The Lamp Lady

I’m not sure why, but the fact that I love this lamp by Cathrine Kullberg scares Julie. I think she’s afraid that I want to turn our house into a log cabin or something… maybe she fears I’ll run away with this blonde from Norway? Who know… but I want to make wood veneer lamps, and have to figure out how to join the two edges. Kullberg does hers by hand-stitching them with leather. Kewl. Putting together that band saw this weekend. Should be halfway thru the Amazon Rain Forest by Sunday.

Infected

Brahs and sahs, I’m in the throes of a sinus infection. Wicked. But we’re still kickin it Man style.




I could go for a hot tea in one of these Gun Mugs. They are stylin with gold or platinum plated triggers. HIGH Stylin.




My workplace also doesn’t have soap right now in the restroom, so these hand soaps would come in mega ummm.... handy. However, I get a little satisfaction knowing I’m passing my germs on to coworkers, I’m not gonna lie.



What I really need, though not often in Texas, are one of these sweet beard caps. Made by Icelanders. Infections are kept at a minimum with a head covered this much… Not to mention it will be the only way I can ever “grow” a beard, says the woman who controls my facial hair.

Northern Wood

These Canadians are on it! Propellor Design is making the kind of items I'm dreaming about in my head/in my future garage/floor covered in sawdust instead of old wet boxes filled with hoses and silverfish. I need to draw inspiration instead of making exact replicas! Bamboo lights, reclaimed wood furniture, rad resin chandeliers. oh man... Welcome to my new company opening in 2008 called Propellor Dezign.

Wood eater

So my parents got me this band saw on ebay for my birthday. Believe! I mean, my birthday isn't until January, but this bad boy is arriving on my doorstep tomorrow, I think. Soon table lamps, pendant lamps, end tables and entire large villages will be pouring out of the garage. Let me know if you are interested in a village... 40 building minimum.

Local Woodman from the A-T-X

Julie and I ran down to the East Austin Studio Tour this past weekend wit a group o pals. It was pretty okay… the highlight for me personally was talking to one Brian David Johnson. Not only does the brah bang out woody delights you can buy at IF+D for thousands of dollars, or sit upon if you need a bench at Whole Foods, but he was super friendly AND informative! I think I have my “how to bend wood??” question answered thanks to this man. Though he didn’t offer me to hang out with him to learn his masterful ways and pay me a grand a day for the learning, he was still inspirational. That’s his Yama coffee table in the pic. Available in walnut or cherry. Oh dang… is it Wednesday? I was supposed to put up something stupid and man-ish right? I’m sick and thrown off by my days, and Thanksgiving and the like. Well, sorry. Here’s to hoping Fish Assholes on a Tuesday make up for my lack of thought on a Wednesday. CLINK!

Soup Me. Please.

Still sick. and at work. A bad combination. The other night, our friend Divya had us come over for delicious vegetable soup. The best I've ever had. I was thinking, "soup sounds good still." Too bad we don't have Div's mad skills, and in our soup pantry, all we have are these Fish Assholes. Luckily, they are Manhattan style at least...

Disicko

Today, I am sick.

Been sick since I went to a disco themed party.

Draw your own conclusions.

If I were King...

Here’s what I like. Big ole castles. There’s one in our neighborhood, weirdly… Pemberton Castle, but that’s another story. Today I was tooling around the web, and on the Day Lab DIY blog today, Amy (meow) was gabbing about this Carleton Villa that’s up for sale.




Now not only do I want to live in a castle, but I want to live on an island. Preferably one inhabited only by those I invite… otherwise, I take them out with a couple rounds of cannonballs.



The Carleton Villa isn’t EXACTLY a castle, but it’ll do. So upsides: on an island, tons of land (6.97 acres), really really rad, and only $495,000. I mean, houses in our neighborhood are selling for more than that, and none of them have 3 water frontages.




Only one downside really… besides it not being in Austin Texas: it was going to be razed in the 1930s, and hasn’t really been getting much attention in the restoration department since then. The General Electric Corporation owned it during WWII, and were letting any old numbskull come take what he wanted, since they were dismantling it themselves anyway.




William Wyckoff cashed in on the Remington Typewriter boom, and snagged the very first student of architecture to graduate from Cornell University, William Henry Miller, to whip up this summer home. Crazy.




I need to jump on this fast, b/c it could be turned into a club possibly. Sounds horrible. I thought our house needed some fixing up when we bought it. I’d better move onto “Woodworking 102” ASAP… followed by the “Got a Castle Fixer-Upper?” series. Maybe they have books on tape?

Gesundheit!

Dood Post Wednesday. Check it brah… Mine allergies are killing me. Damn near choked me in my sleep last night (true story). So a couple good nosy items for you and your shnoz.



Pick Your Nose cups. Thinking about modeling for this company. My profile has a lot to offer.



Behold the Big Maoi Tissue Dispenser. This seems way more awesome than the ugly pink Kleenex box (with lotion!) sitting on every flat surface of our house. Unfortunately, I could also possibly model for this company as well.

P&K, What the Hay?

