Office Talk

This week I reorganized my office, even to the point of moving out the velvet daybed so I could have an L-shaped desk to supplement my standing desk. Having just spent two days in there enjoying all that hard surface area for spreading out papers, my hips are expressing an interest in having the daybed back. But how I can I give up this perfect Zoom background?

Once I get seating sorted out, I'm sure this new design is the way to go. Among the items that stayed are this photograph, which I've displayed in my work space since my high school years when I found it in a charity shop.

I once used Google Images to find out where it was taken and noted it down, then put the paper away carefully so I'd always remember, and then forgot where the paper went. But I do know it's a cathedral town in England. I'd like to visit it someday in person but really, just this framed photo has always been an inspiration to me for some reason. I'm so glad somebody took the trouble to take it, frame it, and donate it rather than tossing it in a bin.

Other things I'm pleased to keep handy are this coaster from the London Underground Museum (a gift from myself), and jewellery stand from Anthropologie (a gift from a friend.) They're like monograms for my desk, reinforcing this tiny room as mine to work in.

 

Then there's my painted metal tray, dating back I am guessing to the 50s or maybe 60s?

These were very popular for a time and people maybe even served drinks on them, judging by the scratches. All I know is, the colours are great. I found it at an antique market for cheap and have always loved looking at it, but it's a challenge to display so it doesn't often get pride of place. At the moment, it's taking advantage of the seam in the standing desk. It's playing nicely there and not getting in the way at all so I'm going to leave it there a while.

I got this kitchen wall shelf at an antique market too, and painted it to match the walls when we first moved back after the renovation. Before that I'd painted it yellow, so this is much more sedate. Perfect for showcasing a shifting display of things that please me, like my collection of pocket-sized Filofax planners.

On the bottom shelf I have placed a napkin holder my mum once gave me (currently storing two packs of small size blank greeting cards) and a pair of mittens her mum once knit. Also, my Strunk and White! I refer to that thing with grammar-related questions ALL the time, when I can find it. Now that I've got it out front and centre again, the finding it part should not be an issue.

Okay I'd best be on my way if I'm going to get in a Saturday afternoon walk. Hope your weekend is going beautifully! I'll leave you with a closeup of these pretty roses, and I thank you again for spending a little time with me. See you next week, sameish time, same place.

Edited to add:

A friend reached out after reading this and suggested my mystery photo is of Durham Cathedral! And she's right, per photos I found of near-identical views. Now I want to go visit even more because I bet the tea shops nearby are fantastic.

An early look at the new kitchen

It's been a while since I've shown you any pictures from the house, and since it's either that or a picture of the bowl of un-cast-on yarn that torments me from its position beside my phone, let's look at the custom cabinetry!

There is a lot of it. What you're looking at here is a view of the living room from the place where our kitchen table will stand. There will be a TV in the centre below a set of shelves that stand behind glass doors, but all around it we will be storing books. The really special books, like my original Judy Bolton collection, will go behind glass so they don't get dusty, and I'll try to make them look pretty too.

Digression alert:

I was of two minds when we bought our table… or rather when it arrived after being made for us. I had always wanted a white painted table, but when it came I realized it really is white, and everything else in our kitchen is off-white. I may paint it again, but I'm putting a tablecloth on it anyway and the legs are heavily turned so it may be okay in the end. The other surprise was the tabletop itself which is quite thin and has crisp edges all the way around in a way that looks more modern than I expected. I have come to love that though, now that it's got a tablecloth over it. It just ends up looking very clean!

Most people I think would have put an island where we are putting a table, but I think the table will look more traditional as well as being nicer for sight lines and more flexible if we are having a crowd in and need to move the table somewhere else either for seating/standing room, or buffet duty. And because we decided in the end to give up on the dream of cross backed French café chairs and go with super comfortable, leather topped, square bench seats to position around it, the table will function like an extra workspace anyway. I mean it is much easier to quickly move a cookie sheet or vegetable platter onto a table if you don't have to pass over chair backs first. Frankly it would be very easy for someone to put an island in later if necessary, and though it couldn't inexpensively have power or plumbing there would be both right behind it… right here, in fact:

This vertical band of open shelving faces into the living room. At the bottom it is open onto the counter area beyond, but the top three shelves are backed by upper cabinets. The day I took this picture, we were waiting for our countertop to be templated. (The counter has since been cut and will be installed next time there are enough clients in the city all ready for our counters to go in, because the supplier is located about 90 minutes away.)

This particular bank of cabinets is for breakfast cereal and tea and toast… The small sink is at the far end and will be deep enough to fill a kettle without being in the way of anyone who is washing dishes or getting things out of the refrigerator around the corner. If we're having a party, it will probably serve as a drinks station, with a tray of glasses and different beverages easily accessible.

