"2ml or not to fill?" Musings on the etiquette of sample sizes

Endangered 1ml vials spell out their fate

My friend Clare was in Florida earlier this year and reported that since her last visit, the concept of the 'bottomless' cup of coffee - ie with refills available on tap - has been extended to main meals (slightly confusingly called 'entrees' in the US), such that she was offered a 'bottomless plate'. I guess this is really just a rebranding of the 'All you can eat buffet', except that presumably the wait staff replenish your plate for you, I don't know. But anyway, Clare reported this latest manifestation of the creeping trend in the Western world towards 'supersizing', remarking that if she were ever to take up such an offer, she would soon be far from 'bottomless' herself.

In parallel, in recent years I have noticed that perfume quantities exchanged between perfumistas appear to have got larger than at the start of my hobby, six years ago. Back then, if someone agreed to send you five samples of perfumes to try, you would typically receive five 1 or 1.5ml vials with stoppers in a little plastic bag. Invariably accompanied by a boiled sweet. If perfume extras were included, they were most likely also of the same sizes.

A swap package of yore

Over time though, sending a 1ml vial as a 'sample' has become almost unheard of, unless the sender is really short of the perfume in question, or it is insanely expensive - something like a Puredistance scent springs to mind, or an extrait strength, say - or where you only had 1ml left in total and are trying to split it into vanishingly small fractions. These days, when perfumistas are sending people samples, they often send quite a bit more than is necessary merely to test a scent, sometimes even a quantity around the 3ml mark or above, which for me is the threshold which distinguishes a sample from a decant. I am not sure that 3ml is the official definition, or even if there is one, but above 2.5ml starts to feel like a decant to my mind.

These larger samples are usually put into spray bottles, which makes the testing process a lot more enjoyable than the dabbing ritual from the 1ml vials. I welcome this trend, as you can spray at will multiple times and get a really good idea of whether you like the scent or not. That said, I am not always as forthcoming myself with goodly amounts, mainly because I have these three receptacles in my decanting stash to choose from...

My paltry collection of sample vial variants

- 3ml plastic spray vials (just a few left now out of a bulk consignment from Accessories for Fragrance).

- 1.5 plastic snap on vials (these are the ones that Freddie of Smellythoughts got me into, which are intended to be used for centrifuge samples. I like them, because they are cheap, available in the UK, and you can dispense with funnels and their associated washing, a tedious task from which I find myself increasingly shying away. I remember Mr Bonkers joking that one of the things he appreciated after I left him was not finding metal funnels lurking in the washing up water. ;) Hmm, I say they are easy to fill 'commando', ie without funnel, but - perhaps becasue of their tapered shape - you get serious splashback after about 0.75ml or so, meaning that I end up just giving people 1ml again like in the old days - at best! It doubtless looks a bit parsimonious on my part, but they are so user-friendly for the decanter, at least.

Tapered 'Freddie' vials - 1.5ml

- 1ml glass vials with stopper (also from a big - nay, huge! - consignment from Accessories for Fragrance). Old habits clearly die hard to have prompted me to buy them...Yet I hardly ever send someone a sample in one of these except for the exclusions mentioned above, because it combines funnel requirement, non-sprayability and stinginess in one inconvenient package. I really do recall their being the standard vehicle for samples back in the day, though!

When I have finally exhausted my supplies of the 3ml plastic sprayers, I might well invest in some slightly smaller glass ones instead - 2ml or 2.5ml, maybe, if they do them in that. I am still partial to the 'Freddie' snap on vials, so can see me getting more of those, even though they do feel rather unorthodox and out of step with pefumista sampling etiquette, as I perceive it.

Sample perfection - unmistakably Undina :)

If the 2ml or 2.5ml bottle is the gold standard receptacle for perfume sampling - note that it doesn't even have to be quite full to appeal - what makes me personally very uncomfortable is when people send me large amounts of samples I have asked to try - or (worse still) of random extras enclosed in the package. If I haven't tested a scent it seems ludicrously reckless to do that, and the largesse behind the gesture is trounced for me by the potential for waste. I once received a whole set of large extra samples - well decants, as there must have been 4-6ml in each - and hated all of them. Then I felt bad for the rest of the day before screwing up the courage to thank the perfumista in question for their generosity...through gritted teeth.

