The Womens Room

Hanging out with the girls at Tobias and the Angel

 
A selection of the Christmas fairies from Tobias and the Angel

A few years ago I spent a rediculous amount of money on a hand made Christmas fairy to hang on our tree. I got it from Tobias and The Angel in Barnes, Anyone who has been to Angel Hughes's shop during her Christmas build up will know just what an exciting experience it can be for first time visitors. Every year the shop closes for three days in order to transform itself into a Christmas wonderland, full of covetable gifts, heavenly smelling hyacinth bowls and a wonderful selection of hand made decorations for the Annual Christmas Show.

The first time I tried to buy a Christmas fairy, some years ago now, I was too late, they had sold out in under three hours, Angel had only made a few and was (I think) taken aback at the speed with which they sold, considering the price. The next year I was better prepared and so was Angel, she had made more of them and I was there at bang on opening time, although she only makes 18 or so each year, each one comes with a birth date tag. 

Since then our fairy has 'hung out' very beautifully, earning her keep, turning an ordinary tree into a Christmas spectacular. She is exquistely made, by Angel and her British based sewing team and has lovely hair, a hand drawn face and rather fetching knickers that she flashes from under her copious lace edged net petticoats if it's a tall-tree year. She wields a fierce looking star wand as she directs the holiday festivities from her elevated perch.

Since the first of the Christmas Shows, Angel has added whole selection of girls to the fairy Christmas portfolio, there are blondes, brunettes, red heads, crazy-wild looking ones and neatly prim and proper ones. There are now also angels in the range as well as an assortment of lovely tree and home decorations  You can order online, although why you'd want to do that rather than turning up on November 18th (from 11.30 till 9.00pm on the first day) is beyond me, as the shop is wonderful, I'd quite like to move in.

The Annual Christmas Show, which also includes The Dining Room Shop and Knots Elementals beauty products, will take place from November 18th until Christmas, at 62 White Hart Lane, SW13 OPZ.
 
ps, you want to know how much the fairies are? I can't possibly admit to it on the blog as middleagedad may read it and pass out, so maybe take a look at Angel's website.  

We Love: Halloween decorating

All images from Martha Stewart

We love decorating the house for Halloween almost as much as we do for Christmas. There's a little bit of competition in our community to see who has the most elaborately decorated house and I am always up for a style challenge! Having spent several Halloweens in canada and America, we have to admit that we know nothing compared to our North American friends when it comes to spooky crafts. So every year, our first port of call for Halloween ideas is the Queen of craft and all round domestic goddess Martha Stewart. The magazine and website are full of inspiring ideas for food, drinks, house decorating, pumpkin carving and Halloween outfits, most of which you can make yourself. We also found some Halloween food ideas ideas on Twitter from US website parenting.com. Its amazing what you can make with some black card, green food colouring, some knobbly squash and a few pumpkins. 

Simple pleasures: nice words

Stayed at the fabulous Ace Hotel in the Garment District while in New York last week and would thoroughly recommend it. Very funky, industrial chic vibe with a dollop of vintage American 50s styling thrown in. Great service and the rooms range from comfortably small and cheap to very lux apartment sized loft spaces.

There's a lot of wit around too, with clever words being used on walls and in communal spaces to inform and make you smile. My favourite was the clothes hanger that said 'You look good in that", it seemed such a simple way to make you smile in the morning, I'm writing it on all of my wooden hangers....

 

Martha moments: Pumpkins

Dean & Delucca display of giant pumpkins in SoHo New York

It's clearly a very US orientated week this week, what with our New New Yorker posts on what it's like to live in the big apple and the arrival in London of our very favourite American store Anthropologie. And now The Women's Room is actually reporting from New York (half term break) and totally loving what they do with pumpkins.

Pumpkins are everywhere here, on doorsteps, in windows, on display in shops, restaurants and anywhere there's a spare bit of sidewalk, as they say here. We've been offered pumpkin beer, frozen yoghurt (an acquired taste), pumpkin cookies as well as plain old pumpkin pie. Martha Stewart, our much loved ex jailbird queen of all things domestic is busy carving them up on her TV show. They are such beautiful vegetables, brightly coloured and very robust, we think we should use them more in the UK and follow our American friends' lead on making the most of them.

Pumpkins feature large in the Halloween festivities here and then extend their interest into Thanksgving in November, so it's just as well they are long lived as a vegetable. We think they are fab and are determined to grow some interesting ones next year, for display rather than eating though. We're still not convinced they taste that good, anyone got a tasty recipe?