Just around the corner, as I mentioned, is the cosy section of the kitchen:

This part is what I imagine a galley kitchen in a small apartment in Manhattan would look like. It's probably too tight for some, and I'm not sure whether we will find it difficult to have the refrigerator in such a narrow space over time (it is tucking in at the end of the counter on the right, past the window.) But there was no other place to put it so we're living with it! The advantage of this layout is that the messy part of the kitchen – the sink, the refrigerator – is hidden from view if you are in the living room. The dining room is beyond through the doorway, but I am planning to hang a beautiful drape there so that if we are having a dinner party we can draw it shut and hide our food prep shame.

If you can believe it, that window was once over our tub – that's where our bathroom used to be. It was the only window we could keep on that wall so we are using it to bring natural light to our sink.

Standing where the range will go, you can see the shallow counter that faces the refrigerator and main sink, as well as the pantry area that frames it.

The pantry is only about 15 inches deep, which is perfect because we won't lose things in the back now, and it's very tall, reaching almost to the ceiling along with all the other upper cabinets.

My plan for those top, almost unreachable shelves, is to store seasonal decorations right there in the kitchen where I can get at them quickly as special holidays come up. Or maybe they will fill up with boxes of knitting, ahem.

Getting back to that shallow counter though – this is, to me, the second most special place in the kitchen! I am so excited to have a dedicated place to manage all the mail that comes into the house, all the paperwork we ever have to do. It is incredibly quiet in this space because of all the cabinetry around it. I plan to use it as a standing desk area, so that I'm not just sitting all the time when I work. And again, if we are having a party, it's a perfect table for setting out trays of nibbles or a jug of cider surrounded by some glasses.

I don't have a picture of the most special place, which is the baking counter. It will be on the other side of the kitchen table facing the tea and cereal counter and because there is no upper cabinet there, I can leave my mixer out all the time exactly where I need it. Yay!


It's just about a year since we started planning our kitchen, and obviously we have put a lot of thought into it, but in a year you can change your mind about a lot of things. If I were doing it today I would think seriously about the kind of cabinet door that is inset in the frame with a visible hinge. My understanding is that they're not as popular in North America as they are in the UK, and definitely they are a lot more expensive which really counts when you are talking about this much custom millwork, but I love the way they look like built-in furniture.

I still feel our colour choice was right for our house because in spite of many additional or larger windows than what we had originally it could be quite dark inside if we hadn't chosen so many light finishes. I have to admit though, the other day I saw the most gorgeous kitchen on a UK househunting show where all the cabinets were painted an amazing sky blue. The advantage of white cabinets is that they don't date and it's true that sky blue could get tiring and look dated fairly quickly. But the way that kitchen was done it just looked vintage and to me, vintage never goes out of style. It made mr feel so happy! I would be really tempted to do a blue kitchen if I were buying ours now. Even though obviously our kitchen is visible from other rooms and having a colour there would really limit what we could do elsewhere. Probably it's a good thing we chose this last spring, huh?


When you are working with a contractor like ours, who is really an artist and insists on a high level of quality control for every finish, you are going to be looking at a long renovation. Also you are vulnerable to setbacks like health issues or traffic accidents and we've had our share of those! Thankfully everyone involved with our project is fine right now and will hopefully stay that way, and the end is definitely in sight.

Underneath the heavy paper in these pictures is a beautiful hardwood floor in clear stained maple sourced locally and installed by a very good (and super nice) tradesman. The temporary stairway you can almost see from the living room door is about to be replaced with the final set, again in clear stained maple with white risers. We asked for a lot of fancy trim – crown moulding, complex window and door framing, and rich-looking baseboard – and that takes time to cut and install but it's nearly done now too.

And it all looks so beautiful. It's still a small house really, but every bit has been so thoughtfully finished, we feel incredibly fortunate to have it to move back to. The knitting pictures I will be able to take in this house… honestly I can't wait!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you back here again very soon.

A crafty person's dream living room

Today I thought I'd do something a little different.  A lot of design blogs are doing 'dream living room' posts with an eye on furniture from Arhaus.com and I thought I'd do one too, but with the Hugs touch (aka, no moodboards, I don't know how to make those.)  Plus, it's so simple.  It's this!

Well, I have a little more to say than that, because hello, Chatterbox Here.  This living room is part of the set from The Holiday, starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz.  This was where Kate Winslet's character got to put up her feet when in the UK - I didn't see this movie but isn't it the one where the two main characters swap their houses, and each fall in love with some guy in the other one's country?

If I'm honest, there are very specific reasons I haven't been able to forget this living room.

Blue velvet
Giant footstool with curvy black legs
Big fireplace complete with fire
It's clearly in England, which is where I would live if it was practical
There's a pretty good lamp at one end of the big sofa
There's another sofa tucked into a window for natural light
I can't stop looking at THAT BLUE VELVET BENCH THINGY.

The rest could all go, really.  Maybe even everything but the blue velvet bench thingy which is the first and last thing I see when I look at this picture.


