Hoshigaki Season!

Pumpkin spice/”Christian Girl Autumn” arrives here in Los Angeles without the warning of red and yellow leaves that comes elsewhere. In our house we believe in making hoshigaki in the fall with persimmons from either the market or, better yet, a neighbor or friend rather than chugging those pumpkin spice lattes. We’ve got a row of seven store bought persimmons hanging in a south facing window and plans to start more.

Here’s what they look like when completed.

If you’ve never tried making hoshigaki, a kind of transcendent dried fruit product that’s very expensive to buy, I can report that it’s one of the more worthwhile DIY projects on this blog and we’ve got directions here. EaterLA has a post on different methods and the history of the practice.

Our original post on the subject resulted in one of the more surreal episodes over the years running this blog: being invited to be on a Japanese reality show that matched non-Japanese participants with experts in Japanese crafts and arts. I exchanged emails with the producer towards flying over until a friend of ours, who lives in Japan, warned us about the sort of humiliation this particular show trades in. If you want to respond with some form of “you only live once” I’d invite you to google “extreme Japanese reality show” and see the type of thing I was worried about.

That said, get yourself some persimmons and give this a try. Maybe you’ll get a free trip to Japan.

More DIY Furniture: Grid Beam and Open Structures

Grid Beam chair from gridbeam.xyz

Root Simple reader LeJun, responding to my post on my Enzo Mari table, left a link to two more ideas in the sphere of DIY furniture: Grid Beam and Open Structures.

Grid Beam, pioneered by Ken Isaacs in his book How to Build Your Own Living Structures, relies on either wood or metal with a regular series of holes drilled to accept bolts. Grid Beam is modular and you can use the method to make chairs, tables, beds and rooms. Pieces can be taken apart, reused and reconfigured. If you want to try it you’ll definitely want a drill press and a jig to make the holes uniform and square. Thankfully you can find many used drill presses in the wild as they are a common tool in both wood and metal shops.

Open Structures table from openstructures.net

Open Structures is a similar modular concept by Brussels designer Thomas Lommée done with metal tubes and connectors. I find it a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the drilled 2×2 lumber in the Grid Beam system, but you’ll need to be handy with metal if you want to try to homebrew this.

Note that I’ve got a whole roundup post about DIY furniture on Root Simple here. Many thanks to LeJun for the tips and I’ve amended that older post with Grid Beam and Open Structures.