Return to Red Purse

This blog of mine was abandoned in 2007. Started Red Purse when a Creative Capital artist friend and I decided to write about our shopping expeditions. I think the initial concept for Red Purse finally got to be too touchy a subject? Did I veer off course and write about other things? Or I was taken up with new blogs that followed along with the jobs and projects in which I became involved? Who knows?
I've taken a new look at Red Purse and have decided that I will write again about shopping - and collecting - and saving. Such activities could easily take over my life. They are guilty pleasures. All need more examination.
Watch for more.

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.

Ok, I went shopping again today. It's Saturday and shopping is relatively mindless after a week of mindful work. Shopping for me is down time. Just looking, editing, selecting, and then, 'to buy or not to buy'. I usually buy. Something. Today, two more purses. This has been a difficult purse season. After a year of use, my bright taxi cab yellow Fossil bag is showing wear. There are newer colors out there, newer textures and much newer shapes.

A month ago I bought a great pair of boots and stuck them under the bed while I pondered whether to keep them. Well, I love them and wore them in Marfa so I'm keeping them. They'll walk me through my public and private lives for as many days as my toes can fold into those Western toes. My new boots are bronze and green metallic and since their purchase, I seem to be color coding everything to these new boots. I only see bronze and green and perennial black. There are few other colors in the spectrum.

And as I said, this has been a difficult purse season. I am not sure I've found 'the one' yet. I began looking for a yellow purse replacement when an unscheduled hour opened up before a haircut appointment. I came home that day with two handbags - a practical leather bag with pressed croc markings - it held everything just like the yellow Fossil bag and was so boring I never took it out of the shopping bag. The second bag was kelly green fake fur with lots of flaps and pockets and covered buttons. I loved it and also knew that it would have had limited use. Tht green fake fur needs chic little black suits or voluminous skirts with layers of shrugs and sweaters. I never took it out of the shopping bag either for fear I would really keep it. I returned both bags and shopped again, leaving the store with a Brahmin green pressed leather bag that i learned is so special that it can be registered on line. Discontinued color so it wasn't full price. Elegant, yet with just a reference to those Mexican handbags with hand tooled roses. Will it go with the boots? More than likely.

And then today, I felt the unquenchable urge to make a quick trip to a store that stocks trendy less expensive bags than the Brahmin. And how easy it was to leave that shop with two handbags - a fashionable and sensible brown metallic mesh bag and a fashionable, frivolous green velvet ruffles bag. I've pulled my boots out from under the bed and confirmed that both bags look really good with the boots.

So my Saturday has been defined by purses. The future of the Brahmin is uncertain. I'll carry green velvet ruffles on my wrist to a dinner this Thursday night. Yes, with the boots and a ruched skirt.

A front came into town today for the first game of the World Series. Astros play at home tonight. Here we are in a sporting event mode again.