Living Rooms: the concept

When I decided to do this post I got thinking about my friends' and neighbours' living rooms, and the ones I see in magazines.  They seem to fall into three categories:

the ones for entertaining in (lots of seating and negative space for standing and, often, the latest decor)

the ones for reading books or otherwise being cosy in (like the one pictured above)

the ones for watching TV in (which mostly have a TV in them)

My preference is for a blend of all three, and if you're a crafty person you know why.  If you don't have lots of seating, how can you fit in all your needleworking friends for a social hour?  And of COURSE you have to be cosy for fiber related activities.  Crafty people are tactile by nature and always collecting different textures which eventually produce Cosy.  Or Chaos, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Finally, TV is the knitter's friend.

On top of all that though, I would want a living room that says "Hello Mary, welcome home, I love and cherish you no matter how many stupid things you did or had happen to you today, and I'm here to make you feel safe and creative and productive even if all you end up doing is collapsing on a convenient feather-stuffed cushion to consume Turtles while watching Pride and Prejudice for the 64th time, because after all, Pride and Prejudice needs to be watched and who else could possibly do it?"  And then ends that very long run-on sentence and lets me just sit quietly for a while.

Now: the specifics.


Feature #1: The Seating

Judging by my reaction to the Kate Winslet Stage Set, my dream living room has to have blue velvet in it.  And since I am absolutely besotted with the blue velvet daybed I bought for my office, and had already ordered a sofa in the same fabric for our soon-to-be living room, I am very happy to be able to show you a picture of same as my ideal sofa.  Just try to imagine there being enough space for the full size version instead of the much smaller condo sized one I purchased.  Less the rivet things, though I wouldn't refuse delivery if that's what came to the door.

This really is my sofa by the way, right down to the blue velvet, from Barrymore Furniture here in Toronto.  Generally I prefer a more English-style sofa, the one with the very gently curved arm and sloping undercarriage, but this flatter arm shape is way more compact and lets you snug a table right up alongside, so we will forgive it its mid-century modern leanings.  I mean I love that look too and have had tons of retro pieces and prints over the years.  No shade cast upon the mid-century modern thing.

Worth noting: the cushion is and should be stuffed with a huge amount of feathers so you sink right in.  Once you're sitting down you want to be able to claim, plausibly, an inability to extricate yourself so that somebody else will fetch you the sandwich you forgot on the kitchen counter.

The trouble with sofas is that they aren't so great for sharing, necessarily.  They might seat three, but you can't sit beside somebody to chat with them while you are both facing forward.  If you can only have seating for two in a room it's so much better to have armchairs angled toward each other as in The Holiday's English cottage living room.  And armchairs are not a bad bargain, either.  If you do have armchairs (and they are exactly the right width) you can prop your elbows up as you knit a quality I appreciate enormously.  But... it's an armchair.  You can't lie down on it, which is exactly what you will want to do after your guests are gone, having restrained yourself throughout their visit because Decorum.

So my dream living room, though it might perhaps also feature chairs, would be big enough for this gorgeous sofa I found at the Art Shoppe (another local furniture store), stuffed with feathers and upholstered in natural linen:

I love this thing so much.  I'm protected by the fact that Pete really dislikes it from noticing the way that its arms are too low to support your back if you swing sideways to knit with your legs stretched out, or that it's a bit short for stretching your legs out in the first place, or that the metal wheels would probably scrape etchings out of your wood floor, or leave giant wheel-shaped dents in your carpet.  All I have to think about is how gorgeous it looks, and how soft the linen is, and how deep and squishy the seat and back cushions feel.  While sitting on the blue velvet sofa instead, the better to admire it without complaint.
 
Although actually, one might also consider switching from the velvet to the linen sofa or vice versa depending on the season and the textile work being undertaken.  Cuddly velvet for winter knitting, cool smooth Linen for summer, or for spinning.  See?  Lavish sofa purchases: they're almost sensible.

Typing that I feel a bit foolish for choosing a velvet sofa and a sort-of corduroy fabric for my armchairs, because MAN am I going to be vacuuming up a lot of fluff from upholstery in our new living room.

But enough already: we have a big velvet sofa now, between two (yes, why not?) of the Napa Valley Settees which are facing each other.  And then maybe two armchairs facing the sofa, except in that scenario, where are the fireplace and TV?  Never mind, it's a dream living room, it would all work itself out.


Feature #2: The Horizontal Surfaces

Horizontal Surfaces is what tables got called when I was growing up, as in, "Every horizontal surface in this house is covered with books!"  Yeah, we were all readers at home, and woe betide anybody who put one down to go and get a snack or use the bathroom because when you got back, chances were good that somebody else would have wandered in and started reading from the beginning.

You're probably thinking I would choose for a coffee table the giant blue velvet bench thingy in my inspiration picture but No!  I would not.  Because even in my dreams I know that dust and toast crumbs happen and those deep valleys for the buttoned detail would be a daily nemesis for me.  Plus, I like to be able to slide a tea mug onto my table rather than lifting it over the edge of a tray, and anyway let's not pretend I would ever do anything but swing my legs up onto the sofa. It's not like I would need the squishy bench.

