You may recall that last September, Jojo and I went to Paris for the Maison & Objet trade show. Paris is a magnificent city. Villepinte, a Paris suburb where the trade show happens, is not magnificent. Going there is a bit like commuting from Manhattan to Secaucus. But we weren't there for the charm. We were there to discover new products, keep an eye on trends, get intel from our partners, and negotiate purchases for the year ahead.

The first interesting product we spotted was an outlier. We're a cooking and home shop. But the Yuyu cotton waffle long hot water bottle reeled us in. It functions like a classic hot water bottle, except that its long, narrow shape and strap make it much more versatile. You can wrap it over your shoulders while you're working on your laptop. You can strap it across your back or mid-section to soothe aches. Or you can treat it like a body pillow and have it keep you warm while you sleep. This is the first product to debut from our Paris finds, and it's currently among our top 20 bestsellers for January. Many more such finds to come this year!

In the meantime, here's where to find the Yuyu.

Amanda Really Messes Up

My "cooking" show started during the pandemic when I was running the company from home and cooking for my family. I was extremely busy and I'm easily distracted, so what I thought would be a cook-along series ended up being more about how I make a lot of mistakes when cooking, but usually figure it out in the end. So we called the series Amanda Messes Up. As I learned from the comments section, I am not alone in messing up. Lots of cooks out there have things competing for their attention!

After an extended hiatus, during which my attention span did not improve, we brought the show back. The first recipe I made was a lemon poppy seed cookie from Crumbs by Ben Mims. The cookies are excellent, but things went more sideways than usual—you can watch it here. The series will run twice a month on YouTube.

Lighting Made in Portland

Josh, our Creative Director, and George, our photographer.

Dave and Scott, installing fixtures.

Adjusting the Ray fixture, just so.

Katie, VP of Design, and me assessing images (or perhaps watching memes on her laptop).

Here's an update on another project I've been working on—this one with the Schoolhouse team. They've been making lighting in their Portland, Oregon, factory for more than 20 years. While we don't make all of our lighting and products there anymore, we wanted to brand the lighting that we continue to manufacture ourselves so that you'd understand that it came directly from our factory. We're calling the line Benchmade.

The lights were drawn and developed by our in-house design team. We have the metal, wood, and glass parts produced both domestically and overseas according to our design specs, then the rest of the work happens back in Portland.

Just steps from where each piece was dreamed up in our offices, our factory team finishes them by hand—by buffing and lacquering or by scuffing and painting. We've found that doing all this in-house gives us a broader range of color and finishes and enables us to control all the details—to make a better product. These last steps require years of expertise and a careful human eye.

Benchmade, which includes some of our classic lighting designs, such as Luna and Teig, is made up of six lighting families (a family consists of the same light in different forms, such as a sconce and pendant). We worked with photographer George Barbaris to capture the timeless fixtures being made by our terrific factory team. The images bring out all of these fixtures' grit, beauty, and heritage.