Andalucia, what a lovely name...

It was the spine of the book that started me imagining Anadlucia, Spain. I was in the Boston Public Library, (this was at a time when I didn’t have an a/c in my office and at times during those July heat waves I would find refuge in the chilly BPL), browsing for a new read and I saw the book “Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia.” I thought:
1. that was a funny title
2. Andalucia is a beautiful name
3. what a nice cover design the book had and that always gets me
So I picked it up and took it home to read. We’ll talk about the book later, (I loved it), but my favorite part was when the author, Chris Stewart, describes the three weeks that all the orange trees are blossoming. Seems pretty magical and I’m sure very fragrant. I could just picture white blossoms falling backed by bright orange oranges.

I totally forgot this...

Somehow in all of my Wellfleet Oyster posting I forgot to mention the best thing: The Wellfleet Oyster Festival! This is too good to not pass on so forgive me that it is not in line with all the other Wellfleet posts, (if you remember my post on my sketchbooks you'll note I'm big on order, so you know this must be important if I'm throwing it in late in the game). While google-ing Wellfleet i stumbled upon the festival's website. “So heaven is a weekend in October in Wellfleet!” I thought. It can't be anything less than a great time. I imagine eating mounds and mounds of oysters, (last year over 100,000 oysters were devoured), and then retiring to a quaint Cape Cod inn to digest in front of a fireplace. There is a shucking contest – which I will watch but not enter, I would need to have better health insurance before I pried anything open with a knife - and even a 5k “shuck and run”, god bless those who are out there running while I will be toasting to the oyster.
The seventh annual Wellfleet OysterFest will take place the weekend after Columbus Day, Saturday and Sunday, October 13th and 14th, 2007 in Wellfleet, MA on Cape Cod. For more information visit www.wellfleetoysterfest.org. Sasso and I will totally be there.

Travels with a French Poodle

Right now I'm reading John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley". It is Steinbeck's travelogue from the 10,000 mile road trip he took with his French poodle, Charley around the United States in the sixties. He was feeling out of touch with America so he thought he's go take a look and see what was going on. I'm only through Part Two, but I'm really liking it, (Steinbeck's East of Eden is one of my all time favorite books).
There was one part that really caught me while I was reading in bed last night. On page 77 he writes, "A long time ago I was in the ancient city of Prague and at the same time Joseph Alsop... was there.... Joe and I flew home to America on the same plane, and on the way he told me about Prague, and his Prague had no relation to the city I had seen and heard. It just wasn't the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both pretty good observers by any standard, and we brought home to cities, two truths."
That is part of my fascination with travel and why I started doing "Places I Have Never Been". People can experience a place in such different ways that it is like they visited two very different cities.

Drinking Stars

The story goes that the monk Dom Perignon said “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars” at his discovery of Champagne. Many refute this, and say that this quote was actually used by Dom Perignon, the champagne company named for the monk, in advertising in the 1800’s. Well regardless, what a wonderful quote it is and it greatly inspired my pattern. All I could think of was stars and bubbles spiraling their way up the champagne flute.
“Drinking the Stars” is also the name of a cocktail served at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room in SF. A $650 cocktail... wait they offer it for $325 too... my mistake, i was going to say they were crazy.
So what is in it… gold dust? Tiny specks of diamonds? Um, no. Chateau De Ravignan 1979 Bas Armagnac infused with Madagascar Vanilla Bean, Orange Peel, Raisins and Dom Perignon. I know nothing about Armagnac so maybe that is akin to specs of gold.
The above images are from my champagne note card. Each one is hand silk screened in metallic inks by me in my studio. The inks are all hand mixed so each batch's colors are a bit different from the next. Available online at www.jhilldesign.com and in NYC at Trunkt, 393 Greenwich Street