So that is what I like and don't like in the state of the sampling world as it is today. I do feel I am not pulling my weight here in my choice of packaging, though in the case of international shipments, I tend to throw in amusing red herrings to distract the customs wallahs such as scraps of wool, buttons, bookmarks or pieces of fabric, which hopefully raise a smile at least.

Foxing fodder for customs officials

So...I would be most interested to know what others perceive as the 'etiquette' of sampling - if you think there is such a thing, however loosely and unofficially?

And what are you own pet peeves about types of vial or fill levels - specifically for samples rather than decants?

Perfume decanting supplies - the UK perspective revisited

Every perfumista reaches a point when they wish to share their collection with a fellow fumehead. This may be in the form of a so-called 'care package' or a swap - whether private or via the lively swap board on Makeupalley.  I have racked up some 75+ swaps on MUA, and have sent perfume as a gift (I narrowly stopped myself there from saying 'I have gifted'!) to many of my friends, both corporeal and virtual.  To this end, I have bought and rebought decanting supplies (atomisers and small stoppered vials mostly) many times over the past five years.  In a recent post on Bois de Jasmin, Victoria takes an in-depth look at the whole business of decanting.  I gazed in awe and wonder at the photographs of her spraying 'commando' (ie straight from the nozzle, without the safety net of a funnel) into a perfectly behaved receptacle.

She also canvassed opinions about the best place to buy decanting tackle in different parts of the world.  Undina of Undina's Looking Glass has also compiled a very useful post on this subject, which Victoria referenced in her feature.  Undina's top choice is BestBottles, which has a superb selection of atomisers at very reasonable unit costs.  BestBottles is appreciably cheaper than Accessories for Fragrance, also based in the USA, with a pretty good range and ultra-friendly service.

But here's the thing - last night I had a jolly good trawl of the top perfume bottle websites and UK Ebay.  I placed dummy orders on both BestBottles and SKS Bottle & Packaging, another site that was mentioned in Victoria's post.  Hey, they would have been actual orders, were it not for the fact that the shipping in both cases - for a $50 minimum order approximately - topped out at $148 via UPS!!!  And there did not seem to be any other postal option.

Accessories for Fragrance, meanwhile, has international shipping costs that are vastly more proportionate, albeit its unit product costs are a lot higher.  So I ended up buying a large quantity of plastic atomisers from them in a selection of sizes - I really can't afford more than the occasional purchase of the glass ones on there (beyond the 1ml stoppered vial kind, that is) - and my shipping total was something like $22, ie much more in the ballpark.

I had never investigated the BestBottles site before, though I recognised many, many of the glass atomisers pictured!, which American swappers have sent to me over the years.

For a small-scale decanter like me, the only other overseas site I clocked with reasonable prices and decent international delivery rates - as in included in the price! - is Proud Style, which also gets a name check in Victoria's post, and which (sadly) I only explored after I had placed my Accessories for Fragrance order...however, I may venture there next time.

It is a while since I last looked on UK Ebay, which is a near total desert where cost-effective glass or plastic atomisers in the 2 - 5ml range are concerned.  Where it does score is in knock-off Travalos, ie refillable atomisers of the Travalo style but very much cheaper.  I even saw one seller called Max Trading offering them at £1.99!, compared to a normal retail of about £8 for the branded version.

Source: Ebay

Ebay also sells a lot of those burnished metal purse spray atomisers - some quite cheaply - but having had a bad experience with a seller in the Far East (where many of the cheaper ones hail from), I would be a bit wary again, tempting as their candy colours may be.

Lovely but leaky!

Ebay is also good for these odd little graduated snap top vials to which Freddie of Smellythoughts introduced me.  They hold about 1.5ml or so, and though the lid is very secure when snapped shut, and they are easy as anything to fill commando, I do get splashback issues with them ie as the vial fills up - the impact of perfume hitting what is already in there causes the next squirt to ricochet out again.  So unless my technique is totally to cock, I'd say these are only good in practice for a 1ml fill level at most.

