Look what just came in...

New merchandise is arriving daily in our shops, and no, this little guy is not for sale. We just thought he was so darn cute... and he really, really wanted to be in that box while his mom shopped.

By the way, we're having a rare and impromptu sale at our downtown location this Friday and Saturday, July 27 and 28, along with seven other great shops along Minnesota Avenue. Stop by and pick up some great deals, as we make room for all the new merchandise coming in. Friday and Saturday in summer we'll be open until 8pm, and ready with a little glass of wine for you. [Our River Mall Avenue location is open regular hours of 10:30-5:30 mon-sat and 11-4 on sunday.] Ciao!

Lavender Festival, Cycling, Art...

It's all happening this weekend in Bend. Pomegranate's seventh annual Lavender Festival and Bastille Day celebration is Saturday, July 14, and we'll be serving up a fun pique-nique lunch, along with French wines and lavender lemonade. New lavender products are just in, along with hundreds of gorgeous lavender plants, and lots of new French goodies, from flea market finds to tea towels and linens. Those who wear a beret or arrive in a cute french vehicle will get a prize! We hope to see you at this always-fun festival, held at our River Mall Avenue location. Call us at 541-383-3713 if you need directions or info.

Meanwhile, downtown Bend is hosting the fabulous Criterium bike race this evening (Friday, 7/13), and it, too, is a can't-miss event. It takes your breath away when the racers come flying around the corners of our downtown streets. Be sure to position yourself somewhere along Wall, Bond, or Minnesota near the parking garage. Oh, huge tip for those of you coming downtown tonight or this weekend: park in the garage! It's free, there's plenty of room, and your car is protected from heat and hail. We remind people every day about the wonderful new parking garage, and even locals seem to have forgotten about it. Don't even think about circling around; just zoom straight in there and go. It's at the corner of Lava and Minnesota.

Here's a photo Robert took in Brugge, Belgium this last April. We just happened to be there when they hosted a huge race, second only to the Tour de France (sorry, can't remember the name of this one). It's quite a serious event, and racers come from all over to participate. But, this is Europe, and so it was inevitable to find this guy on his bike... smoking a cigarette!

On Saturday and Sunday, (July 14 & 15), downtown Bend hosts a summer festival: the streets will be full of artists, wine tastings, jazz, food booths, kid's events... and our Pomegranate Downtown store will be open, of course. Stop in for a cool respite from the heat, and see some of our great new things that have come in over the last few weeks. If you don't want to carry packages, we're happy to put it all aside for you until you can come back to pick up.

By the way, our fabulous artist friend Eleanor Murphey will be showing her ceramic wares at the Summer Fest (look for her along the Wall St. booths). This is a rare chance to see her wonderful wax-resist vessels and pots, inspired by Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau forms. Her work is completely hand-done, from throwing to glazing, and so creative and original. Eleanor's studio is in Bend, but her work goes out to galleries and collectors all over the world. Her next show is the Mill Valley Art Festival, so catch her now while you can!

Hope to see you this weekend!

Just back from a buying trip

Oh, what fun it was to make a spur-of-the-moment trip to the infamous Alameda Flea Market (across the bay from San Francisco) just this last weekend. We came back with a load of goodies for the shops, and Robert will be unloading quite a bit of it on Thursday at our River Mall location. I suspect some of it will never even see the inside of the shop: the fun is to grab it straight out of our trailer or right off the lawn as we unload.

Here's a little buying trip diary of our super romantic life (!) as shopkeepers. Saturday, 7.1.07. Thank god our staff is willing to work extra days while we're out of town. We couldn't do it without them. Hook up the trailer, double check all the equipment we'll need (dolly, blankets, rope, bags, bubble wrap, cart...), drop off the dogs at camp, and hit the road (after doing a hundred other little things before we could leave). Arrive at our motel at 10pm, fall face down on bed. Alarm rings at 5:30am and Jan begs for another 1o minutes of sleep. Check out at 6:3o; breakfast not yet being served, so we go off to shop without so much as a latté to bolster us. Might be a Starbucks or something around here, but we have the bulky trailer behind us. Oh yeah, someone parked like an idiot and we spend 20 minutes jockeying the trailer around to get it hooked up again. At the flea market, we park a mile away and jump out to dash to the entrance.

Ugh. It's still very early and we have to adjust our eyes to the gray of the morning. Fortunately, it's cool and pleasant and even a bit foggy. The sunburn and searing heat come later. The flea market is an endless hodgepodge of stuff, from horrible to sublime. We see a lot of mid-century stuff and some of it is well-designed and fun, and other stuff is just plain schlocky. The chairs above were ugly when they were manufactured, and time has not made them prettier. Ditto the red leather loveseat. Now that little Danish modern table in the front is not half bad, and that hideous blue sofa I think would actually look pretty good reupholstered in a modern fabric. Nothing $1,000 couldn't cure.
One fun thing about the flea market: there are so many amazing characters shopping and selling. We loved this fellow in his getup.

So we dash around for hours, zig zagging through the rows, making quick decisions about where our precious funds should go, taking notes on where we need to return to pick something up, shoveling kettle korn while we shop. You have to have a nifty fold-up cart to drag all the smalls around. I notice some of the serious girls have custom linings for their carts with spaces for bottled water and cell phones.

By 2pm we need to be circling back around to pick up some of our larger things and starting to load up the trailer. It takes much longer than we think because the truck is far away, and each load is only as much as the dolly can handle. Good thing we brought it, because the line for the big carts to borrow is a mile long. Oh, did I mention it's bloody hot by now and we already know we're sunburned, because we stupidly left our hats in the car.


Then it was up to Sonoma for a teeny bit of R&R. When we arrived at our hotel, we had a glass of wine and almost passed out in the lobby. It was all we could do to walk our bedraggled selves to the restaurant that evening. We might have skipped it altogether, except that we were malnourished from having eaten only kettle korn. Next day, more searching for treasures. We like to visit other dealers whenever we travel, and sometimes we find one great little thing, and sometimes, nada. We sure look at a LOT of schlocky stuff to find one good nugget. These little kitty salt & pepper shakers were just begging for a new home. Glad it's not ours.