Evolution of a Champagne Drinker

The first time I had Champagne involved new years, high school and a bottle that may have been pink and was definitely under $10.00. I'm pretty sure I hated it.
In college I moved on to the "Andre", not pink but still under $10.00, and i think I enjoyed it slightly more than the aforementioned bottle.
It wasn’t until I was in Paris with my dear friend Sarah that I began to truly enjoy champagne. We were on a backpacking-through-Europe trip our senior year in college. One night at a café she ordered me a Kir Royale. Mmmmm… creme de cassis and champagne, it is still one of my favorite cocktails.
After college I went on to design for a beauty company who’s parent company happened to be LVMH. The M stands for Moet and Moet stands for Champagne. I always had visions of walking in and there being a nice bottle of Champagne on my desk from our “parent”, just cause we were doing a good job. Well, I've yet to have a bottle of Moet & Chandon.
Last year at Sasso’s company’s holiday party I got asked a question that every champagne drinker likes to hear. “Would you like a glass of Dom Perignon?” Ummm… yes, please! We all had our fair share of glasses that evening. I knew from experience that free champagne, (and Dom Perignon at that), doesn’t come around that often.

A bit of info about Champagne

She is a historic wine region in the northeast of France, about 100 miles east of Paris. The region is famous for that sparkly drink. That’s right… Champagne. Anyone anywhere can make sparkly wine, but only someone in Champagne can make Champagne. The 100+ Champagne houses produce about 220 million bottles each year. The most famous producers (the grande marques) are Moet et Chandon, Taittinger, Mumm, Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and Perrier-Jouet. (Wouldn’t it be fun to get a bottle from each house for a little tasting?)
You can tour the houses and head underground into the “caves” where the “remuers” give each of the millions of bottles just a tiny bit of a turn every day. Hmm… I have visions of water fountains and sprinklers spouting champagne, glasses flowing everywhere. I had the same vision (but with chocolate of course), when we took a tour of the Hershey Factory in Hershey, PA when I was 10. The only chocolate we got there was a kiss at the end so I’m going to guess that the champagne tour is the same way.
“1,000 Places To See Before You Die” points you to Pommery, the largest and most impressive vineyard in Champage. Their cellars were carved by the ancient Gallo-Romans and used as schools, hospitals and shelters during the wars. Looks like it has this whole underground DaVinci Code feel to it.
Champagne is also home to the famous Cathedral Notre Dame de Reims with the amazing stained glass windows by Marc Chagall.

“drinking and eating stars” was the subtitle that got me.

I was reading through the great book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” when I came to the entry for “Champagne and Les Crayères” in Reims, France. The description of this famous restaurant, this famous region and this famous drink… well it sounded just magical…

The Wellfleet, Massachusetts pattern!

I just love the oysters-on-a-halfshell dancing against their backdrop of long, drooping pearls. The pattern reminds me of snowflakes and swirling synchronized swimmers - amazing because those are two VERY different things. You can check it out online at www.jhilldesign.com

Wellfleet Sketches

As I research different places I write, paste, etc… things into my sketchbook. Now to some, my sketchbooks might seem a bit over the top, but I just like to keep the organized. They are black moleskines with a tabbed section, cut by me (which is kind of crazy I guess… can you tell I used to rewrite my psych notes if they were too messy), per place.
So here are a few things from my sketchbook for Wellfleet. These two dresses reminded me of the purples and browns inside an oyster. Some notes taken down. These wonderful wonderful oyster shots are from the December 2006 issue of Martha Stewart magazine. She ran a great article on oysters. The writing was short but the pictures of different oysters sitting in their shell and brine were plentiful!

How to Make a Pearl

When researching Wellfleet and Oysters I felt like I needed to learn a little bit more about the creatures themselves. So I picked up MK Fisher’s “Consider the Oyster”.
The book is great, filled with recipes, quotes, oyster facts and little stories. It covers the whole “R month” oyster myth, its famed aphrodisiac properties, as well as how to make an oyster loaf. The cheekiest recipe details “how to make a pearl” and is found on page 32, as well as below. Now all I need is some healthy spat and a lovely diving girl... I guess I better get going…

Mmmmmm....

