Go exploring for exotic treasures from Europe and Asia, all over the world, at Alexander’s Bead Bazaar on 407 Main St. The Curious Nest can be found on 405 Main St., 20. The handcrafted jewelry, up-cycled and paper art, ceramics, textiles, soy candle tea cups, and so much more are fetching, extraordinary pieces dying to be held, stroked, and taken home. She also finds scores of exceptional antiques that will make you swoon, like a pearlescent shell-encased jewelry casket from 1800s France. Magpie artist Andrea Savar makes and curates jewelry from bits and pieces of her heart’s desire - gemstones, vintage pearls and French medals, evil eye charms and metal stag heads. Not far from crow is the mysterious and enchanting The Curious Nest, a curious, Victorian French antique maze of lost and found treasures, the kind you’d find in your cool grandmother’s attic, along with a closet full of period costumes to play dress-up in. Sit for a spell in a replica of the comfy orange “Friends” Central Perk couch - and when you’re ready, browse a broad, cheerful spectrum of local, handmade gifts: enamel jewelry by Sarah Meranda, Handy Happy fantasy animal pillows and plushie toys, Childs Stoneware Pottery, striped cotton shawls, and of course, lots and lots of local art, crows included. Jen Lawson opened up her brightly-lit, funky shop in November 2019 with fun, comfort, and artisanship in mind. This charming store sells cute, quirky character crows for fun, to plant in your backyard garden, hang on your tinseled tree, enjoy on your soon-to-be favorite drinking glasses, and ward off any bad juju. Curiouser and curiouser…īesides, nothing beats a little retail therapy in the heart of Main Street.Ĭrow. It’s easy to get lost in all that art and magic…a little like Alice Through the Looking Glass. Wander more through Northern Ireland in my other stories - Singing in the Irish Mist and Cosseted at Crom Castle.A good shopping day is when you go with one item in mind, and come out hours later with a whole other story.Įdmonds is that kind of place. This story has been published in Exotic Life: Travel Tales of an Adventurous Woman. When I share my surprise results and daily visits with Noel, he exclaims, “By gosh, I’ll have to build a hut over the stone so youse won’t get soaked in the mist.” This instant response inspires a daily pilgrimage to the wishing stone for the rest of my visit. An email arrives for me that announces I’m going to receive a tidy sum of money from an unexpected source! It is a doozy of conjuring that solves a major financial problem in my life. Less than twenty-four hours after my sitting session, my wish is answered in a way I never expected. In silence, with eyes closed, hawthorn branches pricking my head like a crown of thorns, I wish mightily. I take a turn, folding myself on top of the foot-square dome of lichen-pocked granite. He responds, “Oh yes, indeed, many a time, and the wishes always come true.” I hustle right over there with Noel in the mid-summer twilight.Īs he cautiously holds down the electric wire fence for me to step over, I query Noel, “Have you sat on the wishing stone and made wishes?” Well, I don’t feel that way, ambitious American alpha female that I am. “Violet, have you ever made a wish on the stone?” Ye need to sit on the stone without touching the earth around it-every part of yer body. She says, “Ye must go to the wishing stone right here on the castle grounds by the lake. Ireland is a bastion of superstition and magical lore. One blustery night at dinner, I ask Violet about sacred sites. During the famine they’d walk for days reaching the shore, where the boats were sailing to America only to die right there on the beach of hunger.” Her dense brogue unfurls the story of Ireland’s tragic past as she lays down plates piled high with her special boiled potatoes, roast lamb and aromatic mint sauce on the well-polished trestle table for our dinner at Crom Castle. Bodies of bones still jagging out of the rocky beaches at County Donegal which, Violette (our cook at Crom Castle) shares is, “just a wee drive to the West. All blended in with the mysteries and legends of their history. It wraps around the stories they love to lavish on visitors, stories and stories and stories piled up like strawberries on trifle. The Irish people’s thick accents slather around their words as rich as the dairy cream they pour on top of the delectable Irish coffees-as smooth and blankety as the dense foam on the head of a pint of Guinness. “Forty Shades of Green” it is, this land of ancient stone cairns.
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