Friday, June 08, 2007

Can it be? Eighteen months since I've posted on Red Purse? Has Rockbridge Times just taken over? Or do I not write because my last post was about shopping and as often shop surreptiously, perhaps there should be no written record of my motivations. Perhaps? You see, editing or 'choosing' one from among many is my real passion whether making a collage or looking at a department of handbags. I like nothing better than finding the best purse in the department (criteria to be determined at the very moment the best bag is sighted), the most clever skirt, the item so tasteless that it's-over-the-top wonderful.

I've been thinking very hard about what prompts the decision to buy. I begun to notice when that moment appears and when I know I will buy. I am beginning to learn what leads me to that moment. It has something to do with the 'choosing' of an item with a strong visual relationship to something already owned. "Why, this will look terrifc with that little chartruese butter dish from the Wimberly trade day. Or it is simplyi so spectacular in some odd way that I'd best find a visual relationship between it and another 'something.'

Last September, I walked away from a pottery exhibition empty handed after looking at a charming coppery glazed water pitcher. We were driving down the dusty road when I thought about how beautiful two matching pitchers would look on a dining table, each filled with peach and buttery pink roses. I was smitten by that image - that is called the point of sale. We stopped the car, turned around on the dusty road and I bought not the one pitcher that I'd admired, but both pitchers. I've not filled them yet with several dozen roses, but the thought is there.
What's your point of sale, your moment of decision?
I'll tell you something else. After my acupuncture appointments, the traffic eastward atthat late time of day is too snarled to attempt and so I succumb more often than not to the charms of the mall at 9700 Harwin Drive - it is a veritable palace of knock-off handbags and inexpensive, no, very cheap jewelry.
Thousands of necklaces, a paradise if you like to edit these thousands of necklaces. I am right at home here - pleasantly engaged, the minutes passing with both speed and in blissful slow motion as in my mind I match beads with yarns I have at home and drop the favored necklaces into a plastic basket. It is lovely to see how disparate things come together just because you've had the eye to see the possibilitiy that they are stronger together than left to themselves. And so my crochet neckpieces are paired with Harwin's best. Hansen+Harwin.

So off to bed. Big weekend - Creative Capital is in town at Diverse Works. My expectations are high. And they do deliver. What a joy. Good night.