good design wins in the end

not long after husband and i met, we had a discussion one fine day in a cafe in macedonia. it took place in a badly-designed old and rotting 70s design mistake of a square in the center of skopje. husband (who was someone else's husband at the time), began to wax philosophical about how much he would miss the hans wegner wishbone chairs he was leaving behind in his soon-to-be-dissolved marriage. it seems her parents had bought them for the couple, so he didn't feel he could take the half of them with him that he was entitled to when he left.

and being the non-design-conscious american i was at the time and sitting in that crumbling marble slab of an architectural accident, steam began to roll out of my ears. and i suggested that perhaps he should just stay with those chairs if they were so flippin' important.

i was so offended that when we bought our first chairs, they were NOT hans wegner wishbones. but then, in the home of husband's very tasteful and style-conscious swedish architect father, i experienced the wegner wishbone myself for the first time. and i was won over. completely and utterly. conversation flowed more easily and rose to hitherto unknown intellectual heights due to how well we sat in those chairs. the food even tasted better. and i suggested to that father that perhaps for husband's 40th birthday, he should have four of those marvelous chairs...preferably in soap-treated oak.

and then, a couple years later, i bought four more to go with them myself. because you can never have too many hans wegner wishbones.

life lesson #CH24: good design wins in the end.

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this story was submitted to carl hansen & son's wishbone story competition.

please go and vote for me.
once you're there, click "gallery" on the left,
then find a more golden version of the photo above and click "like"

12 wishbone chairs are on the line.

and since we don't need 12, i will share.

seriously. if i win, i will give away two of the chairs right here on MPC.
and they come in 12 fabulous new colors (no mauve, tho').

the stuff i should have written about this morning

i was so busy getting in a last laugh at our nearly past-president and the shoe thing that i didn't really write about or share all of the things i should have, which actually turned out to be good, because i have even more stuff to show you now.

you are all well aware of how much i adore design for mankind, but now i have even more reason to love it! last week, i left a comment on a giveaway posting for this great print from nicole lecht at freshly blended press. and i actually won!! it's so exciting! i said i would give it to my friend who just had twins, since it's a stork picture and now i really get to do that! thank you erin, nicole and design for mankind! there are more giveaways this week, so get on over there!! maybe you can be a winner too!

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the mailman brought me my back-tack today. my lovely partner mo, sent me these beautiful handmade tea towels and oven mitt, plus a bunch of other goodies (including brownie mix from trader joe's (one of the only things i still miss from the US--having a grocery store like trader joe's)). it's just so nice to get a package! (and speaking of packages, those jokers from DHL showed up today as well.)

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i've been talking endlessly about my writing house. that was the original idea with it, but the room, which is really a 24 m2 building in the garden has become much more than just a place for me to write. as the fireplace guy who came to have a look at where he will install a woodburning stove in there said, it's more of an atelier. i like that idea. it's a place where, despite the fact that the electrician came only last week and the lights aren't really hooked to the switch yet, we want to spend all of our time. and i did spend a lot of time there this weekend. hanging our family paintings from last weekend and painting a liquor cabinet (then filling it with liquor--of which we have a rather shocking amount thanks to how often i pass through a duty free (cocktails anyone?)) and arranging the camera collection.  check it out...

love, love, love the hamngren print we inherited from husband's father and now we finally have a great place to hang it.

masses of beautiful fabric waiting for the muse to strike and looking mighty pretty in the meantime.

and strike the muse did. yesterday's late afternoon big-ass mug of coffee didn't only result in balderdash and laughing at bush, but also in some painting and a pillow design...

i'm pretty pleased with the pillow. it's for my sister-in-law for christmas, but it may be difficult to part with it. more pix of it tomorrow in better light (not the bright work light that's shining on it here, looking like the sun, which i only vaguely remember anyway, since i haven't seen it in weeks) and when it's finished. which i'm going to do now.

what i did this weekend

we realized this weekend that we now have more than 200m2 of house to use, but we spent most of it huddled together inside of about 6 of those square meters, which happen not to have electricity yet (electrician coming on thursday), making stuff by candlelight. paintings, a christmas banner (not finished yet, as my fellow crafters sort of drifted away on me), several pillows and a christmas french press cozy (for which i say a heartfelt thank you to melissa at tiny happy for her awesome tutorial).

i also spent quite a lot of time looking for my card reader so i could download pictures, but finally found it in the Wiimote basket (it has a cord on it after all, so someone threw it in there) after looking for it for 24 hours and putting all of the swear words i know together in refreshing new ways. husband said it was good for me to have delayed gratification. that made him very popular, as you might imagine.

i spent all of sunday in my pajamas, which felt like mad luxury. i love days like that.

on saturday, i scored an old kodak six-20 brownie D at the flea market for under $10. then i spent more than an hour researching ways of using 120 film in it. it did come with one old 620 film spool inside of it, so it just might be possible. fun! and more importantly, it prompted me to start my drawings of the stuff i buy already now:

saturday's fajita dinner was made entirely of things we had in the house (except for some avocados (which is what that bottom picture above is supposed to be--i don't have the drawing thing down entirely quite yet), which were essential for the guacamole)--including leftover chicken from a chicken i baked the night before. i was rather proud of myself for this, tho' we still throw away far too much food in this house. i've been thinking about it since reading about the high costs of wasting food in mankind mag.

