Serendipitous Adventure

My motto is “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and again, I took a leap and had a great adventure. You might remember earlier this summer, I was host to Steve Busfield, a journalist with the Guardian, and his two charming daughters for a “Not Just The Wire” tour of Baltimore. Some of Steve’s colleagues from the Guardian are taking a trip from Baltimore to Bar Harbour, and Tweeting, Instagramming and blogging the whole thing. Throughout the day, I was keeping an eye on what the Guardianistas, Vicky, Greta and Kylie, were doing as they travelled around Baltimore. As I was leaving work, I read a post that they were having coffee at the Paper Moon diner, sort of on my way home. So I detoured over there and met up with them!

Paper Moon is a crazy fun house of a diner, with almost every square inch of the place covered with some sort of doll, toy, Pez dispenser, etc.

After a brief conversation, it was decided that I’d chuck my schedule and become the chauffeur for the evening and show the Guardianistas MY Baltimore. We headed to Charles Village to look at the Painted Ladies – row houses that have been brightly painted in every shade of the rainbow!

We went on a hunt for some of the murals dotting the new arts area, Station North. And found some great ones!

From there, we headed to Woodberry Kitchen, one of the area’s first farm-to-table restaurants where we mostly noshed our way through dinner, starting with the most amazing Oyster Stew and then on to a Kale Salad, and some of their amazing selection of house-made pickles!

We did a drive-by of some of Baltimore’s more interesting architecture, including my office.

One of the fun thing about this trip is that people are tweeting the Guardianistas suggestions as to places to visit, and they’re taking the recommendations and running with them! So we tried a new ice-cream shop just south of my house which opened a few months ago. It’s called the Charmery – a play on Charm City and Creamery. As Vicky and I held back the traffic, Greta snapped this picture.

We were joined at Charmery by Aisha who was also following along with the Guardianistas and lived close by.

By this time, it was time for a drink and we headed to a little “speakeasy” that several people had recommended. We met up with John, who owns the local bar, Bad Decisions, and we all tried some of the specialty cocktails that the bar, WC Harlen, makes. We had a chance to meet the bar’s owners, who’d just returned from a weekend at a gin distillery in Brooklyn! They made us all delicious cocktails, and after we’d finished one, we wrapped up the day!

To read more about their day in Baltimore and then to follow them up to Philadelphia, Boston and on to Bar Harbour, click here.  Thanks so much to the Guardianistas for letting me join the fun and to Greta Rybus for her terrific images, which I snagged from the Guardian’s Instagram feed!

Safe travels to my new friends!

How Well Do You See Shades & Hues? A Quiz

I thought I was pretty good at discerning the differences between shades and hues of colours, and in the scheme of things, I guess I am… But after I took this little quiz, I didn’t do as well as I thought I did.

X-Rite, the company which owns Pantone® the colour matching system, has this amazing quiz in which you move blocks, shading from one colour to another, in the proper order.

It looks like there’s a huge variation in the hues from one end to the other, but there’s only a subtle change. Since one out of 12 men and one out of 225 women have colour deficiency, this is an excellent way to see whether you do or not.

Take the test here, or click the image above. Let us all know how you did. The lower your score, the better you see colour. I got a 27.

Pictures from a Thursday Evening

I love Baltimore, but you’ve already gathered that, haven’t you? This is one of the reasons I love this place: I went to have dinner with two friends, one of whom lives downtown. As we waited for our third friend, we watched the local sailing club’s Thursday night races. They were starting just 100 yards from my friend’s deck, and they were literally tacking their boats just yards away from us.

We had a chance to watch the start of one of the races, which, if you’re watching from a distance, looks like complete chaos. Certain boats have the right-of-way, and others have to move to give them room. There can be a lot of screaming and yelling, but once everyone’s over the line, it’s all good… unless you hit another boat. Here’s a little video of the start.

 

To make the evening even better, we got to watch a near-full moon rise above Baltimore’s harbour. It was just gorgeous with the different sailboats, including an old Skipjack, floating on the water. Shortly after that, the famed Domino Sugars sign lit up and cast a beautiful reflection across the water. All in all, a wonderful and magical night with friends.

Put on Your Pearls, Girls!

To quote the divine Lulu Guinness… And if you love pearls like I do, then the V&A Museum in London is the place to be for their pearl for the next several months.

While gemstones go in and out of fashion (think pink diamonds), pearls have managed to be both classic and contemporary for centuries. Which is just about the span of the jewelry shown at the V&A. Examples go back to the Roman Empire.

Did you know that the colour of a pearl is dictated by their shells, which range in shades from white to pistachio green, pink, gold and aubergine.

French brooch of natural brown pearls, with platinum and diamonds, made in 1900

The Rosebery pearl and diamond tiara was made in London around 1878 and belonged to Lady Rosebery,
famed for her collection of jewels. It reportedly sold at Christie's in 2011 for more than £1m.

This 1930s Cartier necklace features natural Gulf pearls and platinum and diamond clasps

London jeweler Geoffrey Rowlandson designed and made Grand Jeté from gold, diamonds and two cultured baroque pearls

Do you have pearls? Do you wear them? For me, it’s yes to both!

