Hello! I’m Sally from ToDryFor, an online designer tea towel boutique that I run with my husband, Dave. We established ToDryFor in March 2008 and have gone from having around 30 different tea towels on the site to stocking over 130. We live in Oxford, England, and spend our day drinking lots of tea whilst finding and commissioning new designs.
I collect… a lot of random things, including 1980s plastic care bears to coordinate with our colour-coded CD collection [very laborious to organise but it looks pretty]! Dave and I are both obsessed with vintage crockery and at the moment I constantly find myself wanting to buy old tables [but we really don’t have room for them so I have to reign myself in]…
I can’t live without… food. I think about what I’m going to have for dinner when I wake up, and when I go to bed I’m already looking forward to breakfast. It probably means I have a tapeworm, but I’m not complaining!
My guilty pleasure is… reading teen vampire fiction. It’s so wrong, but it’s the best way to spend a dreary Sunday, tucked up in a blanket with a cup of tea.
Our house is filled with…boxes! We are starting two new gift and homewares websites this summer. It’s so exciting to have deliveries of new products every day, but it’s got to the point where we think we may need to move!
I treasure my… grey cat Mr Maurice. I used to hate all animals, especially cats and pigeons. Dave begged me for a pet kitten and eventually I succumbed, insisting that he would have to look after it. Maurice is now five years old and I am hopelessly and irrevocably in love with him. I now have a new found [almost born-again obsessive] love of all animals because of him.
Right now I can’t stop thinking about… freshly baked white chocolate and cranberry cookies.
Currently I am reading… an old penguin edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I’ve always wanted to read it, but just never quite got around to it.
My favourite item of clothing is… my green sundress that I found in Zara a couple of years ago – it’s perfect for wearing to weddings and trips to the beach. It’s got a retro look to it and makes me feel summery.
At the top of my furniture wish list is… a lot of tables! I’d also love a vintage rocking chair and perhaps the Christian Werner mini pop chair in pink.
The last thing that really inspired me was… visiting the Sir John Soane’s museum. There is so much history crammed into a relatively tiny space – it was incredible!
My comfort food is… probably chilli con carne smothered in cheap cheddar. Mmmmm…
On my desk are… lots of lists of things to do; a Tatty Devine moustache necklace ready to send off to a lucky prize winner; my Oxford University Press edition of New Hart’s Rules [acquired when I used to work there - it’s invaluable for my constant grammar queries]); and a cup of tea!
This weekend I will… hopefully be seeing my dad who’s trying to get to the UK from Australia amidst the volcano chaos. We’ll be visiting Oxford’s Ashmolean museum, going for a nice meal at a local pub, and possibly going along to a car boot sale to rummage for more crockery.
Tonight I must… work out what we’re going to cook during my dad’s visit, book some train tickets to London [we’re off to Pick Me Up, a contemporary graphic art fair at Somerset House], and try to stop Dave from eating all the chocolate and cranberry cookies.
I love what I do because… I love tea towels! I get to meet lots of interesting and lovely people, and I get to write silly descriptions on the website that I wouldn’t be allowed to put live if we didn’t work for ourselves. I think the best thing though is that I get to work with Dave; we get to have a giggle together and it means we don’t bore each other when we discuss the drying-up effectiveness of linen union versus cotton!
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