It has been a long time since I have set a "new" table. In recent years the pandemic and my illness combined to keep my table settings infrequent and minimal, always defaulting to the easiest options that I had set before. This weekend, finally, I tried something different. Because it is so close to Valentine's Day, the grocery store was full of red roses so I thought maybe something in red would be appropriate for the season. I don't use red very often, but I did have a length of dull red linen from a project that never got going and I thought it would be easy to pair it with a lacy runner and the red roses to make a romantic sort of feeling on the table. Once I pulled those things together, though, they were flat and uninspired. I kept thinking PATTERN was needed, but was at a loss for what to do until a search through my bins yielded a chintz square that I made in the nineties when big florals were the rage. I thought it had the requisite romance, and because it introduced blue into the scheme I could use my Wedgewood reproduction plates for pattern on pattern. I usually use the little round red candle holders as vases, but they easily switched roles and echoed the true red of the flowers. It is pretty simple, really, relying on the patterns to underline the intense, dense roses as the the focal point. I'm not sure it is the best thing I have ever done, but it felt good to flex my ingenuity a little and come up with a response to the moment. The dinner party was quite successful in introducing some people who didn't know each other before and I hope the setting helped make them feel cared for and welcome.