Sensory Questionnaire

Taken from Yesterday's Perfume and Glass Petal Smoke (who supplied a link to the Sensory Questionnaire posted on Scribd.)

1. What does your sense of smell mean to you?

My sense of smell has more of an affect on me than taste, sight, hearing or touch. My sense of smell can bring up memories that maybe only the sense of taste can come close to.

2. What are some of your strongest scent memories?

A cheap green apple cologne I gave my grandmother for Christmas, the ink from a mimeograph (I was so happy to be picked as student helper lol), nitrous oxide (don't know what triggers this but there are times where it's like I can actually smell it), Lake Erie & Rondeau Bay (summer cottage off the water - damp fishy, sea weedy smell), newborns (plenty of children in the family), mushroom farm

3. What are some of your favorite smells (things in nature, cooking &/or your environment)?

Fresh ginger, ripe pineapple, chlorinated swimming pool water, fresh herbs, highly scented flowers, cocoa butter

4. Do you have any favorite smells that are considered strange?

Green onions

5. Describe one or more of your favorite cooking smells.

Bread baking, coffee brewing, sauteed onions, curry (I don't care much for spicy perfumes but when cooking lots of spice smells so good to me)

6. What smells do you most dislike?

Fresh cut grass, Fendi (smells like Raid to me), Play-Doh, manure, mushroom farm

7. What smell(s) did you first dislike, but learned to love?

Vanilla and cinnamon

8. What mundane smells inspire you?

Fresh air. I breathe in and I breathe out. Breathe in , breathe out. Breathe in...and there is a hint of something. What is that smell? I sniff and sniff. Then I let the bloodhound out to locate it. What is it? Ah ha! Moments like this fire up the brain cells as I try to figure out the mystery scent. In doing so I begin to pull all sorts of images into my mind some of which are far removed from the source of the scent. But the images are there and the ideas start to flow and I begin to create.

9. What scent never fails to take you back in time and why?

Lye. I started getting my hair relaxed when I was a pre-teen. The smell of the relaxing cream was awful. I'm a soaper and whenever I mix my lye solution the thought of getting my hair relaxed often pops into my head.

10. What scents do you associate with memories of loved ones?

• My mother had several bottles of perfume & cologne on her dresser but the two I remember most were Red Door and Paloma Picasso.
• My dad had only one...Lagerfeld.
• One of my cousins always had a bottle of Sung out on her dresser and I would spritz it on almost every time I visited her.  

11. What fragrance(s) remind you of growing up?

• Sand & Sable. That was what I wore in high school. And some cherry/vanilla cheap stuff I don't remember the name of.
• I can't recall the name now but a Giorgio knock-off that several of my high school classmstes wore.
• Jergens lotion, Avon Skin So Soft body oil, Avon Imari cologne, Love's Baby Soft & Jean Nate, Zest & Tone soaps, VO5 (comes to mind when ever I smell geranium essential oil)

12. What fragrance(s) remind you of the places you visited on vacation?

Beef smoked sausage with a variety of toppings sold by street vendors in Toronto.