De-Cluttering for DIYers, Homesteaders, Artists, Preppers, etc.

...re is always something messy going on. For us, relaxation is tinkering and making and cooking and repairing, not reclining on our immaculate sofa, quietly tapping on our iPad. And while we’re aware that other people might accumulate random, useless consumer toys and frippery, we are confident that we don’t…er…mostly. Or if we have, those sorts of things are easy enough to part with. Our weakness lies elsewhere. We accumulate tools and supplies–mor...

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More on How to Make Clear Ice

...amper English has done my work for me and carefully tested every clear ice making method and documented the results in painstaking detail on his entertaining and enlightening blog Alcademics. The winning method he suggests is the one I wrote about: freezing ice in a cooler (also known as “directional freezing”). The distilled water and hot water methods don’t work, according to English. I also learned that the enigmatic David Rees (author of a boo...

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Earth Building Classes!

...e looking to reprise our popular adobe basics class which will cover brick making, codes and basic adobe wall masonry. We are also looking at having an horno workshop in Los Angeles sometime this summer. Events October 2-4 – EarthUSA 2015, Santa Fe, NM: A reminder that EarthUSA, the premier North American earthbuilding community event is coming up this October. The event brings together expert practitioners, historians and conservation specialists...

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Shoemaking Advice?

...ave any of you made your own shoes? I’m looking for good resources on shoe making: books, videos, etc. I’d also love to hear stories of successes or failures or lessons learned. I’d like to make leather, soft-soled shoes as first project perhaps moccasins, perhaps something more structured. I have two books right now. One is Shoes for Free People, by David & Inger Runk, published in 1976 in Santa Cruz. As you might expect, it is highly groovy. And...

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Sourdough Recipe #1 The Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf

...an manufacturing meth amphetamines (not that we know anything about that), making sourdough also benefits from accuracy in measurements, so the use of a scale will give you better results. We’ve tried to give equivalents in cups, but differences in humidity could bite you in the ass and the scale will make things easier. Ingredients: 8 oz sourdough starter (a little over 3/4 cups) 13 oz unbleached white bread flour (about 2 3/4 cups) 3 oz whole wh...

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