Friday Love.

  Bennetts seaweed
Size - About the size of an out-stretched hand.
Species presumed extinct.
Photo by Alan Millar 

Has the snow melted?

I am waiting to see
The flowers of long ago
In my old home
Beneath the plum tree
Has the snow melted?

By Jitsun
Japan ca. 1243

Upper West Side, you so pretty (sometimes).

Photo by Jeffrey Hirsch

This is from New York Social Diary; I click around on there when I start missing NYC, (and maybe also to remember some reasons I left.)  I LOVE this photo.  It's just so heaven.  The perspective is looking south, along West End Ave on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Sofas & the body.



My wintertime sofa. The elements are pared down, tight & trim looking.



The "Ginger gown" by BGU

This is what my sofa looks like right now.  The pink backing is a thrifted vintage Italian piece with silk embroidery ( it's truly exquisite!)  and the matching pillows were originally an oversized French silk scarf which my girlfriend Elizabeth helped turn into two smaller pillow cases.  The pinks are very different, but because they're in the un blushy side of the pink family, they work nicely together.  The polka dots are  irregularly sized and look like big inky navy rain came down and landed at random.  Love it.  Also, I'm liking this bark cloth piece on the right hand side of the sofa.  It's a "wrapped" pillow, meaning it's not a true case but instead a section of bark cloth fabric that's long enough to be wrapped, giving a homespun feel to this basic circular pillow.  As much as I love pillows, I'm more interested in talking about couches and shape; I think if everything is tucked in "tightly" enough on a couch -- then there are endless ways to do said couch and it doesn't matter if it has nice bones or ugly upholstery.  The sofa pictured happens to have a basic look that is easy to build upon, but I have rarely seen a sofa that can not be worked with.  Summertime sofas more easily accommodate an undone, haphazard look where lines don't really matter, and in that scenario, it is easier to start with a handsome & trim couch.  You don't have to worry about bits and pieces poking through, because the base is great and ready to be looked at, too.  This leads me to my main point. Dressing a sofa is a lot like dressing the body.  Model thin women tend to wear big, billowy undone looks better than anyone else and it's not so important how things fall / drape on their nice little minnie bodies.  Curvy bodies with more bits require extra attention to most fully show off their shape & are best served when fabric (be it a blanket or a blouse) is in place & not swooshing every which way.  Let the couch/body be the boss in that instant, and not the material.   And if you need a little swoosh love, do it like designer Jeannie from "BGU" offers up with her "Ginger gown" design, pictured above.  (BGU stands for Big Girls United) and some of their designs are fun if you have time to check them out.