Anne-apolis

  If you live in an apartment and are thinking of getting a cat (or two), the answer is a resounding "yes": the advantages of cat ownership are many, including a number of claims about the benefits to your mental and physical health. They are quite independent, so if you need to go away on business or for a holiday, a neighbour popping in once a day to check on the food and water supply is usually sufficient. I have only had the briefest spells of no cats in my life, but always the "cat redistribution system" has come through for me as soon as I moved out of each of the apartments I lived in where cats were not allowed. I recently had to put down my older cat, of the quintessential "rescue" breed, and decided to wait a couple of months to see whether my younger cat enjoyed being an only child. As at least one day per week I am out for the whole day, I was concerned that he was becoming lonely, so enter Willow, a Friday cat made from all the leftover scraps...

  A couple of weeks ago, I reflected on the sense of smell in a domestic setting, where I touched on the idea of a more conscious "curating" of the smell of your home by introducing some of the vast range of aroma enhancers. As I am such a novice in this arena, I was given a guided "scent tour" of one of my daughters' homes. It is interesting that both of my children are very much more aware of their "smell environment" than I am - one can speculate whether this is innate, inherited from their father's gene pool, or whether this has emerged through its high profile on social media. We started at the front door, to simulate the experience of a guest visiting for the first time. The entrance area is dominated by wooden floors, fittings and furniture. She has enhanced the natural timber smells with a subtle scent of bergamot and lavender, from a reed diffuser in the guest loo that opens into the entrance. A reed diffuser for a subtle background effec...

  Last week I had an online meeting with one of my students who, after a couple of minutes, asked: "Are you in your office today?" An odd question, but one that set me thinking -  I usually hold our online meetings from home, where the WiFi is more reliable, so what was it about the background sounds that prompted his question? He was quite sure about its being the echo - my office has entirely hard surfaces, giving a quite different background acoustic environment. My living room, where I have my normal online meetings, is probably less sound absorbing than most people's, as I have no carpet (due to allergies) and my furniture is not particularly sound absorbing, but clearly the presence of curtains and upholstered seating is enough to make a noticeable difference. My living room with limited soft furnishing, but wooden floor and high ceiling In spaces that are very reverberant and echoing, we tend to be more alert and energetic, while in more sound-absorbing spaces, we ...

  I have had the privilege of two spring seasons this year, as I was in the northern hemisphere in late April and May, in the English countryside . Back in Johannesburg, my first sense of spring is through two quite distinctive and special smells: Brunfelsia (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow shrub) which grows outside my kitchen window, and white jasmine, which flowers very early at Wits University. Brunfelsia flowering in the garden of my apartment block This has set me thinking of smell in the context of buildings, something that influences all of us, wherever we are, yet is quite elusive and seldom plays a role in architectural design. (As an exception, I remember a Master of Architecture submission that looked at designing for visually impaired people which explored smell and touch as the design drivers.) Each of our homes (and often our offices) have a smell that is unique to us, a combination of the many decisions we make about food, cleaning products and air freshening options....

In January this year, a very special friend gave me a voucher for our favourite fabric shop, Arthur Bales , which happened to be having one of its awesome sales, including Liberty fabrics at absurdly low prices.  Some of my "stash" of Liberty fabrics I am a great fan of Liberty, as the quality of their merchandise is exceptional and the designs are absolutely beautiful. I have made quite a few garments over the years, including a shirt from a Liberty fabric that is printed with a William Morris design, which I completed last weekend. A recently completed shirt with a William Morris design Just as a quirky detail, I snipped the "Morris & Co" tag from the selvage to make a label for this shirt - proof of authenticity!  Ever since January, my friend and I planned to use her Liberty fabric that she had bought on the sale to make a replica of her favourite skirt, which she had bought in Paris many years ago, and has been mended and adapted several times. She wanted ...

  I was recently invited to an awards evening that was a "black tie" event, which posed something of a challenge to me as a person used to wearing almost exclusively jeans and "work" attire. I went through a brief phase in my mid 20s of buying evening-wear, partly because I was expected to attend functions as a young professional in a company dominated by colleagues who had a very refined dress sense, right down to matching grey shoes to the exact same shade evening suit! Fortunately, I have held on to clothes I bought many years ago, but what came through for me was a dress that my mother-in-law had worn to my own wedding in 1986! Fortunately her style and dress size match my present situation exactly, so no adaptation needed to this beautifully hand-tailored garment. I wonder how many people at the event realised they were looking at something that was the height of elegance 40 years ago. A 40 year old dress in a timeless design This led me to thinking about those...