NEIGHBORS / SHORT TAKES : Old World Beauty : A Camarillo woman orders her holiday ornaments directly from German craftspeople and sells them at her store.

How far would you go for a handmade Christmas ornament? Our guess is not as far as Camarillo’s Donna Doman would.

Doman, who operates the Olde World Christmas Shoppe in Camarillo, was in Germany on her honeymoon in 1985 when she came across a “partridge in pear” ornament. She apparently liked what she saw because when she returned to the United States, she set out on a mission to track down other traditional European tree decorations in hopes of selling them.

“I wrote the German consulate, the Austrian consulate, the Swiss one,” she said. “I started telexing Germany and Poland. I wrote letters. We got a fax machine and I started faxing.”

Doman located some glassblowers in Germany and decided to drop in on them. “They’re not used to someone showing up on their doorstep,” she said. Although Doman didn’t speak German, she did manage to find a way to communicate. “Money is a universal language,” she said.

Doman has come a long way since that initial meeting.

She now orders the ornaments annually, contacting the craftspeople about 10 months before Christmas. (It takes that long to make and ship them over.) She has sold the ornaments since she first laid hands on them--through mail-order ads and Tupperware-style home parties--but this is the first year that she actually has a store. It will remain open until Dec. 23.

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The three years Andrea Bloom spent sipping tea in England have paid off. Last week, her Tottenham Court tea room/restaurant in Ojai was awarded an “excellence in tea service award,” issued by the British Fortnum & Mason fine foods company.

“They said it was the nicest serving of tea they found in America,” Bloom said. “We do it just like they do in England.”

Bloom spent her teatime in the United Kingdom noting service techniques and picking up recipes for scones and the like. Then she added a few of her own ideas to make it more Californian.

“We made it not so dainty and sissified,” she said, “so men could come in and feel welcome.” (Hence, the ale for sale.)

And what does Bloom like most about the British style of serving tea? “I think it’s such a civilized thing to do,” she said. “I think it’s time we bring back manners.”

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We would like to congratulate Cal Lutheran University Prof. Edward Julius for having his book, “Rapid Math Tricks and Tips,” honored as a Book of the Month Club selection. The book is a “30 Days to Number Power” guide to increasing one’s speed in arithmetic.

Readers can learn to “rapidly multiply by 125,” “rapidly multiply any one-digit number or two-digit number by 101,” “rapidly square any two-digit number beginning in 5” and “rapidly multiply two numbers just over 100” (Julius’ personal favorite).

They are all nifty tricks, but the biggest trick may be to get people to care about math.

“It is almost a status symbol to say you’re terrible with numbers,” Julius said. “But how many people do you know who brag about not being able to read?”

Julius, a professor of business administration, doesn’t understand apathy toward numbers. But of course he has been interested in figures since early childhood.

“I was a weird kid,” he said. “When I was in kindergarten or first grade, I used to sit with a pencil and paper and play with numbers. I would add columns of numbers, play around with them and see how they related.”

Aside from increasing people’s math skills, Julius would like to increase their understanding of numbers. “A lot of people don’t know the difference between a billion and a trillion,” he said. “Maybe that’s why our government is in debt.”