And So It Begins…

The search for the perfect present for each person on your list. I am attending my first holiday fair this weekend at my friends’ shop, Halcyon House Antiques where I hope to find a few presents.The owners told me that they have four holiday fairs in the next two weeks, including one today!

Several years ago, my family, including my siblings and their spouses, and nine nieces and nephews, decided to choose names, which makes things a little easier. But to put a twist on that, we choose a letter of the alphabet and everyone has to buy a present beginning with that letter. I think that last year’s letter was P.

Once again this year, I am going to be an advocate for Small Business Saturday, November 30th. A number of my friends own small businesses and shops, and I do my best to patronize them, and I encourage others to do so as well.

My friends at With Gratitude are great about supporting local artists in their shop. A local artist makes these fun necklaces from old watch faces. The price point on them is really reasonable and each piece is unique.

At Halcyon House, I am always drawn in by their great selection of jewelry and accessories!It’s so hard to choose which piece I want when I am there, and I am usually racked with indecision (I am a Libra) and end up not getting anything at all… some of the time!

Pal Andrea who owns Bosom Buddy Bags has such a sense of style. I am carrying one of her bags these days and I constantly get stopped to ask where it came from!Her artisans live and work here in Baltimore, so that’s doubly good!

Stephanie from The House Downtown always has the best accessories for the house and such a discerning eye.She even has an on-site design studio for consultations and bigger design jobs.

So this holiday season, do what I do… support small businesses, especially ones where you know the owners. You’re never going to get personal service at a big box store like you will at a store where you know the people who own and run the business.

Purple Passion

I don’t know whether you’ve seen this house in England that’s making the rounds, but someone’s got a passion for PURPLE! In Baltimore, we take our passion for purple pretty seriously, as that’s one of the team colours for the Ravens. But I think that this might just be too much, even if we do go back to the SuperBowl (doubtful this year!). Take a look!

Thank goodness for the white accents!

50 Shades of Purple

The purple carpeting is climbing up the sides of the tub!

That chair looks very uncomfortable.

Wait… the dining room opens onto a bedroom?

Purple carpeting in the kitchen. {Shudder}

The funny part is that the house looks pretty normal from the outside!

Yours for a mere £400,000!

I’ll Take This: Plan de London

You might remember a few years ago when I wrote about the amazing Turgot Plan de Paris. I had put it on a large wall in my former house.

Unfortunately, when I eventually took it down in preparation for moving, Connor chewed several pieces of it and they were unsalvageable for the new house, in which there’s a perfect hallway.

A month or so ago, I was looking back through old posts from Ben Pentreath, a London-based architect and shop-owner, and saw that he had a a map of London, similar to the Plan de Paris, in his flat.

Amazingly, the sections fit PERFECTLY on the wall!

Ben said it was the John Rocque map of London, done in a similar style to the Michael-Etienne Turgot map of a similar period, in this case, 1746. It’s officially called The plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark and is on a scale of 26 inches to a mile. For more information on the map, click here. The map shows internal details for some buildings, such as St Paul's Cathedral, and in less densely populated areas gardens are shown.

And damn if there’s not a link to each piece of the map! I might have to print it out again! I’ve been using Staples to print large format pieces, and since everything’s digital, they do a great job for not a lot of money!

If you don’t want to go to the trouble, the map is available here for a mere $850. I think that I paid $60 for the Paris map. It’s in 24 sheets of cover-weight stock. Or you can buy the map at 1/10th of its original size for $35.00. Ben’s currently in negotiations to re-produce the John Rocque map and he told me to look for it sometime in 2014.

I saw another one listed for $2,400, but the link was broken. However, someone had this fabulous comment, “Old maps make your space seem exotic and traveled.” Quite a trick.

This contemporary Plan de London was produced in 2012 for the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics. It’s about 35 x 20 inches and is printed on canvas. It took three years to draw.Only 200 were printed and at £79, that seems like quite a good deal. There’s a paper version for £15. Click here for details.

Do you like  maps as much as I do?

I’ll Take This: Bolthole in Brighton

One of my favourite scenes in the movie, “The King’s Speech” was in the speech therapist’s office with all of the peely wallpaper and mottled plasterwork.

I was really intrigued by that room, which I understood was a brothel in real life.

As I was poking around The Guardian, I saw a similar “holiday flat for let” in Brighton, England. A glass cupola, distressed walls, velvet headboard and wood wainscoting! What’s not to love (aside from the Ikea light fixture hanging down the middle)?

This is another view of the room.

As is this. I am actually quite torn about this place – some of it’s fabulous and some’s pretty ghastly. And the listing says it’s a ground floor flat, but I don’t see how that’s possible with the massive skylight.

It’s right on the beach, with a view out to sea.

There are two other bedrooms, and oddly, they both look like this:

One of two reception/living rooms with what loos like an antler lamp. I do like the metal table on the left side.

And this looks like the other.

And another view of the room.

Interior hallway with reclaimed planks.

The loo with some original details.

Right down the road from this:

This flat sleeps six and is £538 a week. Details here.

