Crafty reading: Sense of style. Colour

I'm moving to a new appartment in a few months time and as it happens I'm going to have figure out how to decorate lot more space than I've ever had for just myself. This has resulted into lot of reading decorating books and magazines, googling a ton of sofas and pinning my ass of all things decorating and furniture. Laiter you'll probably get to see some parts of that kinda big decorating project I'll be overtaking, but for now you'll probably just get some reviews of decorating books and things like that. Like this one.

Don't worry, this blog won't be just about decorating now and there will be posts about other things too. This is just something that is an important thing in my life right now.

Sense of Style. Colour

Author: Shannon Fricke
Publisher: Murdoch Books (2006)

Finnish edition: Väreillä kodikasta
Publisher: WSOY (2010)

What is it about:

 If I needed to condense this book to one centence, I'd say it's a book to teach you how to use color intuitively in decorating. To elaborate more, Shannon Fricke has written a practical yet not rule and colorchart based book that helps you to find inspiration for finding the right colorpalet for your own decorating projects.

Fricke's aproach is rather philosophical and she does start the book by instructing how to concentrate and draw color inspiration from anything you see around you. From here she continues to by going through many different colors, how they have inspired her, how different shades of each color work, how to combine them and where each color fits best.

In the last part of the book Fricke gives more practical instructions on how to actually work the color into your personal home design. She goes through furniture, textiles and ornaments and how to use color in all of them. And yes, in the end she does also briefly go through the more traditional way of working with color, the color circle.

Fricke gives instructions how you can draw inspiration from all kinds of things, including fashion.

What I liked:

This was a really nice book to read. Fricke had a nice flow in her writing and even tough I wasn't reading this during an active decorating project, it gave good base to start figuring out what kind of color palet I'd live to have in my new home. I also think that a very important part of the book was the fact that Fricke did stress through out the book that choosing the colors and designing the home is a proces and you can't and shouldn't try to do it all at once.

Oh, and I absolutely loved the illustrations in this book. It was great that they weren't just pictures of different interiors but many of them (mainly in the color section of the book) were inspiration boards and gave a good idea how you can drow color ideas from objects that are not nesessarely related to decorating.


What I didn't like: 

Here and there the text was slightly too vague for my taste. I liked how Fricke wrote about her own learning experiences but here and there I did miss a slightly more bread aproach to things.

The one thing I didn't quite like about the layout were captions. It was rather frustrating to be forced to flip the book sideways on almost every opening to read them. They were rather interesting captions too, so I think it would have been way more reader friendly to put them horisontal and not vertical.

I might be biased as a green lover, but this page on the right is my absolute favorite in the whole book and the lower right corner asian picture something from which I'm plannign to pull colors from to my new home.

Final verdict: 

This it a nice book to help you (or me) on the way to finding the color palet that works for you and your space. It doesn't give straight answers but pushes you to figure things out on your own and to develope your personal sence of color. So this book is definitely not for quick answers but a nice tool to have helping you along the way to better decoration.

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Olen muuttamassa uuteen kotiin parin kuukauden päästä ja koska uudessa kodissa on paljon enemmän tilaa, kuin yhdessäkään aikaisemmassa kodissa, niin paljon on tarvetta suunnitella ja ideoida uutta lehtien, kirjojen ja Pinterestin avulla. Siksipä täällä blogissakin näkyy nyt ennen muuttoa joitakin inspiraation hakuun liittyviä juttuja ja sitten muuton jälkeen varmasti ainakin joitain sisustusjuttuja. Vaan pelko pois, ei tästä pelkkä sisustusblogi ole tulossa.

Väri-inspiraatiota hain kirjastosta lainatusta kirjasta Väreillä kodikasta, jonka on kirjoittanut Shannon Fricke. Kirjassa Fricke on filosofisella otteella neuvoo, miten erilaisista asioista voidan hakea inspiraatiota sisustuksen värimaailmaan. Eri väreistä esitellään erilaisia sävyjä sekä sitä, miten ja missä tiloissa niitä voidaan toimivimmin käyttää. Lisäksi Fricke opastaa, miten kodin sisustusta on hyvä lähteä rakentamaan kerroksittain erityisesti värejä silmällä pitäen.

Pidin kirjasta kovasti ja sitä oli mukava lukea ihan vaan lukemisen vuoksi. Ainakin minusta sekä teksti että kuvat olivat inspiroivia ja hauskaa oli, etteivät kuvat olleet ainoastaan kuvia erilaisista sisustuksista. Tämä kirja toimisi varmasti mainiona tukena koko sisustusprosessin aijan.

