Travel Gifts: Haptic Lab Map Quilts

New Orleans

Looking for a gift for a new parent who loves to travel?  Or who loves a particular city? It would be hard to do better than one of these sweet cotton quilts from Haptic Lab.

Boston

These sweet yet geographically precise printed quilts measure 36" x 42" and are hand knotted. They come in three color ways and can even be personalized.

Haptic Lab also makes large all-white city quilts with hand-stitched (rather than printed) maps - featured cities include London, New York, Paris, and more.

Paris

The Delightful Cephalopodic Playgrounds of Japan

I’m not sure I would plan an entire trip around playgrounds - especially a major trip to a faraway land like Japan.  However, it’s one of the first things I look into whenever we go anywhere - it’s just good to know where we can go blow off steam and run around if we need to.  

Japan looks to have some awfully neat playgrounds worth keeping an eye out for - and a surprising number of them incorporate one of my favorite cephalopods - the octopus!  The play structures, most of which were built by the Maeda Environmental Art Co., are common and are typically found in neighborhood parks - nothing spectacular about these sites.  But sometimes a little stop at a neighborhood playground is just what you need when you’re on the way to something more spectacular!

There's a lot to love about these structures. The organic, amorphous shapes are very conducive to sliding, climbing, and slithering.  The faces of some these creatures are alternately slightly scary, poignant, or goofy.  While clearly octopi, the structures do not demand that the nature of your play be aquatic - they're suggestive but open-ended.  For more examples (and there are many, many more), click here.

M. Sasek - So Inspiring!

M. Sasek’s series “This is…” has enchanted countless young travelers – I still remember being given my now dog-eared copy of “This is San Francisco” by my grandparents – I loved the jazzy illustrations and simple descriptions of city life.  It got me excited about my upcoming visit to the city!

M. Sasek (also known as Miroslav Sasek) was a Czech austhor and illustrator who later lived in Munich and Paris (both cities are included in the series).  He originally trained as an architect, and you can see his keen understanding of structure in his drawings of buildings – the illustrations overall are very lively and uncomplicated, but the buildings are quite correct and relatively detailed.  I think they ground the pictures and make the scenes really come alive!  The people are also wonderfully drawn - real characters, all of them...

My dad recently gave “This is Texas” to my son, and it is just as captivating, if a little out-of-date. Well, they all are, really – they were written between 1959 and 1970.  New editions contain updates in the back, and it’s fun to compare the old and new, and see how things have changed.  We live in Texas, and although I love to leave the state when I can, it’s nice to see O getting interested in exploring his home state, too.

I wish we’d had the New York book before our trip there a few years’s ago –perhaps I’ll pick it up anyway, and see how it compares with our memories!

images by sarah and from miroslavsasek.com