The #700 Bookshelf

December 3, 2018

Design

...t I did pick up a few new skills. While my solder joints are a bit messy, I got to learn how to make a leaded glass window thanks to some great advice from Stained Glass Supplies in Pasadena (they have classes if you’re interested). Making the bookshelf was easier than paring down our book collection to fit in it. I made sure to leave enough room to display the plaster neanderthal skull which every aging 1990s hipster in Silver Lake owns. Next up...

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More on How to Make Clear Ice

Mr. Homegrown

June 2, 2017

Food

...ding to English. I also learned that the enigmatic David Rees (author of a book on sharpening pencils!), and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, did a whole National Geographic special on ice that includes a segment on making clear ice. And did you know that clear ice sometimes happens naturally? Behold this viral YouTube hit, “Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBqX7MSqWw Lastly, I want...

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Deep Work

Mr. Homegrown

April 11, 2016

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...wport, could be just the person to lead us out of our distraction with his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. The book can be boiled down to this: thou shalt schedule uninterrupted blocks of time to focus on single, important tasks. And, yes, that includes thinking about how we spend our leisure time too. If you allow incoming texts and notifications to define your day you’ll turn into a human router, pushing around f...

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Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown

September 24, 2013

Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening

18 Comments

The directions for seed saving in our last book, Making It, almost got cut. Perhaps we should have just changed those directions to “Why it’s OK to buy seeds.” The fact is that it’s not easy to save the seeds of many vegetables thanks to the hard work of our bee friends. That being said, Shannon Carmody of Seed Saver’s Exchange gave a lecture at this year’s Heirloom Exposition with some tips for ambitious gardeners who want to take up seed saving...

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Le Phone Freak

Mr. Homegrown

May 6, 2019

Appropriate Technology

9 Comments

...ovelist and (superb) podcaster Michael S. Judge has pointed out, Pynchon’s book is eerily prescient, seeming to foresee an era when we’re all monitored and controlled by a enormous electronic loom in the form of the interwebs. Not that I’m in favor of going backwards, but sometimes I can’t help but be nostalgic for my simpler, less mediated, 60s/70s childhood when Western Electric was still around making sturdy, oh-so-beige gadgets like this thing...

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