One Thing Leads To Another

There he is, that wild and crazy bohemian, the one and only Augustus John (1878-1961). Painter, gypsy and virtual force of nature, he consumed wine, women and life in equal quantities. He sits here more demurely than I've ever seen him looking (probably because at 22, he was just beginning to dip his toe into the tidepool of decadence), but that rapacious gaze riveted on the viewer gives the game away.

I'm not unmoved.

In fact, I'd be more than happy to give him exactly what he needs.

(Augustus John by William Orpen, 1899)

A wall-mounted coat and hat rack, of course.

(Coat hanger by Authentic Models via here)

He must be getting overheated sitting there in that wool overcoat and the hat needs a better resting place. (What? Did your minds go into the gutter? Pull them out at once.) I love the dark blue, the vintage-inspired brass details and that unexpected bold red shelf. It feels like a piece you'd find in the back hall of a centuries-old European bistro. Or maybe bolted to the wall of a first-class carriage on the Orient Express headed to Vienna. Or in the cloak room of a very exclusive boarding school in the remotest wilds of Inverness. Or...or...or...make up your own story.

Me wanty.

The Best-Laid Plans

It was supposed to be a weekend of therapeutic relaxation. Piero and Luca left on Wednesday for a four-day ski trip and I was going to celebrate the completion of nine pieces (and five months of stitching) by watching movies, taking outrageously long bubble baths, seeing a friend or two and being as unproductive as humanly possible.

On Wednesday night, I poured myself a glass of tartly sweet raspberry Lambic...

...watched a PBS special called "The Buddha" narrated by Richard Gere...

...and crawled between crisp, lavender-scented sheets at 9:30pm. Absolute bliss.

My vacation was short-lived.

At 2:30am, I awoke with a start. A fully-formed poem had come to me in the middle of the night. At first I tried to ignore it, but the words became louder and more insistent. Was this some sort of sadistic joke my brain was playing on me? Why now? Each sampler takes me 60 to 75 hours to complete. My framer had given me an absolute final deadline of Monday to have all my pieces in. Four days away.

Over and over the words resounded in my head.

Finally, I got out of bed to write them down.

"On The Price of Beauty"

Fill me, plump me,

Smooth me out,

Inject me with

a girlish pout.

Keep me spotless

and unmarred,

Just put it on

my credit card.

By the time I had finished, I could envision the entire layout, motifs and all.

My decision had been made.

On Thursday, I sewed from 6am to midnight.

On Friday, I sewed from 9am to 9pm (minus 45 minutes for a supermarket run to purchase protein).

On Saturday, I sewed from 10am to 10pm (minus a fifteen minute break for the One Kings Lane sale.)

On Sunday I rose at 4:30 am, worked through sunup, took a brief mid-morning blogging break to report on the OKL sale, and plunged my needle into burlap for the very final stitch at 2:30pm. My back ached, my fingers ached and my retinas were threatening to go on strike.

But it was done.

By the time you read this, I'll be racing to the Valley to drop the final piece off at the framer's.

And then I'm going to watch a movie, take a bubble bath, see a friend or two and be as unproductive as humanly possible. Lying on the sofa and staring at the ceiling sounds pretty good too.

Back on Wednesday (maybe Thursday).

Yes.

Re: the Nathan Turner Tastemaker Tag sale at One Kings Lane on Saturday...

I went, I saw, I did a little bit of damage.

I bought the black Flores chair (loved the red one, but it was already in someone else's basket and I have two red leather chairs anyway) which will go next to the fireplace in my bedroom...
...and this huge 33" by 42" framed photograph of an English cottage circa 1900, which I love love love. I think the 1930's ghosts living in my four cracked leather photo albums are going to like it too.

And now, my lovelies, I must go sew. I'm in the home stretch and think/hope/pray that at some point today, I actually...cross fingers...might be...knock on wood...dare I say it?... D-O-N-E.

Sands of Time

About a month ago, I bought a brass ship's hourglass from one of my new favorite online shops, One Kings Lane.