Castle in Connecticut

I was strolling through some real estate website and stumbled across a gorgeous castle in Connecticut. I have to say one thing right up front – regardless of how much money you have and how much you throw at a new house, you can’t buy patina and natural weathering. You can try and fake it, but it will never look like what’s accumulated with the passing of the seasons and the years. {end rant}

The house, which the original owners referred to as a chateau, was built in the 1920’s by a crew of 100+ Italian stonemasons, for a New York surgeon and his socialite wife. It was designed by the architect Edward C. Dean in the Storybook style.

The estate is at the end of a mile-and-a-half long drive and sits on more than 250 acres, with more land available. The property has ponds, waterfalls, old growth woods, meadows and streams.

The main house has seven bedrooms and seven full baths, and three partial baths. But there is also a stone gatehouse with two 2-bedroom apartments, a 1-bedroom guest house adjacent to the pool and spa, a potting shed, a 3-stall horse barn with tack room, a chauffeurs garage with an apartment above, and another garage, which together provide garaging for 18 cars.

The original owners travelled extensively and brought back souvenirs of their travels to both build and fill the house.

After almost 100 years, the house has settled into its site and the trees and bushes have grown up around it, giving it that look that’s attempted frequently, but achieved rarely.

So, if you have a spare $8 million lying around, not doing much, or if you win the big lottery pool, this might be a house for you to consider!

Naturally, it’s being listed through Sotheby’s in Litchfield, CT.

Click here for more images and the specifics.

Nicole as Grace?

Have you heard about the upcoming film with Nicole Kidman playing Grace Kelly? The film will cover her years married to Prince Ranier III, who will be played by Tim Roth.

Others in the film are Parker Posey, Paz Vega, Frank Langella and Derek Jacobi in the supporting cast, and Robert Lindsay as Aristotle Onassis and Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Alfred Hitchcock.

What do you think of Kidman playing Kelly? Who would you have chosen?

Weekend Update, Part 15

Actually, it was a pretty quiet weekend. I was in a meeting for about six hours on Saturday, which killed a good chunk of the gorgeous day.

Fall arrived late on Friday with the temperature and humidity taking a huge dip. The sky looked different, the clouds were more fall-like and the angle of the sun had changed. I had to get an extra blanket for the bed!I have mixed feelings about fall – I love “sweater-weather” and wearing cashmere and wool, but I don’t like that the days become shorter and the sunlight isn’t as bright. I live at the bottom of a valley, and it takes forever for the sun to finally peek over the hill and the tree-tops and make it down to our little valley!

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I can’t believe how many acorns I have on my lawn. I can’t even go outside in bare feet because they’re everywhere! I wonder whether that’s an indication of a bad winter coming.

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I hate to do this, but I need to reinstate the comment validation. I took it off because people in the survey said they didn’t like it. I completely understand, but from my side, I am being bombarded with dozens and dozens of spam comments every day. They clog my in-box and then I have to delete them all, one at a time. There are so many other things that are a better use of my time than deleting comments like these:I get them in Chinese, Russian and barely literate English. They all have crazy links associated with them, which I never click!

Some people mentioned that they couldn’t comment because they didn’t have a blog or a gmail account. You can always click the “anonymous” button and comment that way. I appreciate each and every comment you take time to leave (except if it’s Russian spam).

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I am giving a lecture about why Baltimore’s not just The Wire, on October 1, as part of the Kaleidoscope Continuing Education at Roland Park Country School. There are still some tickets available if you’re interested. Information is here. It’s going to be lots of fun and everyone gets a lovely parting gift!

How was your weekend?

Old St. Paul’s New Look

My father attended the 8:00 a.m. service at Old St. Paul’s Church ever since I can remember. He was sometimes one of only ten or fifteen attendees, which usually included the Mayor of Baltimore, who later became the Governor of Maryland. The church is sort of gothic in style, and sits on what was the highest piece of land in Baltimore when it was acquired in 1729. The current building, one of four which have housed Old St. Paul’s is 158 years old and it was showing its age.

The church was, in Robert Frost’s words, lovely, dark and deep. The reverend could barely see the people in the back pews and the colours had been darkened by a scrim of incense smoke. Recently, the parishioners decided to do something about that and restore their church to its former glory.

They called in Matt Mosca, a chomochronographer, who specializes in historic paints and colours. What he unearthed surprised everyone – the church had been painted the colour of sun-splashed wheat. So that is what the church members selected and that’s what is on the church walls now. Complementary shades were picked to highlight the church’s architecture and everything came together during ten weeks of the summer.

Another discovery was a set of early plans of the current building which showed stars strewn across the ceiling of the church, and while there was never any proof that this was carried out, stars now cover the deep blue ceiling.

Many of the windows at Old St. Paul’s were made by Louis Comfort Tiffany and are still in situ today..I know that this will be a huge improvement, and I am just sorry that my father isn’t alive to see it!

Images: Baltimore Sun