Brooklyn style

I hope you're up for a few more holiday snaps. As well as seeing so many beautiful things, I also got a new camera... and you know how it is with a new toy. So from Monday's snaps of The Best Hotel in The World, deep down in the Mississippi Delta, to...

...Brooklyn. Yes, we drove like the clappers from Clarksdale up to Nashville (which is a whole other post) and flew to New York for a few days. We had a near-death experience on the plane and a brush with the law on the road, but I think it's best I stick to the design. So here are some highlights from a trip to the Brooklyn Flea, via Vinegar Hill.

We got a rainy ferry from Manhattan over to Dumbo in Brooklyn. Miles from the Brooklyn flea, but with were with a local who wanted us to have a wander and stop for brunch at a very sweet cafe in nearby Vinegar Hill. This tiny little neighbourhood only has a couple of places to eat – we went to Hillside, which made me happy because look at how pretty it is.

I think this  idea for a bar is brilliant. It is made from differently painted, varyingly battered wooden poles, lined up and used as cladding. There's something about it that reminds me of the stairs in my house I arduously painted in different colours a couple of years ago. But these colours area really summery. If I didn't already have a colour explosion of stair risers, I'd be looking around the house thinking about what I could clad with a copy of this. It'd make a great bath panel, in a black painted bathroom, don't you think?

How nice is this circular display of greenery. And I do love a pegboard wall (good for hanging jewellery or kitchen things).

 You can't go wrong with a bit of tonally complementary repetition. The 1950s jugs on the top middle shelf make for a marvellous focal point. Helps that they are a very pleasing shape too. (If anyone knows the type of jug they are, I'd love to know – I have a bright green one in my living room, which I found in a London junk shop and which you can see in the link to my painted stairs above.)

GOOD lampshade.

Another nice jug. What you can't tell from this picture is that both glass and jug are half the size you'd expect. There's always something extra good about very little things.

Hillside from the outside.

Then we hopped in a cab and hit Brooklyn Flea. Because of the dubious weather (a few hours after this photo there was a rampant rain storm) there weren't heaps of stalls. But of those that had turned out, I particularly liked the animal cups, bowls and flour sack tea-towels by Susannah Tisue, aka SKT Ceramics, who also sells her wares in selected Anthropologie stores.

This stall had some beautiful antique postcards and school learning cards. Lovely for a child's bedroom wall, or a home office.

And this stall was like catnip for crafters.

Beautiful ribbons aren't they? They'd make wonderful trim on a plain duvet cover.

A seat for two.

 And some good, old fashioned kitsch. I very nearly bought one of these light-up Miller advertising wall plaques. The more I look back at these photos, the more shopping and less photographing I wish I'd done...

Is there such a thing as a good flea market that doesn't have a fondue set on sale on at least one stall?

Some good old Brooklyn brownstones. Yep, my fantasy double life living in New York is well and truly stoked.