Search Results for: label/rainwater harvesting/2011/04/making-it

551 results

The Call to Create: Marguerite Knutzen 1925-2017

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Thoughtstylings
29 Comments
...loving, kind and patient mom. To her I owe my life’s calling: the joys of making, doing and teaching. My mom taught junior high art, crafts and ceramics before I was born. She took a break to raise me and then went back to teaching as an elementary school aide. Teaching at the junior high level is no easy task. Schools dump students with academic and home problems into the arts classes just to keep them busy. My mom’s call to be a teacher wasn’t...

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Fun With Mortises and Tenons

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Design
8 Comments
...els of craftsmanship, I haphazardly fixed the table with screws and nails. Making the mortises and tenons took forever even though I was working with power tools–a plunge router to make the mortises and a table saw to cut the tenons. Of course, a great deal of the time in the workshop was spent in idle chatter. My workshop is right on the public sidewalk and serves as a kind of conversational trap for every passing neighbor and dog walker. Kelly s...

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3 Mules the Movie

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Animals, Thoughtstylings
...ed from my first encounter with the mule man on Sunset Boulevard. Sears is making a point about public space and our rights to travel and use the commons. It’s a stance that often puts him at odds with law enforcement, local governments and, perhaps, modernity itself. You can see some excerpts from McDonald’s film on YouTube and make a tax deductible contribution towards completing the project. You can follow Sears via his Facebook page 3 Mules. M...

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How to Remove Bees From a Tree

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Animals, Bees
3 Comments
...at the section with the bees can simply be relocated or if the hole is large enough to reach into, a cutout can be done. The bees that I took out of the tree back in June are doing well in my backyard: The 2×4 is my crude way of making the entrance smaller. When a hive is getting established a smaller entrance is easier to defend against other bee colonies in search of free honey. My new “tree bees” seem healthy and are already expanding into a se...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Open Floor Plan

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Design
7 Comments
In a stunning bit of hypocrisy, we’re busy making the floor plan of our house a bit more open in spite of our rants and raves about the practice. Allow me to explain. Many years ago, when I installed our living room floor, I pulled up a baseboard and discovered that the wall between the living room and bedroom was of recent vintage. What we now use as a bedroom was originally a sitting room or dining room. And the two closets that share a wall be...

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