Apartment Eye-Spy

Here's what I spied yesterday...in Apartment Eye-Spy

Take a step back to see and discover more...

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Like the oil lamp in my last Eye-Spy, this sailboat mobile also hung in my late grandparents' home when I was a child.  Many of my memories of visits to Poppop's and Nanny's contained either this mobile or the lamp.  Many days I would sit at their dining table, blowing bubbles through a straw into my chocolate milk, watching completely mesmerized as the little glistening boats would turn and bob.  Poppop would never tire of indulging me by pulling the main string so it could remain in motion always.  I guess no one else in my large extended family was so touched by it, because no one batted a lash when I made a request for it.  But as I'm in the spirit of disclosure, this thing was such a pain in the neck to untangle and hang after it was transported.  I spent hours, literally HOURS, going cross-eyed with it laid out on my kitchen floor, trying to sort it out.  But all out of love and in the spirit of keeping those memories alive!    

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 This picture comes with fewer memories than the mobile, nonetheless it has a story.  When I was in my freshman year of high school, my mother and I stopped to browse at a used book fair at our local mall.  I was a voracious reader back then (I'm talking about reading a book a day, oh those were the days!) Well it was paradise for me - table after table overflowing with the bound written word.  I bought a stack of things to last me the week, including one special item - A Metropolitan Museum of Art Album of Miniatures, filled with little drawings on postage-stamp type paper that you could adhere inside paperback guides about the works of art.  Recently, I dug through on old box and found a few of the loose drawings.  This particular Van Gogh piece, Almond Blossoms, strikes a chord in me - it's delicate, subdued, feminine, fragile, and so natural, not quite like most of his other works of bold color and abstract surrealism, although I love all that too!  I wanted to display this in some way, so I stuck it onto some plain brown wrapping paper (yep, thrifty business) and put it in a cheapo frame (bought years back for a few bucks at Tar-jay boutique).  Voila!  Pretty wabi sabi!   
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Thanks for taking a look with me!