Yep, yep, yep....phone

I love photo magnets, which became big, oh, maybe a decade ago? I remember buying some sushi ones before sushi-as-design became a little too overwhelming.

I especially love such magnets when they are pictures of really neat things, like these telephones.

I had a toy telephone that looked exactly like that blue one. But of course the yellow one takes the cake.

Portia

This is just a sensational bag. And really reasonably priced. Cream leather is always just so lovely!

I want to buy one before she becomes hot, gets on Daily Candy and never looks back.

I saw her on greedy girl, who got her from Oh Joy, and further back than that the paper trail gets thin.

Swing low, sweet swingy thing

Via Daddy Types, this is one awesome baby swing. It's made of felt and is just gorgeous. Look at all the colors! (Didn't know that 'pink' is German for 'pink'.)

Move over, Graco.

A few words on a classic

For a while after the Nokia 8920 was created, I coveted it from afar. Then, once the price dropped enough, I got one of my very own. I loved that phone -- its looks are smashing and it has great hand feel, it was miniscule in its time but never fragile. The menu isn't designed by insane sadists and the screen is pretty good for, well, what it is.

Then I sold it and got a different phone and moved and got a different phone and lived in America where the phones are lame (sorry guys).

Now this phone has come back into my life and I am newly in love with it. Just look at it. Stellar. (Except the color of the phone in the picture is boring. I have it in red and used to have it in a sort of forest green.)




To tell you the truth, I am also a fan of the design of the even older 3210, which was big but beautiful -- it was usually silver, I think that was the default, but isn't this a nice color?

So cool it's nearly impossible

I'm tempted to merely post the picture, but I guess I have to mention that no, this baby carriage is not currently in production. It's an original, apparently in perfect condition, sold by Cincinnati Modern. Via Gizmodo.

If 'twere Mother's Day...

I think someone should give me this for Mother's Day...or any day, really, since I'm a mother all the damn time. And then I could punch out the people who play frisbee over the path in the park.

Red and white all over

Here I am, posting about IKEA again. I swear I don't work for them! But my mother bought this little tableware set for the babe, for our visit, and I was shocked at (a) how designy it was, and (b) how well it performed, functionally.

No, the sippy cup does not have ergonomic, rubber-grip handles. It doesn't even have a valve (shock!). But babe could drink from it very well, and had fun using the spoon (with its ice cream scooper-like bowl) to bash things with. The cup also has a circle of differently textured plastic on the front, very mid-century design element.

The best item is the bowl. At first it looks like a plain white plastic bowl, but really it's tilted. Very nice. The red and white color scheme is even more suggestive of the 1950s and it's IKEA priced. (Oh yeah, and it has one of those kooky IKEA names.)

The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round

Since my childhood, Los Angeles has been making rather remarkable strides in the area of public transportation. Of course, they did tear up the streetcar (before my time, of course), but I definitely see some improvement.

And I really like this funky bus. It looks sort of like a train, sort of like a slug, and sort of like a sushi roll. It runs on the Metro Rapid lines, but I'm not sure who makes it or what powers it, or even what it's like inside. I'll save that for another trip.

On a scale of one to ten...

Sometimes you find the extraordinary (this scale) in the most mundane of places (the Lands' End [sic -- but why, anyone know?] catalogue at my mother's house. (Not to suggest my mother's house is mundane, it's actually quite special and beautiful.)

So, um, what was I saying? Oh, right. Cool scale. Hope the lame bathroom tiles are optional.

Real babystyle

Babystyle's Classic Cruiser Silver Speedster (a little heavy-handed on the naming there, folks) has mega-style. I totally covet this, although my babe is not quite old enough yet to really take advantage of it. And it's actually not too expensive...shocking that such a price tag counts as not expensive for a baby toy, but that's the way it is these days in the rich west.

Sublime with needles

I love the patterns at Sublime Stitching, and I love that it's crafty fun for those of us who don't want to get all serious, but just want to have a good time and make something cute.

West is west...

You know L'Occitane, the French chain that has now taken over the world with its excellent marketing of body products? Well, they have always had fantastic packaging. The pictures don't do them justice. What I'm impressed with is how they've used plastic (thus kept things cheap) to simulate the elegance of glass. Now you may be of the camp that hates imitation, but I really think my plastic shampoo bottles should be pretty.

Having said that, this below actually is glass.


Here we have a look I'll call "handwritten by the farmer's wife." The tube is a nice matte silver.

The brilliance here is the crooked label, which actually wraps around a corner of the bottle. The cap looks like metal but is plastic.

Again a nice cap, and an overall nice bottle shape. "L'Occitane" is written (not the right word...) on the bottle as if on glass.

Again plastic, with a really nice shape. You can't totally see it, but there are sort of ridges all the way round.

I'm back...and I've been to Starbucks.

It's way too expensive for what you get, but I love the lines of this Starbucks-branded coffee grinder. And what you don't see in the picture is that it comes in different colors. Very cute. A lot of the Starbucks merch is extremely well-designed.

And the last post leads me to...

What a brilliant shirt.

Fenwick does walls

Check out this fabulous wallpaper at Naked and Angry, designed by Ray Fenwick. The name is Old Timey Tiley and that about sums it up. Ray Fenwick is just fantastic, by the way -- he creates Hall of Best Knowledge. Naked and Angry is a sort of survival of the fittest design world.

This cracks me up:

"As the wallpapers are all very bold, it is suggested that key areas are treated rather than an entire room."

Hmm, yeah.

Shoe contest!

Contest closed.

No really, I'm going...

...to LA for a week.

See you later.

Crazy lovely

I'm a little crazy about Pylones, the French company seemingly dedicated to making the world colorful. I mean, yes, too much Pylones would definitely be a mistake, but it's a nice way to make mundane objects more fun.

A flask!


A fridge!


A thermos!

Jigsaw puzzle

One of my favorite high street shops in the UK is Jigsaw. I love all the little details -- they're very into, you know, beading, edging, that sort of stuff -- and pretty colors. Very Anthropologie.

Well, imagine my surprise to find out that there's a store in the Brentwood Country Mart, a place I only associate with rotisserie chicken, for some reason.

This is all a prelude to say that I will be in LA for a week and not posting, but I may stop by the Brentwood Country Mart just to see...

Flat

Via Design Public, I present these highly covetable wall flats. You stick them on your walls to make blank into interesting, or you do if you have a lot of disposable income and some empty walls. (By the way, I love DP's chick logo.)