All Things Orange

I distinctly remember going through an orange phase when I was a wee Sassy. I coloured everything in one bright orange colour. Why? God knows...

I don't know what came over me, or what happened since, I might have overdosed on orange... but I really, really do not like (read: HATE) the colour now. I just don't. You know how you like certain colours but only for clothing or only for interior design stuff or maybe both but definately not on cars? I don't like orange -at all- ! I can't imagine anything or anyone (except for maybe an orange) to look good in that colour.

Great... I'm a Dutch girl, guess what our national colour is....?



So ok, I’m screwed on national holidays I have to endure the whole country morphing into a bright traficlight (oh, that's a second one...).

One of those national holidays is Queens Day. I wrote a little bit about it in an earlier post. We Dutchies celebrated it on the 29th of April. We celebrate the queen's birth day, although it’s actually not really hér birthday, but her granny’s (the ex-ex-Queen). If you are interested you can read about it here. You might have to take a Dutch course
here first, nice colour in the background of that site... (I can't seem to find any English sites on the subject)

So...
Queens day...
We Dutch do weird things on Queens day. We drink beer by the keg, we get all our junk, place it on a blanket and sell it in the streets ánd... we wear - you've guessed it- ORANGE. My friend Roos and I tried to sell some of our stuff. Let's say she sold almost all of her daughter’s baby clothes and more... and me...?



Me, I thought it would be a great idea to do some quick knits, gather some FO's, print out a few price tags with my logo and go into business big time.

Ehm...
Well...
I made a staggering € 2,50.
What's my excuse?
1. We should've only sold home-made stuff and make a 'thing' out of it
2. I should've made smaller (cheaper) things
3. I shouldn't have tried to sell hats & scarfs & mittens in spring
4. Roos' junk was in the way (oh...that's cheap...)

Anyway, I could've used a marketing plan, let's leave it at that.

While we were sitting there I knitted up a phone cover for my friend Nicole who walked by. It's the only thing I sold and it doesn't even really count... she saw the I-pod cover and told me she needed a smaller one for her phone, I told her I could make her one. She said yes, but we never agreed on payment or anything. She was so surprised that by the end of the day I handed her over the finished cover, she offered to pay me. She wanted to pay full price, but I couldn't let her do that, so I made € 2,50 that whole day since I didn't sell any of my other stuff. Not one single item. I'm refusing to blame my knitting techniques or myself in general!



I'm not going into the knitting business any time soon...haha!

So... one national holiday finally back in the drawer, ready to be taken out the next year. No more orange for a considerable amount of time. Great! Love it! Let's go outside and sit in the green, I LUUUUUUUUUUUUURV GREEN!!

WRONG!!

The soccer world cup has started... And in no time at all the whole bleeding country is back in its tangerine (ok... I admit...another one) look.
And as much as I dislike orange, I love it when our National team plays. Although, every year I hesitate to wear Belgian colours when game-watching. Since I have both nationalities, am half Dutch, half Belgian I'm allowed to. But I feel profoundly more Dutch, have lived here most of my life, but the Belgians have red, black and yellow and that's so much better than friggin' orange...
But I don't wear Belgian colours because if I do I wouldn't make it out of the street alive and I love life too much... And let's not forget that they didn't qualify this year, so that would make me an even bigger moron, wearing their colours...



Here's Nighttown, the club I do PR/publicity for. It's covered in orange posters. An art project by this artist as a part of these parties that are held in Nighttown every time our team plays. My office is behind the windows on the first floor. We're bathing in orange all day. And they expect me to work like that??

When watching a game, you simply HAVE TO wear something orange, usually stupid big hat's, blow up arms, fake sideburns, poncho's or a mind altering combination of all those things. Since I wasn't about to get myself down to that level, I had to think, I had to think fast! I decided to combine the 'oh my god, no please nó' with the 'yay, let's go do it'-vibe and so I've started my first ever lace knit project. I like to do something I've never done before with every new project, that way I learn fast. So now I'm making Branching Out. Not with teeny-tiny-where-are-my-glasses-I-can't-see-it kind of yarn, but with bulky orange yarn (Phildar sport'laine) on 9 mm needles. Hey, I want to learn, fast preferably, and the first game was three days from when I started so I'm making it easy on myself.


And you know what... while being confronted with orange while concentrating profoundly on the pattern (and redoing one row after another) I'm starting to kind of like it. It's overload therapy, just get yourself in contact with the thing you dislike só much that it'll take up too much of your energy to be irritated by it all the time.

I dropped in the Hennes & Maurits today and actually picked up some orange bracelets... the therapy seems to be really working. And I also got hold of this übercool basket that screamed: PUT KNITTING IN HERE! I couldn't resist. Nor could I the other 5 garments... but that's another story that needs another kind of therapy.

GO TEAM GO!

(Didn't have time to finish this post this morning. Guess what?? WE WON THE FIRST MATCH!! 1-0!!)