Virginia Cycle Chic with Peter-Blair

Basket & Bike has partnered with Richmond based Peter-Blair Accessories to create a beautiful and sophisticated gentlemen's tie with our trademark whimsy and Virginia Cycle Chic bicycle.  This tie gives nod to the leisure bicycle lifestyle of simple rides along a country road with a bike basket packed for adventure, and comes in 4 colors as a necktie or bowtie. 

I worked with amazing creative and CEO of Peter-Blair Accessories, Kate Ackerly.  From start to finish this was a FUN project, plus I made a great new friend who has inspired me to keep dreaming and doing.  The art of fashion, and playing with the design and color elements has always intrigued me, and creating this tie with Kate gave me a fantastic opportunity to see the project through from nugget of an idea to completion.

The first step was sizing our logo to the right repeat pattern and choosing colors. I touched the silk and grouped hues together, deciding which combinations were the most pleasing.  By choosing four colors we had the latitude to select something traditional and still include something a bit more unusual.  After deciding on at least 8 patterns the next step was to produce the samples. 

After seeing the first run of silks, we had to narrow to four so I took my samples to friends, men and women, and asked their opinions.  I had at least 25 people weigh in on their top four.  Taking the samples home I asked my sons their favorites.  Then I raided my husband, Andy's closet, and paired the silks with tweed jackets and blue blazers, check shirts and solid broadcloths.  I looked at some favorite ties of Andy's for further ideas and we discussed the need for an additional color in the bike basket.  They all looked great, but the ones you can now purchase - just in time for Easter Sunday - won out.  The scarlet just popped on a pale blue polished cotton, and the maize looked so sharp and classic with a white shirt and navy blazer. And the tweeds, wow they looked extraordinary, especially our tinted apricot and need we say more on the mint.   We are very pleased with what we present to you (though I am hopeful to get that lavender produced in another printing!)  

We are thrilled to have partnered with Peter Blair on crafting a tie that, as they say, "evokes stylish confidence, is timeless, and will continue to serve gentlemen for generations to come."

Peter-Blair Accessories takes pride that their products are of the highest quality, use only the finest materials, and are handmade in the USA.

At this point it bears repeating how incredibly happy I am to have worked with Campfire & Co on the branding aspects of Basket & Bike.  As a small business, having a thoughtfully curated and professional brand guide brings me confidence and an amazing amount of joy.  A joy that translates for all who are drawn to our tours and products (and now this tie).  So thank you Christina Kern, Lauren Stewart, and Christie Thompson.  The beautiful work you did in late 2015 continues to burn bright and spur new flames of creativity. 

A bouquet of flowers, a crunchy baguette fresh from the baker's shelf, a hunk of delicious local cheese, and a bottle of your favorite Virginia wine and you are set to find that perfect picnic location. 

You can Shop our ties now! and they will soon be available at Peter-Blair 5800 Grove Avenue in Richmond, The Carytown Collective 3422 Cary Street, and at other stores across the USA where Peter-Blair ties are sold.  Thank you Kate Ackerly and Peter-Blair for the great design collaboration!

Happy Spring Everyone - Come see us in town and on the trail!

Signature Ride at Upper Shirley Vineyards • Jamestown island Ride at The Williamsburg Winery • Yoga & Ride with Shockoe Slip Yoga • Historic Garden Week Tours with Palate Picnics • AND NOW at The Carytown Collective

Anne Poarch - Founder

Sharing a little Basket & Bike and Virginia love this sweet hangtag will adorn all the ties. 

Waiting. . . A Christmas Missive

Today we began the ascent into slivers of more daylight.  Last night, we welcomed winter in Virginia, the arrival of the Winter Solstice, the Norse night of Yule. 

Awakening after the longest night of the year, the sky beyond my bedroom window was stria.  As if to signal the return of longer days, this sunrise was a summer seersucker of pink, parallel lines of pink and white with a brightness bringing forth the promise of the sun, born again to restore, and to ride her seasonal path.

