Formula for a DIY Donald Judd-esque Sofa

Artist Donald Judd’s austere, organic, ultra-simple furniture has been inspiration for lots of knockoff’s and diy’s and straight-out ripoffs. His iconic sofa, below, inspired the $6,000 Maple sofa, above, a collaboration of Brooklyn-based industrial designer Farrah Sit and textile designer Rebecca Atwood. Sit and Atwood have made improvments on Judd’s design, from a practical comfort point-of-view. The sofa is definitely DIY-able.

Read More

Oven Dried Tomato Candy

Recently we received a trove of small plum tomatoes which are in abundance right now. Since we don’t have the energy or space to can the tomatoes, we experimented with drying them in our ancient restaurant stove whose pilot lit oven is a constant 150′. We often dry our kale chips this way, and in the past have done sliced apples and pears. Why not tomatoes? Our experiments were a success. Here’s what we did.

Read More

Tiny-Vacation: Cosmic Flower Unfolding

(Video link HERE.)  Though we”ve had our “official” vacation, we’re still feeling the need for escape. Ben Ridgeway’s Cosmic Flower Unfolding is a constant flow of emerging and dissolving oceanic, futuristic, and mandala forms: two minutes that takes us AWAY.

Read More

Lego-like Bricks for Building REAL Structures

(Video link HERE.) In addition to plastic snap together grownup legos we could make real things out of, we’ve long dreamed of big concrete Lego-like bricks we could build serious structures out of.  So we were thrilled to find this video of Kite Bricks, a patent-pending, production-imminent component brick that is very much like big…

Read More

A Vacation Note to Our Friends with Benefits

While we take much needed time off this August, we want to make sure our Friends with Benefits get full value for their subscriptions. We’d planned to simply add an extra month to all subscriptions, but have encountered unexpected technical difficulties. We hope you’ll bear with us during our hiatus and know that we’re working on a solution.…

Read More

Life Lesson from a Simple Kid’s Lanyard

Recently, I discovered a forgotten neon pink plastic lanyard at the bottom of a basket of cat toys. Made at summer camp two years ago, it was a gift from a small person, presented with a shy smile “I made it, just for you.”

When I read this poem by poet Billy Collins, I suddenly felt saddened that I had been so cavalier in discounting its importance. Finding it again felt huge––like a redemption.

Read More

Posts navigation