I Spent 11 Months Building an Uncomfortable Couch

August 29, 2022

Design

...tenon joints. We also had to figure out how to do the curved top rail. We used quartersawn white oak, the same wood that Stickley used for most of his furniture. Manny at Custom Designs Upholstery in Pasadena did the cushion. I’m very pleased with the end result and thankful to have a wood shop. The divan has decadent 1900 vibes, kind of the perfect couch to faint on after too many rounds of absinthe consumed while your significant other plays th...

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Hollywood always gets gardens wrong (I’m talking to you, Maze Runner)

Mrs. Homegrown

September 25, 2014

Thoughtstylings

19 Comments

...growing on the trellis? Cloth ivy fronds, my friends. Cloth ivy. The sort used to festoon wedding tables, or is sometimes found creeping dustily along the molding in B&Bs. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to offer a pack of hungry teenage boys a bowl of cooked ivy, much less fake ivy. Now, of course, the intended audience, teenage girls, are NOT looking at the ivy as the hot boy leads discuss their survival problems in the garden. They...

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Is Purslane the New Kale?

Mr. Homegrown

June 27, 2014

Food, Foraging, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

29 Comments

...le fame. We planted some this year in our summer vegetable garden and I’ve used it in a lot of salads this week. Purslane is a common weed in North America. We’d love to be able to forage it in the neighborhood but, for some reason, it only tends to appear in unappetizing locations: usually the gutter (I think it needs a bit more water than what falls naturally from the sky here). You can eat the whole plant: stems and leaves. It has a salty and s...

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How to Make Stock

Mrs. Homegrown

June 19, 2014

Food, How-to

17 Comments

...g on the top, which you can lift off. Fish Stock Fish stock is, obviously, used as the basis of various classic fish soups and stews: chowder, cioppino, bouillabaisse, lobster bisque, etc. You can make fish stock with fish bits–bones, heads, tails, scrap meat and other fishy leftovers, or you can make shellfish stock with shellfish peelings, like crab, shrimp or lobster shells. Again, this is about letting nothing go to waste, and these parts are...

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We are all gardeners

Mrs. Homegrown

April 2, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Thoughtstylings

13 Comments

...ters as it does in those about child development. The phrase is also often used in permacultural circles, where — by oral tradition, at least — it is attributed to Bill Mollison, though after a solid half hour of searching I haven’t been able to find a citation of him saying this in print. In permacultural terms, to say we are all gardeners means simply that everything we do influences our environment. Whether we will it or not, our daily decision...

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