i am not my house (yet)

the room i'm sewing in these days contains our dining table and most of the boxes of stuff we haven't yet unpacked (and won't 'til we have the space - stuff like everything from my blue room). it also features hideous carpet (visible on lower right of this photo) and a hideous ceiling where the "cornices" are actually made of rope. yes, rope. what WERE they thinking? oddly, i turn on the iYiyi, light some candles and i can ignore it. i guess because i know it's not a permanent state (this bit will be gleefully bulldozed torn down. eventually.).  and ignore it i did today. and the only reason the quilt pictured here isn't finished is because i got so many ideas while i was sewing it (sewing is extremely conducive to ideas) that i had to go off and work on some of those. well, that and the dishwasher was running and i can't actually iron at the same time or the fuses blow. oh, the joy of an old house with a fuse board that one electrician characterized as "something hitler left behind after the occupation."

last week, we had some friends over. friends who, like us, have bought a falling-down farmhouse that no one else really can see the potential in. happily, they live nearby (we may have bought in a falling-down farmhouse sort of area) and happily, they totally get us, so they don't mind sitting in our rope-ceilinged, box-lined dining room, eating dinner and enthusiastically discussing ten-year plans.

and casper said something that has really echoed in my head ever since. he said when they first moved in (they moved here about a year before we did), he spent so much energy apologizing to people who visited. apologizing for what is essentially the visitors' inability to see the potential. but also apologizing because you don't want people who don't know you very well to think that the the place is really YOU. (as if that's not obvious.) and i realized i had expended an awful lot of energy on exactly that.

a colleague from husband's former workplace visited us between christmas and new year's with his totally lovely wife and two gorgeous, well-behaved children. they live near nyhavn in copenhagen, in an undoubtedly fabulous 4th floor apartment overlooking sweden. *sigh* and so the minute they came in the door, i found myself apologizing for the house. for the 7 different ceilings, the rope, the fake formica (who knew there was such a thing as fake formica?)  countertops, the pink cupboards, the low ceilings and doorways. and honestly, they were perfectly lovely and even, on some level, through their oh-my-odin-why-didn't-they-childproof-this-place eyes, got it. and they knew it wasn't us, but could respect that we saw the potential in it and that in its current state it wasn't who we were. but for some reason, i didn't trust that, even tho' the former colleague worshipped professed awe at the apple hardware altars around the house. so i spent the whole time apologizing.  which is really kinda sad at this point in my life. i should have more confidence than that.

and i even DO have more confidence than that. so what is it? we both are and aren't where we live.

but we are our wegner chairs (tongue firmly in cheek). but i should trust more in that.

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').

must. have. these. chairs.

photo from here

as you know, i live in the land of no boring chairs and so i have a bit of a...ahem....chair fixation. so when i found out that they're making the Hans Wegner wishbone (Y) chair in shades of blue, i nearly fainted dead away from desire.  we already have these chairs in soaped oak, but you can always use more of a classic. especially in shades of blue/turquoise.

shadows of thoughts

reading murakami (again again) and feeling thankful that my chairs and lamp still have shadows.

many thoughts are swirling in my head, but they have yet to coalesce and form shadows...so please stand by....