Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. I am chiefly interested in stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group.
I depend on friends and readers to suggest things they actually use. There are plenty of places to read about stuff that should be cool, or that looks new and cool, and that might be useful. These recommendations here, on the other hand, are based on people who have used this item and many similar and have come to see its superiority. Items can be old items, or cheap things that you still dote on after years of use. Great new gear, if well tested by you, are also wonderful.
I post things I like and I ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted. Tell me what you love.
I thought I was the only one in the world stealing the safety instruction cards from airline seats because of their terrific folk graphics. For radically clear thinking nothing can beat a really good set of wordless diagrams; hundreds of examples from around the world are paraded here. Designers of the world, please heed.
-- KK
Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design
Paul Mijksenaar and Piet Westendorp
1999, 144 pages
$6
Joost Elffers Books Amazon
Burning Man is coming up next week so it's time to get my playthings in order. I'm partial to those foot-long noodles that glow in various shades of color, also popular at raves. They are plastic tubes with a glass insert that start to luminesce when snapped. Like road safety sticks but thinner, longer, more flexible and cheaper. These floppy light wands say: be creative! The tubes come with a plastic coupler that can connect them in a chain or in a circle. Since they are flexible and light and cheap they can be woven into bike spokes, sewn on clothes, spun, pinned, or swung. They'll last 7 or 8 hours and if by chance you are near a freezer you can freeze "ignited" ones; just thaw them out and they start glowing again. You don't have to go to raves or Burning Man to enjoy them. We break them out for Halloween, Fourth of July, birthday parties, and dark nights while camping. Called glow sticks, they are available from a number of online sources (check for rave suppliers). The come in all sizes from mini-sticks to swords.
One or two tubes are okay; the key to the fun is to get them in bulk, by the hundreds. One hundred 8" sections should be about 10 cents a piece, or $10. One hundred is not too many. It's barely enough to cover a jacket with them, or decorate 3 bicycles, or make a huge glowing hula hoop, or enough bangles for all the arms at a party. The supplier below has the lowest prices I've come across and I've used them with no problems.
This hat is ultralight, crushable, breathes well, and keeps the sun off round the head. I've had a hemp Caribe hat from Watership Trading Companie for about four years and I don't go out in the sun without it. It is much lighter than any other hat I've seen with a full brim.
When I'm kayaking I periodically dip it in the water. The off-white hemp dries faster than cotton canvas, doesn't have a leather band to bleed color or get sweaty, and always looks good.
The Tilley hat you recommend already is a great hat too, and I notice it now comes in hemp. But it isn't as simple and light as the Watership hat. (I wish the manufacturers listed the weights of all their hats.) If the strap were cut off (and if you can get one to fit as well as mine, the strap is unnecessary) the Watership hat would be essentially rotationally symmetric while the Tilley has a narrower brim on the sides, and is generally narrower all around. The Tilley hat seems designed to have a vented airspace above the head (and is thus stiff enough to stay erect) while my hat fits snug on top of my head.
Lastly, the Watership is $13 cheaper. Made in the US (my hometown of Bellingham, WA), from sustainably grown materials, I can't recommend the hemp Caribe hat enough.
Imagine you were about to build your own home, perhaps with your own hands, and you wanted a few ideas of what others have done, so you set out around the world for 40 years visiting unusual homes, snapping pictures, making notes, and gathering evidence of homes that serve as a personal extension of the people living in them -- the kind of home that is most satisfying both for the owner and for their guests -- the kind of home you want.
You don't have to do that now because Lloyd Kahn has done it for you. For far less in cost, and probably with far more effectiveness, Lloyd has collected homes that work for people. He has crammed a life-time of photos, notes, and insights into this amazing catalog, overflowing with wild, zany, practical ideas, hard-won evidence of successful homes in all cultures, chock-full of amazing glimpse of genius homes, owner-built glories, unique, one-of-a-kind, offbeat, think-different homes, mindful places, sketches of long-gone shelters, bits of building wisdom, and actual how-to-advice, all offered visually, in vast color plates, at a modest price for such an intense and dense tome. The entire aim of this book is to expand your notion of what your own house could be. It works.
At least once in their life everyone should make their own shelter. This is the book I would hand to them.
Here is how I think Homework compares with the other inspirational home books I have recommended here: Architecuture Without Architects is timeless, Built by Hand is global, Home Work is contemporary and personal.
Just build it.
-- KK
Home Work
By Lloyd Khan; 2004, 256 pages
$18 Amazon
The yurt shown here is Bill's home in the Maine woods. It is 54' (eaves) in diameter and was designed so it could be built over a period of several years and still provide shelter during the process. It is a tri-centric, or three-ring yurt with 2700 sq. ft. of floor space. You can first build the 16' inner core as a room to move into. In the second stage, you can build the large sheltering roof over a gravel pad, allowing the major cost, floor construction, to be delayed. In the meantime you have a spacious area under roof that can be used for a workshop, greenhouse, garage, or for play.
