January 2010

duct tape repair of bear-ravaged plane

We don’t know where we would be without duct tape, the ultimate solution for many a seeming disaster. Just when we think we’ve imagined its possibilities, a friend emailed an article from the South Africa Times’ about a bush pilot in Alaska who neglected to clean his 1958 Piper Cub after a long fishing trip. The fishy aroma attracted a grizzly bear who chewed and clawed the wood-and-fabric plane apart (as well as its tires) trying to find the source of the delicious smell, then went on its way.

The resourceful pilot radioed for three cases of duct tape, rolls of cellophane and two new tires to be flown in so he could repair the plane and and fly home, which he did; witness the before-and-after pictures!

Duct tape is one of those everyday items we don’t think about much, but it has quite a story, read more…

01.31.10 | comments (3) | in materials, resources, road warrior, sightings, tools, travel |

creative reuse: constance old’s hooked rugs

Phil Scott

Page Goolrick’s dinner party goody bags garnered a lot of improvisations on the idea of “gifts for guests”, from great Comments to Lydia Wills’ innovative reversal of the traditional wedding (or any) gift.

Constance Old, who was one of the lucky few to have actually been at Page’s dinner party, turned her goody bag into art. Constance makes hooked rugs, a traditional American art form originally created out of need: to warm the floors of drafty homes with whatever was at hand. Scraps of fabric, from worn clothing or sheets, were cut into strips and, using a simple bent metal tool, “hooked” into a grid-like backing made from a strong, loosely-wovan fabric such as burlap. Gradually, a span of loops would result, to make a beautiful rug.

Rather than fabric scraps, Constance uses contemporary found materials like sales receipts, plastic bags, string, Styrofoam, thread whatever is at hand that has meaning for her. She used the packaging from the different elements in Page’s goody bag to make miniature rug-hooked “journal entries.” read more…

01.28.10 | comments (7) | in art, elements, people, reclaim, repurpose |

clear space: muley point by walt cotten

Walt Cotten

via 2 or 2 things

01.28.10 | comments (2) | in surprise box archive |

convertible surface for a kitchen island

Ellen Silverman

Ten years after it was built, my kitchen still looked great EXCEPT for the counter tops. The speckled black-white-and-gray granite that seemed so right at the time looked dated, and its pattern was too busy to use as a surface for the food photography we did in my space. My friend Holton, who is an amazing artist, designer, and gifted improvisor said “Why don’t you make a top to fit over the one you have?…Make a form out of plywood that will fit over the granite, and cover it with a soft-ish metal that can wrap around the form…”

I remembered the old burnished zinc bars and cafe tables I’d seen in France, and thought that zinc’s soft luster would be make a beautiful surface to photograph food on. So I looked up ZINC FABRICATORS in the Yellow Pages, and found a guy in Brooklyn who would make me what I wanted. All I had to do was send him a plan… read more…

01.27.10 | comments (3) | in eating, elements, inside, plans, reimagine, resources, resources blogs + sites |

vincent van gogh on doing it anyway

Thanks Pamela!

01.26.10 | comments (1) | in art, inspiration, paths + processes, principles, projects + play, signs |

dangerous things an adult should do

stuant63/Flickr/CC

Writing the post about Gever Tulley’s Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) made us wonder about dangerous things adults SHOULD do in order to explore and learn about the world, figure out what’s what and live fully, just like Tulley thinks kids should do. And that made us think about the very notion of DANGER because, once you become an adult, dangers and fears become a really quirky personal thing: What seems dangerous and challenging to one adult might seem like a piece-of-cake to another, way beyond the obvious challenges like sky-diving or climbing Everest. It can seem dangerous to travel to a foreign country, write something, paint something, not wear make-up, live alone, go camping, learn to swim, buy a house, improvise a dish, love…

And that brings us to the idea of REAL danger versus perceived danger, and the IDEAS that stop us from doing something we want to do.

So we’ve come to think that a good thing for an adult to learn is to gently put aside a fear here and there – not try to get rid of it, but do what we fear anyway, or even just take a step toward doing something we fear. And gradually step-by-step we find ourself not being so daunted, or even feeling pretty liberated, or doing something amazing. And, just like kids, in the doing, we learn…

(This is one those one idea-leading-to-another posts that asks more questions than it answers…it is what some folks call “an inquiry”, an idea we’re mulling and exploring. We invite you to comment and add your 2-cents..)

photo via Creative Commons License

01.26.10 | comments (4) | in learn, paths + processes, projects + play, why not? |

swell office/professional space for rent in nyc

We’ve got a wonderful office to rent in London Terrace Gardens and would love it if you’d help us spread the word: 330 square feet with a big window looking north onto a little garden and brownstones …kitchenette…big bath.

London Terrace Gardens is a legendary apartment complex built in the 1920′s that spans a full block in Chelsea: a full-service building with 24 hour doormen and access, concierge services (with daily UPS and FedEx pickup) and maintenance staff. Storage room available.

It’s one half block from the High Line, and near galleries, restaurants, Chelsea Market, Chelsea Piers, 192 Books and the Meat Packing District. Post office and parking garage on the block; subways nearby.

