I made shoes!

October 21, 2014

...lar Root Simple readers know, I’ve been obsessing on making shoes for some time now, but was not able to wrap my mind around the process without help. Help arrived this weekend in the form of the wonderful–and wonderfully patient– Randy Fritz, who taught me and four other intrepid souls how to make turnshoes over the course of the last 4 days. Lesson 1: As we have all suspected, shoes are not easy to make. Seriously not easy. Four full days of wor...

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The Future is Biomorphic

Mr. Homegrown

November 4, 2014

Design

4 Comments

...ccurate as a dead clock. Twice a day they get it right and the rest of the time they end up looking foolish. We can be especially thankful that the washing machine for people on page 179 of The Futurist never caught on. That said, the point is not always to predict the future. Architects, artists and designers push the envelope of consensus reality to spark a dialog. Architect Glen Small, one of the founders of SCI-Arc and the subject of an entert...

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Everything Must Go Part II: Books

Mr. Homegrown

January 12, 2015

Cleaning, Domesticus, Tidying up

41 Comments

...y and anxiety producing book pile had developed in the living room. It was time for a book cleansing. But let me first state our rule about buying books. My gym is mere steps from the Los Angeles Central Library from which I can easily access over 6.2 million books, movies, CDs and downloadable media. I don’t buy books that I can check out at the library unless I need it as a reference book or if the library doesn’t have it. Even with this rule we...

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Worth Doing From Scratch: Corn Tortillas

Mr. Homegrown

June 3, 2014

Bread, Food

12 Comments

...measure dry ingredients by weight I’ve figured out that for enough tortillas for four people you need to mix 250 grams of flour with 300 grams of water. Cook as many tortillas at once as you can. I can do three at a time on our stove. Cooking one at a time takes forever. Keep a bag of masa harina around and you’ll be ready for any tortilla emergency. In just a few minutes you’ll have healthy, tasty tacos and save money....

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Everything Must Go Part 4: How to Fold Your Clothes

Mrs. Homegrown

January 15, 2015

Cleaning, Domesticus, Tidying up

24 Comments

...always one of my least favorite household chores. I’d let it go for a long time, and live by shamefully rooting through my tangled clothing each day, searching for a certain camisole like a truffle pig rooting through oak leaves. However, unless you have a vast plentitude of drawer space you will need to thin down your wardrobe before doing this, because you can’t cram the drawers full anymore. I’ve discovered that this technique applies to pantie...

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