Happy Double Freya's Day! Double Freya's Day is not a traditional holiday name but I think it conveys how special today is. Every Friday is Freya's Day, but this year we also have February 14th on a Friday.

I don't usually make a huge deal about Valentine's Day. Its origins are non-heathen, and many Asatruers and other Heathens celebrate a completely made up holiday today instead, Vali's Day. It was created based on the similarity of the names Vali and Valentine. Vali of course is one of our gods, but he's not a romantic figure. His personal story is about Odin setting up all the proper conditions, tools, and people to make Ragnarok happen correctly someday. The end of the world has to be done right so the next world can be better.

Most of my life I've thought of Valentine's Day as the day before Half Price Chocolate Day. But this year I'm a member of the fragrance community, which is making a big deal about it. I'm hosting the February Tray thread and seeing everyone choosing romantic, rose, pink and red perfumes for February because it has Valentine's Day in it. People are planning their Valentine's Day perfumes weeks in advance. Specifically, women are planning them weeks in advance. This is apparently a women's holiday, not a couple holiday. I've always thought of it as a couple holiday and I only really celebrated it during that brief period of time in my 40s when I was going out with Tom. The rest of my life I ignored it as not relating to me.

But it doesn't have to be about couples. In the fragrance community it's a holiday for women to feel beautiful about themselves. No one is even mentioning doing couple activities or even planning a couple's matching perfumes. And everyone is choosing rose for this. Rose, Freya's sacred plant. This has made me re-evaluate how I think about Valentine's Day. The influence of Freya is felt strongly in the modern world even among non-pagans and non-heathens. 

So of course, I am participating. I too made a special tray for Valentine's Day, with rose. I got out a pink glass tray and on it I put a jar of dried rose petals from my garden, decorated with a rose on the lid. On my tray I placed the body mist and lotion of Covered in Roses, and the perfume Rose Absolue by Goutal. When I got up this morning I put on my regular Friday perfume, Vanr Volva by Cherry-Ka's Trunk, and then I put on the other things I chose for Double Freya's Day. 

My cat seemed to like it and followed me around an unusual amount until we both settled down here, me on the computer and him nearby on the couch. He's sitting there patiently waiting for me to sit down next to him and pet him, and I shall do that as soon as I'm done posting this.

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The "Me as a Perfume" Challenge was a challenge on Fragram, the associated photo host site for the Fragrantica forums. It was a challenge to create a perfume representing you, based either on real perfume notes or representations like "cats" and / or personality traits, or a mix of all of those. The notes were to be presented over an image representing the artist. One person said she would have to make a series of flankers to fit everything in, and that resonated with me.

Of course, being a fragrance maker, I had to participate. But I wanted to come up with something completely different from the perfume that already exists.

There is already a perfume representing me. Valkyrie by Cherry-Ka's Trunk. That is a very fierce me. That is the me that, when I heard there was the threat of a supremacist disrupting a Halloween carnival at which a friend was to perform, I showed up with a Viking war axe to protect them. That's me in relation to other people. The me that the perfumer saw when he gave me that perfume as a gift. It is an amazing gift and I will cherish it all my days and on into the next world.

So for this, I wanted to come up with something that would not encroach on the territory of the gift I had been given. Something totally different. Not me in relation to other people, but me alone. The me that no one sees but me.

I thought about what the basic me of the line should be, before adding books or bonfires or any of the other things I will add later, and came up with 3 notes. There are many scents I love but one that represents me well is carnation. It's the January birthstone flower. It's highly nostalgic for me because my mom and I used to get ourselves a bouquet of carnations every year for our January birthdays. It's one of the first notes I sought out in perfume, that I discussed with my brother at the beginning of my perfume journey. He recommended his favorite L'Heure Bleu and I bought myself a vintage bottle on his recommendation, and it was everything he said it would be, and is still one of my top 5 favorites. So, carnation, of course. Carnation in perfumery is usually an accord, but I love nature and natural things. My carnation will be real carnation EO.

I am of course approximately 70% coffee by volume. So real coffee EO has to be in there too.

I don't think I actually remember this, I think I remember my mom telling me this and my brain filled in details like the yard and the block from other memories, but when I was a small child living in Ripon a cat followed me home. My mom told me I said, "Cats are distracted to me." That's been true my whole life, cats are indeed distracted to me. So another note has to be catnip. I picked a catnip leaf from my garden. After I took the photo, I started a catnip extract.

I'm not sure how I will make these 3 notes play nicely together yet, but I will get to that later. This part is just conceptual.

I drew myself aspirationally with a combination of my current body, my pre-Depo Provera body from when I was young, and my idea of what I am trying to turn into using my Monster Powers to slowly shape shift into my ideal me. I drew myself swimming. Which is also slightly aspirational right now, because it's February. It's too cold to heat up the pool, so I can't actually go swimming right now, and yet I have to clean it all year. I used to clean the filters myself but I can no longer get all the parts back together afterwards due to arthritis. I was waiting for the pool guy to come clean the filter while I did all the conceptual work for Me as a Perfume, drew the drawing, took the photo, and wrote all this. I think I shall call this fragrance Swimming In Perfume.

Later, I drew a version of the same drawing but in a ridiculously voluminous silk dress. This is to be the first flanker. I added things that are not actual perfume notes, things that are important to my life like "drum" and "friends" and "liberty," in bright colors. I also added things that were important to my life in the past, but I added them grayed out like unclickable buttons. Links that go to places that no longer exist. 

This is perhaps an appropriate thing to relate on Double Freya's Day, since it's at least partly about beauty. About becoming the me I want to be with the body I want to have. Happy Double Freya's Day!