So my assessment today would be: if I was an American I would use BestBottles in a heartbeat.  As a UK-based decanter, I will try Proud Style next time, with Accessories for Fragrance as an expensive but faithful fallback - for plastic anyway, and for 1ml glass vials, which don't strike me as being all that expensive from them for a big bag.  And then Ebay comes into its own for one-off fancier items such as Travalo-type atomisers.

Now I know there is a general preference for glass over plastic in the perfume community - partly for reasons of longevity, and partly on aesthetic grounds - but whilst I have had a few plastic atomisers turn in the past four years or so, it has only been the odd one.  To be honest, I much prefer the look and feel of glass myself and would only ever use glass for decants of 8 or 10ml, say, because it is a much nicer way to present a larger decant, but up till now I hadn't figured out anywhere cost-effective to buy glass atomisers in any quantity (as in 12, for example!).

1ml glass vials with plastic stoppers (somewhere in this bag!)

I mention this fact about my plastic decants not going off because I have got...ahem...about 100 of the things on their way to me as I blog!, so anyone receiving a small decant from me between now and the foreseeable, is likely to cop for one or two of this less desirable variety... ;-) ;-)

The Travalo: Trending Travel Tackle aka More Things On Poles

The Travalo seems to be everywhere these days. I hesitate to speak of it in the plural, because "Travalos" without an apostrophe sounds like a budget hotel chain (or its Greek equivalent). Now as some readers know, such is the vehemence of my opposition to the deployment of the grocer's apostrophe in plural nouns, as in: "it's raining cat's and dog's", that I will see how far I get without cracking and plumping for "Travalo's" after all. And while we are on the subject of grammar, I am not entirely comfortable with "trending" as a word, but it is a descriptor for topics on Twitter, so it is probably here to stay.

Back to the gizmo in question, a new take on the concept of a refillable perfume atomiser. Here is the description from the company's website:

•pocket sized perfume spray bottle that refills in seconds directly from a big fragrance spray bottle.
•no funnel, no spills, requires no skill
•over 65 sprays

As I observed at the top of the post, the Travalo seems to have taken the market by storm recently - in terms of its distribution at least - I can't speak for the sales side. I first came across one last May at Fascination perfumery - Lynn, the proprietor, let me sample Elie Saab from a pink Travalo she had filled up with the fragrance at the Esxence show in Milan. Then in the summer Penhaligon's kindly sent me 4ml of Juniper Sling in a pretty silver Travalo, and in between times I have spotted them by the till in various department stores and other perfume outlets, and also clocked ads for them in the duty free section of several in-flight magazines.

I have since invested in a pack of four of these refillable fragrance atomisers (there - I think I got away with it!), and plan to use them as travel-sized / purse sprays of a few of my favourite fragrances. For that is the first downside of the Travalo: you can't reuse it, any more than you can reuse a plastic or (I would argue), a glass atomiser. It will be impregnated with your chosen scent forever.

And unlike a conventional atomiser that you can unscrew to fill - such that if you had a number of smaller samples of a perfume you could consolidate them all in the one container - the Travalo only works with a full bottle of perfume. Consequently, when my Juniper Sling Travalo is empty, I can't top it up with my one remaining carded sample of the scent, because there is no way of opening the Travalo to pour the vial in.

No, the way the Travalo works is that it has a hole in the bottom, which you place over the "stem" - or "pole", as it seems to me - of the bottle's atomiser mechanism before pumping away to fill it. (Miraculously, the perfume doesn't then fall out of the hole again, which as far as I can tell is "open" at all times.) So basically, the Travalo is no better than any other pretty brushed metal atomiser except for the fact that you don't need a funnel to fill it. For a seasoned decanter this is no big deal, though I don't doubt that this is a major part of its appeal to the public at large.

