Holiday Shopping under $100: Vintage Cards "Kit" & Classic Games

I once read that Isaac Mizrahi hosts a weekly bridge game at his apartment, and that he has delicious cocktails and delicious things to eat, but the real thing is the bridge game: apparently, he's quite serious about it, as are his friends.

This enchanted me. It seemed so glamorous and retro and yet nerdy and smart too. They say bridge is DIFFICULT! Again-- doesn't this sound good?

So ever since then I've kind of had it in mind that the ideal thing in life is to host a weekly bridge game. Or, frankly, a weekly mah-jong game-- that sounds fun too. Canasta! Whist! (Whatever these words mean, they sound great....!)

If you're a reader in Boston and know how to play bridge-- for heaven's sakes, email me! Though I know, my dear readers, I've been rather negligent here at Silk Felt Soil, and haven't posted enough recently. But I now have some time, having finished my dissertation, and I hope to be posting quite a bit more these days.

So I will leave you with this, for now: two holiday suggestions.

1. Present a friend with a cards "kit": a glam deck of vintage cards, like these wonderful matadors; an instruction book of card games, & and a promise to learn a classic card game together. (Bonus: add treats and a 6 pack of Coke in glass bottles, or a bottle of something stronger!).

Or...

2) Give a carrom board to someone you love, and learn to play it together.



What's Carrom you say? Carrom is like pool, except with poker-chip like disks that you flick with your finger over a chalky board. It's played all over Europe, India, Tibet, and South Asia generally. In France they call it "le billiard indien" as well as "carrom." And the boards are so pretty that it would make a lovely gift for the Someone in your life Who Has Everything....


UPDATE for Bostonians: I just learned that not only is MIT's bridge club renowned across Boston, and open to the community at all levels, but that the club's annual bridge bootcamp is free, and about to start up after the holidays. It will take place on Monday and Thursday evenings between Jan 4-Feb 1. More information here and here.