Color Schemes, pleasant vs itchy

Went to the Christmas Castle Green tour on Sunday. It was a good turnout, but the apartments themselves were not as interesting as the last time I went. Since the last time, a few of the apartments have changed hands, and they are not as impressive. Also, many of the places were just open houses, and some heavy on the ikea. Not as many were decked out in holiday splendor, perhaps because this tour was not as close to xmas as the last one.

Castle Green attracts people who are not just buying a house, but buying into a community. The community being both the Castle itself (home to many artists, designers, interior decorators, architects and other art/craft related careers) and old town Pasadena, which is less than 2 blocks away. You don't need a car if you work nearby (or can take the rail) or in your home office, and you can walk to anything you need to buy. The condos start about 500k, the smallest being less than 800sqft, the largest being twice that. Still quite small. And no amenities other than the grounds and common rooms. Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there. If someone handed me one of those condos I would certainly move in, but I'd have to seriously cut down on the amount of furniture and kitchen gadgets I own.

One place was deep Moroccan colors and designs the last time I was there, and I was excited to see it again. It had changed hands to a local designer, and was done up in my least favorite color scheme ever, pink and turquoise. Those colors are not attractive to me separately, and together they synergize into foofy poodle nastiness that made me back out of the space. They are good colors when blended with others as accents, but when they are in the majority they make me almost nauseous.

Went running today, and after the weekend rains, the skies were crystal clear and bright rich blue. Rare in LA, especially in the valley. The Sycamores are getting ready to drop their leaves, and though they don't really change color much (sycamores leaves are slightly fuzzy so they have a greyness to their pale yellow green), they do take on a crunchy rumpled shape and a mix of ochre, sand brown and dusty yellow. Mixed with the stark white bark on the upper branches and crisp sky, it made for a very pleasant SoCal color scheme. I need to capture it.