Sofa is where the heart is....

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

Shop Kitty!

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

The Color Scarlet

This week the color of the week at flutter is SCARLET! I have to say that it is my favorite color besides black, which is not a color in and of itself, because it does not emit light in any part of the visible spectrum. But scarlet, even the word is tempting isn't it? Think of all the amazing things that have this word in common! Books come to mind first for me... The Scarlett Pimpernel, poor Hester Prim in The Scarlet letter, A Study in Scarlet(Sherlock Holmes my dear Watson), and lets not forget the Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst!

Scarlet has always been a color of luxury and position. Funny that it's very associated with the Popes, communists and ladies of the evening. I associate the color with love and passion though. I am a romantic deep in the crevices of my black heart, and the color scarlet warms my soul and stokes my creative fires. I painted my bedroom a shade of scarlet, as the feng shui system of aesthetic advises, so to keep the flames of passion going in the bedroom. Hubba hubba. You don't need to paint all the walls, but you need to get some reds in there to heat the blood in your veins. Flutter is full of scarlet accessories right now including this sweet love seat. Another beautiful sofa, with an Asian brush painting print in scarlet is making me feel better now that my green darling is gone.

So, now that the cold fall evenings are here to stay for awhile, grab yourself a scarlet something and curl up on your sofa and get a little romance into your life....don't forget red wine is scarlet too!

XO,
Susan

all i wanna do is.....

I have been really struggling to stay focused on schoolwork. The thing is, I feel so inspired by everything BUT school right now, I just want my fingers in a hundred other pies. For instance, I finally convinced my friend who teaches video to high school kids to give me a basic tutorial on shooting film. I have always wanted to mess around with that medium, and to see if the ideas I have come across well, to take an image out of my head and try to pin it down. I had some friends over to cut out paper shapes, and we made a stop action movie out of that in an afternoon. It was so fun to film, and incredibly gratifying to watch the playback on the camera's mini-screen. Instead of returning the camera right away, I brought it to work and made some more stop action shorts with taxidermy and little figures of hands. It surprised me how easy and fast it all was, and it looks so good. I'm going to start saving for a camera right away. We haven't done any editing yet, so it's all half done, but when it's cut and copied I'll post it on the blog. Oh, and we'll make a sound track too! If we finish in time, it'll be in the 5th Avenue Cinema short film contest. You get free pizza if you enter. I have to admit, it's hard not to totally bite jan svankmajer, since it IS stop action and taxidermy-- being in Flutter is like spending an afternoon in one of his movies. Cindy's got something arty up her sleeve, too- she asked us to draw some pictures of the virgin mary and so we've been filling up this book with madonna sketches. One looks suspiciously like ms. ciccone, and one is a total rip off of a nina hagen album cover. Its so hard to concentrate, I have three midterms next week and all I want to do is lay around and draw. -sara kolp

Thursday Comes Sooner Than You Think.

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.

Expanding the Parameters

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

purveyors of soft vices and... trauma care?

Two autumns ago, on a sunday, I was working at Flutter and this woman came in supported around the shoulder by her concerned-looking friend. Her friend told me that she had just been hit by a car while walking across shaver at mississippi, but she said she felt alright, just shaken up. She'd exchanged info with the driver and everything, and all she wanted was to sit and be calm. She sank into some downy velvety couch, and I brought her some water and chocolate, and when she had rested they left. Fast forward to last weekend, at my friend's birthday pizza party. We met at 'apizza scholls', which is really good but maybe not quite as good as its reputation. Someone at the party recognized the signature teal of my gift bag and said she loved Flutter. She went on to tell everyone at the table about her amazing experience there after she'd been hit by a car- some nice lady had given her chocolate and a glass of water! It was pretty funny when I told her that it had been me. Then we all got margaritas at the new 'por que no', which is worth every inch of its reputation. Another really great way to deal with stress or trauma is by laughing. The blog Failblog literally never fails to make me laugh out loud.

A Very Few Of My Favorite Things....

Creativity is a funny thing. You gather inspiration(there's that word again) from just about everywhere when the juices are flowing. Fall is the time of year when I really start getting excited and busy. The turn of the season always infuses me with 10 times the energy I have in the summer. I feel like I can do anything, be anyone. It's like I had a creativity bail out, which is great since I'm not getting an economic one!

So things that I love this season! Peacocks! The blue and greens are so amazing. I dream of looking out my manor house window and watching my peacocks stroll around the grounds. I am wearing a black silk dress, with corsets and lots of petticoats it's 1850....I watched Bleak House too many times. Lady Deadlock is my most favorite tragic character....
Sir Leicester Deadlock: "Is it still raining my love?"
Lady Deadlock: "Yes my love. And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place. Bored to death with my life. Bored to death with myself."
Me: "That's because you need peacocks Lady Deadlock!"
That last bit is not in the story, but I bet she would be less tragic is she had gotten some.
Anyhow! Jillian Anderson plays Lady Deadlock and has the most incredible wardrobe. Really you should watch all 12 episodes. Yes 12, Charles Dickens never wrote anything short now did he?

Ok, so you get the idea I'm a bit hung up on old things? I am still mourning the loss of Flutters green velvet sofa. Yes, still! Velvet and silk are heavy on my mind these days. I have found a beautiful rayon silk that I am still trying to figure out what to do with. The silk I have picked out three colors and we have all decided on the designs for the new fall pillows for Flutter.
Magenta, Flutter famous turquoise blue, and my favorite of all time black, all of them in Dupioni. Dupioni is a shimmering silk that is created by weaving silk threads of two different colors into a weave that changes colors as the silk is moved around in different lights. Beautiful stuff. Mmmm.

I said a very few of my favorite things....I'll be posting more next week!

xo,

Susan