Over the years, I’ve collected a disparate assortment of glassware that I use as makeshift vases: tiny odd-shaped beakers (whatever were they originally used for??!!), little bottles, and squat stemware from decades ago. They are perfect displays for inexpensive branchy flowers whose stems I cut way down. Grouped together, they take the place of a…
Read Morefierce stuff: improvised empathic device (I.E.D)
A couple of months ago I received an email from Kim Sykes, an architect and early friend of ‘the improvised life’. She wrote: “We are hearing a lot about I.E.Ds in the news from Iraq and Afghanistan. I.E.Ds are Improvised Explosive Devices. Every time I hear the word “improvised” I think of your blog so…
Read Morethe oddness and power of real cook’s tools
Just about every cook I know has a favorite fork or a spoon that they use for all sorts of purposes in the kitchen; they reach for it before any other tool when they need to toss or stir or shift something in a pan, because it feels right in their hand, makes them feel…
Read Mored-i-y: cracking the code of a donald judd table
Recently, 2 or 3 Things I Know posted a picture of this table by the artistĀ Donald Judd; it isĀ miraculous in its simplicity and harmony. I put my face close to the screen to contemplate the structure. It looked to me to be made of big sheets of plywood with an ash or birch veneer: a…
Read Moredream balloons
Kyle Cornforth recently moved to Thailand with her family to take a job as Director of the Prem Cooking and Farm Academy. She’s writing a charming personal blog of her experiences in this very foreign country, her “musings on living, working and eating abroad”. This breathtaking video is from her post about the Yi Peng…
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