Odds & Ends Around the Valley

By Any Other Name

There’s a little bit of 19th-Century England right in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Running along Chestnut and Walnut streets and Lyons Avenue in Newhall is a great profusion of small, elegant shops that the more well-to-do inhabitants of almost any Dickens novel would have been delighted to patronize.

Included in the Victoria Square store collection are A Touch of Class, which has exquisite antique velvet and beaded gowns and bags; a children’s clothing store (for those of the “nothing’s too good for my baby” persuasion) called Snuggle Bear; The Quilted Heart, which has traditional and fanciful handmade quilts; and the One Stop Doll Shop, which has handmade and machine-crafted antique dolls that no child should ever be allowed to touch, as well as some that they should.

One of the jewels in the Victoria Square crown is The English Rose, which has reopened under the management of Carla Cummings, who seems to know just what to do with her trove of old and new treasures.

She has stocked it with affordable antiques and antique reproductions and memorabilia reminiscent of a particular era. There are lots of collectibles, including Limoges hand-painted porcelain boxes, and unique items like the handmade, personalized, one-of-a-kind wedding albums that are a world apart from the usual white plastic affairs.

One of the most expensive and exquisite items in the shop is a $450 needlepoint pillow that shows a traditional English hunting scene and is backed with velvet. The pillow was made by one of the young adults in a home for the handicapped in Arizona, according to Cummings.

In addition to restocking and starting The English Rose in Lancaster, she was asked to open another satellite shop in the new Antelope Valley Mall. “So I’ve been a little busy,” Cummings said, showing a nice flair for English understatement.

“It wasn’t just reopening one shop and opening another,” she said. “I have seven children at home, between the ages of 3 and 13. They’re what keep me hopping.”

Ho, Ho, Ho

It was a bit disconcerting to drive by Frank and Frances Cooney’s Canoga Park house at 6900 Winnetka Blvd. during recent hot spells.

There, for all the world to see, was a display board full of Santa Clauses smiling out at passersby, with a sign announcing that the $30 Santas now cost $20.

The husband-and-wife team, who make each wool Santa wall decorations mounted on a plywood back, began selling them during the summer, Frank Cooney said. It takes them about four hours to make each holiday head and the couple said they couldn’t meet the demand if they began any later.

After living most of their lives in the Valley, Frank Cooney, a retired supervisor from Rocketdyne, and his wife, Frances, went to Alaska for 14 years, but the winters in Anchorage finally got them down.

“Since we are back here, we just wanted to keep busy in our retirement,” said Frank Cooney, “so we started making the Santas the way we had learned in Alaska from a friend.”

He said that three years ago, when they first made Santas, they sold about 375. This year, even with the summer heat, they have already sold about 70 and expect to sell about 250 more.

Planting an Idea

Agoura Hills residents Judy Rae, a former television producer, and Dale Hallcom, a real estate executive, became interested in what’s going on in the environment for a very personal reason.

He is allergic to air pollution.

Rae said they both started reading about all things ecological because her husband was having trouble breathing, which does tend to get your attention.

Instead of moving, they decided to fight and their weapon of choice has turned out to be a new publication called Earth News, into which they have poured $75,000 of their own money, Rae said.

“The newsletter is for people in Southern California who want to know about what’s going on in our area and what can be done about it,” Rae said.

“Anyone sending $30 to Earth News at P.O. Box 1620 in Agoura Hills, CA 91376, will receive 12 issues and we will arrange to have more than 20 trees planted in one of the 18 national forests in California in that person’s name, according to an agreement we have with the Forestry Service,” Rae said.

She added that for $100 the donor will become the sponsor of an acre of about 260 trees in a national forest of his or her choice, and the acre will be marked by a standard U.S. Forest sign that names the contributing individual or organization. This is in addition to receiving the newsletter.

Overheard

“Why don’t they have any books on how to be a rock star so you can get out of going to school?”

--Youngster looking over the self-help books in a North Hollywood bookstore