Doorstep display

Crosby Street hotel display

The Women's Room review of: Frieze (part two)

So, for us, the two highlights of Frieze were only slightly connected with art. Firstly, the food at this fancy fair is a cut above normal exhibitions, we stopped for a cake at Gail's artisan bakery and were overwhelmed with choice, apparently she does wonderful bread at her stores in Clapham, Notting Hill, St John's Wood and Battersea. Lovely, interesting and terribly fattening cakes revived our flagging interest in the canvasses half way through our art trawl..

Our second highlight was something we could actually afford to buy. In a collaboration with Bill Amberg, the Royal Parks charity has made shopping bags out of its old deck chairs, not any old deck chair fabric either, these are the designer deck chair slings (the technical name for the fabric seat) that were produced over the last three years as part of the Deck Chair Dreams initiative. 

Artists such as Tracey Emin, Rachel Howard, Marc Quinn and a lovely one by Catherine Yass, designed chair fabric that has been in use throughout the parks for the last few summers. Now they've done their time, they've been replaced by new works and the old designs have been cleaned up and turned into jolly bags, with nice strong leather handles (courtesy of Mr Amberg and his skilled Somerset craftsmen). 

The bags are limited editions, each chair sling only makes one bag and can be bought from the Deck Chair Dreams website. At £55 these would make rather lovely London-flavoured presents for Christmas, particularly for home sick Londoners currently abroad or anyone who's a fan of the eight Royal Parks, which the proceeds help to support,

Deckchair bags made from fabric recycled from the Royal Park deckchairs 

Readers kitchens: Dinah from Hammersmith

Who: journalist Dinah Hall

Where: Hammersmith

What do you do in your kitchen and who with? I cook with Nigel Slater and feed his heterosexual look-alike, my husband, whose cooking skills sadly bear no resemblance whatsoever to my culinary hero. When our four children are at home they spend a lot of time looking optimistically in the fridge and willing delicious things to come out of it, despite having emptied it two hours previously. My kitchen is probably too accessible – its design, dominating the entire open plan living area, makes cooking in to a spectator sport.

How would you describe your style? In theory my style is minimal, in practice messy. Not a good combination. In order for it to work, you need a cleaner and an anal-retentive husband. Fortunately I have both. I think the ugliest six words in the English language are “tidy up as you go along”. My husband uses them a lot.

What is you favourite and most useful object? My favourite item is a bobbly glass jug. I vocally admired it when interviewing a shop owner years ago for a Christmas shopping piece, and she immediately handed it over. It took about two seconds for me to wrangle with my journalistic sword of truth and shield of honesty, before succumbing to base desire. I should be in prison. But in my defence, everyone who came to the house for dinner since – all four of them – went straight out and bought one. One friend gave it as a wedding present and was really pissed off when the bride – on getting divorced six months later – returned all the wedding presents bar that.

If I wanted to be really pretentious – which I do – I would say that the humble wooden spoon is my most useful item. How could you make scrambled eggs without one?

Readers Kitchens: Louise from Kensal Rise

What do you do in your kitchen and who with? Although I have a large sitting room, the kitchen seems to be the only place where I hang out with my friends and family - not only do I love cooking, but I find the kitchen the most comforting room in the house. In summer it is light and airy, but even cosier in the winter and at night. I have a total of 10 lights (not very green!) none over 40 watts to set any mood.

Describe your style? I find colour and pattern very appealing and this will always be the basis for my style. The kitchen design originated solely from the wanting of the Yellow Arne Jacobsen tap I found. I would say it is very global as many of my possessions are bought on trips abroad. But the overriding theme is welcoming and cosy, but not in a 'country' way. Actually it is anything I like, even if it doesn't go together!

 What is your favourite and most useful item? My Le Creuset screwpull corkscrew....genius. Also my Brittania 6 ring, double oven cooker, great for any size of dinner party.

Modern dillema: to tumble dry or not?

We've been having an ongoing debate here at the Womens Room about one of the more important things in life. To tumble dry or not? I am dead against them and love to peg out and Amanda is in two minds. Having three boys with dirty sports kits, sometimes she doesn't have an option. 

Making the choice not to have a tumble dryer means washing all over the house in the colder months and unless you live in a huge house, it can take over. As more and more people choose to dry their clothes the old fashioned way, whats the alternative to washing dripping from every radiator? Well, we have done a little research and come up with the Womens Room guide to the most stylish drying accessories.

We like traditional wooden airers and think they are much more stylish than the modern plastic ones. H is for Home have a fold out airer at £38 and an overhead pulley for £35. Re-Found Objects have a concertina overhead affair for £12.50 (stylish towels not supplied) 

We also love the rustic pegs available from H is for Home, which are a little expensive at £10, but look great.

