The Tuxedo Effect

I can't do anything without a deadline, so with company coming tomorrow I finally decided to replace the seat covers on my dining room chairs.

These chairs are survivors. They were part of a dining room set given to my grandmother by Les Watson in 1919, and eventually passed along to me. So the Mary Elizabeth Watson Jewell oak table and six chairs have lived on Southern Parkway in Louisville, they've migrated to various institutes of higher education, have made lateral moves across Kentucky, have survived a divorce, and lived alone with me and a dog named Maggie, they crossed The Great Divide, and along with a truck load of other items I could have done without, landed in San Francisco.   

My first choice of replacement fabric was a pricey cotton brocade (also indigo) that I spied at The Satin Moon on Clement, but the solid linen I found in The Mission has a reasonable amount of elegance for half the price, and going down there in the pouring rain and standing in line to buy it Saturday was fun. Really.

Also this afternoon, continuing to ride the creative wave, I dug out a couple of unframed paintings, small watercolor/ink works, and matched them with frames that had been sitting in our basement since Aaron Brothers last frame sale.  Of course I only had one mat that fit, so that necessitated another rain-soaked trip downtown to Flax, art supply heaven, between Castro and the seedy end of Market.

Now the chairs look so fine that I don't want to sit on them because the linen may wrinkle, who knows.

And the drawings...floating them in a deep beveled mat and classy frame has the tuxedo effect (anything looks good in it)-- but heck, I don't have a single wall to hang either of them on. So here's an idea, the paintings can sit in the chairs. Yes, that works, and now order has been restored to the universe.