Lovely ones, on to quite a different topic for once: color. It is an endless source of inspiration for me, even if my home has exactly three colors: some cocoa brown, mostly shades of gray, and a touch of turquoise. And now, finally, after decades of thinking about it, I had my own colors analyzed. I always thought of myself as a True Summer, but could not quite make mint green or light blue gray work. Now I know why. My coloring is one of those tricky neutrals, on a slider from the coolest colors slightly towards warmer, but still more cool than warm.

Soft summer is probably the most boring, flat, mousy color scheme out of them all. There is no white, only a light neutral like a sheet caught in the smoke of a campfire. There are no pastels, or colors with white added to them; instead all the light colors are diluted with a shade of gray.

But soft summer is also elegant, understated, polished. Like a bluebell on a slightly hazy dewy meadow. My gray cat’s paw, with lavender pads. Dusty old dried roses. There is depth to soft summer: aubergine, Douglas fir needle green, a deep slightly muted burgundy.  There is no real contrast: the differing but same-tone colors bring the picture to life. Like if you reduced a photograph of a hazy summer night meadow to black-and-white: you cannot tell what is what, and where the flowers are. But add color and all makes sense.

Now I need to get my head into a slightly more neutral, dusky, calm space. With a sense of revelation I have recycled a couple of garments I had always loved but which never seemed quite right. Mostly because they were either too cool or too light. And I cannot wait for spring to go hunting for seafoam, sage, and pistachio greens.

(Helsinki, Finland; November 2017)