Niceguy,
Maybe we can do a one-for-one anonymous exile exchange--you for Roman Polanski who is still here hiding out in Gstaad.
I adore the Vallee de Joux where the JL factory is located. Here is a story you will like. In order to keep their European headquarters in Switzerland, my husband's multinational company has to re-sign a contract every year with the Swiss government that they will keep their ONE factory in all of Switzerland, (which happens to be located in the Vallee de Joux), open and functioning and will never drop below their current (and perpetual) 120 employees. This factory is by far and away the most expensive production facility in the entire company. It's how the Swiss government keeps ANY manufacturing facilities in their country at all. If you want to put your headquarters here and reap the huge tax savings, you have to agree to employ 120 Swiss people in perpetuity. Done.
Aunt Mark, you made me laugh out loud! I blame Ray.
Is that the real Honey Fitz?
One of my kids got to go on an old Norwegian sailing ship this past weekend. (Vikings, not pirates, but pretty much the same thing.) She said it was all teak and brass and white and very beautiful. Or maybe it wasn't old, but it was a big sailing ship and they always look old to me.
I took this photo on a semi-vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This is is the kind of beach that makes my heart get all fluttery. All I want to do is look at every single rock and pick out the ones I like best and take them home. I spent a week on a beach in Delaware a few years ago and collected 300 lbs of much smaller beach stones with my daughter. They're still sitting in her garage. I can't imagine getting rid of them. I also still have some big granite stones from a beach in Denmark that I got 18 years ago.
Spanky, the salt-and-pepper granite boulder (c. 7" dia) which I used in this photomontage resides happily on my floor -- my foot is resting on it now. I found it in my garage years ago, here in San Francisco; it was no doubt brought back from the Merced River west of Yosemite Valley, where there are countless others. I love the look. I also have much smaller pebbles of porous red brick, from a local beach . . .
Very nice! I have some just like that from Denmark---actually they are bits of Sweden that broke off a really long time ago and eventually got all smooth in the Øresund before ending up on Danish beaches. There were all kinds of granite there. I have some that are dark gray or black mottled with brown in about 3/8" circles---iron ore? It looks like rust, sort of.
They also have a lot of basalt and chalk rocks---the hardest and softest of rocks in one. My Danish friend said that that's the only place in the world where this occurred but maybe I'm remembering that wrong. It was all over the place, I know that!
SDR , here's one of my mottled rocks. I have two or three and they're all exactly the same. I remembered them a little incorrectly--I thought the circles were rust colored but they're just lighter gray. But there is some brown in there too. The spots are about 3/8" in diameter, I think. Any thoughts on what kind of rock it is? Is it another variety of granite?
Heh. Yeah, it's very hard! I think the lighter dots may be slightly indented, indicating they're a little softer than the black part.
My geological studies started at a very early age, like 10 or 11, when my little sister and I would go park ourselves on the slope where the road cut through a hill near our house and hunt for interesting rocks for a couple of hours. We would still do that, given the chance. I also have a rocks & minerals guidebook. And that's about it!
I would go with Natzler over Marimekko!
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