What the?? There’s this place that opened up 18 months ago called the P&K Grocery. It pretty much ruled. I popped in there once on a whim to get some coffee, and was helped by a bunch of really cute hippie style ladies… really cute. Really friendly. Really good coffee, and miniature loaves of banana bread, and awesome bacon egg and cheese sandwiches. It was all modern and nice and cozy on the inside. The first time Deanna went with me she said she wanted her house to feel like this on the inside. They had groceries, and cool old school giant lollipops, and weird candy, and stylish home décor stuff, some handmade goods, rad magazines… now they closed?? Already? Sounds like the owners worked a lot, and have to spend more time with their families. Guess I wasn’t a close enough relative. Hardcore sigh. Where them pixies working now?? A coworker of mine thinks we should open a quiet neighborhood pub there. The building is for sale, and I keep tripping over the bundles of money when I try to leave the house, so….

Dane Alert!

Rasmus Fenhann not only makes great looking stuff, he also gets to live in Denmark doing it. Lucky man that man. Julie and I are fans of Scandinavian design, and Fenhann’s work keeps the fine Danish design alive.



I’ve seen his Hikari lights around the web a few times, and they are a great mix of mathematical thought and artistic beauty. He’s also worked up a new table based on these designs.



The man uses a “vacuum lamination” process to bend this chair into perfection… what does that mean?? Why will you geniuses not share?



This chair he created for the National Theatre in Copenhagen. In the man’s own words, “I never make kompromises with the quality.” I believe you my brutha! Next stop on our journeys to Europe will include the land of the wicked designers and lovely blondes.

Scratch em...

So check it. Wednesdays are going to be for the doods and bros. Hump day mon. Today it’s about the walls. We have this hallway that needs wallpaper. Here are options that my wife thinks are fun, but probably will never fly. I won’t give up hope though. First is this sticker from Dvider. We talked about getting this a year ago, and putting a picture in the square. A nice sweet picture of grandma has found its new home.




How’s about revolver wallpaper? Maybe not tough enough. Needs to be like… Tommy guns or something.




These guys at Flavor Paper are no holds barred. Scratch and Sniff wallpaper? Hells yeah.




The same fine Flavor Paper folks really set the bar high. Thigh high. Which is my pick of picks. I’m considering wallpapering the entire house with this, including the outside, windows, roof, and lawn. I’ll get on that the weekend Julie’s out of town.

Spaghetti Wood

How do you bend wood? Magic? I hear whispers in dark corners about using a vacuum and a bag, and you can bend the hard and brittle into new shapes. Or maybe heat and steam will get wood to move? Or start with pieces of thin veneer, the thickness of paper, and glue enough of them together to become wood? I’m on it, but if you know how wood bends, please let me know, as it’s a driving force behind my woody desire. The picture above resembles a Kodawood chair we bought off Ebay, but ended up reselling when we bought a couple matching Selig Chairs. I really love the way the seat and back bend. See mo rad floppy wooden chairs below.




The Cherner arm chair.




The Plycraft Lounger.



The Eames molded plywood lounge chair.




And from this millennium, the bamboo Spring Chair.

I Came, I Saw...

I took my 7 hour long Woodworking 101 class. It was very overwhelming, and the fact that I was one of two people in the class put me on edge. Some might jump at the chance for a private lesson plus one, but the thought made me cringe- turned out not that bad though. Mark Giles taught the class, and kept referring to it as a “firehose of information”, which it was. There was much discussion about buying a table saw first, a planer second and a jointer third… and of course a dust collecting system. How serious about all this am I? Table saw for 1100 bucks? It seemed like wanting to learn to play piano, but first building an addition to your house to fit the baby grand your would have to purchase. I learned about a woodworkers group that meets up in Austin… most members seem to be interested in fixing antique furniture or turning wood pens (snore) but Jason Bedre has some promising items on his site. Maybe I can get a good table saw on the cheap, and see what I can do with it? And pick myself up a book about bending wood along the way…

FUTURAMIC!

This is the first of two posts about great houses on our street in Austin, both within two blocks of our home. The first is the Bohn house. It's a wild art deco style house that appears to be empty. Actually we know it is, as we’ve looked in the windows (though it is being renovated). Our L.A. friends mentioned that they think it belongs more in their town than in ours, and they could be right. I’ve seen nothing else like it around town. There are lots of curved walls and this cool circular design theme throughout the house.





Honestly, I thought the house was built in the 50s some time. Wrong. It was built in 1938 for Hubert & Alice Bohn, by Roy Thomas, who also built many other homes and great buildings around town, like the Stephen F Austin Hotel downtown. The word is that the house was inspired by The 1936 Sci Fi movie, Things To Come.




It looks like this is one of the first, if not THE first, Science Fiction movie to hit the big screen (like there were tons on the little screen?). Anyway, I got to thinking about the car show we went to in Detroit this summer. There was a 1950 Oldsmobile with a rocket as the hood ornament, and the word "Futuramic!" down the sides. I love this double up advertisement with the Olds and the mid century mod pad! It reminds me of the way Epcot's "Futureworld" interprets how the future will be, "In the year 2000"...








To see this shot from Things To Come lined up with the east side of the Bohn house, I'd say it's a safe bet that the the inspiration theory is true. It's nice to know there were those, even back in the prewar days, cranking out wildly designed houses that still look Futuramic today. I'm throwing this cherry on top. A sample of Max Frost & The Troopers 1968 hit Shape of Things to Come, since it's been in my head throughout this post.

If I had a million dollars... then another 24.

I’m gonna whip up a nice little post about this fantastic art deco house on our street, but until then, check out my last Christmas present request. Read more here.