For more info or photos, send an email to info@theimprovisedlife.com

01.26.10 | comments | in community, cool spaces, family + friends |

5(0) dangerous things your kids (and you) should do

Gever Tulley, founder of Tinkering School for Kids, has published Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), a book we’ve been waiting for, not just to give to the kids we know, but us adults as well, because the same idea applies: By exploring the world (maybe doing things we never got to do as kids) we learn and get ideas and new develop parts of ourselves. I want to:

throw a spear…
…make a bomb in a bag…
…spend an hour blindfolded…
…construct my own flying machine…
…melt glass…

Tulley isn’t cavalierly sending your kids (or you) into danger. He gives detailed instruction and explanations about the why’s and how’s things work, as well as possible dangers. He figures, wisely, if your kid really understands how something works, she will be more able to navigate its challenges herself, use it creatively AND stay safer.

About a year ago, Tulley gave a taste of his book-to-be in a TED talk called “Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do”. It’s full of wisdom about learning, creativity and danger safety. Here’s the video, and the transcript, along with a page from the new book:

transmaterial: books + website for big imaginings

Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine Our Physical Environment is a series of books - with a companion website - about intriguing materials for building and designing. Browsing spurs endless ideas and imaginings of what you could do with some of the more accessible materials like…

Paper Softwall, lightweight, freestanding honeycombed paperwalls that can be arranged in almost any shape to make instant room dividers and walls…(imagine an instant “clear” space for meditating, or just plain thinking… read more…

01.24.10 | comments | in inspiration, materials, resources, resources blogs + sites, resources books + zines |

late night forager: seven layer cake for one

Ellen Silverman

Late in the evening, I often find myself wandering into the kitchen like some sort of hungry bear or raccoon or a snuffling truffle pig, looking for a sweet to eat: not fruit, but something more powerfully dessert-like in effect. That’s when I devise odd, curiously delicious and satisfying concoctions that are the products of serious constraints: a pantry and fridge with a hodge-podge of offerings due to my aversion to buying a bona fide dessert, coupled with my refusal to bake or spend much time cooking, or get dressed and go out to buy ice cream.

The occasional sweets I do keep in the house, like amaretti cookies, are invariably too austere and chaste to be truly satisfying – my attempt at NOT keeping anything really fattening around. Amaretti are perfectly honorable Italian cookies made from egg whites, sugar and bitter almonds, but my wild hunger one night craved extremes of cream puff and gateau. I think what possessed me to stack amaretti with crème fraiche into a miniature leaning tower, was a faint, sudden memory of the classic ice box cake of my childhood: thin “bought” Famous chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream, left to soften for a couple of hours into a cake.

I ate one crème fraiche-smeared amaretti to tide me over while I waited for the other six to meld into an alternately chewy -crunchy- creamy confection that quelled my hunger perfectly: my personal seven-layer cake for one. read more…

01.21.10 | comments (6) | in food, recipes |

bike chain jewelry lesson

Sally Schneider

Vicki Beth Lynn has an eye for jewelry. She’s bought and sold lots of it over the years, especially the work of interesting designers from past and present. She knows dealers and jewelry-makers in Paris and London, and sells regularly to television shows and movies. (She also runs a multi-media production company but that is another story…)

Vicki and I were walking around Manhattan the other day when she stopped and pointed to a huge brass chain lying on the street, securing a bike to a post. “Look, Sal.” she said,”Wouldn’t that make a great necklace?”

And I looked and saw something I’d never have noticed before (but do now, thanks to Vicki): possibilities for jewelry in all sorts of everyday things, even in the street. Translate the look of that bike chain to a wearable version (real bike chains are HEAVY), and you’d have a dramatic and startling necklace…

…there are teachers all around us, sharing what they know…

01.19.10 | comments (1) | in apparel, hard, inspiration, outside, people, sightings |

pamela’s brilliant d-i-y wrist warmers

Pamela Hovland

Designer and contributor-of-brilliant-ideas Pamela Hovland recently improvised wonderful wrist-warmers out of an old pair of wool socks. Here’s how this inspired bit of repurposing came about, in her own words and photos:

“I often wear wrist warmers while I’m working away at my computer as my hands are cold from the fall to the spring. I first saw them in northern Sweden; someone was selling hand-knit versions at an artisan’s market in a remote village. I remember that I didn’t know what they were; I was simply attracted to the colors and patterns. Once I figured it out, however, I bought a pair knit from beautiful charcoal grey and burnt orange wool and ended up wearing them nearly every day last winter.

A few months ago I washed some beautiful (and expensive) wool socks in the washing machine by mistake, and as a result, they shrunk. As I couldn’t bear to throw them out, it occurred to me that perhaps I could repurpose them somehow. read more…

01.18.10 | comments (3) | in apparel, cheap + great, copy this!, how-to, reclaim, soft |

lucky biscuits + signs in cookies

Rebecca Gagnon

At ‘the improvised life’ we are big on signs; they make up many of the posts in the Surprise Box and I’ve written about how helpful it can be to tape a sign up on the wall of your office or bedroom to remind you of what’s really important (that we so easily forget), like Holton Rower’s great “Apologize Every Day”.

So, I was happy to stumble on “Biscoito da Sorte” in a curious blog written in Portuguese called Don’t Touch My Moleskin. “Lucky biscuit” is about the charming photos Rebecca Gagnon made of the papers found in fortune cookies, which she’d been collecting for years. read more…

01.17.10 | comments | in art, media, projects + play, rules for living, sightings, signs |