As for the pumping action itself, it is straightforward enough. At the outset, I had doubts about whether all the bottles in my collection would really prove to have Travalo-friendly tops. I did my first "pumped decant" with a bottle of L'Agent (modelled below by Mr Bonkers) and that worked a treat. I knew it must also work with Penhaligon's bottles, of which I have four - though crucially not Juniper Sling - so if I want to reuse my Travalo of that I will have to bite the silver bullet it resembles and buy myself a full bottle for that specific purpose.

Right, so I will just go and take a random selection of bottles out of my fridge and report back which ones have "easily flirt-offable tops".

Well, I am happy to say that very nearly all of them passed the test, even Ajne Calypso, in its atypical Bohemian filigree bottle. The tip to remember is to be assertive and assume the top WILL come off. If you are a bit of a wimp about it you may find the top resists, as happened to me intially with one of the Jo Malones.

The only top to cock a complete snook at the Travalo mechanism was my humungous bottle of IUNX Eau Frappée, which - let's face it - is more light sabre or police truncheon than perfume bottle.

So that was a happy discovery, though so far I have still only filled up the pink one with L'Agent. For the most significant thing about the Travalo - given its relatively high unit cost versus a conventional atomiser bought in bulk - is not the mere fact that it is a handy travel format. No, the Travalo's key function is to force you to decide which scents really are your favourites, and worth dedicating one of these refillable sprays to.

Which may be why the other three are still empty.



Would be interested to hear people's thoughts on this apparent trend.

Have you taken the Travalo plunge?

If not, are you *pumped up* to try it?

If so, what scents did you consider "TW" or "Travalo Worthy"?

And do you own any bottle with a non-compliant atomiser mechanism like my IUNX?

Over time I am standing by to compile a list of Travalo Refusenik bottles on this post - though maybe the IUNX bottle was a case apart.

And finally, seeing as the stem of the atomiser sticking up reminds me of a little pole, here again are the other things of poles I saw on my travels lately.







Photo of Travelodge from www2.travelodge.co.uk, other photos my own.

The Scent Crimes Series: No 9 - "Snapped: Women Who Fill" - 2.5ml Glass Atomisers Behaving Badly (Again)

Mr Bonkers recently suggested that we kick Sky, our satellite channel provider, into touch, as we aren't watching nearly enough TV to warrant the £60 a month. One of the programmes I will miss is a crime series called "Snapped: Women Who Kill". Apart from anything, I have always appreciated the portentous semi-colon in the title. The other day my friend Clare wrote on Mr Bonkers' Facebook wall, warning him that he may regret this decision:

"Having watched all those episodes of 'Women who Kill', Vanessa knows all the best techniques. You don't want to upset her...I'd restore Sky, smartish".

But really, it is okay. I am fully behind the decision and not about to run amok in the living room wielding a semi-automatic rifle. Or for that matter a knitting needle, mini-stapler or Estée Lauder lip gloss, all of which items sundry airlines down the years have construed as offensive weapons and summarily confiscated from me.

But what did get me mad the other day were some more technical difficulties while decanting. I don't know this for sure, but I may be the most prolific blogger in perfumeland on the subject of various decanting issues: from bottles that only spray at a funny angle, to swivelling nozzles and overspray problems, tricky viscosities and curious arrangements of insulation tape. On this recent occasion, a 2.5ml glass atomiser was getting up to its tricks again - well, different tricks, in fact.

Yes, the usual trick of these particular vials is to resist having their tops put on altogether, even if you follow to the letter the method outlined on the Accessories For Fragrance website.

No, this time something most peculiar occurred. I was trying to consolidate my small samples of Armani Sensi - an underrated jasmine floral I have already reviewed on Bonkers - into a single 2.5ml atomiser, as I quite fancied spraying it for once. My only other stocks of this scent are in the form of a miniature with a tiny aperture, so there was no hope of transferring its contents - that will forever remain strictly a dabbing receptacle.

But I had a couple of ml in 1ml vials to combine and managed to get them into the 2.5ml atomiser okay. Then I had some trouble getting the top on, but in the end I managed to bodge it in after a fashion, applying lots of brute force (though I didn't deploy the geode this time). But the fit bothered me still - for some reason I doubted whether it was properly in - I hadn't heard it do that click thing it is meant to do, and it was also sitting at a slightly funny angle.