It is a measured path and the daughter of the sun goddess takes her time.  For a winter sky is filled with waiting.  Waiting for snow, waiting for a sleigh of toys, waiting for a star to light our way.  In the stillness of a winter's night we wait.  We wait for the rebirth of a child to fill our hearts with the light of love.  Beyond the tinsel and the trimmings, the herald of a new year, the epiphany to come, we wait.  We wait for the return of spring, for happy growing things, and for winged dreams to carry us with them into sunlight and warmth.  We long for the light, but it is in the darkness of a winter's night, in the waiting, that hidden talents and treasures are stoked, fueled by warm mugs of tea or cocoa.  It is the rest all of life needs, in the huddled hibernation of a home or the deep soil of the soul, in order to do the miraculous work of stretching, of flowering and unfolding to bring forth new promise. 

And each day lengthens, spreading out that pink sky, until I, too, uncoil like a seedling and become who I am meant to be.  Until I ride with you again, and we fly with the sky, astride our bikes, me wearing a pink seersucker dress, happy face to the sun.

I will see you in the spring.  Be patient, while you wait. . .

Merry Christmas!

XO Anne Poarch • Founder • Basket & Bike

Agecroft Hall and Gardens • 4305 Sulgrave Road • Richmond • Virginia

VOICES FROM THE GARDEN - THE VIRGINIA WOMEN'S MONUMENT

I attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Virginia Women’s Monument on Capitol Square, titled “Voices from the Garden”, biking to the event on my first RVA BIKE SHARE excursion.  It was a great experience, cycling up the hill (okay that required some effort!) first to Sefton Coffee to meet up with other women entrepreneurs, members of the RVA Boss Babes Group, to enjoy conversation before walking together to the ceremony. 

IN THE GARDEN

Honoring the contributions of 410 years of Virginia’s women, and part of Commemorate 2019, this monument will feature 12 important female figures, well-known and lesser-known, of Native American, African, and European descent, that played major roles in weaving the fabric of our nation. This will be an innovative, interactive monument to help Virginians, Americans, and all visitors to our beautiful Commonwealth celebrate, not just the sacrifices of these 12 women, but all women whose heroics may still go unsung.  The Virginia Capitol Foundation is still at work raising money for completion.

Bob Brown, Richmond Times-Dispatch photographer, managed to catch me peering at the model, and while fun to be snapped for the paper, I am more pleased for the chance to open up the dialogue into these women and others like them, including those among us now. Their stories run deeper than the soil, they forge a continuous line from the women that called the shores of the James River their home for thousands of years before Jamestown was settled by the English. The title of the monument is fitting way to symbolize the accomplishments Virginia women have prized from the soil. From Mother Earth with her fecundity, to native women, forming hand-built bowls or digging up the tuberous plant, Tuckahoe, to grind into flour. From African women teaching little girls to dress a wound, to blend spices, or to just blend in, so secret reading lessons would go unnoticed; to English women, recording thoughts, keeping poise and decorum in public, while aiding a rebel cause behind closed doors. Strong-willed women, all Virginia women, all essential parts of this land where America began and which has continued to change as women have enriched her soil with a deepening diversity, an ever lovelier garden of flowers representing women from nation upon nation, upon nation upon nation, who now call Virginia home. Who come not just to claim the soil as birthright but to roll up their sleeves, and do the hard and important work of citizenship, and demanding from this claim what it offers them, a chance to live a beautiful life of freedom, by each, to her own definition.

*Our Signature, Jamestown Island and Discover Downtown Richmond Bike Excursions, focus on the freedom and fun of a bike, an important invention in its time for offering women a new freedom, explores our history and our present by placing the past on the landscape and highlights the four major events that happened to the colony in 1619, two of which are 1) the first large group of women to risk the uncertainties of life and marriage in Virginia and 2) the first Africans to arrive on our shores in chains, both traded for provisions. The English women as brides in exchange for tobacco, and the Africans for corn and other provisions.

Come with us and experience Virginia with us!

Anne Poarch • Founder