Foodies out there, look out! Ice-cream lamps, cupcake stools and mushroom pillows are coming your way!
Jellio: Fun…by Design has two delicious products for foodies looking for furnishing. Check out the cupcake stool!
And for a healthier option, I spotted a vegetable box in Muji, perfect for mushroomy dreams.
There’s a bit of magic when your space is altered. I love it when the outdoors get mixed up with the indoors and vice versa. The best art installations I’ve seen have mostly been about altering your environment, which is familiar in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way.
Last year, I saw some pretty spectacular outdoor/indoor mix-up. I was reminded of this when I was looking at an Anthony McCall image on Chris’s blog. Technically the exhibition I went to in the Serpentine Gallery didn’t really bring the outdoors indoors but it helped fuel my imagination on what it was like to be able to walk towards the sunlight in a midnight sky.
This reminded me then of the time when we went to see Roger Hiorn’s Seizure. A flat in a housing estate in Elephant & Castle had been transformed into a crystal house.
On a smaller scale, a nice way to bring the outdoors indoors is through something like a tree bed. Having been brought up in the city, I have found nature slightly scary. While I can appreciate nature aesthetically, I am not entirely comfortable with being outdoors. I like that someone has thought to design something for the non-campers out there.
Last summer, on a glorious sunny day, I found myself walking along South Bank and stumbled upon the Armchair Theater.
But really, the quickest way to bring the outdoors indoors or the playground anywhere is with this swing skirt by Rachel Griffin. I love that with this one simple design, this is fashion that you can wear and play in anywhere, anytime. Easily going back in time and being a kid again.
Happiness is finding time for a sit down. True happiness however lies in finding a new favourite place. On Sunday, having a little stroll from Dalston, we looked inside Time For Tea. The sign for this wonderful discovery has filled me with much curiousity previously but having always been on buses when I passed it, I’ve not had a chance to peek in and investigate the delights it holds.
Finally on Sunday, we walked into a room, not unlike most grannies’ living rooms. There were a couple of tables and intimate groups of people sat about drinking tea from a variety of vintage tea sets. The room was filled with the sounds of swing, but curiously punctuated by the sound of someone typing on a typewriter.
We walked in through to the back passing “objects”. On an upside down chair, the legs now housed some hats; on a little dressing table, there laid some vintage brooches; and a whole load of records all for £2. On that wall, an old map of Australia, brown from age; on another some beautiful old clocks.
At the back of the room, we reached a little serving counter with an old cash machine. Shelves were lined with labelled jars of tea and there was even a selection of homemade cakes (on cake stands). At the corner of our eyes, we saw the typist. A girl of about 10 or 11 sat facing the room and typed away. She wore a flat cap and jodphurs and she was concentrating seriously.
After a sit down and a few cups of Russian Carnival (oh yes, even the teas are magical blends!), it was time to go. The girl -Tilly is her name, served us.
She had finished typing. I asked her what she was typing, was it a story?
“It’s a classic love story”, she replied.
That was a surprise. And she went on. She said it was set in the 40s.
But of course.
Going into Time For Tea is a magical experience. Stepping in you leave the craziness of Shoreditch High Street and back into time. Drinking tea and eating cake. I didn’t know it was so easy to forget 2009.
I quite cherish January when excessive everything comes to a halt. When it gets properly cold and you almost certainly step out onto icey pavements, you just have to slow down and absorb. I love the silence that comes with the cold weather. The sort of quiet that creates a sense of space, even in a city like London. It is during these times that I feel the urge to listen to quieter sounds, to stay in and to get cosy under the covers.
Tonight I’ve put on Olafur Arnaulds loudly so that my room is filled with the sounds of his computer explorations in strings and the piano. I am in the mood for beautiful and haunting images. Yesterday, I spent most of the day listening to Paavoharju and ended the day by watching Twin Peaks again. At the moment I am overcome by stillness and slowness.
Something in the music in Laulu Laakson Kukista reminds me of a French film I watched a few years ago. I remember how it had such a residual effect on me that I thought about the film for days and weeks. I am also reminded of the Lee Jones mix on Resident Advisor and I particularly love that Golden the Pony Boy is in the mix. For the longest time I could not remember where I’d heard it from until I started seeing the scenes from the magical Science of Sleep in my head.
These are sounds and images I’d like to wrap myself in when the days are short and it’s quietly freezing. These are the senses that need to be filled to keep me blissful.
If you thought that knitting had reached its peak with stitch-n-bitch groups, the knots are getting bigger in the form of guerilla knitting for the outdoors and phat threads for your interiors. I don’t really know how to knit and have tried to bring out my crafty side by picking up some free leftover yarn from work and finding some giraffe-stamped needles from the local charity shop. I have had friends try to teach me but I abandoned the project sometime last year when I got distracted by something else. But perhaps knitting graffiti can help me pick up those needles and cast some loops.
Graffiti has evolved quite a bit from its spraycan origins. Laser tagging and cuprocking are ones that spring to mind. Some might argue that guerilla knitting isn’t a true graffiti art (would you call it craffiti instead?), but you can’t really complain when it splashes colour onto our otherwise mundane (grey) concrete slabs. The other forms of graffiti can’t quite create that surreal feeling of seeing a knitted flower sprout out from the lawn.
The Happiness of Delicious Feeling 