Days Gone by also have a good selection of untreated wood traditional style airers ranging from £42 - £58.

Of course good old John Lewis have an excellent selection of very practical (if a little hideous to look at) elaborate airers, as do Lakeland.
Happy drying.

We Love: The Front Room

You know how fascinated we are here at the Womens Room with interior style. We love everything from the most stylish to the most eccentric, the only we thing we don't like is boring. There is nothing more disappointing than visiting someones house and finding they have no individual style. 
We particularly love the style of some of our older West Indian neighbours. Their eclectic, bright and often multi patterned style is often reminiscent of their culture and a hybrid of West Indian and English taste. 

Michael McMillan curated an exhibition at the Geffrye Museum in East London some years ago, featuring West Indian front rooms and their social significance. He has now turned the project into a book which is out at the end of September. This unique study of different migrant groups, examines how these rooms reflect some of the isolation, aspiration and displacement the owners felt and how certain objects became symbolic to them. The images are poignant and nostalgic and we love the mixture of print, pattern and colour.

Take a look at the website for some images that may well transport you back to you own childhood!!

And while we are on the subject, if you like this book you may well like Living Normally too! Not so much a visual inspiration, but defiantly heartwarming and makes you realise that maybe style doesn't matter so much after all!

Shopping with experts: Cabbages & Roses

 
Who knew Epsom salts were the cure for everything? Cabbages & Roses apparently, who were kind enough to give us a giant size packet of them to celebrate the brand opening in six Jigsaw branches around the UK from this week. We mentioned C&R a while back when we saw the autumn press day and were wowed by the romantic clothes and gorgeous fabrics used.

Epsom salts and bicarbonate of soda are both sold in large, bag-of-sugar size packs as part of the Home collection and do have a great long list of attributes, Epsom salts (£9.79 a kilo bag) make plants healthy, help them flower and a generation ago it was a major player in the medicine cupboard, curing aches and bruises and helping to draw out splinters. It also makes an excellent skin softner in the bath or as an exfoliator in the shower. Bicarb (£8.81 a kilo bag) is the best stain remover as well as an effective abrasive cleaner for tricky surfaces and will hold mildew at bay for shower curtains. Since we are in the 'make do and mend' mindset, these reassuringly pristine white packages of magic crystals are filled with a strongly nostalgic authority that we love.

The whole romantic Cabbages & Roses lifestyle is wonderfully addictive when seen up close. We loved the Kings Road store which has the clothes and homewear nestled on the first floor of the Jigsaw store. The flowing, easy clothes are such a relief to consider after so much body-con dressing and the ultra close fit styling we've been seeing this winter. Hurrah for loose, we say.

The new Cabbages & Roses stores are found in the Jigsaw stores in Bath, Bristol, Guildford, Covent Garden, Brompton Cross and High St Kensington. The two stand alone stores are still at Langton Street SW10 and Northcote Road Clapham, London.

Cabbages & Roses

Buy this: Labour and Wait's computer brush

We love our computers here at The Women's Room but hate the fact that they don't quite blend in with the rustic French kitchen table and polished oak pew chairs, and we hate the fact that the printer, hard drive, cables and wireless booster boxes all seem to have been designed by someone with no sense of style or understanding of how they should blend into our houses. Obviously Apple Macs are ahead by miles in the design stakes, but you know where we are coming from.

So we were thrilled to see that those clever chaps over at Labour and Wait were selling a very stylish computer brush, which when placed in the vicinity of the clunky looking computer, add a certain sense of style. The brush is also a genius design, swishing all the dirt out of the keybords with a quick flick of the stiff pig bristle section and cleaning up the screen with its soft goat hair bit (have you ever turned your keyboard upside down and banged out the dirt? Euwgh!) Very effective, it will last forever due to being hand made and very sturdy. It is £16.50. 

We picked up the brush at Dover Street Market (almost the cheapest thing in the shop, L&W is on the top floor next to the lovely Rose Bakery)  at the end of an exhausting marathon shopping session on Thursday night during the Fashion Big Night Out celebrations by Vogue. The event saw every shop in London W1 open until 11pm in a bid to help retailers and get people shopping again. Actually we thought it was something of a damp squib, we had a lovely night out but it was really lots of the fashion crowd swilling back champagne and scoffing cup cakes while a few bemused customers looked on. We hope our retailer friends made some money.

