It's funny... and awesome... this blog has been getting really popular lately! It makes me really excited! Thank you to all of you who read this... first time readers, daily readers, and occasional readers. I am so glad to have you!
oh hey. that's me!
Lately, my blog has been coming up in conversation a lot with my friends, and I've noticed a few things. The first one... people seem to like this page and what I'm doing! The second... well... apparently, I named this page something that no one knows how to pronounce. Oops.
When I originally started Travel and Toile, it was a journal type-thing documenting my travels while abroad in Europe for a semester. I wanted to name it something that described what I was doing and who I was, and had some alliteration to boot, so that it would be memorable. I settled on travel, for the obvious reasons, and then chose toile as the second word of the title. Toile.
Toile (twahl)... not toil (toy-uhl).
Most of my friends call this page Travel and Toil, which, well, basically totally defeats the point of what I'm trying to say. This page is not about traveling and gruelingly hard work, it's about traveling and trying to be classy, with an edge of history and fashion. But, I am way too sensitive about my blog to actually correct them in person, so I'm doing it here. Plus, if my friends, who are mostly artistic types, don't know the name of a type of fabric print/ design... a lot of other people definitely won't either.
I'm not blaming you for pronouncing it wrong, I'm blaming me! So, no worries. I should buy you all cupcakes for this. I shouldn't have chosen such an obscure word. However, since I did... I'd like to attempt to clear things up a bit.
Toile is a type of print, used on just about anything, but most memorably on towels, curtains, and pillows. It is a set of small prints, often, but not always, only being two different colours. Families, children, women with long hair, and general provincial scenes are sometimes shown, but there are so many variations. Here are some examples, straight off of the first page of a google image search for "toile"...
That kind of stuff.
When it comes to toile... think of half the items ever designed by Vera Bradley, and you've pretty much got it.
According to Wikipedia...
" Toile is the name of a fabric that entered the English language around the 16th century[1] from a French word meaning "linen cloth" or "canvas" — particularly cloth or canvas for painting on. The word toile in modern English has multiple meanings...
Toile de Jouy, sometimes abbreviated to simply "toile", is a type of decorating pattern consisting of a usually white or off-white background on which a repeated pattern depicting a fairly complex scene, generally of a pastoral theme such as (for example) a couple having a picnic by a lake. Toiles also often consist of an arrangement of flowers. The pattern portion consists of a single color, most often black, dark red, or blue. Greens, browns, and magenta toile patterns are less common, but not unheard of. Toile is most associated with fabrics (curtains and upholstery in particular), though toile wallpaper is also popular. Toile can also be used on teapots, beddings, clothing, etc. In upper-class (primarily American, but also northern European) society, toile is often seen on dresses or aprons used at such events as country-themed garden parties or tea parties. Toile de Jouy originated in France in the late 18th century. In the French language, the phrase literally means "cloth from Jouy-en-Josas", a town of north-central France. Although it has been continuously produced since then, it experienced a marked upsurge in popularity around the year 2000. Previously only a decorating design, designers have been recently experimenting with toile-patterned apparel as well, although toile-patterned shirts were widely worn in the 1970s".
So, yeah. That's toile (twahl).
Toil (toy-uhl).... toil is another story.
Here are some of the google image results for "toil".
Unknown
... Yeah... you get the idea. Very different.
So, note to self: next time you name something, be it a blog or whatever, use a more normal word. Use a word people know. Or, you might have inadvertently completely misconstrued the purpose and title of your blog.
Oops.
Back to the photographs tomorrow :)