My New Fave Read!

I can’t even remember how I discovered this, probably googling for something random, but the day I discovered the Financial Times’ How to Spend It website, was one happy day! The tagline is a website of worldly pleasures from the Financial Times.

It presumes that you have bucket-loads of disposable income, and even if you don’t, it’s loads of fun to peruse. It does have a British/European slant to it, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Someone there has a great sense of humour and the columnists have the best titles:

I particularly like their Diary of a Somebody, in which a “somebody” writes about their week. It was in reading one of them, that I discovered the amazing Cheapside Hoard which I wrote about recently. I’ve also found good sources for books, and some other great tips. also love Van der Postings, the musings of the wonderful Lucia Van der Post, whose writing I discovered when I lived in the UK.

Literally, every time I check in to How to Spend It, I find something new! I like that some of their articles are relatively long – 1,000 words or more. You get in-depth information in an age where most everything is just a snippet. An interview with Paul Smith ran well over 2,000 words.

It’s a big rabbit hole, but you’ll be better for reading How to Spend It. It’s not dumbed down at all, and in fact, I think you’ll be even more clever if you read it. You’ll thank me later.

My Latest Project

I don’t watch television and although I have one, friends laugh at it because it’s so small. Instead of watching TV, I like to have a project or two going on. Or else I like to read.

You might remember from a year or so ago, all of my sweaters got chewed on by nasty evil moths. Of course, they go for the nice yummy cashmere ones instead of the old wool ones. Since I couldn’t bear to throw them all away, I started cutting them up and making scarves. See here. When I ran out of my sweaters, I started trolling thrift shops for more. I’ve got a wonderful cashmere throw, which I love, but I kept thinking how fabulous it would be to make a cashmere blanket! I’ve been hunting around for the perfect technique to use to make it, because I don’t want it to be too heavy or too thick. As I hunted around, I found a blog post from someone in Lebanon who made a cashmere sweater blanket.

I pulled out all of my sweaters in shades of pink and orange, along with a few in pale purple and orchid. I cut out 121 8x8 inch pieces and stacked them up. The finished size of the blanket will be about 77x77 inches and 11x11 rows.

My next challenge was how to lay out the pattern. I had between four and twelve pieces of each of 16 colours. I hunted around for a random pattern generator and finally found one that was for tiles. I needed a program where the number of colours and the number of each colour were variable. So after naming all of the colours and counting the number of pieces, and then transferring that to an excel spreadsheet, I got my pattern.

I stacked all of the squares by colour, numbered each pile and then started assembling the rows.

As I finished each row, I put it in a ziplock bag and then numbered the bag.That way, once I start and finish a row, it will be in the right order for the pattern – although, since it’s random, I guess it doesn’t matter too much! It will just keep me a bit organized.

The one thing I’ve been stewing about is how to finish the edges, because unlike wool, cashmere does not felt. Luckily, the blog from Lebanon had the solution - modified pojagi seam! It’s a Korean technique and when I saw it, I knew it was perfect.

Basically, you sew two pieces together, right sides facing each other. Then you press your seams open. Next, you run a zigzag stitch down the raw edge of the seam. The actual pojagi seam is a little more complex than this, but this will be fine. On the right side, the zigzag stitches create a nice pattern in the material.

And on the wrong side, the stitching acts as a seam binding, holding down the raw edge so it doesn’t unravel.

I have finished one row of the blanket and am quite pleased with the way it looks. I know a couple of the colours will be a bit jarring together – especially the fuchsia and the orange, but overall, I think it will work.Stay tuned for the finished product in a week or so!

Ring It In

For at least 2/3 of my life, I’ve worn a small gold signet ring on my right hand. At this point, I am not exactly sure where it came from, but I’ve worn it so long that my finger’s indented where the ring sits.My house was robbed a few months after I returned to the States, and every single piece of jewelry that I had, with the exception of the pieces I was wearing, was stolen. So I have very few pieces of “good” jewelry, and I wear what I have.

A while ago, I heard something hit my tile floor, and looked down and saw my little gold ring. The gold in the back had worn through and had just broken. Luckily, I heard it fall, otherwise the ring would have been lost. After faffing around for months, I finally took it to a goldsmith friend, Lauren Schott, who repaired it for me, courtesy of my mother who did this for my birthday. Lauren, who is so talented, did a beautiful job of repairing and strengthening the ring, which has more sentimental value than actual value.

Here are some of my favourite pieces of her work.

18k yellow gold handmade chain with uncut diamond crystal bracelet

Kallatis - Therace Moesia Infarior 3rd century BC - Black Sea Ob. Apollo 18k yellow gold and .09 ct diamonds handmade chain bracelet

18k yellow gold and aquamarine ring

14k yellow, rose and white gold Mokame' wedding bands for our friends Mike & Chick

Constantine I and II with tourmaline and pearl earrings

14k white gold with amethyst and seed pearls

18k yellow gold pendent with peridot, tanzanite and diamonds

I am so pleased to have my ring back on my finger and delighted that Lauren helped me accomplish that!