(it would go into the front hall instead, so I could look at it adoringly every time I went in or out of the dream house.)

The coffee table I would choose is the coffee table I'm going to order from a local custom furniture shop for my actual too-small-for-standard-furniture living room, which is impossible to clip in a picture of here but is very similar to the Toulon coffee table at Arhaus:

You probably know exactly why I love this table.  It ticks all the critical boxes.  Drawers to store the tape measure, darning needles, stitch markers, scissors, and playing yards (hey, I love euchre and cribbage, don't judge me.) Ample space below for baskets or stacks of books (the version I have on my shopping list is missing the shelf, but I can still stow baskets and probably vacuum with less effort so, tradeoffs), and a large surface for draping a runner and vase of flowers over, or to serve snacks on, or support a cushion, or host your mug of tea.  PERFECTION.

If there was space - and in my dream living room, there would be space - I would also want a table to write at.  I love Beckett, also from Arhaus:

To me, this is a genius piece of furniture.  It has black carved legs, a parquet top which gives texture, the brace is across the back legs instead of the middle so you can push in a chair or bench underneath it, and it is only about 10" short of the length I need for my office and 3" too deep.  Do you know how hard it is to find a desk with its brace in a logical place, a shallow depth, and a wide, uninterrupted work area?  It's really hard.  In my dream living room, there would be space for this one.

Of course you need side tables too, if you're having table lamps or don't have enough coffee table surface for a plate of cookies.  Mine would be square, with four legs so you can stack books under it, and have marble tops like in a Paris bistro.  I love marble and it's looking a lot like I'm not getting any in my actual living room, not even around the fireplace.  So let's pretend I found the perfect ones and imagine them repeated around the sofas.


Feature #3: The Drapes

I spent weeks looking at fabric for the house so I have no hesitation whatsoever in telling you that the drapes in my dream living room would be Tree Poppy, a large-scale brushed cotton fabric from Sanderson:

.... or more likely Amanpuri, in linen, also from Sanderson.  They are both reproductions of 1920s English prints and I love them both, but Amanpuri has more colours to play with which is why in my actual house the Tree Poppy will be in the stairwell and the Amanpuri gets the living room and my office.

Feature #4: The Blanket(s)

If you're going to relax in a room, there's a serious risk that you might get cold.  Or you might suddenly find yourself in need of a hug.  Or a scary scene might come on the TV and leave you looking for a makeshift wall to hide behind.  A really good blanket can solve any of these pressing problems for you, even the interior decorating kind one calls a 'throw'.  Technically a 'throw' is smaller than what you'd put on a bed, and should appear as an afterthought, strewn over the arm of a chair as though casually left behind when rising to perform some elegant domestic task such as making more tea, or wrestling the recycling out the side door to the bin on a commercial break from the scary movie running on your TV.

Because it is an interior decorating feature, the throw's colour and print should play nicely with the other features of the room and its texture matters.  For example, in a room with velvet and linen, a boucle fabric would look good, or a loose-weave cotton or something.  In my dream living room, however, the most important quality is SOFT.

The blanket has to be soft.  And long enough to cover your feet, because it's entirely possible that you sat down, then curled up, and now can't move, only to realize you forgot to leave a pair of handknit alpaca socks within reach.

(seriously this happens to me almost every day.  why can I never remember to bring over a pair of socks??)

At the Royal Winter Fair this year I bought myself a sort of cape/wrap thing in a 100% lambswool plaid from Patrick King, and it is wildly soft and cuddly.  Patrick King also produces blankets.  Sadly none of them combine the right colours for my dream living room.

So instead, let's go for a blanket from MacAusland's Woolen Mills in Prince Edward Island, since I had a memorable vacation there one summer with my family when my age had only just entered double digits.  A nice natural wool with either a blue or red stripe depending on which curtain fabric I chose.

Let's just pretend the blue stripe and the blue poppies are a perfect match, okay?  And if in person the cream colour proved to sort of scream at the linen sofa twins, it could be stowed in a natural woven basket or on the lower shelf of our coffee table.  Baskets are a hugely textural element to include in a room, so my dream living room would need one anyway... though it would have to be lined with fabric if blankets were getting tossed in there all the time.

Or maybe a black wire one would offer a fetchingly rustic note?

Hmmmm... I am feeling pretty smitten with this basket. 


Feature #5: The Throw Cushions

Okay, this one is a biggie.  A lot of designers are saying now that throw cushions really do make or break a room and I can see why, but only partway, because - have you noticed this?? - a lot of designers seem more engaged by appearances than function.

In a crafty person's living room, cushions perform very specific tasks.  They might raise your head just enough to see past your knitting needles, when you are watching TV in horizontal mode.  They might prop up your elbow when you are knitting at one end of a sofa and missing the other armrest, or when you are in an armchair too wide for your frame.  They might tuck behind your back to give you a little more support and push you forward on the seat while operating your spinning wheel.  They might get thrown onto the coffee table to elevate, and/or to protect the back of your legs, from the surface and edge said table.