So I set about trying to take the top section off again: pulling it this way and that, trying to twist it or prise it off with my fingers. I was just about to go and take a knife to it when I had the bright idea of trying to bite the top off . Apart from anything it felt like a way to release the annoyance I was by now feeling - and after all, it is a tried and tested method I use with those dangly plastic tags from the dry cleaner's that you remember to remove just as you are going into an important meeting.

Well, I am not sure I would recommend biting as a technique of atomiser disassembly, because the whole top sheared off, leaving the rest of the mechanism still firmly stuck inside the vial, like the stinger a bee deposits into your skin. I have not yet tried to get it out again. other than half-heartedly upending the darn thing to see if any perfume comes out the tiny hole in the atomiser tube / "stinger equivalent" (it doesn't). I will have to try taking a knife to the plastic rim embedded in the glass base at some point, but I sense it may be messy.

And the worst part about biting off more than I could crunch? Getting perfume in my mouth - not much, obviously, as you can see from the photograph, but enough to know it is not something that - notwithstanding its alcoholic base - will displace my favourite tipple of G & T any time soon.




Mugshot photo from crimeinvestigation.co.uk, photo of a vial having its top inserted from accessoriesforfragrances.com, photo of bee sting from Wikipedia, photo of Sensi mini from Ebay, other photo my own.

Finding The Tipping Point - Vexingly Various Viscosities And Why It Sprays But It Never Pours

As a frequent decanter, I must say that I can't be doing with washing funnels. I own four metal ones and a handful of plastic funnels of varying dimensions, which I try not to use, precisely because they are only suitable for one-time use - or multiple uses involving the same scent. I do in fact have a bag of plastic funnels dedicated to different scents, but rarely find a need to redeploy them. Oh, I have just spotted in the photo the one for Michel Comté's Shared Water! That's ironic, given that the whole point of the funnel is to prevent that very phenomenon...

So for the most part, I decant using metal funnels and wash them in the kitchen sink. That is one of the few perks of my going away as often as I do on work trips, according to Mr Bonkers. When he does the dishes he doesn't catch his hand on an assortment of metal objects lurking like submarines at the bottom of the washing up bowl, along with the obligatory teaspoon or two. For it is an infallible law of nature that there is always at least one teaspoon in the dirty water when you go to empty the bowl...

Yes, I wash and soak and sometimes re-wash and re-soak the funnels - I squirt neat Fairy Liquid in and swoosh it around with my finger, before putting the funnel back in to soak. Overnight, often. Or whole days if the coast is clear. Yet certain scents resist the most determined detergents and retain a trace of the decanted fragrance for a long time afterwards.

Given the palaver involved in funnel care, it is hardly surprising that when I set about consolidating my various bits and bobs of samples of the same scent the other day, I decided to go commando and just tip from receptacle A to receptacle B wherever possible. I was mostly trying to transfer 1ml and 2ml glass vial samples - together with the remnants of minis and small splash bottle decants - into 3ml and 5ml atomisers, with a view to taking some of these scents on my next trip.

Upending a 1ml sample vial and tipping it into the wider mouth of an atomiser is usually straightforward, assuming you have a half-steady hand. The procedure becomes very tricky, however, if you are emptying one of those glass vials with a lip, like the ones you get from Les Senteurs. Tip the sample upside down till you are blue in the face, tap it against the side of the receiving atomiser as hard as you like, but not a drop will come out. Or not until about 10 minutes of concerted shaking and tapping have elapsed will the vial grudgingly yield its contents.

This all seems counter-intuitive though, because at the end of the day, it is still A HOLE, and you would think the laws of gravity would apply. Well, a "lay decanter" like me would think that, anyway. I have the same problem with two of my funnels, which have a markedly smaller diameter of the funnelly bit. You spray a goodly squirt of your chosen perfume and wait for a moment, but the darn liquid won't go down! Again, I repeat - a hole is a hole - or should be. But there again, maybe not. It may be all about the meniscus. Menisci moving in mysterious ways.