i made the painting above. did you do anything fun this weekend?

taking stock

it's that time of year for stocktaking. last year at this time, i realized that i was answering to my fourth boss in three and a half years and that i didn't have the energy for the starting all over that that promised. each one came in and wanted to undo everything the previous one had thought was ok in order to leave his mark, so it was an endless cycle of defending the projects one was already doing. and i realized it was no longer worth it to my sanity. and so i'm no longer there. and it has taken me nearly this entire year to recover psychologically, but i do feel that i have at last recovered and found my way back to myself, strong and whole and probably better and stronger and more sure of what makes me tick than i was before.

so that makes stocktaking feel like a good and worthy activity, so although i'm not really a big advocate of new year's resolutions, it seems worthwhile to think about what one wants going forward into the new year.

yesterday, i had a two hour brainstorming session with two very brilliant and wacky minds. these two people get more ideas every minute than you can imagine and i am always in awe when i'm around them. i feel that i am also a person who gets a lot of ideas, but i could tell that spending a couple of hours brainstorming with them yesterday was the most productive and energizing time i've spent in ages. and i realize that although working mostly from home over the past year has been a true luxury, it has been a bit isolating at times and isolation can be stifling to ideas. you need other people around who stimulate you creatively. your own ideas become better when you bounce them off of the ideas of others. so one of the things i resolve to do in 2009 is to regularly spend time with creative minds who push my thinking in new and exciting directions.

this morning, i sat with my newspapers and a cup of tea and read headline upon headline about the financial crisis and how it's starting to impact businesses and individuals. when i walk around on the pedestrian shopping zone in my little town, i see little evidence of any christmas slowdown. people appear to be hurrying around, shopping their little brains out, with that slightly panicked glazed-over look in their eyes, grabbing another and another and another gift. and i realize that i really don't want to do that anymore. it doesn't make us feel good, so why is it that we are driven to consume?

last night, i downloaded and read from cover to cover the latest issue of mankind mag. it's a free download from design for mankind and i thought it was so awesome that i went back and donated to it. completely in tune with the zeitgeist, it's the consumption issue. erin talks to artists all over the world about consumption. even before i opened it, i thought of an artist i'd seen on etsy who made daily drawings of the things she bought. and i was delighted to find that she was there in this issue--kate bingaman burt. and because i'd lost track of her after stumbling onto her on etsy months ago, i have now bookmarked her blog.

so i hereby resolve to document my purchases, on a daily basis, for at least the whole month of january. perhaps it will be so much fun (or so shocking) that i will continue. but i've been talking about off and on during 2008 that i want to be more conscious about my consumption and now it's time to do something about it.  i actually tried keeping a food journal at the beginning of the year, in order to be more conscious about what i was eating, but somehow it didn't catch on with me and it's lying mostly empty by my bedside.  the cover above features a drawing of purchases by UK artist gemma correll that's amazing and inspiring as well, so i think i'll be able to stick with this resolution this time around.

one other thing i've been thinking about in addition to spending my money more wisely is spending my time more wisely as well. some of the first blogs i discovered at the beginning of the year, when i began spending time in the blogosphere in earnest just don't fit me anymore. and it took me awhile to realize it. there are a couple in particular which have been daily reads for me, which i have come to realize are really quite empty and false and pretty much annoy the hell out of me. so i resolve, actually already now, as of this minute, to un-favorite them and not spend any more time there. some people, "rad" as they fancy themselves to be (seriously, who says that?), really aren't worth it. and besides they never reciprocated by reading me, so who cares? my time is too precious. (EDITED:  please note that i do not mean any of you guys who visit me regularly...these were people whose blogs i visited, but who never visited me!!!)

and, i'll leave you with erin's challenge from her editor's note in mankind mag--"every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." --anna lappe.  then erin asks, "have you checked your vote lately?" i for one will be checking my vote a lot more often.

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just stumbled onto an interesting blog entry and song demo by suzanne vega on the NYT website. check out her song, it's very timely (tho' completely unrelated to what i've written above, just had to share because it was cool).

seeking inspiration

as the paint shapes up on the walls in the writing house, i find myself increasingly thinking about how i want to decorate out there. i chose the dark colors (the ceiling will be even darker) because i want it to have a cozy, almost cave-like feeling and i chose the rich turquoise because i want it to have a moorish/turkish feel. i'm going to have all kinds of creative supplies at hand and yet another sideboard (with 12 drawers) to use as a work surface. but, i'll have quite a lot of wall space to do some interesting things.  so, i've been looking for inspiration and finding it...

in an interview with artist kat mcleod on design files ...

and this cool stuff by artist jeff canham on design for mankind...

and here ...on danish art group superflex's website

and this fresh, funky embroidery by megan witmarsh, also found on design for mankind

my latest obsession and daily visit is design for mankind, erin does the best tumblr i've seen yet. and she has a cool magazine too, that's a free download. totally worth checking out next time you need inspiration.  i'm not sure yet how i'll put all of this inspiration together, but i am confident it will gel in my head and come together somehow. perhaps i'll embroider bold statements on small canvases and group them together on the wall....so many possibilities.