When I consulted to Country Road we used to have to come up with colour names. Romantic, evocative labels to differentiate one shade from another. Sometimes we'd egg each other on to come up with the worst moniker just for a laugh.
Yesterday when I was working on cushions and purses in these beautiful fabrics all I could think about was 'bile' and I split my sides chuckling. I don't mean 'bile' in a bad way, just in an honest 'it's the colour of bile' way. I could call it the nice polite 'chartreuse' but after a nasty incident with a bottle of Galliano a few years ago 'bile' is more accurate.
Don't let me put you off though, the fabric is lovely, birds and branches and duck egg blue. I've put a gorgeous fabric on the back of the cushions that is a hazy smoke lavender with (sort of) white ranunculus. And there are granny purses too.
In fact I should stop typing and go finish them. An hour 'til shop time.
And in shop news.... we have a new batch of pianola shades in and over the next week we have more spotty knitting needles arriving, Nikki is sending over a batch of yarn, patterns and needles and there will new/old lampbases ready. Time to snuggle up!
oh yes indeed, reminds me of the days long gone where i worked as a carpet designer and would end up in fits of awkward laughter after half-hour long group debates whether some blah sample was more sand or oatmeal.
ReplyDeleteIt just happens that bile and hazy smoke lavender is my favorite color combo. Any chance you might consider shipping one of those cushion covers so far as the us? im_hypnotic@hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteI currently sell hand-knits with colourways 'slaughterhouse' and 'artery,' and once had a 'haematoma' in my range (a particularly nasty, necrotic purple). My current best seller is something I'd like to call 'baby shit' but I'm playing it safe with 'yellow ochre.'
ReplyDeleteIn 'real' life I work in pathology. Naming colours after body fluids is just the sad and perverted way I get my jollies.
Bile is one of my very favourite colours. In fact, it features heavily in the bedspread I made (photo in most recent post on my blog) alongside, pus, sputum and earwax shades. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteAh Pen. there's been a funny syncronicity between your posts and the posts i haven't been getting to post right now. We're in melbourne for Joseph's heart surgery and the facebook mode has gone into overdrive. He had a successful procedure yesterday and has been ringmaster to a circus in intensive care today. Won't go into the gore, but will say that your colour naming is very accurate. And that, while Joe felt better for the extraction, his mother subsequently illustrated, in 3D, her rave about the fabulous mixed marinated mushroom salad she'd forked down in the caf just a few minutes previously.
ReplyDeleteLooking fwd to visiting The Cottage. I reckon the vibe around you is a bit like the one that would have been around that McClaren/Westwood shop back in the day. If you kna warri mean..
Char.
Precisely, bile. Romantically... goldenrod?
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