The Smell of Wool in a Warm Room

There are few things I love more than the smell of wool in a warm room. It is a smell with layers: lanolin, first, and then something sweetly animal, and then, at the bottom, a note of cupboard. I have tried to bottle it. I have failed. The nearest I came was a candle called Sheep Weather, which smelled of a wet Tuesday in Wales.

The boutique, I like to think, smells of it all the time. Customers say that they walk in and feel their shoulders drop. I tell them that it is the lanolin, and they believe me. It is not only the lanolin. It is also, I fear, the three hundred and forty things I have taken apart and never quite aired. Do come in and breathe. Linger. Everything lingers here.