Reception room of Save the Children Office Building, frescoed lime plaster [over straw bale] walls. Blue color comes from azul anil , a blue pigment commonly found in the Dulcerias or candy stores.
The "honey house" by builders Kaki Hunter and Doni Kiffmeyer in Moab, Utah. This dome/vaulted structure was constructed from earth-filled sandbags and plastered with earth and lime plasters.
For the close-to-hand pruning, I have my trusty Felco. For branches further than I can reach with a lopper, I use a big, unwieldy pole pruner with a pull-rope to muscle the clipper. It's overkill for smaller out of reach plants but for decades it was all I knew. Then I discovered the telescoping long arm pruner: easy to extend and collapse, lightweight, and it holds the clipping until you release the trigger, enabling efficient stashing of clippings in a lawn bag. This model, made in Japan, features two pistol grips for two-armed aiming, which most other telescoping pruners don't have. And its telescoping capability unlocks quickly with a lever instead of having to tighten and untighten a collar. This is now one of my favorite tools on a daily basis, considering all the huffing and puffing I used to do to clear ivy or deadhead roses high up on the fence.
People who make things keep one of these little books in their truck, one in their tool box, and one in their office. Its tiny pages are crammed with dense tables, charts, lists, codes, conversion formulas--more than 500 pages of numbers, yet it fits into a real pocket. What is the friction rate of water in a one inch pipe? What's cubic feet per second in liters per minute? The country code for Turkey? The voltage drop of number 12 wire over 100 feet? The shear strength of Eastern White Pine? The insulation value of carpeting? You get the idea; it has the numbers for everything, and 95 percent of them found nowhere else (of the web), and no where else in one handy place.
-- KK
Pocket Ref
Thomas J. Glover
2002 (3nd edition), 768 pages
$10 Amazon
A favorite tool, the glue gun, now comes in a low-temperature version which works much better with some materials like foam, and is the preferred one to grab at our house because it is slightly less dangerous for kids to use.
-- KK
WESTEX Lo-Temperature Trigger Fed Glue Gun
$4 Mister Art
Saffron
Saffron is the stigma of the fall flowering crocus. Peek inside most any flower and you will see three threadlike filaments. These are stigma--but only in the saffron crocus are these stigma worth thousands of dollars per pound. Saffron is so valuable because it is a very labor intensive crop; only 5-7 pounds of saffron can be produced from each acre of land. This makes saffron the most expensive spice by weight--it has always been--but by use saffron isn't that expensive, because a little goes a long way. A single gram of saffron easily translates into golden color and fragrant flavor.
Saffron contains 450-500 saffron stigmas to the gram. The stigma are also called threads, strings, pieces or strands. 1 gram equals 2 tsp. whole, 1 teaspoon crumbled or 1/2 teaspoon powdered. Don't buy pre-powdered saffron because it loses flavor quickly and is usually cut with turmeric or something else.
Mace
Mace, the lace-like, dried covering of the nutmeg, is a sweet and flavorful spice well worth using. Mace has a softer flavor than nutmeg, and for a nice change of pace it can be used in place of nutmeg in any recipe. Blade Mace can also be added to clear soups and sauces where nutmeg powder might spoil the appearance. Mace is a traditional flavoring for doughnuts and hotdogs.
Ajwain Seed
Ajwain (or Ajowan) is a traditional addition to many Indian and Pakistani dishes. It's especially useful in vegetarian lentil and bean dishes, as a flavoring, and to temper the effects of a legume-based diet. From Pakistan.
50113 1 lb bag 13.90
50184 8 oz bag 7.49
50142 4 oz bag 4.29
Kashmir "Mogra Cream" Indian Saffron is the world's finest saffron. The dark red color and long perfect strands are as beautiful as they are colorful and flavorful. Kashmir saffron is awfully tough to obtain, which makes it higher in price, but Kashmir Mogra Cream Saffron is truly wonderful.
Spanish Coupe Saffron is the top grade of the Spanish Saffron crop. Extra hand labor is used to remove every bit of the yellow saffron style material, leaving 100% beautiful pure red saffron threads--hence the name: coupe means "to cut", as in cutting off all the yellow bits. Spanish Coupe Saffron is a truly excellent crop, especially nice for the traditional Spanish dishes.
Spanish Superior Saffron is the most widely available saffron and is a very good crop. Spanish Superior Saffron has a bit of the yellow style material left attached to some of the saffron stigmas (see photo), so it is not quite as strong as Spanish Coupe or Kashmir Indian Saffron.