Labour and Wait

Shopping with experts: Sewing boxes

We like to think we are ahead of the curve here at the Womens Room and we pride ourselves on our ability to identify what we think consumers will want in the future. Our current love of crafts and make do and mend has recently found us searching for the perfect sewing box. 
Sewing boxes have long been relegated to the back of the cupboard (if indeed, you ever actually had one) and were seen as the domain of little old ladies. Now it seems everyone is either already sewing and knitting or planning to learn. As we have mentioned before, our mothers and grandmothers were experts at keeping small tins of hooks and eyes and buttons and always used a pin cushion, but our generation seem to have missed out on the joys of the sewing box. 
I have a Cath Kidston one and it never fails to please me when I open it up and all my equipment is stored neatly in individual compartments. There really is nothing more frustrating, than setting up the sewing machine etc and finding you don't have the right colour thread or size needle. 

So as we think you will be on the lookout in the next few months (could be a good Christmas present idea) we have been out and about searching for the most practical and stylish sewing boxes available and were surprised by the lack of choice. Cath Kidston and John Lewis are the only brands who have targeted this market. Come on retailers, you are missing the opportunity, especially Liberty or Muji. Imagine what fabulous ranges they could do?

We Love: Culturelabel

It seems a little early to be talking about Christmas presents, but one can never be too organized and it can take time to find original and interesting presents. So it's worth taking a look at  CultureLabel.com, a new website selling products from leading British museums, galleries and cultural institutions. 

Over the last few years museums and galleries have undergone a retail revolution, offering original, authentic merchandise, appealing to the consumers increasing desire for unique product with a sense of culture. CultureLabel brings together the best homeware, books, textiles, limited edition prints, kids toys, wallpaper and gifts from over 60 institutions including The Tate, The Baltic, The Hay festival, Designers Block and the ICA. We particularly like the Editors Choice, where the editors pick out specific products based on a theme. Rather than buying directly from CultureLabel you are automatically directed to the brands website.

While online shopping is ultimately easier than shopping the high street, it requires time to browse and the breadth of choice can be overwhelming. We think time poor consumers will increasingly look for more sites like this, which pull together niche, curated groups of product. 

The Womens Room online shop anyone?

Readers Kitchens: Lindsey in Pembrokeshire

Who: Interior designer Lindsey Howell

Where: Pembrokeshire, Wales

What do you do in your kitchen and who with? No one knocks on our front door anymore, everyone comes around to the kitchen door.  I think this is fantastic, especially when Dai the Postman comes around to give my daughter a birthday hug, dripping raindrops from one of the wettest days we have had (if that is possible). Not so good when the plumber turns up and I am in my not very glamorous PJ’s.  We’re very lucky that the kitchen is very large and bright, so everything seems to happen in it, including some cooking!

How would you describe your style? I would like to say that my style is Contemporary Country, or Vintage Chic but it really has just evolved with the house and the family, adapting to hobbies and gifts and friends.  Granny's old Chesterfield holds the china, an old French fold away chair sits along side a friend's painting of a lighthouse, it is always a work in progress.

 

What is your favourite and most useful item? At present it is my beautiful Swiss Rosle tin opener, when I first bought it I thought it hadn’t worked so I cursed its expense and the Swiss, only to discover that it had opened the tin so accurately that you couldn’t see the join, only a little tug needed to open it. Clever lot the Swiss.  I also have to include my Granny's fish dome, although I have no idea what you would use it for, perhaps cheese? The colours and its size always please me.  If anyone knows what you would use it for I would love to hear.

We love: cherry tree rental

This weekend there's been a distinct autumn chill in the air and we're sad, as it means that the end of summer is nigh. Not that it's been the blistering barbecue one we were promised, but we have had fun in the garden. Apart from the tomatoes (that's it, never again with tomatoes) we've had a glut of fruit from every tree and fruit bush in the garden, it's been a brilliant year for produce.

Naturally, we're planning next year's growth, although middleagedad has requested that we grow stuff that we all like and are likely to want to eat (ruling out marrows and asparagus peas). There are lots of things we'd like to grow but space is limited, so we are grateful to Diana, who told us about the joy she has had from renting a cherry tree for the summer, which resulted in bucket loads of sweet black cherries and very little actual work.

For £40 a year, you can rent a cherry tree from www.rentacherrytree.co.uk, who will look after the tree in their lovely Kent cherry orchard, net it when the fruit are ripening to keep the fruit from being eaten by hords of birds and then tell you when to visit to pick the cherries. You then get to spend a blissful day picking delicious fat cherries to take home with you, and if that's too much trouble they'll even arrange to pick them for you (for a small fee).

Since it takes a few years to get a cherry tree to maturity and we've run out of space in our garden, this seems a magnificent idea. Obviously you need to be able to process the cherries pretty smartly once they are picked, freezing or perhaps a major jam session seems the obvious move ( there are lots of recipes on the website). Sharing the tree with friends seems a good idea too, since it's not unusual to get 15 kilos of fruit each summer.