Okay, those last two could be performed by a designer's choice of standard cushion shape.  And in my dream living room, in addition to a few small pillows in the drapery fabric the better to bridge it further into the room, the fabric I'd use would be sewn from Sanderson's linen Roslyn print in its palest colourway, which looks fabulous with Amanpuri.  You wouldn't expect that, but it really does!

plus a ticking stripe because I love stripes SO MUCH... maybe in black, to tie in the inevitably black TV set and floor lamps:

or maybe a vintage linen tea toweling such as the one I sourced for our kitchen windows, instead.  To use both would be way too much stripings.

I like a soft dense fringe on a pillow so - some would be trimmed with that, and some would have a crisp piped edge, and there would be a mix of sizes for stacking.

HOWEVER

throw cushions do not have to be square shaped, or round, or tubelike.  They can be rabbits.

Or swans.

Or LC.

Okay, LC (a hand puppet from Folkmanis, not a real calf) isn't stuffed quite enough to serve as a pillow but she is so happy-looking and would be adorable - or, in Interior Decor terms - 'whimsical' peeping out from behind a feather-stuffed square cushion.  LC came home with us from the Royal Winter Fair this year and honestly, she never gets old.  If you have a bad day, you need one of LC's sister cows for your home.

(really truly love the swan though, don't you?  those FEET!! totally adorable.)

The key to using stuffed animals as cushions is not to go overboard (poster child for overboard = me); buy animals made from only the softest fabrics; choose a variety of sizes and shapes to fill different gaps in cushion usage; and stick to fur colours that go with your decor.  After that, you can factor in cute.  There is never ever a shortage of cute.

Why choose inanimate furry friends for some of your cushions?  Because in addition to their oddly-shaped usefulness, they are cheerful and funny and if the only way you can get a crafty friend over is for him or her to bring a small child with them, said child is guaranteed a good time in your dream living room.


Feature #6: The Art

Of course, you need to have art on the walls, especially if you are crafty.  It's very very important for good vision to look up from your work from time to time and focus on something in the distance - what better something than a beautiful thing?

If you're going to hang art, I think it should be something that matters to you.  My dream living room would include a painting by Ady - I have several, and in my actual living room I'm going to hang Whiteswan Lake:

Ady was at a huge crossroads when she painted this, and I was present for most of it by phone.  After it came to live with me, the painting hung in my front hall on the wall facing our kitchen wall, which housed (on the kitchen side) our telephone.  I spent SO MANY HOURS on that phone over the years, talking to loved ones who are gone now, or to loved ones who were in desperate situations and calling to ask for advice or sympathy, which I always feel is a tremendous honour even at 11:30 at night (unless I have to get up at 6.)  Inevitably I would have the cord stretched around the corner, leaning on one wall and gazing at Ady's painting on the other.  As a result, these trees have valuable people and memories lingering among them.  It is the perfect living room art for a creative woman.

Also a favourite: vintage plates. I am a huge fan of dishes and for years I had these, and others like them, hanging on the wall in our old living room.  They made me so happy.  Still do, only at the moment they lie on a table with sweets or a candle resting on them.  Can't wait for them to go vertical again.

Another dream art item: enlarged and framed photographs.  I took so many pictures of clouds the last few years at the cottage, and when I colour corrected some of then I got combinations that would look amazing with the Amanpuri drapes.  Maybe with the Tree Poppy ones, too?

Yum.  Still love this picture.  If it was made big enough, you could see probably a thousand different things in these clouds.


Feature #7: The Lighting

Lighting is important in any living room but crafty people need task lighting.  You need a good overhead light in case you find yourself cutting out fabric on your nice roomy non-velvet coffee table, table lamps to spotlight where your bowl of current knitting stands, and floor lamps to provide swing-arm lighting.

For my casual dream living room, I would choose a black wrought iron candelabra like 'Graham' from Pottery Barn (which I did actually choose for our dining room):

and this swing-arm 'Kinetic' pharmacy floor lamp from Robert Abbey in - what, oil rubbed bronze? something that looks nearly black anyway - which I have already bought for our living room and is SO functional:

and 'Yolanda', a fetching mercury glass table lamp from Currey and Company which I could only ever afford in a dream.

Probably it's too fancy for the pharmacy floor lamp.  What do you think?  Bad combo or charmingly mismatched?


Feature #7: The Odds and Ends

The stand for the Ashford Knitter's Loom.  Need I say more?


Feature #8: The Books

Probably it goes without saying that a living room needs books.  There are always books going in and out the door of ours, but I think a good mini library for this Dream Edition would include:

1/ the entire set of Margaret Sutton's Judy Bolton mystery books

2/ a collection of knitting stitch dictionaries, including Japanese ones (so creative)

3/ a stack of picture books of English country houses and their topiary gardens

4/ a stack of coffee table books of portraits of famous people, because faces are so fascinating, especially as they change over time.



