The Beat That My Heart Skipped – A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations. By Rohini Wahi.

Curry and pink lemonade on Sunday with family…

Then a trip to Switzerland for the day Monday xxx

I been slowly but surely making my way through  London the Biography and have learnt so many enlightening things! One thing that has struck me the most is of the life expectancy of 16th Century London (or for that matter the rest of the world) The average Londoner lived to be 30.

Can you imagine a world where everyone was young? I know history’s ways and cultures were substantially different from our own and that we can accept – but this yound London struck me as something from a strange parallel universe or sci-fi movie.

How did anyone prosper or reach their goals? Who took on the senior roles in life? Doctors? Lawyers? Scientists??? How did people fall in love?

On the other hand Ackroyd says that’s why the London of then was such a young London, full of activity and life and energy…

By Mina Perhonen.

Julia Rothman is an an illustrator and pattern designer located in Brooklyn, New York. On her blog project – Book by its Cover – Julie shares and writes about beautiful books she has collected over the years. She displays amazing children’s books, unusual handmade books and comics, as well as design and fine art books. I’ll try not to focus too much on the childrens books which i find the most interesting!

An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton. The book is about dreams and how you should have them. But your dreams should be exciting dreams (”of rocket-powered unicorns and candy cane machines, of magic watermelon boats and musical baboons”) and not boring ones like the kind some other people dream (”of buying a new hat, of owning matching silverware”).

Tico and The Golden Wings by Leo Lionni. This book reminds me of the books I used to have growing up in India. The illustrations are from 1964. The story is about a bird who had no wings but then gets granted golden wings. He uses each golden feather to help somebody and a regular black feather grows in it’s place. In the end he has his wings and has also done great things for all different people.

Velluto Storia De un Ladro by Silvana D’Angelo, Antonio Marinoni

i think i like this on the best as you get a tour of the interesting house. In each spread you follow the thief who crawls through a window into a house full of all kinds of interesting furniture and decor.  He sneaks past open doors where the residents are always too engaged in something else to notice him. At the end, someone does catch him- the ghost of the house who makes him leave out a window!

A lot of beautiful Design books on Pattern are doing the rounds lately – so covetable…i love Minha Perhonen 3 Print by Minä Perhonen.

Amy Cutler’s fine art illustrations are compiled in this book.

She makes detailed narrative paintings that look like they belong in an old children’s fairy tale book. In most of her paintings the figures are usually women or some sort of hybrid women in a surreal scene. In Traction, women are pulling a house with their braided hair, like rope. In Egg Collection, the woman’s head is a basket full of eggs and some of the chickens have women’s heads. Amy’s paintings seem to have some sort of feminist undertones. Many of the paintings have women performing chores together- even though they are not being done in the normal fashion.

I could go on and on with this post but check out the rest here.

After months of whinging how I am now a ‘permanent freelancer’ and never have anyone to have lunch with and no one to ask how my evening was in the morning rituals of being part of a team…I am suddenly loving all this ‘me time’. Not having left the house for the last 3 months (apart from the odd meeting/propping/lunching) due to the continuous PJ wearing writing of my Design Guide (which I am now half a day away from finishing) I decided to treat myself and leave the house!!!

I sat in our local park which, is 20 steps (to be precise) away from our flat  – and read my current book Mistress of the Art of Death (light reading?), I watched all the dogs and kids, and enjoyed a chocolate croissant and a coffee from across the road. On the way home, I walked past the little church inside the park which was also looking so pretty in the sun with its bright blue door and daffodils that have sprung up – it looks like someone’s house.

Then I walked down our street to our flat and saw some houses that I might not mind living in forever…

Now all this waxing lyrical  may stem from being cooped up for a loooong time, but for the first time in a while I have felt truly content! Life’s not bad at all when you live in Wanstead : )