"It smells so good here. Like the ocean," Sasso says, inhaling deeply while driving along the R1-A coast in North Hampton. “It smells like eating an oyster."

Oysters + Champagne, mmmmmm...

A couple weeks ago it was Sasso’s birthday and we decided on a dinner of oysters to celebrate. Our dear friends Matt + Chad joined us for what promised to be a delicious meal at B + G Oysters in Boston’s South End. The restaurant was quite tiny and tiled in a way that reminded us all of Matt + Chad’s bathroom - which isn’t a bad thing, they have a beautiful bathroom.
We decided that we would choose a round of 4 oysters to start and proceed on from there. We each picked an oyster, 2 from the East Coast and 2 from the West. My choice was, of course, the Wellfleet from Wellfleet, MA. They were just as I hoped: cool, crisp, plump and super salty. We also got the table favorite Marin County from California, the Sunhollow from Washington and the Fancy “Sweeet” from New Brunswick. Well I can’t tell you what we ordered for of the next round of oysters because
1. I didn’t write it down (see previous post) and
2. Each round was accompanied by a bottle of champagne
In the end we had a lovely time and can’t wait to go back. Here are some of my other favorite oyster testing facilities:
Legal Seafoods: www.legalseafoods.com
East Coast Grill: www.eastcoastgrill.net
Summer Shack: www.summershackrestaurant.com
Neptune Oyster: www.neptuneoyster.com

I remember the first time that I had an oyster.

I was with Sasso, Mr. O’Conner and his lady friend at Central Kitchen in Central Square, Cambridge. I was a little hesitant, the whole alive and raw thing really threw me off. Jonathan Swift was right when he said, “He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.” But I will try any type of food once so I gave it a go.
Of course I loved them. I could have eaten dozens. From then on whenever they were on the menu, (at suitable establishments of course), I would order a few.
There was one type of oyster in particular that I loved. Whenever we would order a “dozen on the half shell”, there was always one that stood out to me. Of course I never wrote it down, in the moment I assured myself that if I liked something that much I would remember it’s name, (I do the same thing with wine). I will say it took a couple years to embed the name WELLFLEET into my head, (think how much easier it would have been to have written it down the first night).
There is something about the Wellfleet Oyster. It is always plump, always refreshing and always tastes like the cold ocean. Better yet, it is only 100 miles away from my home and they oysters are always plentiful in Boston.

Here she is, the Prairie City, Iowa pattern.

This is actually one of my favorite patterns that I have done. It is hanging in our hallway next to the Tequila, Mexico, print (coming soon). This pattern makes me want to re-read the whole Laura Ingalls Wilder series, run through a tall grass prairie, learn more about the native american's relationship to the prairie and, of course, head out to the fair to eat the aforementioned foods. I also want to cover everything in my new favorite pattern, something about the colors just feels like summer to me, but for now it is available just for the wall as a print.You can check it out online at www.jhilldesign.com

I was always a bookworm.

I remember when every night before I would go to sleep my mom would read me a chapter from one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I loved them.
Not too long ago I salvaged my little collection of “Little House” books from my family’s home and put them on my bookshelf. When started researching Iowa and the prairie I turned to “Little House by the Prairie” (of course). Visions of Laura and Ma and Pa and covered wagons all came back to me. And I have to say the books still hold up twenty years later, (I was almost in tears when it was thought that Jack had died in the first few chapters).
Laura did live in Iowa at one point growing up, but not during this book, (you can visit her childhood home of in Burr Oak, Iowa. Check out their site here). Regardless, I used her descriptions of the prairie as inspiration.
My favorites: “There was only the enormous, empty prairie, with grasses blowing in waves of lights and shadow across it, and the great blue sky above it, and birds flying up from it and singing with joy because the sun was rising. And on the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there.” Imagine that…
"All along the road the wild larkspur was blossoming pink and blue and white, birds balanced on yellow plumes of goldenrod, and butterflies were fluttering. Starry daisies lighted the shadows under trees, squirrels chattered on branches overhead, white-tailed rabbits hopped along the road, and snakes wriggled quickly across it when they heard the wagon coming."