Well, that was a very long post.  Did I miss anything, apart from a carpet?  I would be skipping that, the better to admire my beautiful wood floor.

What would you put in your dream living room?

Ready for the knitting party

I missed posting yesterday because it took longer than I expected to unpack New Dishes!! I also finished a sock, but let's talk dishes because some days, you just need a few minutes to empty your mind by focusing on something stress-free, like clean, simple pottery.

Okay so that picture tells the end of the story.  I could stop writing now with "At the last minute, I found off-white porcelain dishes and moved to the next thing on my Moving Home list."  But where's the fun in that?  And anyway, if you look closely, you might see a tiny shadow up in the top right corner of that photo.

Yep, it's a plaid dish.  Which looks rather fetching with the off-white porcelain mug, don't you think?

Storytime:

Last weekend, Pete took pity on my dish-set angst and asked me to take him to an actual store to look at and touch actual dishes.  He too wanted to be able to put out matching dishes at suppertime without cobbling sets together (okay, we haven't broken THAT many dishes in the last 15 years, but the day is coming soon when cobbling will be required.)

So, we went to the big posh store where we went when we were first engaged, and where we returned when our foolish choice of easily chipped stoneware came back to bite us, and where we bought cutlery when I got tired of the sharp edge on the handles of the cheap set we started out with.  (honestly: how hard is it to get these basic design features right?)

We looked at plain white bone china - strong but stark - and fun earthenware - pretty but so, so breakable - and plain white porcelain - all in sets too 1960s for Pete or too fussy for me.  In the end we agreed on only one set and we both loved it so, so much.  I'm not even going to paste in a picture or include a link because I won't torture you like that.  It was from Gien, a French manufacturer of earthenware, and it would have cost us about $1700 before tax and without completer pieces like a cream and sugar or, heaven forbid, a teapot.

I mean maybe if the set was also capable of walking itself to the dishwasher and then clamoring up to the cupboard after its bath, all without chipping itself, I would consider that.  But probably not.

When we left the store I was feeling quite anxious.  Obviously there was only one thing to do.  I said "Pete, I saw a black plaid plate at HomeSense (discount housewares store, if you're in the US you probably have this chain also) and I would like to buy one if they haven't already sold out, because right now I really need a comfort dish."  We've been married a long time now so he didn't question my logic at all, bless him.

Anyway when we got to the store there were TONS of the black plaid dishes!  I guess nobody is lining up to eat off a plate that looks like it needs a good wipe to get the coal dust off it or something?  Even if they are made by Royal Stafford, my favourite for made-in-England earthenware.

I looked at the shelf - the dinner plates, the sandwich plates, the pasta bowls - and I said Pete, what if we just did this as a set?   He considered, perhaps factoring in how quickly earthenware breaks and how quickly he could get us back to a plain white set of some kind, and then said Yes, it's a good pattern.  This led to him accepting plate after plate as I checked for flaws - we wanted a 12-place setting so that in five years we still have a respectable number of intact dishes - and then carrying armfuls to the checkout.

Several salespeople were wrapping the majority of our 36 dishes as I carried the final stack of pasta bowls past a table display of -

white porcelain dishes.

You may recognize these.  They are the plain version of the cottage-gardeny set I liked originally from Villeroy and Boch.  I balanced the bowls carefully and picked up a mug to check the manufacturer and it was, in fact, Villeroy and Boch.  Steeply discounted Villeroy and Boch, I might add.

I went very calmly to the checkout with my choice of plaid pasta bowls and said, I am not going to ask you to stop wrapping these dishes, but Pete, please go look at that table.  He came back and said, You know what, I like the ones on the table even better.  So I said, "Let's Get Both!"

Which we did, obviously.

So here we are with two sets of dishes, which I hope will prevent me from needing to go dish shopping again for a really long time, for about half of what one set of porcelain dishes would have cost us anywhere else.  Even after you factor in the extra pieces (bowls etc.) that I bought from the Villeroy and Boch site when we got home and then unpacked last night.

End of story, beginning of fun and games.

How cute is this possible table setting with a bunny dish on black plaid and a matching-ish mug on the side?  I mean we can only do that for three, since I broke the fourth bunny bowl, but still.  If we have more people I could serve sandwiches, because I have 8 bunny plates in that size.  Sandwiches are more practical for a knitting party anyway.

And what about this setting, on the plaid tablecloth I bought for Christmas when we went back to the store for the second load of dishes?

Oops, I guess I left that part out of the story.  The Homesense we went to is a 10-minute walk from our condo, on a super busy street where parking is not really an option, so we carried the two sets of dishes in two loads, in bags.  Oddly it was my legs that hurt afterward - for two days - and not my arms, no idea why.

And how cute will our little kitchen table be, set with these dishes and surrounded by porcelain-white cabinets tricked out with this hardware?

