Buddies

My long awaited trip to Normandy had to be postponed, I was to go to Montreux and Geneva instead (the hardships of life! ;-). It was a windy, saturated with events day, and suddenly in the middle of it I had a flash of summer. On the Place des Nations in Geneva I saw these buddies, playing and splashing in the fountains, utterly unaware of dozens of tourists with cameras and curious looks, cars passing by, business-looking people rushing after lunch back to their offices. These pals seemed not to have a care in the world, and I had a nostalgic pang in the chest about times when I could run barefoot in the middle of April...     

Try to have a care-free day!

Love,
AB

Getting Smart Part Two: Bad Touch

Oh yes, the iPhone saga continues. I have been learning to type on a micro scale, coaching myself not to reach for it every two seconds, and yes, advocating for my decision to buy an old iPhone…it has been fun.

Well, so far. It did play a few practical jokes on me though. The auto correct I am talking about, of course. After a senseless string of sms about Alaska to one of my French friends (my iPhone’s interpretation of “Oh-lala”) I switched the auto correct off. (Yes, that’s why all the misspellings :-). But it seems I got away too easily, it could have been much - MUCH – worse. A site I discovered today, www.damnyouautocorrect.com, demonstrates the auto correct function go wrong…hilariously so.  Here are some of the most innocent bits: 

For more iPhone fun and embarrassment go to: www.damnyouautocorrect.com.

Have a blush-free week.

Love,

 AB

Getting smart or Tales of the Jazz Age

I need a new phone. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking, but really, I NEED one, because my old Sony Ericsson is in bits and I cannot hear a thing when I am in a noisy public place. OK, it  does have many buttons - apparently it is something not very “in” right now (how was I supposed to know? Buttons are still perfectly cool in my world). It is time to go for a smartphone. 

I don’t know why, but somehow iPhone seems like a logical choice (because of the iTunes lark,  for the biggest part). So here I am, standing in front of an Apple store in Zürich feeling totally intimidated and unsure of myself. It seems like all those quirky looking people darting in and out of the store have a special aura: of knowing the difference between…hmmm….ah, just knowing the difference.

 Image: www.iphonemag.ch

I dive – literally – dive into the store (to avoid the danger of changing my mind and pressing buttons for another decade) and bump into a friendly young creature called Raphael-the-assistant. I explain. He sympathises. I look around and see a nice iPhone 3G: smooth design, acceptable price. Raphael-the-young-creature-the-assistant looks tense, he is obviously upset: I choose the wrong stuff (of course)! 

He explains to me that in a year this model will be FOUR years old (it's my turn to sympathise now: in his life calendar four years take lots of space ;-). Raphael takes me by the hand (figuratively speaking) and brings me to an iPhone 4G – masculine, angular and somewhat overpriced. I patiently (and as cheerful as possible while eyeing the exit) explain that I am coming from a world where buttons are still perfectly cool, that acquiring an iPhone 3 is a huge - I repeat - huge leap forward. He sympathises again and calls his colleague to join him in an effort of converting me into an iPhone 4 kind of person.  

Luckily the other assistant is nearly half my age as well, so the forces are equal. It is a matter of a principle  for me (plus the smooth design, the acceptable price…), and I am holding my grounds , and they surrender, hang their heads and lead me to the check out. Oh no, of course I do NOT need a case! (Why should I hide the “retro” beauty of my iPhone 3?)

Day passes in what seems to be useless fiddling with my new toy necessary equipment, but in 24 hours here I am, sitting in a café, sipping my cappuccino and “talking” simultaneously to my friends , scattered between Tadjikistan and Mexico, and in short pauses scanning through "Tales of the Jazz age" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, downloaded from iBooks, while keeping one eye on my train schedules - yet through another iPhone application. I am feeling very -VERY - modern and “smart”, so let Raphael laugh, and tell stories to his friends about a clueless girl with a rotary dial phone he met yesterday. 

Have a good weekend everybody.

Love,

AB

Bright Thoughts

Ouch! I have been diagnosed with a BSD! Never heard of it? Oh, yes, you had to: Beautiful Spring Disorder?.. Symptoms? Hmm… Severe laziness, uncontrollable daydreaming, and atrophy of shame for all of the above. :-) (Nothing  new, heh?) Ok, seriously now, it’s wonderful outside isn’t it? But I have been trying to working and my Kulobi dancer is nearly finished and my summer atelier is cleaned up nicely. 

See, my summer atelier in winter is an “I-am-too-lazy-and-it’s-too-cold-to-go-to-the-cellar-so-I-ll-leave-this-here” kind of place, so…lots to do in April. But this newly arranged cosiness doesn’t help, mind you; all I want to do is lie on my oriental bed and look out of the window and listen to all the insane birds singing outside, and imagine all the exciting things this spring is preparing for us, and visualising finally burning bringing to the cleaners my grey winter coat, and putting on something like that:    

Ah, if I only had those legs! (Sigh.) These are creations of Mary Katrantzou, a fabulous designer I have discovered today. Ok, I agree, these pieces are kinda hard to pull off  (especially if you are a guy), but aren’t they lovely? After her Spring 2011 show Katrantzou said: "With this collection, I wanted to put the room on the woman, rather than the woman in the room". She also says, she'd been looking at the highly stylized seventies photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin when it occurred to her that the interiors in the pictures were just as important as the models. And guess where the images of these interiors are coming from? From old issues of Architectural Digest!

And if in her Spring 2011 collection a woman tries on an interior filled with beautiful objects, in her Fall collection the woman IS a beautiful object:

Don’t these images make you think of Fabergé eggs, Ming porcelain vases, and mistresses of the Luis XIV?..  “Everything about man should be beautiful: the face, the clothes, the soul and the thoughts,” wrote Anton Chekhov. Mary Katrantzou would probably agree, don't you? :-)
 

Have a lovely weekend, everybody, - bright and filled with magnificent things!

Love,

AB

 

The Power of Place

Returning home from far away places is always good; returning home with the latest copy of Architectural Digest sitting on the mail stand is even better :-). That means the far away places come to you – all at once! “The power of place” is the title of the last issue featuring eight beautiful homes around the globe.  

I have been a raging fan of the AD magazine for ten years now, and it never ceases to surprise.  A team of talented writers and photographers labour on each issue to make is special. Passion for design and beauty shines through every picture, every line. AD taught me to appreciate mid-century design and to love lived-in things, showed me how to look at objects from a different angle, and  dare to combine uncombinable. 

Photo: by Marina Faust, published April 2005, AD magazine

Not everything I am onto is a success, but the process of cutting, re-painting, and re-stretching is fun on its own.  The last attempt is a winner I think, so I dare to post a couple of pictures. When a friend moved to a new apartment, I “inherited” her grandmother’s PFAFF sewing machine. It looked something like this one by Adler...

No, I wasn’t going to become a seamstress; the idea was to make a table for my bedroom. First I removed the machine leaving the wooden base, but it looked heavy and dated. So a couple of days ago I went radical, removing the whole wooden structure and replacing it with a thick glass with round corners. Voila! The surface is much larger now, the table looks weightless and one can see all the nice a little dusty cast iron details. :-)

 I wish you a constructive weekend!

Love,

AB