America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie

So we don’t have cable. The main reason is that I work at home and it is very dangerous to have a marathon of E’s "The Girl's Next Door" going on in the room next to my office. What we DO have is about 5 channels of PBS. So most nights when I can no longer handle dancing with whomever or law and order: something or other - that is where I end up.
One night when I was channel surfing I stumbled upon: America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie. How fortunate, since I was thinking about the Iowa pattern.
First, it is the most beautiful documentary I’ve seen in a while. The grasses and flowers and bison and birds and insects, oh my!
America’s Lost Landscape talks about transformation of the tallgrass prairie to farmland in the short time span of 1830-1900, one lifetime. This treeless landscape has some wonderfully named flowers and plants: Pale Purple Cornflower, Shooting Star, Sneezeweed, Big Blue Stem aka: Turkeyfoot. It used to cover 400,000 sq miles of N America and today only 1/10 of 1% of the tall grass prairie remains. Good news is the is prairie restoration and reconstruction began in 1934 and the movement is still going strong. This includes the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge in Prairie City, Iowa. I suggest you all check your local PBS stations for when it is playing near you and then tivo it. Check out the film’s site here: warning, the music of the website could bring you to tears like an old att+t commercial.

I’ve never been to a real state fair.

I know I went to the Cheshire Fair outside of Keene, NH when I was young... but I'm not going to count that. I’m talking about those big Midwest state fairs here. You know the ones you see on the food channel talking about fried Oreos and such?
So when I started researching Iowa, the Iowa State Fair’s website came up and it looked fabulous. This is why I want to go to Des Moines in August, and for $6.00 advanced admission I can’t think of a better deal. Where else can you see a cow made out of butter, ride down a super slide, watch someone be shot out of a cannon and then go listen to Joan Jett?
That's all well and good, but the real reason I want to go? I want to eat some top-of-the-line state fair food. On my short list:
- Cheese-On-A-Stick An apparent kin to grilled cheese, but with a better name
- Funnel Cakes Looks like Jackson Pollock’s interpretation of the North's fried dough
- Corn Dogs I’ve had a corn dog or two around these parts, but something just tells me that a state fair corn dog is going to be so much better
- Pop Pop just sounds a more fun to me than "soda", even if in the end it's just Coke
Check out the Iowa State Fair's site here where you can see the activities and food vendor list, (organized by what food they sell... genius), and if you go make sure to let me know how much fun it was.

I didn’t know much about Iowa.

My naive East Coast imagination immediately thought of corn, big sky and long, long roads. Honestly, off the top of my head I couldn’t even tell you were Iowa was exactly, which I found slightly embarrassing. So when I was picking places for 2008 I thought of a very nice customer I have from Iowa, (Hi Tracy!), and wondered what it was like in her state. A few things that spurned my imagination was the Iowa State Fair, the nature of the prairie and my Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

Welcome to my new blog.

I have multiple moleskine notebooks filled with research i do for my paper line "Places I Have Never Been". Seems such a shame to keep it all to myself, considering I do come across some interesting and funny things. I thought that this could be a place to share those little bits, show the process of how the patterns come about and also share the new patterns are released. Also, there are so many places that i haven't been to, but there ARE places that i have been to, (i think some people think i site home all the time - only partly true), so I hope to share little bits from those trips as well as bits about the pieces I'm working on right now. Of course if you have your own stories or pictures of interest please email me! I love to be inspired by others! Oh and please don't hold any grammar mistakes against me - I still couldn't tell you when and when not to use a comma.