Pretty Things

Why does that woman insist on call­ing my home if she’s going to hang up when I attempt to give her infor­ma­tion? Yes, I know that she’ll see this. Oh well—if she can­not be civ­il, infor­ma­tion about her chil­dren must not be impor­tant to her.

Sam and the kids are off to cop­per­scale’s house for a D&D game. They have much more room than we do these days, and teen­s/pre-teens take up a lot of space. It’s much more than a phys­i­cal issue. So the apart­ment is nice and quiet—even the cat is dozing.

I think all the pieces of fur­ni­ture in the liv­ing areas are pret­ty much where they’re going to stay. I am going to move the CD rack the next time I get up, but that’s it. We have an actu­al din­ing area now! So it’s final­ly time to get things hung up on the walls.

I was look­ing for­ward to hang­ing my Rube­nesque Ruby poster in the entry­way, which is where Sam want­ed it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my beloved came home with two 24 x 36 poster frames for some rea­son. One will be per­fect for hang­ing his print of The Acco­lade, but the Ruby poster is 20 x 30. I don’t want to just stick it there with­out a mat. No, it won’t look okay with white around it, it’ll look like a poster in the wrong sized frame.

So I start­ed look­ing around for frames, and some­how I end­ed up at AllPosters.com look­ing at prints instead. You know, there are some prints I’ve want­ed for years that I just haven’t bought, and I do believe it’s about time to get them. They don’t hap­pen to be at that site, but I want them:

I did run across a print I rec­og­nized today, Gar­goyles by Michael Parkes. I did­n’t know the name of the artist before, but some for­mer friends had a print of that piece in their liv­ing room. It is very strik­ing. I like it, but I’d pre­fer to avoid the asso­ci­a­tion with them that I know I’d have every time I looked at it if I had it in my home. Deva, Dawn and Desert Lotus, how­ev­er, would­n’t make me think of them at all. I’m some­what sur­prised at how very drawn I am to Desert Lotus, but I think it’s my favorite of the three.

I’m try­ing to remem­ber the name of a paint­ing that Sam absolute­ly loved. We saw a print of it years ago when we were just killing time before an appoint­ment, I think. It was­n’t a good time for shop­ping, but I know he did love it. There were roundy nude nymphs sur­round­ing a male fig­ure. The scene was some­thing from a Greek or Roman myth, but I’m going com­plete­ly blank on what it was now, so I can’t find it. When I asked him what he wants hang­ing in our bed­room, he said “naked roundy women” and that print came to mind. Now I’m won­der­ing about how he’d like Renoir’s Seat­ed Bather and After the Bath.

Of course, if I ever get all that needle­work that I’ve got stuck in draw­ers framed, the walls will be much fuller. But fram­ing that stuff is VERY expen­sive if done right-and I did­n’t spend as many hours as I did on each of those pieces to ruin them with sub­stan­dard fram­ing. I get most of the enjoy­ment out of mak­ing them, any­way. The only needle­work pieces I’ve ever had framed are those that I’ve giv­en away as gifts.

Oh my—Roberta Gel­lis has a new Mag­da­lene la Bâtarde book out, Bone of Con­tention. I’ll have to see if the library has it. (Yes, real­ly, there was a connection—she’s a whoremistress whose house is list­ed on the Lon­don tax rolls as a house of fine needleworkers.)