So this week's Knock Knock, we have the excellent Emma Abrahams! Emma & I have never actually met, but I know she is excellent as she was one of my first customers. Since then, we have kept a good little correspondence going, and I have been able to sneak looks at her house. These sneaky looks had piqued my interest, so I tentatively asked if she would ever be keen to take on Knock Knock. Hurrah - she agreed! She doesn't only interest herself with being my sometimes pen pal; she also is the Managing Director of The Assembly Network, a marketing agency in East London. I don't know where she found the time, but I am very thankful she did!
Alex and I didn’t know this part of London very well before we moved here, but we fell in love with the house, its light, its shutters, its personality. Right from the start, even when it needed a lot of work, it was clear to us that it had real chutzpah.
Over the years, we’ve also become the biggest fans of our local area - London Fields. Like all good places to live, it feels like a village community, with its own quirks and eccentrics, but mainly full of kind, passionate people - who have opened unique shops, gallery spaces and warm and restoring cafes and restaurants.
The house, which is a Georgian townhouse, has provided us with the space and canvas to really build the life we wanted to - filled to the brim with friends, dogs, good food and bad dancing. It’s been the house where I’ve learnt to vaguely be a grownup, hone my craft as margarita-maker-in-chief and how to feed and care for the people I love.
It’s also been a willing mule for many an interiors project. Again, it’s where I’ve cut my teeth and learnt so much about how I like to live and how I like to decorate. Each room has been built-on over time and I’ve loved sourcing antiques and unusual finds from markets, eBay and countryside junk shops. I’m sure a lot of people reading this can relate - but literally nothing makes me as happy or excited as a really good antiques market and hours to peruse at my leisure. I’m really missing my Thursday market-day fix in Spitalfields - mainly for the lovely stall holders, who over the years; I’ve got to know really well. I also have a few haunts in Suffolk, near my mum’s house - which I equally get far too excited about visiting. I love our community of interiors nerds.
Even as a child, I was always in charge of decorating the table and whilst I didn’t grown up going to antiques fairs, I had a weird (and possibly slightly embarrassing) obsession with TK Maxx, which afforded me the chance to spend hours getting lost, looking for unusual treasure. To this day, I’m still thrilled when I stumble across a store and immediately text my mum and friends to rate my haul.
As I’ve entered my thirties proper, I’ve also tentatively learnt how to garden, filling our tiny patchwork space with bulbs, annuals and perennials and slowly learning what combinations work and please me.
Gardening has taught me the benefits of slowing down, submitting to nature and appreciating the seasons - all of which has been called upon in spades this year of all years.
Looking ahead, we’d like to extend our kitchen space, building out a room into the garden that would allow for a really generous round dinner table - so that we can pick up where we left off with hosting, once Covid buggers off.
Big old thank you to Emma for this week's Knock Knock, for more glimpses of her house follow her here!
I must know what shade of green that is in the living room! Can Emma help me out?