Let it rain

Marimekko Petrooli umbrella makes me drooli.
I’m thinking my red Unikko umbrella might be lonely…

I first became aware of Marimekko in 1990 when working in a textile showroom in midtown Manhattan. It was love at first sight.

When I moved to Berkeley in 1991 after a bitter breakup (I got the microwave, he got NYC), I was thrilled to discover the Crate & Barrel Outlet on 4th Street because:

1) well, hey, it’s Crate & Barrel. AND it’s an outlet. duh! Two great tastes that taste great together.

2) they carried raw bolts of Marimekko fabric! Outlet cheap!

• That was before the era of giant outlet complexes where outlet prices have become a misnomer.
• Especially exciting in the era before interweb e-commerce.

Sigh. The good ol’ days before life in the fabricstoreless land that is Santa Barbara.

pffff… as if I regularly sew or anything. NOT. (I eschewed home ec as a high school elective, electing to take honors British Lit and honors French instead. In restrospect, I shoulda learned to sew.) But the fabulous thing about Marimekko is that it makes for some fantastic wall art, easily constructed by sewing flunkies such as myself.

Now, if we can just get a Marimekko concept store on the left coast…

Speaking of fabulous prints, I picked up some of this loveliness a number of weeks ago at IKEA:

I had asked for 1.5 yards of the brownish one, but the cute young guy said they only sold it by the yard. So I said I’d take 2 then, as I had gotten 2 yards of the green one. As he handed me the nicely folded pieces, he pointed out to me he only charged me 1 yard for each one.

IKEA + cute young guy + free fabric = happy Regina.

And because I have an inexplicable fascination with umbrellas (I have a lot of ‘em… umbrellas, that is. Well, and inexplicable fascinations.), here are a couple of my oldies-but-goodies favorites. While these styles have long ranked among my favorites, I don’t own either one, but had them as a kid. (However, my porthole umbrella was white.)

I do hope it starts raining tomorrow, as predicted.

Filed under NaBloPoMo, gimme, favorite things | Comments (2)