If you want to rent a tree for the 2010 growing season you'll need to get your name down fast, Right behind ours, perhaps we could organise a Women's Room cherry picking picnic next year?

We love: John Lewis's Make Do and Mend

The new John Lewis update (left) and the original 1940s pamphlet, available from the Imperial War Museum (right)

Everyone's at this home-made lark. Yesterday we told you about the Make Lounge and then we found out that John Lewis has brought out a great Make Do and Mend booklet, an updated version of the original 1940s government booklet on being frugal.

John Lewis believe there is an increased interest in maintaining and making things and sales in its haberdashery departments are up a reported 17% this year. The little booklet, which costs £3.00, is full of useful tips on how to mend tights, revive the colour of denim jeans and take up hems and is for sale in the habidashery department of most branches. A few John Lewis branches are offering Make Do and Mend classes this September, where you can brush up on your sewing skills, or even learn them for the first time. Classes are free, but you need to book and pay for materiels used. It's time we upgraded our sewing boxes.....

The booklet is out from Monday 7th Sept and for John Lewis Make Do and Mend classes, check stores for availability

Post update! John Lewis has just sent me the press release for this, which states that sales for sewing boxes are up a staggering 75%! (that'll be the nice Cath Kidstone one's I spotted yesterday) and sewing machines sales are up 30%. There's a craft revolution going on ladies!

We love: The Make Lounge

Lavender Bakery cupcakes for The Make Lounge

September is the month when ones thoughts turn to the Autumn and Winter months ahead and the plans you made (on that sunbed in france!) to do something useful with your spare time. 

We love anything craft based and are always up for learning new skills here at the Womens Room, so we were delighted when we found The Make Lounge. Based in leafy Barnsbury, North London, founder Jennifer Pirtle, offers a contemporary take on the evening class. The slogan 'meet people, make stuff,' perfectly sums up their philosophy, as classes offer the chance to learn new skills in a relaxed friendly atmosphere and take home a gorgeous completed item. 

Workshops are available for all levels and are kept deliberately short, so as not to interfere too much with everyday life. Traditional skills are taught using modern materials, which means your finished item will have a contemporary look. 

Classes are held on weekday evenings and repeated on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with Saturday afternoons devoted to group bookings, a popular choice for Hen parties (nibbles and wine are available). Sunday afternoons are devoted to children's parties and classes and include a Sewing Club and Crochet Camp and holiday courses. 

The calender for September includes crocheting fashion accessories, extraordinary embroidery, cupcake decorating and making a cushion cover with a floral corsage. 
We just cant decide which one to do?

We love: The Horticulturalist

 
Lisa White author of The Horticulturalist describes her blog as "a organic entity, and my intention is to disseminate ideas and inseminate inspiration across the board, showing how the vegetal world influences the creative design world and vice versa: how a garden becomes a floral print for fashion, how a popular consumer colour becomes a new hybrid blossom. The goal is to unearth and untangle the tendrils of nature and culture and let them grow back again together, with a twist."

Could this be The Sartorialist of the gardening world?

We love: The Selvedge Shop

 
We are big fans of Selvedge magazine, for it's eclectic view of the textile world and those who inhabit it and we have written about before here. They have now opened a shop in North London, selling their unique range of crafted textiles and dry goods.
Open from Monday to Friday from 9.30 - 5 pm, its a little bit out of the way (unless you happen to live in Highgate) but well worth a look if you are in the area.

162 Archway Road,
London, N6 5BB

Readers' Kitchens: Sarah from Dulwich

Who: Sarah, avid reader & fan of The Women's Room

Where: a 1966 bungalow in leafy Dulwich, a cricket ball throw from the college

What do in your kitchen and who with? Unmodernised 1966 bungalow with 1970s style ‘open plan’ kitchen, including diagonal brick wall set in front of sink/work surface ‘demonstration’ area. The kitchen is the only warm place in the house & it’s a large space so husband, boys & anyone else who’s around tend to gather for impromptu tennis, cricket practice etc.  

How would you describe your style? I love colour & pattern, particularly yellow, ikat & bold geometrics (at the moment) & will always find a place for rye pottery, Scandinavian oven-to-table ware or woven food covers.

What is your favourite and most useful item? There are a few essential items in my kitchen including the best ever glazed bronze teapot, woven food covers bought years ago in Zanzibar which hang on the wall when not being used (so they are useful & decorative), ikea magnetic notice board which always seems to look slightly out of control with never enough magnets to go around, very handy large wall clock & favourite ikat bowls bought on a work trip to Istanbul.