Category: interiors
575 Wandsworth Road
It won’t be this year I get to see this house – visits are limited in numbers and duration and this years slots are already full – but it’s on the bucket list.
The house is the work of Khdambi Asalache, a poet and writer of Kenyan descent who also worked for the BBC and the Treasury. He started making fretwork to cover up the damp coming from the next door launderette, beginning a project that would last another twenty years. He would use abandoned wood, doors and boxes first cut to size then carved using a single knife.
(More details from National Trust and pics from Pinterest)
An extraordinary testament to patience, human endeavour, love and creativity.
Laters, Kate x
Wiser x
It’s going to be some time before my fingers can instinctively do this, but I’m having my first ever crochet lesson today and my eyes can’t wait.
They’ve been checking out all the incredible designs a simple hook and a piece of yarn and a little bit of yearn can make.
I’m very lucky – I’m learning from a highly skilled older lady in my neighbourhood courtesy of The Wiser Collective, a group set up by local mums Claire Redway and Sarah Laffey which aims to link up the generations in my area and
- offer practical support for families living apart from their relatives
- build connections and provide purpose for potentially isolated older people
- offer a sense of neighbourly community and companionship for both groups.
It works on the idea that there is so much we can learn from a group that all too often find themselves isolated, and there are things that as busy families we can offer – large meals with laughter can be something we take for granted.
(All pics Pinterest)
I can’t wait
Laters, Kate x
Captured x
Going green..
Living art, two words that deserve to go together.
(All pics Pinterest)
I need to do this: Alfie and Bear, the stone dogs need a new outfit for summer.
Laters, Kate x
Project x
We spent last week in the far north of Finland, 120 miles within the arctic circle: A fab and magical holiday – proper photos to follow – but it blew my mind to be miles away from anywhere, in a winter wonderland deep with thick, pure white snow, and somebody still had the guts, gall, initiative to guerrilla yarn bomb…that’s not a tree with a strange disease in the picture.
I’m loving the way this Street Art is developing, mutating different yarn crafts, particularly the use of embroidery.
But not only is it a new take on embroidery, it’s the re-imagining of the holding structure: Anything with a grid is fair game.
(All pics Pinterest)
It’s a new way of looking at our black and white world…and seeing potential.
Laters, Kate x
Winding up x
It’s half term next week which means we’re leaving the darkness of winter and transitioning properly into spring. We’re going away – everything is booked except where we are actually going – we’ve never left it this last minute before. It feels decadent. If we weren’t disappearing I’d be tempted to make one of these lights – such a simple, clever idea. You take the metal skeleton of one or as many lampshades as you like and wrap them with embroidery yarn…genius..
If you prefer to buy your lampshade ready made (and they don’t come cheap) check out Wera Jane and, for inspiration, Ana Kras.
I didn’t know you could get embroidery thread in neon pink…
Laters, Kate x
Shadows
All these art works were created by Kumi Yamashita using a combination of solids and a single light source.
She says ‘ I sculpt using light and shadow. I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore composed of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow).
(All pics Kumi Yamashita or Pinterest)
Pure magic.
Laters, Kate x
Design Hero 1
Those true, authentic, all singing, all dancing design heroes – the things that not only work well, look good, but also punch high above their weight in terms of financial outlay and usability. And for us, this £12 Nisse Ikea chair has to be up there at the top…we bought 6 of them for the garden four years ago, more as a stop-gap than anything else, but they’ve proved their weight in gold: They spend their lives outside, except when we have dinner parties or Christmas or birthday, then they get wiped down and in they come, still looking as good as the day we bought them. They’re light, flexible, sturdy and generally a brucie bargain – it helps that their light is shining more brightly at the moment as our ‘proper’ dining room chairs have gone to be re-woven, re-caned, re-woke…
(This is a pic of one of the less trashed seats…one was so bad it could be used as a commode. That’s baaaaaad.)
But you’d never know these were the ugly sister.
(All pics Ikea)
Tres chic and tres cheap.
Laters, Kate x
Swing by x
A main focus of the garden planning is creating an area that people want to be pulled to, that’s different from any other part of the house. I have always been a great admirer of the American porch – cool, shaded, sociable, restful, a place to sit and while away time without over missing the seconds ticking by. A place you want to go with a good book and a long cold drink to hide away. So on the list of musts, after pergola comes swing chair..
(All pics Pinterest)
Bring on summer!
Laters, Kate x
Pot Pickers x
When I was little this was the sort of pottery you’d expect to see in charity shops, the sign of a design aesthetic rejected. How times have changed, the tide, turned. What was generic is now confident, what was old fashioned is nostalgic and what seemed ugly is now defiant and most importantly, appealing.
There’s a company that’s drawing from this feeling and adding their own signature: Kat Huffer and Roger Less, work partners and life partners based in Northeast Los Angeles make up Kat and Roger. Their aim is to combine classic shapes and graphic surface patterns with earthy natural clay textures.
These are mugs you want fill with hot tea and hold between two hands on a freezing winters day.
(All pics Kat and Roger and Pinterest, their work can be found in the UK at Alpha Shadows)
These are heart singers and obsession inducers.
Laters, Kate x
Maison Bentley Style 