Seattle Archives - Page 9 of 20

Getting Old

September 18, 2009 By Paola 9 Comments

It’s my birthday today and Seattle is rewarding me with the most glorious sunny day imaginable.

The long hot summer of 2009 continues its magic, I’ve picked myself some flowers from the garden, and I’m feeling very lazy, very grateful and very content.

Real birthday celebrations are happening tomorrow, so I can spend the day with Minx, and then on Monday both the Husband and I are taking a day off to go on a very exciting hot date, of which more anon.

See you on Tuesday!

Cute antique milk bottle vase is from Casapinka’s fabulous new Etsy store.

The Golden Years

September 15, 2009 By Paola 1 Comment

Or, yet another chapter from ‘If My Daughter Dares Complain About Her Childhood, I Will Refer Her To This Blog’.

This has been a record-breakingly fabulous summer in Seattle and this weekend we headed to the beach to cook sausages and watch the sun go down.

Ta-da!

September 11, 2009 By Paola 11 Comments

So here is the new sofa in situ. It is as comfy as hell, IMMENSELY practical, extraordinarily well -made and we are thrilled to bits with it. Thanks Couch Seattle!

You will note that we’ve also taken your advice – you were right of course – and bought a new rug for that end of the room so that the coffee table sits on it correctly and moved the green rug to the dining area. We also moved the green curtains to that end of the room to give a bit of colour and raised the curtain pole so that they hang better and give more of an illusion of height.

Things Still To Be Done About Which We Need to Talk

– Paint the walls. I have a completely different colour in mind from the last time we discussed this and am going to get samples this weekend.

– Reframe and move the artwork. Commission or buy huge and expensive piece of art (ha ha! – Ed) or at the very least do SOMETHING with the wall above the sofa.

– Replace (or possibly just paint?) the incredibly ugly door on the left which leads straight out onto the porch.

– Do something about the light fixtures, about which we have still done nothing since last we spoke.

– Crochet the sofa a beautiful present.

– Learn how to style photos better and at least smooth down the cushions on the couch before photographing it.

There is much to discuss and much to do. But we are getting there slowly.

The weather is supposed to be glorious this weekend which I suspect will be the Seattle summer’s last hurrah. So we are going to go out and PLAY!

Adventures in Knitting – Knitting the Ocean

September 9, 2009 By Paola 6 Comments

The only thing I have really been able to achieve this summer is a ton of knitting. I was inspired by all the fabulous patterns on Ravelry to embark on a cardigan for myself, the first time I’ve knitted an adult-sized cardigan or sweater since I was at college (more years ago than I care to remember).

This Featherweight Cardigan was a really quick, simple and pleasurable knit, particularly as it was the first thing I’ve made out of yarn dyed by a Seattle-based woman who goes by the name of Sundara. The woman is a colour genius and I’ve recently been bankrupting the family buying up her limited edition yarns, but the colours, oh the colours are a-maz-ing. I will blog about her separately as she really is an artist who deserves to be seen by knitters and non-knitters alike.

But I digress. This cardigan was made in Sundara’s soft and sumptuous Fingering Silky Merino in a limited edition colourway ‘Macedonia’ and, with its variegation from dark to light blue with little flecks of pale ‘foam’ on top, it was just knitting up the sea. The photos really don’t do justice to the depth of the blue and how it glows in the sunlight. Full project details on Ravelry as usual.

These pics were taken by my friend Kassandra at Seattle’s Golden Gardens beach on the last beach day before school started. Our kids are rioting gently somewhere a few yards out of shot.

While we’re on the subject of rebooting and reclaiming one’s life after the baby years, looking at these pictures I think I also really need to start reclaiming my body – it seems a bit much to be carrying ‘baby weight’ when the baby is nearly five.

