Black Friday Book Suggestions

November 27, 2015

...thing for someone, and books make great presents, especially for do-it-yourselfer types. With that in mind, here’s a round-up of our favorite books of the year: Wild Drinks & Cocktails: Handcrafted Squashes, Shrubs, Switchels, Tonics, and Infusions to Mix at Home by Emily Han. Emily visited us on our podcast just a couple of weeks ago. Wild Drinks is a really fun book which teaches you how to wildcraft both fancy artisanal cocktails and unusual no...

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Starbucks Moderne

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2019

Design

2 Comments

...g a face? Is this a stab at corporate cubism? Or is this a mask? Is this a self-portrait of the artist who portrayed themselves wearing a mask as a kind of plea for help or a way of saying, “don’t blame me for this ugly thing?” Kelly actually started drawing a copy of this masked figure in order to understand it but couldn’t figure out what it was about. The 1990s era curly chair in the background means that this hapless artist is probably of my,...

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Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

Mrs. Homegrown

February 26, 2016

Domesticus, Tidying up

2 Comments

...lding techniques. These things made the book worthwhile for me. The book itself is interesting as an object. It’s smallish, and pretty. Inside, the illustrations are Japanese-cute line drawings. It doesn’t look like any cleaning or organization book I’ve ever seen, and that is what makes it special. Kondo understands that tidying is a spiritual activity, not an organizational activity. The same week we got this book, we also had a library book out...

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The Blue Bear

Mrs. Homegrown

September 9, 2016

Thoughtstylings

36 Comments

...rrangements, and also made a pretty good pillow for reading. What my young self did know, however, was that he was handmade expressly for me and that was nothing short of miraculous. I did not come from a crafty family. The kind of emotional weight that I’ve attributed to the gift accounts for his longevity. I’ve dragged him along with me for all these years. Mostly he has spent his time on a closet shelf, ignored but kept, because great-grandma m...

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Peter and the Farm

Mr. Homegrown

October 28, 2016

Animals, Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...oetic idealism has since soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape that he has spent decades nurturing. Imbued with an aching tenderness, Tony Stone’s documentary is both haunting and heartbreaking, a mosaic of its singular subject’s transitory memories and reflections—however funny, tragic, or angry they may be. Peter and the Farm will be in theaters and available on d...

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