I just saw this morning that Paula, the creator behind otchipotchi, has added these beautiful porcelain crochet stones to her shop and thought that it was time to share her work with you here. I love to follow her flickr stream as it is full of the most lovely images; her work is always simple and beautiful. It is exactly this kind of work with great attention to detail that I like to add to my own home.

wall vases

porcelain swallows

Last weekend we took a day trip to San Juan Bautista.  There is a fantastic Mexican restaurant with a charming patio where we like to eat and the town has a good number of interesting antique shops.  We also walked through the mission gardens and tried to forget we were walking right on top of the San Andreas fault. It was at the edge of the hill on which the mission sits that I saw this one field of mustard growing in the valley.  I love the way the color of the mustard adds a bit of sun to the landscape and had a bit of fun searching for some mustard to add that same sunshine to my home.

 propellor design, papaver vert, up in the air somewhere

green chair press, perch!

pigeon toe ceramics, janice jong

I stumbled onto these amazing ceramics on the Dwell website, and have a great deal of respect for the designers who worked on this project.

"We wanted to make tableware so that the vegeta-
bles prepared for dinner could be served from vessels made
from the same soil the vegetables came out of" (Van Rijswijck)

The different soils that were taken to create these pieces resulted in different colors and textures in the final pieces.  All of this reminds me of a book I read a few years ago called, "Life Place" by Robert Thayer, which was a study in what it means to live, work, eat, and play in naturally defined areas.  It was a call to have a deeper connection to the natural world that surrounds the place you call home.  What a beautiful connection these designers have created to their life place.