the improvised life

what a pickpocket tells us about attention, focus, practice

Video link here.) 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 your wallet! cellphone! watch!— and tells us exactly how they work. And even knowing how they work, the tricks remain astonishing for their effortless precision. He’s made a study of how we see so he can manipulate our awareness.

Robbins’ entree into his unique profession was in part due to disabilities he had as a child:

My half brothers were involved with crime. But I was too young to participate. I also had certain disabilities that prevented me [from joining in]: like braces on my legs. When I became a teen, I ran into a friend at a magic shop who took me under his wing. I started reading up on magical theory and immediately blended that with what my brothers had shown me.

Being friends with several magicians, we know that acute precision and ability to suss-the-moment takes thousands of hours honing skills, practicing in front of a mirror, observing behavior, making mistakes, practicing and practicing and practicing some more to gain mastery. THAT’s what you’re really seeing in this video.

…

Right after we read the New Yorker piece, which elevates pickpocket to rigorous neuroscientist and artist, we heard David Sedaris on NPR’s This American Life, telling the story of a subway ride he took in Paris. Two American tourists mistook him for a Frenchman and eventually a pickpocket. He starts off hating their cliched stereotyping him as a “smelly, thieving frog”, but eventually comes to enjoy being seen as a…ROGUE. Listen here when you need a laugh. It’s from his book Me Talk Pretty One Day.

01.30.13 | comments (6) | in paths + processes, people, video |

a 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 move. We solved that by finding a set of wheels that fits it perfectly.

We still didn’t love that way it looked: a busy tower of book titles, distracting to our minimalist slightly ADD eye. Then we saw THIS solution to that problem: read more…

01.29.13 | comments (2) | in cheap + great, copy this!, inside, resources, solutions, storage, why not? |

start 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

01.29.13 | comments (1) | in people, principles, video |

diy strapped-together dowel tables

chopped dowel tables by designer yuval tal

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, and we found the answer at Uline, one of our favorite online resources for weirdly compelling and really useful industrial stuff. You can buy stainless steel strapping and seals that you tighten with and a tool called a tensioner. Uline offers have a great instructional pdf that gave us the gist. read more…

01.28.13 | comments | in copy this!, d-i-y, furniture |

‘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 more…

01.28.13 | comments (3) | in principles, quotes, signs |

people 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

01.25.13 | comments | in leaping + flying, paths + processes, people, video |

kid’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 (and remind us that making prototypes can be a form of thinking-out-loud.) We’d be thrilled to have anyone of them in our home. The first and last are the bomb.

robert 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 looking for more examples of tree trunk lecterns and stands. To our surprise, we found this tree trunk bench by Droog. read more…

01.24.13 | comments | in copy this!, d-i-y, furniture, inside, nature, outside, quotes |

budget 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, as well as help source the many items I would need, from sinks and plumbing fixtures to door knobs. Hiring a consultant for a fixed amount of time is a good strategy if you you’re don’t have the resources to hire a someone to see the project though, or don’t need start-to-finish service.

I met Scott McFarlane through friends and liked ideas he’d come up with for their recent renovation, as well as his attention to detail. Although I have a strong design sense, it was clear that there was A LOT of things I could use advice on. I hired Scott to consult on critical elements of my plan so architect Emily Johnson could draw up plans that contractors would understand. Scott and I spent many hours in the empty apartment busting holes in walls, tacking up images I’d clipped from design blogs, measuring, brain-storming.

Scott came up with A LOT of clever solutions to some extreme design problems (all pictures below are from the in-process days of the reno). For starters, read more…

01.23.13 | comments (6) | in before + after, cool spaces, inside, laboratory, paths + processes, people, reimagine, resources, services, solutions |

looking 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 to look beyond the surface of lines and shapes. They might be unknowingly challenging expected behaviors within the museum, but the little girls are also undertaking the exact type of close scrutiny and imaginative looking that curators and artists dream the art gallery might inspire.

We should all ‘see’ like that…

And it begs the question: What is REALLY interesting?

via Explore

01.23.13 | comments (3) | in art, kids, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes |

cantilevered homes, chairs, diy, life

photo via hno (henk nouwens) flickr

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 all their color.” Cantilevered structures self-supported over the void. From: The Gormenghast Novels.

Who knows what the story is, whether the house is real or fake? Is it a fantastical image from The Gormenghast Novels? Comments on the flickr page yielded no info but lead us to a tove of images at The Cantilever Project, which got us thinking about cantilevers: A projecting structure, such as a beam, that is supported at one end and carries a load at the other end or along its length.

We’re smitten with this simple cantilever plywood chair (tiny angle braces clearly showing…could we diy this?) read more…

01.22.13 | comments | in buildings, dream houses, elements, furniture, outside, principles |

woody 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 video from Woody Allen: A Documentary in which he shows the tools he has used for sixty years, for every essay, joke, screenplay and script he has ever written. Allen uses a manual typewriter for writing. He “word processes” by cutting-and-pasting with a scissors and stapler.

“It’s very primitive, I know,” says Allen, “but it works very well for me.”

Allen doesn’t seem like a Luddite to us, but just a guy whose sticking with what works, for him.

via Open Culture

01.22.13 | comments | in inspiration |

stress relief: balance breads (+ stones + blocks)

photo: nacho alegre

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, they’re a charming reminder that read more…

01.18.13 | comments (1) | in copy this!, gifts, health, materials, projects + play, strategies |

diy 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 be a way to give new life to stained or worned sisals (sisals ain’t cheap and show wear like crazy).