Shopping!

Fewer, Better | 4.20

1/ My friend Christina kindly sent me the completely bananagrams self-massager that I had been so distracted by when I visited her. Sharper Image jokes aside, it’s now this social distancer’s best friend.

2/ Picked up these sandals at Zero by Maria Cornejo just before leaving the city. Luckily they’ll look great with my new uniform of army pants and old striped tees.

3/ What’s your stockpiling panic trigger? Mine is the lack of good flour, online and in store. How am I supposed to bake bread? Luckily my friend Sabine reminded me of the wonderful Maine Grains. Their buckwheat flour (just what you need to make the banana buckwheat loaf in Susan Spungen’s Open Kitchen) is great, as are their oats and heirloom beans. You can even buy a sourdough starter for $1.50!

4/ Pre-massager, my friend Christina gave me this schmancy Byredo hand sanitizer for Christmas, replacing my bougie Aesop. I now wish I’d bought more of both. Simpler times…

5/ If no one sees you, do you really have to wash your hair? For the weekly store run, just spray on some Gold Lust Dry Shampoo. The newer formulation of Oribe’s popular dry shampoo has a less grippy finish, buying you even more time between washes.

6/ I’ve started a microbakery upstate, delivering loaves to neighbors every week. My bread knife of choice is from Material.

7/ In Kyoto, I was lucky to do a tasting at Ippodo tea (see the VP, Mrs. Watanabe, making tea at my place last summer!).  They were politely mortified when my favorite was this local brew, made each year when the tea bushes are trimmed and the clippings intensely smoked, making lapsang souchong seem dainty. I bought so much iribancha, everything in my suitcase smelled like it was just back from summer camp.

8/ “Offline Activities” by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin is a delight, confinement or no. (Ex: Bring something home from the supermarket and treat it as sculpture.) Please subscribe to Tamara’s delightful newsletter — and be sure to click on all the images.

9/ I’ve been happily wearing the same thing for the last three weeks, but I’m ordering this Toast dress in the hopes that I can wear it in public this summer.

10/ My new Moleskine replacement is from Germany. I stocked up in my favorite colors: Army green (for work) and Hermès orange (for thoughts).

11/ No mask? Up your grocery-store look with this Imogene + Willie bandanna. Gloves not included.