So aperture is one thing, but even when I was tipping samples from and to identical vials, I noticed marked differences in the pourability of some scents. I should have been paying more attention at the time, but I recall that Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint was a very compliant pourer, while Tom Ford Neroli Portofino was like recalcitrant magma! Which I wouldn't have expected from what I perceive as a light, "get up and go" scent. I would have placed scents like Ormonde Jayne Tolu or Patou Joy or Micallef Hiver at the magma end of the bell curve - you know, plush and overtly perfumey scents with the sluggish gait of motor oil.

I tried to google "perfume viscosity" and its relationship to decanting and pouring, and came up with surprisingly few citations of note. Though I did find this nugget on the "pour point":

"Pour point: The temperature at which a viscous liquid becomes pourable is called the pour point."

Temperature is also involved? Perhaps it is standard though across all perfume, but actual motor oil may have a different pour point, say. Or maple syrup, for argument's sake. Or sake, for that matter... : - )

The nugget continues:

"If diluents are present in the supplied viscous liquid then the pour point is reduced."

As in the temperature?? Does Jo Malone contain diluents? I am sure those nice people at Estée Lauder wouldn't thank me for speculating on the matter. For that way lies orange squash...

"Pour points are generally not very accurate as they vary with every consignment noticeable in resinoids."

I don't doubt it! So could my perfume collection be construed as "a consignment noticeable in resinoids", I wonder? Very likely - for I fancy a resinoid has got to be just some gunkier version of oil, and my slowest pourers must surely have a bit of those in them?

Still, I can't help thinking that this pour point and temperature lark may be a red herring. I would like to know what else affects pourability, and is it in any way a marker of quality, or not? You know, the double cream principle...

Has anyone else experienced problems relating to narrow apertures and/or variable viscosities? (There I go again, uncharacteristically asking a question!) And was it with the same style of vial? And can you recall which scents poured with glacial torpor? Tip me the wink about what goes on in your sink... ; - )


Photo of woman pouring perfume from art-prints-on-demand.com, photo of Les Senteurs sample from shop.lessenteurs.com, photo of frog pouring perfume from bibliodyssey.blogspot.com, other photos my own

The Perfume Studio Fragrance Blending Kit Prize Draw - The Winner Is Chosen!

Mr Bonkers has come down again this week with one of his special colds, but struggled valiantly this afternoon to click the "Generate" button on the Random.org random number generator gizmo, and the winner is......

ANNA

Congratulations!

Contact me on flittersniffer@gmail.com with your address, and a note of whether you would like me to include some decanting tackle with the kit. Please also let me know if you are already familiar with Puredistance 1 or would like a sample to try.

In due course I would be most interested to learn what formulations you come up with! It is fun to give your scent creations a name too, the way clients do as part of the "full service" Perfume Studio experience.

(NB Please claim your prize by April 27th, or I will enlist Mr Bonkers' services again to pick another winner. : - ) )

The "Starter Gun" Style Of Decanting - And Other Faff-Filled 'Fumie Feats

Okay, so that was a truly terrible tabloid-y title, and the opening sentence of this post doesn't exactly redeem me. And I am sorry too for the fact that this is yet another "decanting rant", but as you know I am heavily involved in the swapping scene - and in making up vials as part of my evangelical crusade to convert friends and relatives - so decanting is a subject never far from my mind. And in fairness, one about which there doesn't seem to be a great deal of coverage in the blogosphere, or not that I have noticed.

But to my first gripe...the other day I was splitting a new bottle of Michel Comte's Shared Water with a perfumista in California. The name "Shared Water" was really rather apt, now I think of it. Anyway, I consider myself to be well versed in the techniques of spraying, and familiar with the idiosyncrasies of different bottle shapes and nozzle types - or so I thought... It quickly dawned on me, however, that this particular bottle only wanted to spray at a minimum of a 45 degree angle, and in fact the closer to the perpendicular the better.

