During our stay in Asia, we took a weekend trip to Hong Kong. Towering buildings, crazy traffic, streets packed with shoppers, and an occasional moment or two that reminded me of the old Hong Kong I grew up in. I also remembered the pet bird I had when I was in elementary school, a little blue budgie named Wendy.

Sightseeing aside, we ventured out to a less touristy area, Tin Hau, in search of a shop called Kapok. We followed our map to the hillside, up a winding cement staircase, and found the store on a sloped, tree-lined street that carried the light scent of incense from the temple nearby. The minute we stepped inside, we were all smiles.

Kapok is part storefront, part gallery space, part design studio, carrying products by Asian and European designers. We spent quite a while there, looking over all the things in the store and chatting with the owner, Arnault, who told us about a great teahouse that we headed over to later in the afternoon. We left the store with a bunch of things from Postalco - marbled journals and notecards, postcards, a wallet, and two booklets, sheets of silkscreened wrapping paper from Bob Foundation, and Print’em’s Shift Calendar 2008 (we’ve been so picky about calendars and this one seems to be just what we’re looking for, except it’s missing a hole at the top to hang it by, so I’ll have to use my hole-puncher).

Seeing Kapok makes me wish I had a big first floor studio with a big glass window so that I could turn half of it into a gallery and storefront ~ how fun would that be! It’s a lot of work though, and right now, I’m perfectly content to be back in our sunny and quiet third floor studio!

January 16th, 2008