Steady

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Thoughtstylings
2 Comments

My gappy first attempt at a hand-cut blind dovetail. I’ve got a lot of practice to do!

I spent the past weekend taking a magnificent class with woodworker Chris Gochnour. In addition to being a master of his craft he’s also a talented teacher with many years of experience. Now, this is not a woodworking blog because I’m soooooo not qualified to opinionate on the subject. But I would like to share two things Chris taught that I think apply to any worthwhile task.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson of the class was getting a sense of how to pace work. Sometime in the late afternoon of the first day there was a building crescendo of aggressive pounding and sawing and I think Chris could sense that we were all getting a little too frenetic in our actions. He stopped us and said, “steady, work steady.” He explained that we should not work so slow as to be inefficient but that we shouldn’t rush either. That “steady” pace will, of course, be different depending on if you’re a beginner, such as myself, or further along on the learning curve. I found myself through the rest of the weekend, when I found myself rushing, hearing Chris’s voice in my head saying, “steady.”

The other thing he said that stuck with me is that you, “don’t learn to play the violin in one day.” Skills take practice. I’m familiar with this from studying music and yet I forget that the other needed skills in my life need to be built slowly over time. In music, you have to set aside some time every day to practice your scales.

But where to find the time? Lately I feel like I’ve been paying too much attention to the news. While I think it’s important to know something about what’s going on, I don’t think that I need to follow the day to day drama. What if I devoted the time I spend reading the newspaper to practicing cutting dovetails by hand? What if, instead of falling into the daily political reality show, we practiced sewing, or drawing or learning a language or playing musical instrument? We could probably catch up with the important news in just an hour every week.

While not eschewing power tools, Chris ended the class with a moving plea to consider the more “steady” pace of working with hand tools. “Steady” is not the same as “slow.” “Steady” implies a skillfulness that comes with practice and focus. “Steady” is counter-cultural, at odds with the always distracted ethos of our cheap, plastic, ugly, restless and isolated Empire. So, my brothers and sisters, steady.

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Stanley Pocket Folding Knife

134 Eric of Garden Fork on Mental Decluttering, Washing Machine Repair and More!

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees, Podcasts, Water and Power
6 Comments

On the 134th episode of the podcast we talk to DIYer, YouTuber and podcaster Eric Rochow of Garden Fork TV on some eclectic DIY notions and projects including why he’s quitting beekeeping, mental decluttering, washing machine repair, print making and more.ing,

Watch Garden Fork on Youtube and subscribe to the Garden Fork Podcast. You can also find Garden Fork on Patreon.

If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected] You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. Closing theme music by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

The Glorious USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Fruit Trees, Gardening
6 Comments

Chestnut. Ellen Isham Schutt, 1913.

Over the past few months I’ve been reviving my long lost drawing hobby, partly as a way to fend of the temptations of phone addiction but also as a way of training myself to take the time to really see what’s around me. Anyone who has tried to draw knows that what it teaches is to observe the world without the preconceptions imposed by language. Before the advent of inexpensive photography, drawing had a central role not only in everyday life but also in science. The United States Department of Agriculture’s online collection of watercolor illustrations of fruits and nuts demonstrates how scientific illustration can be both useful and beautiful.

The collection spans the years 1886 to 1942. The majority of the paintings were created between 1894 and 1916. The plant specimens represented by these artworks originated in 29 countries and 51 states and territories in the U.S. There are 7,497 watercolor paintings, 87 line drawings, and 79 wax models created by approximately 21 artists. Lithographs of the watercolor paintings were created to illustrate USDA bulletins, yearbooks, and other publications distributed to growers and gardeners across America.

Rimmer Apple. Deborah Griscom Passmore 1901.

The collection showcases the diversity of fruit and nut varieties before industrial agriculture took it all away and replaced it with easily shipped but tasteless produce.

Pomegranate. Mary Daisy Arnold, 1932.

The human eye can see and perceive things that a camera can’t and the artists who made these exquisite watercolors must have had an encyclopedic knowledge of the fruits and nuts they portrayed. The collection has 3,807 images of apples alone.

Should you have some blank walls in need of art let me point out that all of the images are available in high resolution.

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Drawing Your Life: Learn to See, Record, and Appreciate Life’s Small Joys. Observe. Record. Reflect. Create a visual record of your days. Informed by the author’s personal philosophy of “Sustainable Creativity,” this guided journal encourages creative people-from doodlers and sketchers to fine artists and graphic designers-to develop their artistic impulses and discover their own inspirations through observing and recording-in pictures and words-the ordinary objects in their lives. The book comprises prompts and ideas for things to draw, books to read, items and ideas to collect, and adventures and encounters to pursue.

Saturday Linkages: Agitated

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
RLeave a comment

Engraving from the Kelmscott Chaucer.

The Baffler serves up some Fresh Hell

Kentucky politician with a demented hatred of trains

Dreaming octopus changes color

I ‘stormed’ Area 51 and it was even weirder than I imagined

Handsy old goon supports fossil fuels

If world leaders choose to fail us, my generation will never forgive them

M.I.T. Media Lab’s crackpot plant computer

What if America Took Amtrak Seriously?

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Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: The Deluxe Edition. Put down your damn phone and learn to draw. Everyone can do it!

Homesteading Heresy: On Giving Up Vegetable Gardening

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
25 Comments

Eric Rochow of Garden Fork TV and I interviewed each other for our respective podcasts yesterday. Without giving too much away, we talked about the idea of mental de-cluttering: weeding out those activities in our lives that take a lot of time, tools and expense with less than stellar results. While it’s easy to focus on the negative aspects of failed interests, perhaps it’s healthier to see that with one door closing another one opens.

I spent an hour yesterday pulling apart our last remaining raised vegetable bed. This bed had a caged top to keep the skunks from digging up seedlings. I called it “vegetable Guantanamo.” It took a lot of work to build and looked hideously ugly. Removing it was the first step in making some much needed aesthetic improvements to the our front yard. We plan on replacing it with two dwarf citrus trees: a kumquat and lemon.

I mentioned in a previous post my ambivalence about vegetable gardening. Frankly, I haven’t devoted the amount of attention the task deserves. It feels like a chore to me. Meanwhile, as shown in the picture above, vegetables happen without my intervention, in this case a cherry tomato plant that seeded itself and grew without irrigation while the tomatoes I planted, tended and watered withered and died. So while I don’t plan on growing annual vegetables in the near future, I’m certainly not going to get in the way of nature. If she grants us feral vegetables we’ll get out of the way and let them flourish. Maybe we’ll even throw some random seeds around and give nature a nudge.

If you love growing annual vegetables, go for it. But if you don’t, consider what you really want to do and focus on that. Maybe it’s embroidery, or writing or just hanging out with friends. I’m having a good time in the wood shop. I’ve also been working through the drawing lessons in Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain for the second time in twenty years, tackling some difficult books on my reading bucket list and I even sat through the entirety of the Ring of the Nibelungen. I say embrace whatever activity keeps you away from the addictive grasp of the Silicon Valley Übermenschen. Go plant some vegetables if you enjoy it but, at least in the near future, you’ll find me in produce aisle of Super King.

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Pattern of Fashion 4. What’s up with those crazy collars? This book tells ya. Patterns of Fashion 4 features hundreds of photographs of genuine examples of ruffs, shirts and more from the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, together with detailed patterns for recreating such pieces, including advice on how to starch and set intricate ruffs.