Well, even though I dropped physics at the age of 12, I could tell right off the bat that spraying upwards was not going to be the optimum way to fill a 15ml glass atomiser. The act of filling - although the dictionary definition of the verb is less specific - is, in my experience, an inherently downwards motion. The compilers of the online dictionary I just consulted may indeed have had problems of their own decanting from certain perfume bottles, because they are deliberately coy about the recommended way of "filling":

"To put into (a container, for example) as much as can be held: fill a glass with milk."

So, once I had encountered a problem with the classic mode of downwards spraying, I too had to resort to merely "putting" - by any viable method I could devise. In the event I resorted to a big plastic funnel like Jodrell Bank telescope and the closest angle to the horizontal I could get away with (which was not very close at all), hoping against hope that the funnel would catch and direct all the errant perfume down into the atomiser.

Sadly, a fair bit of spray ricocheted off the funnel and back in the direction of my face and the atmosphere in general, so I probably lost about 5ml by using this clunky - and counter-intuitive - process. But the bottle stubbornly refused to spray at any other angle.

In the end, though, I did manage to "put" the perfume in the receptacle and share Shared Water with the person in the US, but by golly it didn't go quietly!

And having since done a bit of research, I think I may have identified the correct tool for the job:

"The AccuMist system from Sono-Tek offers the highest degree of accuracy, precision and fine-line control in ultrasonic deposition."

The Sono-tek website helpfully goes on to explain the mechanism in a little more detail:

"The ultrasonically produced spray at the tip of the stem is immediately entrained in the low pressure air stream. An adjustable focusing mechanism on the air shroud allows complete control of spray width. The spray envelope is bow-shaped. The width of the bow is controlled by moving the focus-adjust mechanism in and out."

I don't know about you, but I am sold already and poised to place my order...

Another faff-filled fumie feat I struggle with is upending splash bottles and simply pouring their contents down a funnel into an atomiser. I use the term "simply" advisedly, because in my experience the perfume comes out with a rush and instead of it all going down the hole in the funnel, it overflows, not unlike - at the risk of lowering the tone - a blocked toilet! Now what is that all about? You would think gravity would be our ally here, but obviously not. I don't know the reason why perfumes behave badly in this instance, but I have a hunch that it may be to do with their viscosity or density, or some such tricky technical parameter.

Finally, a while ago I blew off a little steam describing the problems I was having snapping on the plastic tops to 2.5ml glass atomisers. Well, I stuck with them and kept practising my technique, and am pleased to report that I can successfully assemble these on the first attempt 4 out of 5 times now. So that is quite pleasing, and once in place the closure is pretty tight, just as the supplier said.

The secret with these is composure, self-belief and a high degree of mental focus. It is exactly like chopping a plank of wood in half with a karate blow, or locating your core muscles in Pilates.

Pernickety Pipette Practices - A Mug's Game?

When I first began decanting perfume, I remember reading the following warning on NSTperfume, in their comprehensive guide on the subject:

"Avoid plastic funnels, as it is nearly impossible to remove all traces of scent once they’ve been used."

Having adopted a strict mantra of "metal good, plastic bad", I proceeded to apply it to the pipettes I use for decanting from splash bottles. I use them for one scent only and label them to this effect. Now...I have been doing this swapping lark for a year or more, and pipettes are starting to proliferate in my office. This means that I sometimes forget what perfumes I have dedicated pipettes for, and consequently I have at least two for certain scents.

The pipettes are stored in two mugs, notionally in a fanned out display to avoid mutual contamination. By the way, the pipette wearing the improvised bandage made out of a bit of kitchen towel is not ailing, but its designated perfume is deemed to be particularly contagious (Cuir de Lancome).

An interesting post the other day by Notes From The Ledge discussed the subject of "Wandering Minds", as in minds left free to roam off topic in an idle moment. And so it is that when I get distracted from my work, I sometimes find myself staring at the mugs of pipettes - and before you can say "graduated in 0.5ml increments" other images pop into my mind...

And if I ever tire of my hobby, I might be able to fashion interesting household objects out of the used pipettes, drawing my inspiration from this lampshade, which seems to be constructed entirely from uncooked spaghetti.