(Video link here.) Last week, Open Culture ran two incredibly illuminating videos in tandem: the first, below, is the comedian Louis C.K telling of being at a low point in his career, having done the same old comedy routine for 15 years and getting nowhere, when he happened to hear George Carlin talk about how…
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(Video link here.) …makes us wonder what it would be like if we all wore the occasional L.E.D-laced outfit…to become…moving light sculptures… via Kottke Related posts: string lights as everyday indoor lighting light reflective bike decals for safety and fun practice flying (via the uganda skateboard union) skateistan: skateboarding as antidote (to war, poverty, sadness…)…
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We’ve long been fans of unhemmed linen tableclothes, napkins, shower curtains – a rectangle of pure linen just ripped to leave a raw edge *. We hadn’t though of this swell embellishment: the yarn stitching accentuates the intentionality of NOT-HEMMED in a really beautiful and charming way.
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When we want to wake/shake up our thinking, we check in at Dominic Wilcox‘s blog Variations on Normal. You never know what that clever guy will come up with. We especially love his month-long project, Speed Creating. Every day for 30 consecutive days, HE practiced waking up his thinking by making something creative with whatever was at…
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(Video link here.) Although we’ve spent decades improvising in the kitchen (figuring out ways to cure hams in a city apartment and make souffles in iron skillets and teacups) we haven’t embraced molecular gastronomy in our everyday cooking. We enjoy its magical qualities on forays to the restaurants of inventive chefs like Wylie Dufresne and Daniel…
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Our friend and resident oenophile Anthony Giglio snapped this picture of a rather bold and desperate masking tape repair. We see it as a fine example of what we are frequently told is the powerful effect of reading ‘the improvised life’ daily: gradually you’re vision changes. You not only ‘see’ and delight in found improvisations around…
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We’ve written about painting chair and table legs, and we’ve written about pink but we’ve never considered putting the two ideas together…until we came across this image of just one leg of a chair painted pink. It’s a lovely visual surprise that makes an old chair looks like it’s dressed to-the-nines. Although in reality, every…
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The Guardian recently wrote about Bonnie Ware, an Austalian palliative care nurse who counseled and cared for the dying. Over many conversations with her patients, she heard five main regrets expressing things that they would have done differently. We find that rather than being a downer, they are a big gift, offering great perspective about…
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This uplifting bit of graffiti brings out the guerilla in us. We don’t WE become anonymous graffiti artists and leave uplifting (and impermanent) messages around town? All it would take is carrying a piece of chalk (easy to carry)…
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Ever since we gave up paying a personal trainer to keep us exercising, we’ve been slipping and sliding around with staying disciplined, and EXPLORING ways to get our heads and bodies into healthy work outs. Here are two simple strategies that we’ve found remarkably helpful: 1) posting this image on our wall (and in our…
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In the early thirties, as he was writing Tropic of Cancer his first published novel that was to become a classic of twentieth century fiction- Henry Miller wrote himself this list of 11 commandments. We find them really useful – some more than others – applicable to many creative pursuits: Work on one thing at…
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After reading our post about how to design your own textiles, our friend Andrea Raisfeld sent us this doodle by her daughter Maxie: “I thought it would make a great fabric design.” We’d love to find some fabric like this… Another great example of where your designs for on-demand textiles can come from. Related posts:…
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We’ve long loved Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld’s elegant, elemental, iconic wood furniture. When we read that there was a book of his built-it-yourself furniture designs, we were thrilled….until we discovered that it cost $145 new and $78 used at Amazon. Darn. (Curious, a few days later we found that it IS available on Amazon though…
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Read a Valentine heart shape from top to bottom. and it says the two can become one. Read it from bottom to top, and it says the one can become two with the two still connected. Read a Valentine heart shape as a whole, and it says wholeness is a place to live with room…
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Charlie Allenson alerted us to the Vatican’s brilliant website that allows you to fly around the vast Sistine Chapel from your armchair. Using your mouse, you can click left/right/up/down…zoom in or out at astonishing Renaissance frescoes, including The Last Judgement widely believed to be Michelangelo’s. We are stunned at it’s beauty. As with just about everything…
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Early this morning we received an email from a friend who was about to make chocolate truffles for her Valentine, and wasn’t sure how to transport them. The email was sent in the wee hours of the morning, and we realized that for many, today means a last-minute scramble to get ready for Valentine’s day…
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A post on 99% by James Victore gave us pause last week. He writes about how as we spend more and more time staring at screens (our computers, our phones, iPads, etc), our brains change too: we forget how to function without immediate access to “information.” Because we are always plugged in to our various…
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Valentine’s Day is next week, which leaves us thinking about gifts that break the chocolate-and-flowers mold. We were suddenly reminded of an email we received from Virginia Del Giudice, a reader in Argentina, who used my simple Lemon Olive Oil recipe from A New Way to Cook to make Christmas presents. We thought this would be…
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We love of images of people jumping and leaping and have posted quite a few: they seemed like apt visual metaphors for a life principle, of being willing to take leaps…risk…or just jump for joy. In 1959 , photographer Philippe Halsman published a series of famous people jumping. Our favorite is Eva Marie Saint, leaping…
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One of the most inspiring D-I-Y books we know of is from the 70’s, with illustrations in black-and-white. It is Spiros Zakas’ More Furniture in 24 Hours, a book of plans for making simple, sculptural, practical pieces of furniture FAST, like this folding screen made of hollow-core doors and piano hinges. Unlike most hinged doors,…
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