nosy recommends: weleda wild rose pampering body lotion

background Marimekko Ruhtinatar print via

I tend to prefer oils to lotions, but this creamy & dreamy new Wild Rose Pampering Body Lotion from Weleda may make a convert of me. En route to the San Juan Islands from Seattle, we stopped at the Skagit Valley Co-Op (recommended for lunch as well as for any island-snacking stock-up needs) where I picked up a little foil sample packet of this moussey wonder. I loved it so much that our first stop back on the mainland was the co-op, where I made a beeline right for the Weleda display, anxious to slather more of this cream on my dry winter self. (It is challenging to describe how delighted I am whenever I use this product without devolving into a crazed advertorial territory.) 

The bottle's not messing around with this "pampering" promise, and the lotion forms a silky, protective barrier on your skin immediately after you smooth it on. And, oh, the fragrance! It's glossy and chewy with just a smidge of powdery softness, appropriate since your skin will be so soft also. The rose is thorny, buttery, garden fresh, and paired with some greener plants that make the bouquet bright and clean but not soapy, refreshing but still comforting, and long-lasting in both function and fragrance (but the latter is subtle enough to not compete too much with your perfume). It leaves skin absurdly soft even through the especially vigorous hand-washings flu season inspires.

image via 

Related encouragement: Fear not rose! Many Americans seem unnecessarily wary of rose, and I get the sense that the aversion was formed at an early age, against dusty little guest soaps still in their faded tissue-paper wrappers. Try again! Let rose-gurus Katie Puckrik ("Wearing [Un Rose] makes me feel like a baby bee crawling around in the most enormous, lascivious, skyscraper rose to ever bloom.") and Elisa Gabbert ("Over time [Rossy de Palma] gets slightly sweeter, but continues to smell gleamy and green and squeaky clean without resorting to soapy or laundry musk notes, and the crispness keeps it unisex.") nudge you along, and open your nose to rose paired with incense, leather, musk, and wood. By any of its names, and not always sweet.

Nosy Interview: Roland Satterwhite

Roland in Zeta Oph: Runaway Star, © NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope

Roland contacted me after Ayla Peggy Adler's interview was posted, nominating his sister, Zanna, who he describes as having an amazing sense of smell, for an interview (Zanna, I hope you'll share what you're smelling one of these days). He was kind enough to submit to a nosy interview himself (one  hazard/benefit of nominating anyone is that I will definitely ask you what you smell like, too). Visit Roland's web site here, and check out his Facebook page to learn more about his music and upcoming performance dates. 

What do you smell like?
it is hard to answer the question what i smell like. but mostly i smell like my armpits because i usually don't wear deodorant, unless i'm going on a date, or know that i'll be nervous....i like my armpit smell.  the truth is that i like it more, the longer i don't shower, but i love to shower, so it usually doesn't collect more than 24 hours. My dream is to have BO that is as good as some people i've met.  I can't figure out if it is their diet, or their genetic makeup.....i think cumin/curry is the flavor of BO that is my favorite...you know what i mean?

What do you like to smell?
i love the smell of:  
gasoline,
paint thinner,
permanent marker,
cow shit, 
straw bales,
pencil shavings, 
graphite dust, 
stinging nettles,
blackberry bushes,
railroad ties,
wet asphalt after a long dry spell,
i love the smell of outside--after emerging from an underground car park, which for me is nauseating,
gillette shaving cream,
smell of my armpits in the morning if i slept long and well,
a lot of pakistanis i know,
the senegalese guys at mariana's restaurant on reichenberger street,
onions frying in olive oil,
tomato plants,
pine needles,
book binding glue is deliciously whiffy,
puget sound (Puuuuuuuuget sound),
the lungs of a lover,
any cotton that has spent the night outside,
rain,
my old polyester shirt,
bleach, when it is faint,
her shampoo, when a woman with long hair jogs in the opposite direction,
cumin

the air from here

All critters created by the LBJ Conser-clay-tion Club.

As I was last year around this time, I'm breathing Pacific Northwest air right now, remarking nearly every single time I step outside at how incredible it smells here, how you really forget that when you live here, how invigorating I find it, all this mountain-ocean-pine-ancient-glacier-freshest-coffee air. My husband usually breathes in deep and agrees, even though he has heard at least one hundred iterations of this monologue since we stepped outside at SeaTac and I exclaimed how even the airport-adjacent air, not traditionally known for its ability to invigorate, is better here. And it is!

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

Better even than airport parking lot air is San Juan Island air, and that's what I've been fortunate enough to breathe these past few nights, gaping up at what seems like all of the stars between nearly all of the pine trees, dumbstruck by the beauty of this neon-mossed, pine-studded, sea-whipped island, wondering at how lucky we are just to get to walk around on this planet, and when we get to breathe in air that makes us feel especially alive it seems like too much almost, too bracing to keep even for one split second in our lungs.

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

Nosy Interview: Cody Walker

Zia & Cody in the NGC 5189: An Unusually Complex Planetary Nebula, © NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage

What wonderful luck to meet Cody during a frigid January residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2006. His laughter melts snow! When we returned to Seattle, where we were both living at the time, Cody proceeded to introduce me to the greatest people in Seattle, for which I'm forever grateful. Visit Cody's web site and buy his book, Shuffle and Breakdown, here. 

What do you smell like?
After reading through all the interviews in this series, I feel a bit like the guy in “Annie Hall” who, after hearing about the many meetings being conducted around him, complains, “All the good meetings are taken.” All the good smells have been taken, too! Because really and truly: I smell like potting soil and haunted estates and honey. I think I may even smell like a sparrow! But OK. I followed the lead of many others and asked my partner what I smelled like. After a disconcertingly long pause, she said, “Like a good guy”—which was singularly unhelpful. (She’s a fiction writer; she could’ve just made something up.) Maybe I smell like Skin Trip? Or mulched leaves? Or a tennis court? Or maybe a chimpanzee—that’s it. A freakishly clean chimpanzee.

What Do You Like to Smell?
I like a lot of smells that aren’t on everyone’s list: anchovies, for instance, and kimchi, and skunk spray. I like almost any of those glass-enclosed candles that smell like cookies or suntan lotion or pie. I like the earthy upended-ness of the Ho Rain Forest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I like almond steamers and leather boots. I like Natures Paradise Coconut Body Mist (which I use as an air freshener in my daughter’s bedroom, and which pleases me so much that I’m willing to forgive the missing apostrophe in “Natures”). And because I went to a hippie college in Florida when I was nineteen, my true elixir is a mix of sweat, patchouli, and clove cigarettes.

happy new year

fresh year at Fresh Pond

Happy New Year, dear Nosy readers! How is your 2013 smelling so far? I wore Avignon plus some dainty dabs of 7 Billion Hearts (the perfume absolute version) to ring in the New Year, and my smell felt solemn, human, and true. 

chartreuse + champagne

I also wore sequins (pictured above), as one should when ushering in a new year. But January rarely feels fizzy to me; it's a serious month, usually a cold one, and I think more during these short (but thankfully lengthening) days of loss than I do during January's neighbors.

I've been, and will probably continue to be, a bit remiss with regular posts. But Nosy Interviews (the best part!) will be back next week, and I'll continue to post those consistently, even as I otherwise hibernate a little bit to work more on my novel, to open fewer tabs in Chrome, to cook with greater care, and to strive to be as I smell: true, true, true.