Friday, October 16, 2009

Making everyone's life more descriptive

In elementary schools, they often have people from various professions come in and talk to kids about what their job is, how they ended up there, and what a typical day is like (hm, sounds sort of like questions you're supposed to ask in an informational interview).

I'd like to start a campaign to get a color-namer come in and talk to me. How does one end up with such a job? Is that all they do, or do they have some other job in the paint factory, fabric mill, or makeup designer's office? Because, you know, I think I might be interested.

Case in point. This fabric that I've been working with is from a line called "Cheddar and Poison Green." The best part of it is, it's not even a new fabric that someone just named. These were colonial dyes from the early days of automated fabric production (and quite different from the earliest dyes--browns and rusty reds). What I have is a reproduction (I don't have any 200 year old fabrics in the stash), so I'm guessing it's not dyed with the early natural dyes (some people think poison green refers to the dye's source which was possibly the wormwood tree of absinthe fame).

I think the print is great (and great for the project it's going in), but I think the names might make me love it a little more. It's happened before. When I was in elementary school, crazy-colored nail polish was the coolest thing ever. There were a couple of bottles I bought just for the names, particularly "E=mc^2," which, if I recall correctly was blue and sparkly. Anything you love even more because of its name?

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