December 16, 2008

The red chair

My favorite color has always been red. Partly, this was because red was one of the leftover colors. My oldest sister choose green as hers, and my next oldest sister chose blue as hers. So when my parents were color-coding things like duffel bags or scarves or camping pillows, I naturally ended up with the red ones.

More than that, though, I've always loved how bright the color red is — cheerful and full of energy. I live in a landscape that is lushly green for spring and summer, and brilliantly red-orange-yellow-gold in the fall. But from November through March, more than half the year, it's a landscape of mostly whites and greys. Oh, we have subtle colors in the winter — blues and browns and tinges of green — but still, white dominates.

I can appreciate the beauty of the winter landscape and those subtle colours. But still, my winter coat is red, my sweatshirt is red, my fleece is red, and my favorite sweater is red. My superhero cape is red. And just recently, we bought a bright red chair to put in a sunny spot in the living room. This winter, when everything outside is white and grey, I am going sit in that red chair and write.

Guarding the Christmas tree

Gretel guards the Christmas tree.

9 comments:

Busymomma66 said...

I think you might have to fight with Gretel for the chair.

jo(e) said...

Oh, there's room for both of us. We deliberately got a big chair because there's only room for one chair and almost always there's at least two people and one cat in it ....

Anonymous said...

We just got an unusual amount of snow and suddenly I am noticing that houses are pink and green and blue and yellow where before they just blended into the street and trees. It's odd, but neat.

Why do cats love the squashy backs of furniture like that? It seems like such an unstable place to curl up.

Kathryn and Ari said...

I love red, too, but have only started wearing it. I think I was afraid it was too flashy: especially among all these dun-wearing, puritanical New Englanders. I had to go for a paisley chair, though--to match the tortise-shell cats.

Unknown said...

I'm loving red more and more these days. That is a gorgeous picture of Gretel, and I love her colors and the red together.

Ursula said...

Only you would think that 5 months is more than half of 12 months. Probably because of February, eh?

;-)

jo(e) said...

Ursula: Yes, that's right. February is 94 days long. Whereas there is only four days between the Fourth of July and Labor Day.

November through March is WAY more than half the year.

Jenevieve said...

She is such a pretty cat.

justin said...

What a gorgeous photo, Jo(e). I feel I could be in your home, looking close up at Gretel. Most of the fabrics & rugs in our sitting room are of a similar red colour -- we love it, and so do our cats.
Most of my socks are variations on brown ... rather boring, but they match some of my clothing & my brown shoes.