I've become quite addicted to their hugely discounted designer homewares over the past few months; last week, I bought a beautiful gift box of Claus Porto soaps for just $19.

Anyway, back to that hourglass. I bought it because I had a sudden revelation on where it absolutely needed to hang in my house.

(Kitchen)

It's a thirty minute timer, which is exactly the length of one episode of "Phineas and Ferb", "Johnny Test" and the regrettably-named "Kick Buttowski." I'm not wholly parsimonious with my son watching television, but I'm hoping that having those sands of time slipping, slipping away right in front of him will make him consider what else he could be doing. Plus, I just like the way it looks up there, its delicate structure offering a gentle counterpoint to that black thing anchored to the wall (living with two males, I have reluctantly come to accept that sports and cartoons are considered as essential to life as air and water.)

In other news...

My friend Andrea over at C Magazine emailed me that One Kings Lane is holding their first Tastemaker Tag Sale this Saturday, April 10th, and seriously, the only break I'm taking from sewing this weekend is to be online when the sale begins. I was fortunate enough to meet the dashing Nathan Turner...

(Nathan Turner; photo courtesy of All The Best)

...during a party in Almont Yard recently and he told me that the chair I've had my eye on for about two years now...

(Flores chair designed by Nathan Turner)

..is going to be in the sale at a crazy reduced price. Be still, my heart.

Andrea also sent me a photo of this pair of Foo dogs which will be on sale for $109...

...and this incredible hand-painted lantern ($599) that would grace my entry foyer so nicely.

All the items were handpicked by Nathan, which is kind of cool, I think. If any of you buy anything, you'll let me know, won't you?

Speechless...

...is what I am over Diane Dorrans Saeks' incredibly kind profile of me.

And so so grateful.

(Flower offering, Rishikesh, India, 2007)

iThink. iLike. iPad.

It arrived on Saturday. Our mailman said he was delivering 140 that day to our neighborhood alone and that people were opening their front doors before he even had time to ring the bell. We laid it on the table and looked at it. Luca said it felt like Willy Wonka's golden ticket.

We agreed that he could touch it first.

After we were able to pry it away from his hot little hands, we synced it up and started playing around with it. I set it on my new cookbook stand and the angle proved perfect for viewing. I love the juxtaposition of Black Forest carved wood cradling sleek 21st century components. It's hearth meets high-tech. Piero played an ABC news video and the image was great with no false starts or stuttering.

When I finally got my husband to let go of it, I tapped the Epicurious application. Up it came and as you can see, the colors are lush and razor-sharp.

I did a random search for "pancakes" and was instantly given pages of delicious-looking options.

Then it was Luca's turn. After he wrested it from my hands, he clicked on "Winnie the Pooh" (free with every iPad). I have always sniffed at reading books online because I so love the real thing, but I have to say that the experience was surprisingly pleasurable.

When it came around to my turn again, I hit paydirt. I discovered that with the FreeBooks application, you can download thousands of books that have been deemed "public domain." (Most books become public domain when their copyright expires, which is anywhere from 50 to 100 years or so.)

Many of the titles come courtesy of Project Gutenberg, a website I highly admire. In fact, I have downloaded dozens of out-of-print books onto my office computer...but have never gotten around to reading them because I have been reluctant to read an entire novel while sitting at a desk.

That's all changed now.

In the span of ten minutes, I downloaded 25 books, including:

Adam Bede, George Eliot

Beasts and Superbeasts, Saki

Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Camilla, Fanny Burney

Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley

Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey

Fanny Hill, John Cleland

Going into Society, Charles Dickens

The Longest Journey, E. M. Forster

Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell

Mugby Junction, Charles Dickens

The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe

Shamela, Henry Fielding

South of France, Giacomo Casanova

Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

Sylvia's Lovers, Elizabeth Gaskell

The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf

I was pinching myself.

And look, I know it's not paper, but it mimics it pretty darn nicely.

