Sunday, June 25, 2017

A Peek into a Spring NEST: Berkeley and San Francisco


Living Etc., the UK decorating magazine says that "Nest" is #19 of "the 50 hottest interior shops


in the world".  THE WORLD!!!!


I had only known the Berkeley store to date, and conveniently (says Mr. Paradis),  on past visits to 


the Bay area,  I had arrived at the Berkeley 4th St. store only after closing time.  The original, Fillmore St. store, I had never visited, and did not know at all.


HAPPILY.  Such was not the case on the occasion of my latest visits.......


TO BOTH THE STORES -  Berkeley on a Monday,  AND the


Fillmore St. store on a Tuesday.  (After a long and informative walk from the Union Square


neighborhood.  Through Nob Hill.)  If you were a woman after my own heart, you might have been


making mental negotiations like mine: "I DO need new car because after all, I live in L.A.!


(Where a car is a MUST. ) BUT,  if I DID NOT BUY A NEW CAR,  but I tried instead to keep the old one going and bought the entire contents of at least one, if not BOTH of these Nest stores......(with the money I'd "save")


could I make myself the HAPPIEST PERSON ON EARTH FOREVER  and 


never need to leave home????"  "It seems very possible", a person like me might persuade herself, "because the Nest stores would provide everything


I have ever, could ever, want or need?"


Would you feel like a Chinese person or an Egyptian, knowing that you could die happy


with everything you'd ever need in your afterlife as well?  The way I do in this magical place?


Is that what heaven would feel like?  That you'd been transported to somewhere utterly wonderful and not wish to ever leave again?  "They" say that heaven is as simple as that.  And through millennia we've been inclined to believe it.  

That there is a heaven.  So perfect, so pleasing, yes, small, perhaps but infinitely varied and pleasure-able.  That heaven for me must surely be NEST.












Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Diversionary Tactiles

Hello from your phantom blogger.


It is insanely gorgeous (and a little hot) in Los Angeles these days.


And I have been mostly silent and absent during a month of mostly bad news day after day.


It's a little bit of hyperbole for someone in such a comfortable situation as myself to say that I feel


sometimes like I'm living on a knife's edge.


But uncertainty and threat and change is on our doorsteps....which seems to make retreat frivolous


and shameful.  But let me suggest that the "thread", both fragile yet enduring, of the traditions and making all illustrated here provide profound comfort in their constancy.  We as humans persist in the activities illustrated here.  And meditating on the necessary mindfulness that goes into these makings


suggests solutions, resolution and solace if only in the day to day fabric of our lives.

All pics above variously happened upon via the following Facebook pages:

https://www.facebook.com/LondonEmbroiderySchool/

https://www.facebook.com/fashionandtextilemuseum/

https://www.facebook.com/SilkDamaskConsulting

https://www.facebook.com/rit.maes.37?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Other good textile pages:

https://www.facebook.com/Flavigny.Algranate/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/SelvedgeMag


It's a great year for creativity in fashion, I've been thinking.  

As the old Chinese proverb goes:  "In every crisis, opportunity".

This is what is also understood as "disruption."  I'm grabbing hold of the good bits.