Snapshots from NYC

The view from the Williamsburg flea which I watched from 7am until well past dark. Note to self, skip this flea, get a chair, fishin pole and a cooler of frosty beverages and eats..

I could jog home faster than this train (when you score a parking spot for a 15 passenger van, you leave it…until you get the $45 parking ticket, f--kers. Can't let my people go and don't get to bed before 2, yet up for school 7…not my best look. By 10am I'm lugging projects in from the car.

Restoring Italian beaded screen, God I may have to keep this one, the color combination is fantastic (and I'll never finish the work). Note to self: match paint and pantone chips for future use, that turquoise, brown and gold yum

Pile of hotel keys to separate, fish net to cut up and make scarves out of to sell this weekend at the Brooklyn flea markets. Love the keys with the holes in the middle, put your own little charm, picture or hotel medallion in there. OMG!! tie keys on scarf ends! I'm so pleased with myself, dork.

Cabin fever, brave the commute to see Nikki de Saint Phalle collection at Norma Haine gallery, 5th and 57th St. Oh crap, one of those behind gold doors galleries in a fancy building and you gotta sign in. Tourist filthy with backpack, I get the look but Checkpoint Charlie clears me. Here's some pictures I snuck. This crazy stuff as good in a small room as it is in the fountain in Paris. Play the game I made up with Wyatt, "if you could only have one thing, what would it be?" Golden Swiss cheese lady or giant skull with rotating fern head?…Duh, the skull with motor and softball-sized pewter teeth, "epic".

Breakdown at 23rd and the Flatiron building, laptop monkey on my sweaty back. I love that they have cafe tables and chairs in the middle of Broadway. Always a good time to people watch or sit and write. Speaking of people, I almost have an accident gawking at the Satmar in Brooklyn (Hassidic population). Crazy for the beaver hats, belted coats, wow that's a commitment to a look (it's 85deg). Shameless voyeurism, this image haunts me, how to get one of those hats.

Two fleas, two days, never again, but it's over and here are the booths. One in the beautiful Fort Greene neighborhood the other on the water in Williamsburg. Trend predictions: architectural is gonna rebound cause they're building even on the street where I live and well, I see all these great buildings and I miss these details so I'm gonna get some (details that is..right).

In my head see new spin on industrial softened with theatre and romance, gothic and medieval, muddy brown, oxblood, grey and lavender, textures like silk and velvet. Worn wood will continue to be hot, that and handyman's stuff. Seductive mood with tools for those dark hours ahead…oh behave!

Farmer's market at Union Square. I can't resist. A Yo Go frozen yogurt gets the whole $1 worth of bleeding raspberries, a peach. Picnic on the window sill of an ancient stone bank to watch the people pass, like molecules in a solid, there's not much wiggle room. Now dragging bag of bread and treats, have sugar need coffee...It's a haul, but it's Bubby's coffee in TriBeca. Roasted on site and ground before they make it for you, over ice. It doesn't get better than that!

Head east towards home with stop in the East Village to see Joel, the philosopher-genius who has a strange affinity for cast iron pans. Signed privacy agreement, so you'll have to imagine an ancient apartment with walls, ceilings and floors covered in cast iron cookery. I'm speechless, no really, and want to make a movie, write storie. Skip permission, beg forgiveness, here's another dealer's place. Beautiful, open, full of stories, just like Val. We share an obsession for things in quantity, but I'll let her do the 500 crates and 1000 folding chairs (like I'm 20 years older than her) Love these antique dealers, a field of the wildest brightest wildflowers.

Detroit, disassembled as it were and...

here's the world's fair, 1964 structure in Queens....

One last side trip, it's destiny. The Detroit Disassembled photos are right, I mean a 20 block walk, by the apartment at the Queens Museum on the grounds of the old world's fair. The ruins of the fair the perfect intro to the beautiful photos of Detroit ruins. Yeah, yeah the ruin porn. Don't hate me, I'm a walking talking Detroit ambassadress and I could fill a bus here with all the people who want to see what's happening in Detroit. It's all good news. Design Festival in Detroit in full swing as I type, I'm into it with barely a nap to catch up from the drive….

Magic and Madness in Every Nook and Cranny!!

Madness and magic in every nook and cranny…no, I did not write that precious quote. I read it in Country Living whilst stuck in my van. No foul language, the dead giveaway and if you watched 6 inches of rain fall on your show, I'd like to know what you'd have to say about it. WTF!! comes to mind. It's now the infamous Brimfield of September 2011.

I felt like I was in a barrel under the Niagara Falls. The rain came and wouldn't leave. By thursday morning they'd closed May's show, the first time in history. The water was 6 inches deep around my van. I open the door, climb on top of the hood and jump to the embankment. By the time I reach my booth, I'm soaked and muddy anyway. Atleast the booth is on high ground and dry, but there's a pond a foot deep at the entrance to the field. This day's a wash. Of course I have to be there for this record-setting nightmare. I'm the embedded reporter, the Lakshmi Singh of Brimfield.

Thankfully team Tommy Hilfiger came by the day before and found magic in this madness. I'm paying close attention to what they're putting together, their advertising is free marketing for me and the time in to designing a booth pays off in sales here and at the new space in the antiques mall in Saugatuck,MI proves. This is how I justify that late night OCD episode the night before the show opened. Really, where to put that jar of sock cuttings is critical, maybe it wasn't such a great idea to start this undertaking after cocktails. Naturally, I'm jolted out of my sleeping bag at 4am by the sounds of arriving dualies and their diesels. It's the eager beavers who curl their hair rain or no, and want that pot pourri goo burning for an hour so that it's in the air, like napalm for everyone to enjoy. I slog through the mud for a timed 6-minute shower. Oh the fun of camping, the thrill of opening day!

Actually, I am remarkably upbeat and into the shopping. I must say, I scored some of the coolest shit. In this nook theater props, army gear, industrial furniture, oddities, science charts, letters, 60's and in that cranny, funerary…dying to know what this choice pick might be?…a large collection of Victorian era casket blankets and pillows in their own suitcases. Top quality rouched silk, crushed velvet and exquisite tassels, European to be sure.

I could lie to people and then secretly smirk to think of them placing it t in those happy homes completely oblivious… but, then I'd miss the look of joy on their faces when they read my tags. How I live for these blessed moments in my day, "They laid people out on these and did portraits in their own homes," I say all delighted with my magical, mad self.