Heard about this site on NPR as I was running out the door to take Freia out. I rushed home as soon as I could to scope it out.. This site is a HUGE time sucker, be warned if you start browsing around, it’s one of those where one thing leads to another and then another.. wow – don’t say I didn’t warn you…
Chocolate and Zucchini
Hmm.. this is my second post with chocolate in the title, do you think there’s something to it?
Yesterday I mentioned Orsett Hall in my post and today the building has suffered a major fire.
This house was in our family for close to 100 years (from 1884 to 1968) I lived there for my first year or so, and though I don’t remember it then, my dad sold it to a family that we became good friends with and I do remember visiting them many, many times into my teens.
If I remember correctly one of my great great uncles (or something like that) originally won it in a game of cards – those were the days!
My dad has stories of him and his sister running around the rooftops when they were kids during WWII, giving my grandmother no end of heart tremors, I’m sure. Later when he was a race car driver, they used to race go-carts around the driveway. This place has seen some pretty crazy times.
My cousins and I had fantasized about buying it back from the current owners and turning it back into the lovely stately home it once was. Now it’s future is looking quite bleak.
Strike that:
An absolute heartbreaking tragedy.
What with this burning down, my father and stepmother divorcing and selling Southfields, our family home in Kent of the last 20 years, my swedish uncle giving up the flat in Stockholm that was my mother’s and his childhood home, and was my grandmother’s home of some 60 years, and my mother moving out of the house in San Francisco, our home of the last 30 years, I feel totally uprooted.
OK, so I’m really turning out to be about the lousiest blogger out there, and like all the other lousy bloggers I have really good reasons, honest.
I’m redoing my website, and it’s looking good! My friend, the talented Ms. Safarik is doing the hardcore programming and we are developing the design together. There’s still a ton of work to do, but it’s coming along really nicely.
The other thing that turning into a giant time-sucker but really quite fun, in some crazy way, is that my mother is packing up her rental house of 30 years in the city. Everything has to go. Yesterday Susie and I went over and Susie picked out a great stash of amazing fabrics and sewing stuff that my mum either doesn’t use or has replaced. We also picked through a bunch of old 70’s clothes including some awesome shirts from Biba in London that are all too small for me to wear (like they would fit an 8-year old). Those were the times of Twiggy, and my mum was another trendy jetstetting stylish London twig! There was also a faboulous pink sheepsking jacket (furry) that is just totally crazy and I actually wore it in public when I was a teenager – that’s going to a dear friend who is still out there clubbing and grooving and always looks fab and could actually carry off wearing a jacket like that. I snagged this most incredible hat that I adore! It’s probably from the sixties and it’s way cool. I won’t wear it a whole lot as it’s fur and very toasty, but I had to have it! I will post a picture when I can get a decent one.
Going back there today to maybe pack up some other stuff. She’s also giving me some curtains that my great grandmother crocheted.. wow, the valance is just stunning (pictures to come, I promise) and the dishes that I’ve coveted forever, they are matte black around the edge and white shiny in the middle (black all on the outside) they are soooo swellegant. She’s also giving me some bedside chairs that she’s saved from when she was married to my dad and they lived at Orsett. Anything from Orsett is a keeper as far as I’m concerned! There’s lots more too.. too much to list, but it’s all very cool stuff, and would be a horrible shame to chuck out.
Freia and the Knitwhit 