It's matchy with our countertop, but not too matchy.

I didn't expect to love the cabinet hardware we chose but in fact, I am constantly holding these samples while I'm on the phone or otherwise pondering things - they feel so nice in my hand and the shape, size, and soft iron finish is so much like the hardware my grandfather used for a desk he built in the 1930s, and which is going into our front hall.  Plus: they are from Martha Stewart, and available at Home Depot, for which I have many many gift cards.  I might not even have to come up with much cash for these things, though actually, there is a ton of cabinetry going into our house, so... yeah.  They'll cost me.

Okay, that's enough kitchen stuff for today I think, don't you?  (too much, even!) I'm sure we all have more important things to take care of over the weekend and hopefully some of it involves knitting.

Take care and I'll see you next week!

Wasted knitting time: the hunt for new dishes

My friend Doris and I have much in common, perhaps because we were born the same day only a few hours and miles apart, and this week we discovered we are both hunting for new every day dishes.  Our current sets have reached the point of 'more broken than whole'.  We also have the same taste when it comes to our homes so we are both quite attracted to 'Cottage' from Villeroy and Boch:

This set is so perfect for our house that it should be a no-brainer.  However, as I'm pretty sure you've noticed, I'm a chronic over-researcher.  Also, it's quite expensive.  So I am still looking.

I've had two sets of every day dishes over the last 23 years, which is probably pretty good, especially since the first set was made of stoneware and we went through a few weeks of its lifetime with no dishwasher.  It seems the trick to handwashing plates is to do them one at a time in the sink or in some other way protect them from smashing into each other, ahem.  The second set was porcelain and held up much better, but it was already discontinued when we bought it, and replacement plates have been harder and harder to come by even on replacements.com.

Before those two sets, and after a series of depressing 4-place sets from the hardware store, I had a 'set' made up of mismatched dishes I found at thrift stores.  I loved those dishes... each one was beautiful and I could always find the perfect complement for my mood and the meal I was putting on them.  Also, it was a super cheap system and when one dish broke there was never an issue finding another to replace it.  The only problem with it was me, and the fact that I get overattached to inanimate objects.  I'm looking at you, blue toast plate.  When the blue toast plate was stuck in the dishwasher or in use by somebody else, I couldn't bring myself to have toast, and after a few episodes of this I knew I wasn't the right person to have a mismatched set.

Pete chose the stoneware set and it was SUCH a relief to have dishes that were all the same.  Best of all, the teacups were beautiful.  Many sets have a flat-bottomed teacup and I find the bend quite hard to clean - I end up with a tea stain that requires baking soda to get out.  Who needs extra work?  Plus they don't rest neatly against the palm of your hand, like a gently curved teacup will.  Or stack, usually.

The stoneware set's downfall, other than its readiness to break when you looked at it, was that it had a colourful Art Deco pattern around the rim.  Mostly it was black, but there was also peach, and a funny green, and a very cold blue, all filling in the centres of stark geometric shapes.  When it came to putting linens on the table I was as often taking them off because the vintage red or floral cloths I am always drawn to just looked so wrong with the dishes and bothered me. 

The porcelain set is white - or rather, just enough off white to feel warm.  It's got a curved teacup that is the perfect size and shape and has a handle that feels like it was made for your fingers, whoever 'you' might be.  The plates are generous but not so big they don't fit in the cupboards and the cereal bowls are just deep enough to be easy to take out of the stack.  You know those really deep bowls that you can only nest if you're willing to take the stack right down from the shelf whenever you need one?  Yeah.  My set doesn't give me those problems.  It goes with everything, and every food item that goes on it looks lovely, and when I open the cupboard and see it all there looking monochomatic I instantly feel completely calm and happy.

But... soooo discontinued.  It's a Johnson set, and if I am willing to accept a very busy pattern in a colour that is nonetheless agreeable to me I could swap it for Johnson's traditional Blue Willow, whose bowl and teacup shapes are similar to what I have now:

This set is made of earthenware and may be less sturdy than porcelain... however, it is so classic it will probably never ever go out of production, so I would never have to worry about finding replacement plates when somebody surprises me as I unload the dishwasher. 

At the cottage, we have a Corelle set - what is that really, tempered glass? - that has held up very well to hand washing.  I mentioned it to Doris and she said she's used that for years too, and her set got dinged up in spite of its longevity, so I guess nothing is perfect.  On the upside, that stuff nests like nobody's business and takes up the least possible storage space.

Another option would be to upgrade to bone china.  This seems counterintuitive to me because I am trained to think of bone china as exclusively the domain of the 'good' dishes you keep in a cupboard and use four times a year plus tea parties.  But when the current set first started to break I met a salesperson with young sons who told me she has always had plain white bone china for her every day set.  She said it comes out of the dishwasher without a scratch and her boys have never broken any of it. 