Challenge: 11 questions

PäiviH from the blog Tanssivat puikot had been challenged to answer to 11 questions about her handicrafter habits and instead of challenging new people decided to just leave the challenge open for anyone interested to take and answer the questions too. As I've thought this is one of the more interesting challenges circling blogistan at the moment, I decided to join in! So here are the 11 questions and my answers to them.


1. What is your most ambitious handicraft project you are dreaming of?
I'd say that out of my current dreams, the most ambitious is probably a fair isle cardigan. I would really love to make one but am also very scared of the project at the same time. An other ambitious dream I have is a quilted bedspread.

2. What has been the most ambitious handicraft you have actually made?
Probably the historical ballgown (vanhojentanssipuku) I made for my friend back when I was studying to be a seamstress for a traditional school dance. I made few other nice dresses back in the day.
Outside that world of professional sewing the most ambitious handigraft I've made has definitely been the double knitted Protu 20 scarf, of which I'm super proud of.

The Protu 20 scarf was a custom order I made in few weeks with great exitement.
It was a lot of work but I was super proud of it when it was finished.

3. Are you ever unable to choose and thus do not start a handicraft project when it's time for you to start a new project?
Nope, I don't think this has ever happened to me. Also, I always seem to have several projects I'm working on at the same time (see this post for an example) so quite often when I'm finished with one project I just move on to an other one I'm already working on. New projects tend to come along there in between when ever I come up with a new one.

This box in our livingroom contains most of my unfinished knitting  and crocheting projects and tools too.

4. What type of handicrafts do you most like to do?
At the moment my handicraft of choice is definitely knitting. I'm very much enjoying the versatility of the craft. But I do enjoy many other things too and will probably push myself more back towards sewing when I'll get a proper space where to work with bigger projects.

5. Is your job in any way related to handicrafts?
No, or not more than public library work is related to any other field of life. No special emphasis on handicrafts. But before becoming a librarian I used to work as a seamstress and have to say that I'm rather happy that isn't my day job anymore.

6. Is it a complete chaos or clean and organized at your workstation (or where ever you store tools)?
My crafting supplies and tools are actually rather organized, which is somewhat untypical for me. That's how ever more a result of not having a proper space for crafting and all my materials and tools need to be stored in one cabinet and few boxes all the time. It wouldn't work it it all was super chaotic.

This is my kinda packed handicraft closet.

7. What material do you have in store but have never used for anything? How long have you had it?
Ok, this is not a material but a tool, but I have a textile printing screen that I got from a friend seven or eight years ago and have never used. In general I try not to store things I'm not using for anything too long.


8. What kind of mood are you in when you make handicrafts? Are you working as fast as you can to finish the project of do you work calmly and enjoy the process?

I'm pretty laid back with my projects and mostly do them because I want and need to do something with my hands, not because I would want to finish things as fast as I can. I can be ambitious too, but some years ago I chose to not make handicrafts my job so I won't be working on them like they would be.


9. Have you ever come up with an idea, structure of method in your handicraft projects that you have thought has been something new and different than what has already existed?

I'm fairly certain that I have never come up with anything that someone else wouldn't have come up too, but there definitely are few things I've figured out on my own without ever seeing any kind of instructions or patterns for making them before doing them myself for the first time. 

I'm sure someone else somewhere has also done double knitting with different pattern on each side, but this is one of the things I figured out on my own without seeing anyone elses project or any instructions.

10. Which school grade would you give yourself about your handicraft skills?

On a scale from 4-10 (this is the scale they used when I was in elementary school) I'd say 9. I mean, I'm pretty good in many things but the more I learn about handicrafts the more I feel like I need to learn more and better. So good but not perfect.

11. Which is the handigraft project someone else has made that you love the most?

The fox hat Inari made for me as an unbirthday gift some years ago. It's very dear to me in many ways and tends to serve as a thinking cap sometimes too.

Well this was fun. I'm not gonna challenge anyone else as I wasn't officially challenged either, but if someone else wants to answer these questions I'd definitely recommend it and you can consider yourself challenged.

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Päätin tarttua Tanssivat puikot -blogin PäiviH:n avoimeen haasteeseen vastata 11 käsityöaiheiseen kysymykseen. Näihin oli hurjan hauska vastailla ja samalla pohdiskella omaa käsillätekemistä. Jätän itsekin haasteen avoimeksi, koska minua ei virallisesti tähän haastettu, joten kuka tahansa, jonka tekee mieli vastailla näihin kysymyksiin on tervetullut mukaan!