Combinations of Stripes, Blocks and Color

Today the three members of our household each wore a plaid shirt. Funny how we all enjoy a good plaid. Plaid is fascinating to me because some of the combinations of color can evoke a variety of imagines and feelings, like of woodsmanship, scotsmanship, privateschoolmanship, scotchtapemanship, order, process, and complexity. Varying widths of stripes come together to cross, overlap, and weave to create new colors and layers of squares and rectangles. Plaid can be versatile -- understated or overstated; conservative or liberal; cheery or dark. But with all those things, plaid can still maintain a neutrality that is unparalleled by any other type of pattern. Flowers can be too floral and feminine, stripes can be too stiff and confining, circles can be obnoxious, argyle too conservative, and checkers too uninteresting.