Three designers from Ciao Interiors came to my house this morning. It was better even than having Tim Gunn stop by to redo my "look". I have been wanting this day for years and years. It's a dream come true.
After we had moved into the Lindal Cedar home at the farm, I chose a Portland designer from her website and had her come out to see the house. We weren't having the best day. I was a rundown, overweight, poorly dressed mother of twin toddlers, I'm sure there were dirty dishes and I'm sure the floor probably needed to be mopped. I was comforting and holding one little guy on my hip when she said, "There's nothing wrong with your chairs. They just need to be SCRUBBED." I was so dejected I couldn't even fire her on the spot.
Then there was the website designer who proposed clear teal and lemon yellow for a Butternut Woolens' logo. I was able to fire her pretty quickly.
But TODAY! Ha, I am VINDICATED! And it is soooo sweet. I have finally found designers that get me. They understand my relationship with color and textiles. And I have every confidence this experience will be astonishing, and so will the final product.
It turns out that the architectural style of the house is Arts and Crafts with cottage elements like leaded glass windows. 
Anyway, after looking at all the rooms on the first floor, we sat down and I talked about my ideas for the rooms, what I liked, what I hoped for from the process. I talked about wabi-sabi style, the Japanese minimalist aesthetic. I talked about my busy young boys and our active lifestyle. I talked about Michelle Obama and how I was watching the colors she was choosing to wear, the colors of the first State dinner. In retrospect, that about covers the spectrum doesn't it? Mud colors of the wabi-sabi look to bright jewel toned limes, saffrons, and tangerines. No wondered they looked politely confused.
Then Linda asked what colors I liked and I was temporarily speechless. This is, after all, the reason we were all gathered, but I didn't know what to say. I mean, I like colors, I don't have anything against any colors. How can I choose just one? It was kind of like having to choose only one fruit to eat, or only one fleece to spin, for the next several years. She showed me some paint chips in a big fold out.
"I don't like any of these, but I don't know why exactly."
She gently suggested a seafoam green. Poor Linda. She had no idea what she was getting into. To boldly go where no one dared tread before....so to speak.
"No", I said. "I mean, it's nice, but it looks like a color my grandma would have, no offense. It doesn't say, 'Let's have a fun party!' I....I just.....I'm not looking back, I'm not interested in the past, in history, even though this is a historic home and that's part of its charm, but I have to have something modern, something....fresh." I suddenly realized I was standing up and making big gestures with my arms. I quickly sat down.
"Do you mean like a carnival, with every room a different color?"
"No. Yes. But sophisticated."
I jumped up again and rummaged in the studio a bit and came out with a few skeins of my hand dyed yarn.
Here's where things started to cook. I could just hear everyone's brains, "Oh, now I get it!"
Linda looked at a watermelon BFL and said, "I can see the cool and the warm colors."
"Exactly!", I said. "I like colors that are hard to describe, that aren't obvious. That look like, like mossy rocks underwater with a little bit of slime on them."
Linda's face went oddly blank. It's a look I recognize because that's how I look when I'm deep into a writing project and I get up to use the bathroom and glance into the mirror. Dazed. She held the yarn up to the woodwork. She ran the strands through her fingers, she talked excitedly about all the different colors. She asked how I did it. She sat down and said, "I've worked with lots of different people, but I've never met anyone who was as passionate about color as you are. You are a pearl in a mud puddle."
I was pleased. She's right on, if I do say so myself.
We looked closely at the yarn and she held the skein with her hands stretched about 6 inches apart and said, "This is what I'd suggest."
I LOVED it. She had found colors in the skein that I didn't even know were in there, but the more I looked at it, the more excited I got. Then she looked at Les and said, "This is going to take some thought, I'm going to need some time....." Then she turned to me, "Can I take this?" Of course. "Really?" Of course!
Les said, "How about textiles? How do you feel about....patterns?"
I must have sucked in my breath or grimaced because he laughed, "I bet you have some thoughts."
"Textiles matter a great deal to me, I love textiles. But they have to be absolutely right or I'm going to be depressed. They can't look like they came from KMart."
He snorted as if to say 'as if.'
I looked out the big bay window. "I don't like taffeta, nothing shiny. I don't want a print. Absolutely no fringe or dingle balls or tassles."
He interjected, "We don't want this to look like a theater curtain."
The window is 12 feet wide and 7 feet high, so this is certainly something to consider.
"How about global style? Batik? Fabrics from India, Pakistan?", the youngest member of the team asked.
"No, I don't want that. I guess I'd rather have a handspun, handwoven natural colored linen with slubs and bumps than any print."
Les and Linda smiled broadly, they were getting a clear picture of what I value and what is going to make me the happiest. And I smiled too because I was getting a clearer idea of what I like. No one has ever really listened to me talk about what I like. No one has ever cared that I be surrounded by colors and furnishings that make me happy, not because I have mean people in my life, but because NO ONE UNDERSTANDS what a huge impact color and textiles have on me. Mr. X wouldn't allow any money to be spent on furnishings. The first time I tried to paint a bathroom terra cotta, he about had a psychotic episode. I learned after 11 years that for him, white is the only acceptable color for anything. All other colors caused him great distress. I think it's probably related to his mental illness.
We agreed in the end to begin with the dining room. We agreed the kitchen would be a "happy room". We agreed to work with the cracked and heavily textured walls as features, instead of trying to cover them up or somehow pretend they aren't what they are, 100+ year old plaster that has seen a lot of settling and a couple of small earthquakes.
Linda said if paint didn't exist in the colors in the yarn, she'd request a custom mix. Ha! My own paint color! She said she was really excited to work with me and I feel the same way.
So my hand dyed yarn is going to be transformed into paint. I can't wait.
I won't spoil the fun by telling you which colors in which colorway we'll be working with, but I will tell you it's right in the sidebar.
Ciao!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 10:06AM 