When Piero finally pried it from my grasp, he touched the Netflix icon and up came our account with all the movies listed in our queue.

We wondered how it was at streaming videos and so I asked him to take "Hideous Kinky" for a test-drive. He pressed "Play."

When Kate Winslet opened her eyes after the opening credits, I swear it was like she was in the kitchen with us.

However...

There is room for improvement. The iPad doesn't play Flash videos (nothing onYouTube worked) -- although there's supposed to be some way around it which we haven't figured out yet. Also, you can't multitask (i.e. listen to music and browse the web).

On the plus side, I thought the keyboard was easy to use and -- gasp! -- accurate (unlike my iPhone, which usually turns "Hey Piero" into "Hwy Pwuri").

We bought an iPad 50% out of curiosity and 50% because we are diehard Apple people and 0% because we had any preconceived idea of how we were going to use it. It's only been a day, but I can tell you this: using it is a very personal experience. In a way, it feels like a true home computer because its size and portability mean it doesn't belong to any one room or person. We can pick it up, pass it around, share it and take it anywhere. Owning one doesn't change anything, but in a way it changes everything. I don't know. We'll see.

After all that excitement, we powered it down and turned our attention to breakfast.

Pancakes, of course.

(Note: The opinions expressed about this product are strictly those of the blogger and were not solicited in any way.)

The Color Without A Name

It's the secret agent of colors: complex, discreet and completely ambiguous. You've seen it many times but may have never quite registered it because it defies categorizing. It's not gray or blue or green, but a strange and mystifying combination of all three. It changes color depending on the light and the hues which surround it. It can appear slightly sulky, calm and relaxing, or intensely introspective.

Note: It's not greige. Greige is grey meets beige and this color is much more layered than that. And it's not eau de nil or chalk or grey threadbare velvet (although that's getting closer). But I know it when I see it. I am always searching, searching for it and when I find an example, I collect it carefully into a special folder titled "Color X."

Here it is, atmospheric and ethereal, in this ocean on a cloudy day.

(T. F. Simon, "Windy Beach on Normandy", 1924)

Here, Otto Dix painted himself in a suit of it. Understated and subtle, it nevertheless calls attention to itself in an elegant way.

("To Beauty", 1922)

It makes a beautiful counterpoint against warm, pink skin, as seen in this interior.

(Pierre Bonnard, "La Sieste", c. 1899)

At other times, it gives off an air of unapproachable sangfroid.

(George Grosz, "Remember Uncle August", 1919)

Here, Christopher Baily of Burberry covered a favorite chair in a floral pattern that incorporates bits of it. The peachy background really makes it sing.

(via T Magazine)

John Singer Sargent painted circular patterns of it onto that lush rug. It sets off red beautifully -- look at how alive that screen in the corner is.

(John Singer Sargent, "Daughters of E. D. Bolt", 1882)

The Neue Galerie shop uses a chair covered in it to make some Madeline Weinrib pillows really pop.

(via here)

My eyes hunt for it constantly. Once you have it in your brain, it's remarkable how often you can find it. Can you spot it here, in this photo of the Queen meeting Sir David Bailey? (It's on the strip of flocked wallpaper between them.)

(via here)

Most paint companies have their own version of it. Here are a smattering of them:

Benjamin Moore 1635 Water's Edge

Benjamin Moore AC-17 Sea Pine

Benjamin Moore 1633 Brittany Blue

Behr 730F-4 Flint Smoke

Ace 190-C Dusty Jeans

Sears Shadow Cloud

Farrow and Ball Light Blue

California Paints Standish Blue

So what color is X?

The color of antique milk glass?

Of a Norse legend?

Of an oxidized copper roof by moonlight?

Of a 1920's silk faille tea gown?

Of a nor'easterly wind?

What would you call it?

(Editors Note: The answers in so far are lovely..."English Channel", "Being and Nothingness", "November", "Ether", "D Day Landing Sky", "Dust", "Undertow"....You're poets, all of you.)