There is nothing that makes the living room a home more than a comfy sofa. A sofa is the anchor. The place where you snuggle with your most loved people and animals. A place to read, dream, watch movies, and take the occasional nap (every day if you’re my husband). This beautiful little number Cindy found, is a beautiful light pistachio green. In the eighties it was called “sea foam”. I personally have never seen soft green colored sea foam, and I grew up by the ocean. Seam foam is always a scuzzy gray color. Anyway, whatever you want to call it, it is amazing paired with browns and pinks. Oh, and black and white kitty Rizzo.

Oh look at it sitting there, such pretty legs. All upholstered in velvet with down cushions. Down. Oh, there is nothing like sitting on a down filled sofa. Nothing. And what else do you need besides the sofa? Pretty pillows! Look at all of these birds and brown velvet. I don’t know if you knew this, but you can shop the pillows at Flutter too. Yes, Cindy makes it easy for you, doesn’t she! She has a gift…knack. She’s talented in sofas, velvet, feathers and birds. And light pistachio green, not sea foam.
Sofa, so good.

XO,
Susan

Here’s a picture of our new shop kitty, Rizzo! She’s been with us now for almost two weeks, and is unbelievably well behaved. Well, she is a little too fascinated with our finches, but Cindy just got a new cage for them, and it’s hung on the wall where Rizzo can’t get at it. Cindy told me that the cat got into the old cage when she moved it and just sat there, checking out the bird vibes I guess. The Humane Society gave us these kitty nail tips called soft paws so she wouldn’t scratch the furniture, and they work so well. You just put glue in them and slip them on over their claws. We got a pink set, so it looks like she’s got a manicure. They’re so darn cute.
This is a picture I drew in the virgin mary sketchbook- there’s lots more where that came from. It’s from last week, when the muses were sweeping me off my feet. I finally edited the paper cuts atop action movie that my friends and I made last week, and it was submitted to the student film collective before the deadline! Yes!! I am usually a total loser when it comes to completing tasks. I am always reading three books, finishing none. Of course, I had tons of help, but the point is, we plucked the idea out of the ether and made it real. I learned so much doing it, and I am happy with how it turned out. There are two more that need to be edited, the two that I filmed in the store, and I’ll post them when they’re done. -sara kolp

It’s my turn to post already! Oh, golly. On the mornings I post I generally start going over what my theme will be at around 5AM. In the dark. I just rummage around in the deep recesses of my mind, what I have been thinking about, what I have been working on, things that made me laugh, beauty that I have been in the presence of. This morning it was well, too busy in there. What is it about fall that makes me so crazy busy? I notice a lot of my women friends are the same at this time of year. Of course that includes Cindy who has become the queen of the hunt for sofa’s. Sofa’s! She’s had some swell couches in the shop of late, so swell they don’t seem to stay long enough to get acquainted with. I still long for the green velvet, but I did see a sweet dark beauty in there the other day. Nice legs, beautiful shape, dark….Sigh. So, pretty.

I have been waiting for this fabric to arrive so I can start on these pillows and panels which are due to be in the store for the big November change over at the shop.
Waiting to lay my eyes on these pretty fabrics is hard. I am not a very patient person. While I have been waiting the I have taken to reading home and fashion magazines voraciously. I’m starting to think that maybe this just makes me spin faster, but wow, there is some crazy beautiful stuff out there! Alexander McQueen! Oh, his fall collection is to die for. Feathers everywhere, and then I saw this feather chair and this dress with a whole bird on the front! Oh, how completely not practical, but such an amazing sight. I think I would prefer it in hot pink…Feathers, hmm. I always use them on the insides of the pillows but now this has got me thinking about using them on the outside…feathers, yum.

xo,
Susan

This weekend I made like the masses and drove out to Sauvie Island (as an aside, I figured out why so many people call it Souvies Island: apparently it was renamed Souvies in the 1850s but the name never was committed to print, and lives on only in Portland vernacular). It was super crowded out there, but gorgeous and clear-skied. The textures of the rolling fields, with their rows of berries and sprawling pumpkins, were best viewed from the tractor-pulled hay ride. I bought some little cucumbers for pickling and some dark red apples that are crisp white inside, delicious fairy-tale apples.
Last week I had a customer ask me to show her around the perfumes of Flutter. She said she was a little obsessed with perfume, so I asked her what fragrances she liked. She looked me in the eye and said “leather”, so I steered her away from the “fleurs petillant” and towards the wonderful Amber by Cote Bastide. It smells like an oak whiskey barrel full of oily black vanilla pods. We talked about Chandler Burr, the brilliant perfume writer for the New York Times, and physicist/critic Luca Turin, subject of Burr’s book “the Emperor of Scent”. Both of them write volumes about perfumes and the heady cloud of culture and innuendo surrounding them. I tend to agree with them about 60% of the time, and they have turned me on to some amazing olfactory works of art, yet they are generally unimpressed by one of my favorite scents, Samsara by Guerlain. Turin said it was “more notable for its absence of faults than for its qualities”. He just hasn’t smelled it on me yet. Anyone who hasn’t been to the Perfume House on Hawthorne should make a trip down there and just smell for hours. Don’t spray one on yourself until you find one that’s just right, and then ask the kind people there if they can make a little tester of it for you. Last time I was in there I got a sample of the pink hand-grenade Agent Provocateur perfume, and the amber by Prada. Any of the Guerlain fragrances are transformative, they sit in these gilded bottles like a row of archetypical femininity; like the greek goddesses. Jardins de Bagatelle is like Diana, woodsy and floral. Mitsouko is like Aphrodite, obscenely perfect rose and peach. I think Samsara would be like Hera: overly sensual and heady, demanding, maybe a little needy. Hmm.

Seen in my mind as recently as this morning….GOLD! Yes, golden colored rods for the panels I am making for Flutter. Can you picture it in your mind too? Magenta panels with black peacock feather stencils, hanging from golden rods?! I am feeling it. A rustic old gold. It will be fantastic. I promise.

I used to paint everything gold. At one point my apartment in San Francisco had a gold toilet seat and claw foot tub. I even painted my TV gold and my phone. It all looked great until you like, sat on the toilet seat or used the phone. I had a golden ear and a golden rear. Yes, live and learn. This was around the same time I was breaking mirrors into pieces and gluing them to pretty much anything. That proved problematic also..can’t seem to ever get all the tiny little shards of glass off the floor. I was a budding designer then, I laugh pretty hard when I think about those days.

These days, I have resources and skills, but sometimes with those comes self limitation. A fear of failing and not being taken seriously can really hamper creativity. I am currently working on thinking outside of my own box that I have fashioned. Having Cindy around has really expanded my parameters. Just walking into her store two years ago changed the possibilities I saw for myself. I consider her my mentor. Just watching and seeing what she can take on is a huge inspiration to me, it has enabled me to take on bigger challenges and take risks. I am brewing another big project in the back on my mind, thinking forward to a place where I only get to do what I really want to do.

Anyhow, I am digressing here. I thought I would do a quick update on the status of that new line of pillows and panels and look what happens! So, the panels have been screened by Sari, and I must say they are more incredible than I imagined they could be. The fabric for the pillows is on the way and I am so excited to hand it over to her to work her magic on them. I would give us about two weeks to get them in to the shop, just in time for November! I can’t wait to see.

Oh and as my mind spins, and I just met a woman upholsterer with very funky style….am thinking of how to use her skills to their fullest potential! My mind is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get when you wake up on Thursday morning. That was said out loud in my best Forrest Gump voice..

XO
Susan