Current Obsessions: Style Notes

Happy weekend! Ahead, a humble kitchen essential gets its due; Scandi retreats open their doors (and windows); and a Memorial Day sale starts early. Read on:

• NYC Design Week kicks off in a few days; are you going?
• Attn., Angelenos: make your own hand-built vase (and other workshops).
• Still looking for a gift for the moms and mother figures in your life? Look no further.
• (Alternatively, Margot suggests breakfast delivered on a bentwood tray, such as Alvar Aalto’s Siena Tray or a Josef Frank design from Svenskt Tenn.)
• File under Niche Interests: a delightful little book on the humble tea towel.
• Love the way this Netherlands-based artist’s line drawings make their way off the wall and onto ceramics and lampshades.
• Annie’s bookmarking this list of Scandi retreats for future trips (the ones in Norway especially).
• Intrigued! The early 20th-century folk woodworking technique known as tramp art, “carved from layered scraps of wood,” over at John Derian (hat tip: Margot).
• And a new exhibit in NYC is inspired by the idea that, embellished with patterns and paint, “everyday, unremarkable furniture and objects become revelatory.”
• The Devil Wears Prada characters as interiors. Agree or disagree?
• “I was so saddened to hear of architect Peter Aldington’s passing,” says Fan. Revisit our post on Turn End, the trio of incredibly thoughtful homes he designed and built himself, here.
• Psst… DWR’s 30 percent off Memorial Day Sale just started.
• Ooh… We love when gardening and fashion worlds collide. See Niwaki’s just-launched limited-edition collection of camo-print gardenwear here.
• Worth a listen: A psychiatrist discusses the “positive hormonal effects of gardening on the body” in the latest podcast episode of Homing.
• We are big fans of Pamela Anderson’s garden goddess era. Her latest launch: The Garden Within Journal, “a guided journal for tending the self the way you’d tend a garden—slowly, patiently, and with room for imperfection.”
• An absolutely genius outdoor shower. (Hat tip: Annie.)
• A compelling video to go with Stephen Orr’s treatise on shade gardening.
• Two Gardenista favorites in one place! Salmon Creek Farm’s Fritz Haeg will be in conversation with Terremoto’s David Godshall tonight at Terremoto’s headquarters in L.A. Details here.
• Ahead of Mother’s Day, a sobering reminder that store-bought cut roses often have a sketchy provenance.
• Hahahahahaha. (Hat tip: Laura.)
• P.S. Heads up, subscribers: We’re taking a pause from Sunday stories tomorrow; we’ll be back at it next week.