Framing Memories

I see Annie, The Framer, almost daily at La Noisette (a.k.a. Franck's tearoom). Her framing shop is two doors down and we chat on any number of topics. When I had two precious things to frame, I naturally turned to her. Although I believe in supporting local business, I also love her work.

We had so many colours to chose from, but I also wanted to hang the poster along the stones, and she spied the perfect frame. She spied the perfect tone of grey with a slight design.

Why is this poster in my studio? I found it on a memory-trip to the Christmas market in Stuttgart last December. My father once had the Underwood typewriter franchise for West Virginia, and I had an Underwood when I was a cub reporter for the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune.

As my fingers fly over the laptop keyboard, I remember the pressure needed to depress the keys. In those days, electric typewriters were barely heard about. When they were I dreamed of having one. It was an Olivetti, made in Yverdon, Switzerland, a place I never heard of. Only later would it become a town I went through almost weekly. That factory has long been abandoned.

To think I once dreamed of owning then acquired an IBM with its golfball fonts, then a computer, then a laptop and now my baby laptop. As a writer all of these machines are my version of a quill pen used by writers of long ago.

The fire screen sampler was made for me by a friend of many years, who when I use to pop into her office at noon I would find munching a sandwich as she worked on one beautiful sampler after another.

We'd spent a weekend in a freezing apartment near the Bastille in Paris so we could attend a needlework exhibition that showed embroidery from the Middle Ages through to a designer wedding gown. We've shared sheepherding lessons, movies and meals, tea-toast-telly, picnics, sad moments, and times of unbelievable silliness, hopes and dreams. Thus is both a pleasure and an honour to have her needlework in my flat.

Annie came to my studio to make sure the measurements for the sampler/fire screen was the right size. She had never seen feet for a frame that my friend had provided brought back from the UK. There was much discussion on whether the frame should be rustic or modern but when we spied the exact colour of the letters, we knew -- there was no other possible choice.

Thus, I am happy to have two more possessions (yes Rose, you read that right) but they are both the item and a raft of memories to be savoured.