As it happens, the cup and plate design for our bone china set is also available in a plain white - Leigh, from Wedgwood:

If we replaced the current set with this, I would have all the joy of our current set plus the joy of handling bone china every day.  And if we ever have more than eight people over for a fancy buffet supper, I can combine the formal and everyday sets, which makes it a very cost-effective solution.  But Doris and I agree that it would be weird to be using bone china all the time.  I mean, when you have the worst cold ever and haven't showered in days and you've crawled into the kitchen for chicken soup, do you really want to feel you have to live up to the bowl you ladle it into?

I once met a woman who lived in a beyond-charming worker's cottage in North Yorkshire, right across the moors from where the Bronte sisters lived, and what she ate off of every day was a Bunnykins set.  No need to live up to that - that's comfort food right there, don't you think?

It's a long time ago now but I'm pretty sure I ate off them myself, when I visited her with our mutual friend.  Ever since, owning and regularly using Bunnykins dishes has been one of those things I aspire to do one day.  But I suspect Pete is not up for that, and anyway, it would be quite a challenge to cobble together a 12-place setting of it because it's marketed to children rather than adults who aren't convinced they are adults yet.

I am getting a lot better at choosing things for the house, in that I start from a practical point rather than what I might dream of.  In this case, it's "where am I gonna buy this stuff?" and from there, it's pretty much "what are they selling?"  That leaves me with three realistic choices.  I can go to a restaurant supply store (white dishes), a department store (ditto) and the posh china shop where we got our good dishes and our first everyday set.  So it's not like I can research forever, but I've already lost a lot of valuable knitting time to the hunt.

And why?  It's only dishes... that you handle and eat off of and look at several times a day for years and years.  ugh, okay.  Maybe that's worth giving up a little knitting time. 

Do you have dishes you love?

What's wrong with this picture

This is a trick question, because technically there is nothing wrong with this picture:

I love this room and would be very happy to spend time in it.  My cousin feels the same way, which is why she bought me this card many years ago and why I kept it after it arrived in the mail.  Recently I came across it again and realized it contains all the colours I had begun to commit to for the house renovation - the dark brown of the dining set we bought, the blue of our sofa, the mushroomy grey of our small-enough armchairs, and even the gold of the higher-end light fixtures I scored on sale (yay!!!)  So now I carry it around with the colour swatches and samples as my inspiration picture, to keep me on track.

From another perspective though - there is everything wrong with this picture.  Where's the knitting, or the spinning, or the loom?  There isn't even a lump of embroidery cast down in a hurry because a companion brought in a sumptuous fresh-fruit snack. 

The picture is a detail from Farmhouse Kitchen by Stephen Darbishire, RBA, and if you Google those descriptors you get the most AMAZING collection of dream rooms.  I would love to own an original of any one of these paintings, or even a print - must look into that. 


Getting from framed walls to a finished, inviting room is a challenge, not least when all your original furniture is the wrong size and you have to buy new (or new-to-you.)  We used our decorating budget to upgrade our heating and ventilation system.  We're using our condo renovation budget to take care of the rest of our new furniture, all our tiles and counters, and expensive but necessary blinds.  There's a little left for lighting and curtains, but I've had to do some serious bargain hunting and be very flexible about colour and finishes to get close to the same quality we chose for all the other details.  I want everything to work together after all the effort I've put in and so far, things are working out okay.

Today for example I got a fantastic discount on yellow-gold linen/cotton drapery panels.  I knew I wanted that particular curtain, though I was aiming for off-white.  I changed my mind when I saw that this other colour was being discontinued and was priced to sell, and I bought a TON of it for every room that didn't absolutely have to be off-white.  Dining room, adjoining front hall, smaller bedroom, my office... done.  They're all getting yellow-gold curtains similar to the light fixture in Mr. Darbishire's farmhouse kitchen.

Amazingly, the curtains are a great match for gold in the brocade fabric we're using for some of our accent cushions.  They also blend all right with the deep gold of the light fixture I bought for my office (the ceiling plate is pictured above - another amazing bargain), which in person matches the surface of the blue dresser in the corner of the picture-kitchen, and its floor tiles:

Does the brocade look any more perfect for the curtain in this light?

Not really... but trust me, it's dead on.

So is Benjamin Moore's 'Wilmington Tan' paint colour:

Even though that colour looks painfully beige on my screen, it's a gorgeous deep gold in person.  Paint costs the same no matter what the colour, so why not pick one that goes with the curtains for a nice seamless wall?


I am seriously going to need to bring more blue into the dining room if I want to match the Farmhouse print, but I have a painting to help with that, and our dressy-uppy dishes too. 


Okay, I think all that news sums up what's really wrong with this picture.  There's no knitting in it, and there's no knitting in here, either! I've been too busy all day shopping and double checking that everything still works together to sit down with a sock. 

So that's what I'm going to do now, and with luck, I'll be back here on Monday with something stitchy to show you.

Have a wonderful relaxing weekend, and I'll see you then!