Our friends Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton, creators of the wonderful Canal House cookbook series, have a friend in the appliance business who keeps offering to get them a big new stove for their kitchen studio. NO, they keep saying, We love our little side-by-side stoves! Every great dish Melissa and Christopher come up with…
Read Morenail salon anti-boredom strategy: read out loud!
In response to our recent post mentioning the hilarious David Sedaris pickpocket story, ever-improvisational Susan Dworski sent us this email: I recently undertook a Sedaris readathon and plowed through all his books in one fell swoop. To avoid the usual, well-thumbed celebrity-smut at my manicure salon, I introduced the notion of reading several Sedaris stories aloud to…
Read Morefound kinetic ice and water sculpture
(Video link here.) While walking in a nearby park one frigid day, I noticed that a sheer wall of ice had formed on the bedrock that rises up to make Mount Morris in New York City’s Harlem. It appeared to be alive. When I looked closely I saw its shimmering movement was due to water…
Read Morediy bathtub tray/desk from a wood board
Spotted at the PegandAwl Etsy shop (above) and Martha Stewart Living (below) simultaneously: bath tub trays/desks made out of a wood (reclaimed or new) board. Beautiful (and a relief from those wire grid tray) but we worry about the board sliding off the edge of the tub. MSL advises screwing on wood struts below. We’ve got another…
Read Morewhat a pickpocket tells us about attention, focus, practice
We loved Adam Green’s recent New Yorker profile of famed pickpocket Apollo Robbins (whose website is I Steal Stuff), and all it has to say about what we think we’re seeing at any given time, and how easy it is for certain savvy people to decode it. In this mesmerizing video, Robbin reveals his favorite sleight-of-hand — watch…
Read Morea solution to the busy visuals of vertical book towers?
When we first saw the Sapien vertical book shelf, we were smitten. What a great idea: an impermanent shelf that stacks books vertically, making use of odd spaces. We bought one, well, er, a less expensive knockoff. Once we actually stacked it with books, we realized how problematic it actually was; it was too heavy to…
Read Morestart or refresh your day with ‘katachi’
(Video link here.) We find this stop-motion video by an energizing and heartening view to start or refresh your day. It was made as a music video for Japanese singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru to accompany his new song “Katachi”, which means “shape”. We’ve watched it with the sound and without, and would retitle its one-thing-always-comes-from-another imagery as ‘possibility’! via Explore Related…
Read Morediy strapped-together dowel tables
At Design Milk, we came across these cool, full-of-possibilities “Chopped” tables by designer Yuval Tal. They’re made of packs of wooden towels strapped together with a metal ring — no screws or glue needed. We were mulling where to get metal strapping and how to get it tight enough to hold the dowels securely in place,…
Read More‘if you won’t take a chance…’ (winter’s tale)
We’ve been reading Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale and stumbled on this amazing bit. No need to know the background. It rings big bells right on it’s own… We’ve enjoyed this fatso novel immensely (except that it’s so heavy). Another favorite chunk is a list of dishes that are part of a rather crazed housekeeper’s repertoire:
Read Morepeople are awesome 2013
(Video link here.) We especially love the kid at 1:30 min. While we watch all these wildly ACTIVE people, we think of all the people doing awesome things unobserved. via Kottke Related posts: danny macaskill’s new video: what he thinks as he rides 94-year-old matilda klein’s gracefully defiant dance weekend fun: new danny macaskill…
Read Morekid’s modernist chair designs we want to fabricate
We are knocked out by the insanely beautiful, moderne chair designs made out of construction paper by 3rd & 4th graders at Turtle Lake Elementary School in Minnesota. They are highly architectural, thoughtfully made and colored, with a sophisticated minimalist aesthetic. We see them as fine inspiration for chairs and chaises made of plywood or heat-bendable plastic…
Read Morerobert frost’s tree lectern + a $23,000 trunk bench
When we started on our obsessive tree riff, hauling home huge logs to make into “furniture“, Pamela Hovland mentioned that Robert Frost spoke standing at lectern made of a giant tree. We’ve GOT TO SEE THAT, we wrote, and Pamela kindly went to the library to scan the image. And of course, that sent us…
Read Morebudget reno + life strategy: hire a project consultant
After I had figured out the essential plan of the multi-functional space that was to become my home and ‘the improvised life’s Laboratory, I started bringing friends by to get their opinions and input. I also hired an interior designer to consult for a short time, to consider my ideas, challenge them, add to them,…
Read Morelooking beyond the obvious
We found this image at The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. The commentary said it all: ….they are not merely ignoring the art on the walls, but literally looking beyond those walls….This is intense, curious looking… The square grid-like vent seems congruous with the canvasses of the modern art gallery, and the children are inspired…
Read Morecantilevered homes, chairs, diy, life
Holton Rower spotted this amazing image on henk nouwens flickr. It is titled ‘The Cantilevered Void House’ and accompanied by these words: “Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun’s rotation, exuded a kind of darkness for…
Read Morewoody allen’s writing tools (what do you really need to work?)
(Video link here.) We know a lot of people who live in a constant state of anxiety at how fast technology is moving, often feeling ashamed that they are unable to keep up with it, wondering if NOT using it is keeping them from manifesting their true creativity. We hope they’ll be comforted by this…
Read Moremartin luther king jr’s legacy, 50 years later
Although we saw little mention in the news of Martin Luther King Jr, whose birthday coincided with Barak Obama’s inaugeration, his presence was everywhere. In the almost 50 years since his famous walk from Selma to Montgomery fighting for civil rights, a lot has changed — albeit slowly. We see the results daily of his…
Read Morestress relief: balance breads (+ stones + blocks)
Omar Sosa and Ana Dominguez of Apartamento magazine, with photographer Nacho Alegre, created a series of still-lifes with balancing bread. They’re beautiful, though I’m a little doubtful they are just balanced breads, no pins or stuts anywhere. To my former food-stylist’s eye, they seem, well…. …possibly faked, though it would be fun to get a bunch of breads and try. Nevertheless,…
Read Morediy stenciled coir, jute, and cork rugs
The other day, we spotted natural fiber rugs on the floor of a Swedish farmhouse — they look like coir or jute — that seem to have been stenciled with a pattern. Brilliant, why didn’t we think of that?!!! The technique would allow you add simple geometric designs to inexpensive and durable rugs. It might even…
Read Moreobject lessons: some sh*t just doesn’t matter
The other day, I accidentally knocked a treasured cup off a table and watched, in the slow motion of a car accident, as it crashed onto the stone floor. It was gone in a moment, an object whose beauty I’d enjoyed daily since my friend Suzanne Shaker had given it to me over a decade…
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