A viewing suggestion from the media arm of Root Simple

...outside world, to the electric light burning beside me. Bless the BBC for making Tudor Monastery Farm (a title which I believe would not fly on American television). This is a quiet series showing three historians/archeologists at play in the Weald & Downland Open Air History Museum, trying out some of the skills they’d need to be tenant farmers to the local monastery. It has some of the structure of a reality show, but it seems that no one reall...

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Curing Boredom with Solenoids

...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcgFfY4fVqU Sixteen year old Brandon Switzer came up with a way of dealing with boredom: build a player piano. The project uses a humble Arduino and a whole lot of solenoids. It took six months to finish. I’ve come to see the value in taking on a project that’s out of your comfort zone and this is a great example of learning while making....

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BrickTube

...et for cutting bricks. Bricklayer, August Sander, 1929. I like the idea of making small garden follies with bricks and can imagine other uses for brick structures in gardens. Could I build a wall or something structural? No way–not without a lot more practice. Brick work is intellectually challenging and hard physical labor. I have much respect for the people who do this for a living. I mean, just think about the man in that Sander photo above and...

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Biodynamic Composting Workshop

...tes life, grows food and saves the planet! In this hands-on workshop we’ll build a compost pile out of materials commonly available in Southern California. We’ll also cover the use of and apply Steiner’s biodynamic preps. Our workshop will be led by Erik Knutzen of Root Simple. Erik Knutzen is the author, with his wife Kelly Coyne, of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post Consumer World. He blogs and produces a podcast at w...

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Mortise and Tenon Magazine

...house needed some work and those skilled with planes and hammers are busy building custom staircases for Barbara Streisand and don’t have the time for a 980 square foot bungalow in the HaFoSaFo district. I took a few classes, subscribed to some woodworking and home building rags and I now spend my evenings pondering the grain orientation of drawers. To further my interest in traditional woodworking, I just signed up for the twice a year Mortise a...

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