New York

Our quick jaunt up to New York yesterday worked perfectly and was just the respite that my friend Julie and I needed. It strikes me that New York now seems to be more like the Jay Z and Alicia Keys song than the Frank Sinatra one.

We started our tour with a stop at M&J Trimmings, which is a veritable rainbow of ribbons, badges, feathers and fripperies. Walls of passementerie in every possible combination of tassel, ball and bobble.and insignia badges enough to start your own army.

Julie and I traditionally have lunch in Chinatown at a dim sum joint. If you don’t know what this is, it’s lots of fun – all sorts of delicacies are wheeled around on carts and you pick and choose from each trolley. The selections are marked in Chinese on a card and at the end, it’s tallied up and you pay the tab. From there, we headed to our favourite shops – Muji for the spare Japanese style, and Pearl River for the over-the-top Chinese style. Of course, we bought things at both places, including a  hanger for drying clothes and fabrics, which will be handy, and a pig kitchen timer for my chef friends, Cat and Dog, who took care of Connor, the most stubborn dog in the universe!

We then headed to ABC Carpet and Home, one of New York’s most interesting stores, with its ever-changing display of mini-shops and its in-house Conran store. No offense meant to ABC, but as a non-profit professional, I had to laugh at their mission statement, which is nearly incomprehensible:

abc home’s mission is to serve by manifesting a retail paradigm shift in which we compose a revolutionary platform for offering cause related product through beauty, experience, and magic, in order to guide you to creatively express your individuality, values and to actualize home as sacred space…

It sounds like it was written by an MBA candidate for a creative project in 2001. Some of the bad buzzwords include manifesting, paradigm shift, platform, product, and actualize. ABC… no one talks like this and furthermore, no one really understands what this means. {End of rant}

Here are some of the things I liked at ABC. The wall of cashmere scarves, mirroring the ribbons we saw at M&J earlier in the day. Lots of old hotel silver, priced a lot higher than my pieces! A book by fellow bloggers, 1802 Beekman, along with some of the products from their farm. This dresser for my friend I Love Lime Green!  Fabulous butterflies made from old maps. They were commissioned by Conrans. I was very excited to see some beautiful napkins made from Thai Silk. Since I now have yards and yards of this fabric, I’ve been pondering what I can do with it. This is one good idea! From ABC, we headed diagonally across the street to Fishs Eddy. It was jammed with china and glassware, and since we were carrying both umbrellas and bags, we were both a little worried that we’d make a wrong move and take out a stack of china plates! I couldn’t decide whether I was amused or creeped out by these hands. They were miniature glove models. There’s something sinister about these, don’t you think? We ended the day meeting up with fellow blogger, Central Bark Design, sans her pal, Abbey. We had a lively dinner at a small French bistro in the theatre district before we headed back to Baltimore.

It was a wonderful day, but a long one. However, it was just what the doctor ordered!