(Video link here.) Feel like a road trip but don’t have the wherewithal right now? Check out David Lynch’s collaboration with Lykke Li. That Transcendental guy has made a meditation… Related posts: jack kerouac’s crazy-wise advice + that improv scroll 2 minute vacation: a virtual trip to paris weekend road trip: ‘address is approximate’
Read Moredeconstructed slipcovers like paola navone’s fab ghost chair
Recently at Style-Files, Danielle de Lange was mulling whether to buy the pricey ($1,000), chic or a Ikea’s cheap, rather clunky and traditional alternative, the Ektorp chair ($199), below. She inadvertently pointed out a great lesson in slip-cover assumptions: the usual, standard approach with piping or neat seams is NOT the only way to go. Paola Navone devised a…
Read Morelife lessons from an exploding egg + roz chast
This morning while engrossed in redesigning ‘improvised life’, I forgot about the eggs I was boiling on the stove. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the kitchen. When I explored, I discovered firm little pellets of egg yolk scatter-shot across the kitchen. Once the water had boiled away in the little copper…
Read Morebooks as stunning reclaimed building material
Recently we celebrated a friend’s birthday at the rarified 12-seat sushi bar at Brushstroke, chef David Bouley’s collaborative Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. Designed by the Japanese firm Super Potato, the interiors are serene and graceful, evocative of a Japanese temple melded with modernist architectural elements: stone, reclaimed timber, salvaged, weathered steel. The most stunning detail were…
Read Morefast forward’s mind-shifting finds
We like to stop in at our friend Fast Forward‘s Facebook occasionally to see what the eagle-eyed avant-garde sound artist has found in his travels. We can always count on an expanding view of things…
Read Moreinspired reno: 8×10′ shed morphs into a 2-story house
Our first ‘real’ house was a midget, 1937 knotty pine beach cabin meant for weekend use, built by three spinster sister daughters of a wealthy Iowa man who had invented the snow plow. The seams started busting when two babies arrived bam bam in a year, and my husband and I were struggling to cope…
Read Morethe power of failure, doubt and stumbling
We recently ran a New Yorker cartoon showing Noah’s Ark filled with only giraffes. The suggested caption was “Mistakes were made.” Now The New Yorker has compounded its mistakes with Malcolm Gladwell’s latest piece The Gift of Doubt. It totally convinces us that in order to find the right path, you often have to take the…
Read Morediy window boxes and planters: modern to rustic
Julie Houston, whose home reno we posted last week, sent us this image of the clever window box she made using some of Hurricane Sandy’s twig debris, glued onto plywood frames (made to order by her husband). It came just as we’ve been collecting images of the various diy planters we’ve spotted around town. …
Read Morethe first apple computer: great ideas start rough!
Dig this picture of the original apple computer, now known as the apple-1, designed and hand-built in 1976 by Steve Wozniak in Steve Job‘s garage. It’s one of a number of “primitive” early computers that Christie’s will auction in ‘First Bytes: Iconic Technology From the Twentieth Century’. It represents the very first step in Apple’s quite amazing history of…
Read Moremistakes and broken things can yield unexpected beauty
We know this was Maria Robledo‘s favorite cup. Broken in an instant, another kind of beauty came through (which the inimitable Maria ‘got’ and showed us). The handle looks like a perfect little sculpture of an ear. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower…
Read Morethe sf bubbleman shows how-to diy giant bubbles + why
San Francisco Bubbleman 1 by Susan Dworski @improvisedlife.com from Sally Schneider on Vimeo. (Video link here.) Some time ago, Susan Dworski emailed us about the mysterious Bubbleman she passes on Highway 101, and sent two little videos. At sunset today alongside bustling Highway 101 in Tiburon, CA, an unknown man with a boom box coaxes soap…
Read Morecement, not tiles, in the bath…and elsewhere
There is no getting away for my thing for cement. Fantasies of making things out of it abound in ‘improvised life’s archives and for years Working with Cement was in the stack of books on my bedside table. When I was renovating what was to become ‘improvised life’s Laboratory, I contemplated surrounding the tub in…
Read Morewalls for painting, climbing, decorating, writing poetry,
The Big Picture recently ran an extraordinary, and surprising, collection of photos around the theme of walls: They keep things out or enclose them within. They’re symbols of power, and a means of control. They’re canvases for art, backdrops for street theater, and placards for political messages. They’re just waiting for when nobody’s looking to…
Read Moresolar-powered moon lanterns for summer nights
Installing hardwired, outdoor lighting can be a big, expensive, all-too-often unaesthetic hassle, forcing you to put lights where you really don’t want them, and use commercially produced fixtures that are less than enchanting. One elegant, inexpensive solution is solar lanterns. My favorites are Allsop‘s faux Japanese shoji solar lanterns available in a rainbow of lightweight polyester that mimics silk.…
Read Moresurrounded by love
Found recently, a powerful reminder: We are surrounded by so MUCH: possibility. We just have to look. Related posts: sister corita kent’s enduring rules for making + her art the collected wisdom of louis c.k. ‘proceed from gratitude’: personal lists and principles chuck close’s ‘note to self’ (eight perfect rules for living) steve jobs: one simple…
Read Moreil reader julie houston’s brooklyn renovation
We are always thrilled to hear (and see) how ‘improvised life’ resonates in our readers lives. Sometimes it’s a “shift” of mindset, sometimes it’s a daring diy. In Julie Houston’s case, it was a major renonovation of the back parlor of her Brooklyn brownstone, transformed into kitchen/dining area. When children and pets leave — as…
Read Morethe question to ask when you make a mistake
This cartoon was the subject of the New Yorker’s great cartoon caption contest, where readers are invited to submit their caption for the cartoonists drawing. Our favorite caption (that didn’t win) was: Mistakes were made. We make so many mistakes daily that it was heartening to see this image of Noah’s miscalculation. Although we don’t…
Read Morerichard woods’ fab colorful wood-pattern floors
When we stumbled on images of artist/designer Richard Woods‘ show D.I.Y at the Alan Cristea Gallery in London, we literally gasped. LOOK at those floors!. They turn out to be Woods’ trademark vibrantly-coloured and exaggerated wood-grain motif. …deceptively simple in form, these bold images are produced using traditional block-printing techniques and installed as parquetry (inlaying wood in geometric patterns)……
Read Moremuhammad ali: ‘the rent we pay for our room on earth’
Designer Laura Handler of Interesting Found Objects spotted this scrawled sign in the window of a Manhattan dry cleaner. The owners identified something they have that would be useful to someone looking for work: a clean set of clothes. They also stated their simple philosophy. Beautiful. Generous. It reminded us reminded us of Mohammed Ali’s…
Read MoreHow to: Crispy Kale Chips (Slow + Fast Methods)
My local market sells a 2.5 ounce box of mediocre kale chips, seasoned with weird stuff like cashews and brewer’s yeast, for $7. Why don’t I just try making my own? I thought, remembering how well my pilot-light-warmed oven dried out paper-thin cross-sections of pear and apple until they became like crispy botanical drawings. So…
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