I’ve never wanted to learn to knit. Too much counting while needlepoint offers the mindless stitch-by-colors. But this? This cable on steroids? Yes, I’d like to make that.
Image, Living, etc., November 2010.
Knit Wit
Shock and Awe
I can give or take orange most days. I know, there are folks who are devoted followers and I like it just fine. In fact, there’s not a color I really don’t like except purple. Orange seems to scream for attention in a way regal red does not. “Look at me! Look at me!” waving its arms and jumping up and down. Or maybe it’s the heavy association with Halloween, a holiday which I’ve grown to fiercely abhor. Still, when this clipping of Charlotte’s Locks from Farrow & Ball slid from the envelope into my hand, well, I crushed. It’s rich, it’s bright, it’s bouncy. Orange you glad they did? (Couldn’t help it.)
Oh. And the purple I don’t really like? Well, it’s not these purples. Not these smoky, complex purples that might be right for reading poetry on a quiet day. Brassica, top, from the “family of vegetables” (do get back to me on that as I will forget to google it) and Calluna, its paler, breathier cousin, are both new colors from Farrow & Ball as well. There are six others, but I won’t spoil your fun – click here to see the rest when the collection is launched.
Why is she posting about paint? What happened to the white wall wonderland?
In my own F&B news, I sent off for a few pots of samples myself. Yes, yes, I know, I said white. And I meant it. Butmaybenoteveryroom. I think I told you that I painted the boys’ rooms. In addition, Mr. Blandings’s study is a tiny room. A dark room. Hardly a room at all, in fact, it’s smaller than a Manhattan socialite’s closet. So, light to make it bigger? Nonsense. Dark, dark green to make it better.
Walls, ceiling and trim. Most likely Calke, though Card Room has a fan.
“I put up paint samples today, what do you think?” “I like the lighter.” “Oh?” “You don’t.” “I didn’t say that. But I think with a little time you might find you like the darker.”
Don’t worry about Mr. Blandings. He knows better. He’s used to me.
Bells and Whistles
May your new year be shiny and bright.
May it offer you many happy surprises.
Hoping the reflections of the past year bring no distress.
That New Year’s Eve finds you without a hair out of place or a need for mad money.
And that all your wants and needs fit in the palm of your hand.
Happy New Year,
Last, But Not Least
The new house is a story-and-a-half. We’re down; they’re up. One room is just at the top of the stairs and the other is around the corner down this terrifying – terrifying – hallway. (It is actually not the door that you see, which is to the attic, but rather just at the end to the left. It is doubly terrifying because the door to the attic is right there. I think.)
With the light on is only slightly, well, worse. Eerier somehow. I practically skip down it. None of the boys have mentioned that they think it is scary, but I very nearly had to medicate the night I painted the room by myself while the house was still empty.
And while they haven’t seen The Shining,
they have seen Harry Potter and, goodness knows, nothing good every happens in a long stretch of hallway like this. At least in the movies.
And, to finish off this series (and you have been incredibly game this week) here is my kitchen sink. It’s lovely. The entire kitchen is lovely, if not exactly as I would have designed it, really lovely. Nothing to complain about. Yet, I never fully realized how much I need, and love (yes, love) my sprayer until I didn’t have one.
Now, I can see myself as the kind of girl who would say, “I’d rather have a clean counter. No sprayer. They’re silly.”
But what I’m finding during clean-up is that I am chasing things around this increasingly large bowl.
The flow of the faucet and the slope of the sink are insufficiently corralling the ick (the same stuff that was delicious just five minutes before) and I am left chasing it around with cups of water. Pouring and sloshing first this side, then that side. For what seems like minutes, at least.
Hmmm..? Use my hand? Well, yes, I could, but, you see, I don’t like to get my hands messy (maybe this is why I don’t like to cook or garden) and, I hate to get wet.
Go ahead, Dr. Freud, and draw all the conclusions you want. Harken back to the shower post if you must, but these are just the facts, Jack.
My list of the things I love about this house (wait until you hear about the microwave) will play out over the next year. These things are minor. Tics. We’re just getting acquainted. 
In the Closet
We are long on closets, lucky with closets, lousy with closets. Not only are they numerous, plentiful and many, they are big. Cavernous, yawning, monumental. Two, here in the entry.
Another in the family room.
This one in the den. And they are all, perhaps, within five to ten giant steps of one another. Kissing cousins.
Our closet, too, to the left, is ample. It’s a complete and total disaster (they all are, which is why they are being so dodgy with the paparazzi) but I think it will suit us just fine.
So, my beef? My bitch? My befuddlement? No linen closet. Nothing. Nada. Nowhere.
And here is where you will think I am bizarro and not the house. This stackable washer/dryer hook-up to the right of the master closet? Yeah, I think I’ll skip that. Who needs that hovering nag there every day just as I get home from work-out and coffee? Why be confronted with constant guilt before I am out the door for lunch and a hc/hilite? How could I enjoy a pre-carpool cocktail haunted by the thought that I could so easily be doing laundry?
Shelves is the answer. A respectable linen closet to save these wayward sheets and tablecloths. Washer and dryer firmly knowing their place in the basement. Visitation on Sundays. As it should be.