I’ve been hampered in my efforts to exercise recently by lack of time and crippling plantar fasciitis -an excruciating pain at the bottom of my foot, which I think has been indirectly caused by twisting my ankle very badly a couple of years ago. At the moment the best exercise for me appears to be yoga, so I’m committing to doing a bit of yoga (either a class or a video) every day for the rest of September. I used to do quite a bit of yoga before the Minx was born, and it’s horrible to realise how inflexible I’ve become.

So(fa) Exciting!

August 6, 2009 By Paola 3 Comments

This is apparently what our new sofa looked like before it left the manufacturer. So fabulous to see it with the cone legs at last. It looks even better than I thought it would. Ameer and his team have done an incredible job.

It should be delivered next week, so then we get to see it in situ and sit in it. Can’t wait!

Lampshade Couture – It’s Competition Time!

August 4, 2009 By Paola Leave a Comment

Dawn Bassett of Seattle-based LiT Shades makes bespoke lampshades for any room in the house, using designer fabrics such as Marimekko, or custom letterpress printing.

Until 7th August Dawn is running a competition on her blog where you can win your very own custom couture lampshade. All you need to do is send in a picture of a lamp in need of a revamp and Dawn will pick one to crown with its own special bespoke shade.

I mention this by way of a public service announcement because I love my readers, though I don’t particularly want any of you to enter as I’ve just entered my own sadly neglected Ebay lucite lamp. Anyway, if you must, full details of how to enter are here.

A lamp in need of a vamp.

Urban Craft Uprising – the Reckoning

August 3, 2009 By Paola Leave a Comment

We went, we saw, we bought. AND there was air-conditioning. What more could you ask for?

UCU has grown up. It still has a pleasantly friendly and chaotic vibe, but there was so much more stuff that was actually worth buying. Still a lot of felt though.

Here are a few images of the Uprising. I’ll talk about some of the individual stallholders over the course of the week.

Urban Craft Uprising

August 1, 2009 By Paola 1 Comment

Just a quick reminder for Seattle-based peeps that the first ever summer Urban Craft Uprising is taking place tomorrow and Sunday at the Seattle Center.

I got to a UCU a couple of years back when I first arrived in Seattle and found it to be a charming mishmash of the homespun, the bizarre and the fabulous. Included in the fabulous this time round will be Dave Sheely Designs and the Cakespy herself.

Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly

July 31, 2009 By Paola 10 Comments

Oh I’ve have been a very naughty blogger recently. I’ve been struggling a bit keeping all the balls in the air while the Minx has been on summer vacation and to top it all Seattle has been having a mini-heatwave this summer culminating in a record-breaking temperature of 103 degrees yesterday (that’s 39.5 degrees in real money) .

I realise this is nothing compared with what many people elsewhere in the US go through, but you have to remember that most places in Seattle, including our house, don’t have air conditioning. So we’ve been getting through it with a combination of cool baths, evening swims in the lakes, sleeping in our new tent on the roofdeck, moaning about the weather and generally finding it difficult to achieve anything.

There’s some potentially exciting stuff going on in the background though, of which more later, and I’m intending to relaunch the blog somewhat when the Minx goes into full-time education starting in September! I’m such a bad mother, but I really cannot wait…

In the meantime, here are some pictures I took of the lavender festival in Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. Sequim (pronounced ‘Squim’) is in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains and has a uniquely dry micro-climate for these parts, which is apparently very similar to that of Provence and has become the centre of a burgeoning lavender production area.

Hey Cupcake!

July 9, 2009 By Paola 5 Comments

Sorry for light bloggery recently – it’s the interminable school vacation here and while we’re having lots of fun in the sun, there really isn’t much opportunity to get to a computer.

Last weekend, as usual, was filled with preparations for our annual Fourth of July firework party on our roofdeck, for which I ended up baking 113 mini-cupcakes, two huge clafoutis with cherries from our tree and one enormous strawberry and raspberry pavlova (which I will blog about separately).

Here are the cupcakes in action (with a glimpse of one of the clafoutis to the bottom right of the bottom image)