat the wearer kindly. It is important to note that the wearer of Lady Poppycock’s Peculiar Tincture of Questionable Origins may find herself with kittens following her right up to the doorstep of her home and into the parlor for company and bits of greenery, so it is recommended that the wearer have at least one sprig of catnip at home at all times. Lemongrass, bubblegum, Lily of the Valley and exactly two point three hundred and eighty-two raspberries.

Madame Pompidou’s Elixir Secret pour les Maladies et Crises du Coeur
Passed on to me by my great, great grandmother whom I have never met, Madame Soupiron, this recipe was perfected by the grand Madame Pompidou in 1762. Although believed by the world and French men to be only available to very high class French ladies, in fact all French women have been using this not so secret (to French women, that is) elixir for ages, even prior to the perfected formulation by Mme. Pompidou. This oil is used for any sort of woes of the heart or spirit such as results from tripping in public places, bouchers who sell you the wrong cut of meat, mail that is damaged by the mice in your courier box, any day that ends by being qualifiably described as en merdant, being jilted by a so-called friend or lover or simply getting a hole in one’s stockings or breaking the laces in your corset. Chocolate, mousse au chocolat, various friandises au chocolat and any singular or mix of cordials or liquers remaining in the cabinet in the pantry that you have not already finished off. This fabuleux cure-all will brush all your malaises and crises away!

Mrs. Mary Picklelee’s
Uproarious Bottled Bouquet For the Bitter and Bored Widow
(Also equally suited for the bland and sullen old maid.)
Mrs. Picklee began enjoying life very late. Often the term “Merry Widow” would be applied to her despite no one really knowing just what type of undergarments she wore. It simply took Mrs. Picklee a long time to come into her own. In fact, it took her 78 years and two days. At midnight on the second day after her 78th birthday, she sat upright in bed as if a very, very, very fat cat had jumped from the top of the bookshelf next to her bed, right straight down on to Mrs. Picklee’s stomach. That didn’t happen, but that’s how suddenly she woke up. When she did she, she suddenly thought about how cranky and bitter she had become by having spent her entire life (so far) taking care of everyone but herself. Now that her husband was dead and she had no children or family members to tend to, it was high time to start having an uproariously good time. It had to be uproarious since she had a lot of catching up to do good time-wise. Mrs. Picklee’s bottled bouquet is an effervescent and bright blend of red currant, lemon verbena, pear and moonflower.