Air travel — there's something very odd about being flung through the air in a giant tin can at 500 miles an hour. It's ungrounding. And when we land, the light, smells and sights are entirely different from the place we left.
Even when I'm home visiting family in Edinburgh, a trip to the grocery store qualifies as an adventure. Packages have unfamiliar shapes, colors and typography. The food they contain is different from what my upstate New York stores carry. My assumptions and expectations get shaken up while I'm just out buying bread.
All of which is great for a designer! I've come back to the studio with that topsy turvy feeling, looking at familiar objects with fresh eyes, ready to make new pieces — I'll be launching new jewelry designs in February!
Music in the studio
I've been listening to sounds from around the world:
a quietly haunting Icelandic song,
Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi performing in the arctic,
and this phenomenal Venezuelan youth orchestra. 
I love to read
While in Scotland I visited the Lewis Chessmen, and have since been reading Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them by Nancy Marie Brown. I find it fascinating how some handmade objects survive for hundreds of years.
In the Company of Women by Grace Bonney is particularly interesting to anyone creative or self-employed, but if you like to read about how people live and work I think you'll enjoy it.
What have you been reading? Let me know. I always need suggestions.