Anyway: we love this bed. Min bed, was $750, on sale (only through tomorrow!), $675

In today’s Reader Mail:

Dear BS:

I know you don’t always handle furniture questions, but I was wondering what you think about used couches. My mom is telling me their bad feng shui, and I’ve heard they can even let bed bugs into your house! What do you think? I’d rather get something cool and used on Craigslist then new and boring from IKEA, but I don’t want the bed bugs!

Love,
P.

Oh! We hear you. We, too, fear the bed bugs, and we will say that this has been sufficient reasoning for us not to buy used—it’s the upholstery and all that that freaks us out. But we can’t afford the couch we really want (above), and so, we wait, couch-less, and eat on dinner on the floor.

We’d love to hear from everyone: horror stories? Excellent stories? Fill us in!

Above: Design Within Reach Theater sofa, $3750. To be clear, we find that cream color disturbing, but tragically they did not share a photo of the lovely sage one.

We had a friend staying at our apartment in Park Slope, and because she is an idiot, she cracked our (admittedly ugly) hanging-from-the-ceiling lighting fixture. She replaced it with something equally ugly. Now that we think about it, we obviously should have held her ransom for $2000, because we loooooove this “effervescent chandelier” (er, okay) and … this is the kind of thing that has us wondering if we could still sell our eggs. TMI, obviously, but we sure do like it.

Maybe we could instead become champion glass blower \ designer.

The effervescent chandelier from Anthro, $1999

Muji! We love Muji because everything is adorable, and most of it is so inexpensive. It is full of things we had previously known that we needed, including this bag of little wooden New York things:

New York in a bag, about $10. Also available: Paris, London, Tokyo, suburbs (on sale in the stores) and countryside (ditto).

We had forgotten how big the range is after just going to the Muji mini-shop at MoMA’s design store. This is much better.

And! These are collapsible cardboard speakers (about $40). Everything at this store is so much smarter than we are.

Shrink-wrap t-shirts! That is pretty much how we are at Muji, just walking around with little exclamation points coming out of our head. Sadly not available in women’s sizes. Shrink-wrap t-shirts, about $20

But everything is adorable, and there’s enough stuff to offer an afternoon’s worth of distractions … like this adorable teapot for $5!!!

Oh, dear, we just absolutely love this, and somehow the fact that it is currently $500 off makes us no less capable of purchasing it. Triple tss. Trellis armoire, was $1898, now $1398.95

We don’t care if this costs five billion dollars (hmm, a little closer to $7,000) but we love this so much, we can barely express it. Obviously. We can’t wait until Urban rips the designers off and gives us the $99 version.

“Shipping charges may apply.” Er, we bet.

Zanotta Fiore room divider, $7,457

Crochet. We are trying to crochet a hat. We are fucking it up. We can’t crochet. And still, still, we are convinced that if we can crochet this hat, at some point, far in the future, we would be able to crochet a rug like this one. It is even nicer in the other colors it comes in. Erm, this picture doesn’t entirely do it justice, we would like to say. Paola Lenti + Eliana Gerotto crochet rug, price on request

Really: Everywhere. Try watching 20 art students learn to crochet. This is something we have recently witnessed. It’s sort of like teaching cats to knit. It’s just not happening.

Still, we love crochet. And, for the third time, it’s everywhere, not just in Alice Temperley dresses. (Above, from net-a-porter.com.) It’s in furniture, like this Marcel Wanders crochet table, which is held up, apparently, by epoxy. And magic. Honestly, it’s amazing:

We don’t know why we should be so offended by its price when we’re dedicating half of our space this week to $1000+ handbags, but we are. Tss. Marcel Wanders Crochet table (large), $1945   

But back to the clothes. A.P.C. Fucking love A.P.C. And their website is shockingly functional and friendly. We see how this crochet-neck dress might look a little dowdy here, but with the right presentation it’d be absolutely dreamy. A.P.C. Dress with Crocheted Neckline, $163

And then this is a Sass & Bide crocheted bikini. When we were angry high school students, we tried to learn how to crochet and make bikinis, so as to redistribute the wealth of the skinny, annoying girls we hated. This failed, sadly. We’ve moved on. This is very hot-Raquel Welch to us.$203

We know. We’re a little on the border about this, but it’ll look adorable with all those menswear-y shorts they’re forcing down our throats this spring. Anna Sui crochet panel top, $144

And okay, we know it’s impossible to see, but there’s an adorable crocheted cardigan over that bizarre, poufy top. From BCBG, $158. No sales on the site, so it’s off to the mall if you’re into it. (And really, it’s cuter than the picture. Annoyingly.)

Napkins (below)! Everyone needs napkins, right? So much nicer than paper towels. Would like to add here that we’re watching the Suze Orman show and imagining the fit she would throw if someone told her about $10 packages of French napkins.

And notecards (way at top)! Even more than notecards! Maybe we could put these in vintage frames for immediate wall art, and Suze Orman would be proud of us for only spending $15 on wall art, which certainly should cost much more. Don’t they look like they should go over a nice sofa, perhaps the Amelie from Anthropologie? Er, now the total for wall art + sofa = $2613.

Is this not the most beautiful mirror? We couldn’t find it anywhere online, but they do have it at the SFMOMA store (maybe it outsmarted us at their online store) and also at Aime in London, where you’ll have the pleasure of paying twice what it costs in the U.S. Nice! Suze would love that. The more we watch her show, the more we know Suze Orman would think we’re great, big idiots.

And this must be them, for $30. Legitimate wall art. Without the sofa, $30. But truth be told, we really like Urban’s sofas. Tsss. Maybe Suze Orman could come over and cut up our credit cards. Maybe right after we buy that mirror.