So last week I went to Barnes and Noble to buy some new home design books (will someone tell me how to get free ones sent to me to review, btdubs?) and after perusing the Thomas O’brien book (yes, please) and ‘The Joy of Home’ by Naomi Cleaver, which is awesome, I found a little ole book called ‘The Pocket Decorator’.
Huh.
What does this little peanut of a book have to offer me. oh, i’ll just take a peak, just a gander. I mean, i’m sure i know everything that is in this book, but it doesn’t hurt to look.
30 minutes later.
So that’s what a palladium window is!! And what is this ‘axeminster’ she speaks of? fascinating. Let me be clear, this was not ‘decorating for dummies’, no ma’am. It categorizes everything very easily and instead of me trying to explain with my hands what ‘interlaid curtains’ are to the seamstress, i can say ‘interlaid curtains’. (which are curtains that have a layer of flannel in between the primary fabric and the lining). I totally recommend it, not the curtains, the book.
But checking out with it was rather stressful. The potential embarrassment was enormous. The clerk didn’t recognize me, thank god, but what if she had? What if she was like, ‘oh my god, are you that Emily with a design show on HGTV….wait…what is this…huh..’
I mean, I would have had to explain how I know what the eff i’m doing, just some of the terms are more foreign to me than others. I probably would have started talking really really fast, faster than normal, if you can believe that. I would have said speedily ‘yeah, well i know what fleur de lis and arabesque are, but no, maybe i don’t know what ‘cartouche and singerie’ mean. and that’s ok, i’m not ashamed. It’s fine, it’ll be fine.
Besides ‘it was for my new intern’.
Or I probably would have ran, leaving Tom and Naomi on the counter and booked it through the Glendale Galleria.
All that stuff can be learned. It’s just words that you put in your brain with definitions behind them and visuals attached to them. But I’m pretty happy to have learned them. And not above filling my little brain with as much useful design information as possible right now. I’m learning hard and my brain is feeling the punishment.
it (the brain) is getting full real real fast. too fast to capitalize or put commas where appropriate. sorry.