Lloyd:

Just got your Tiny Homes on the Move. Very beautiful stuff. I hadn’t seen your books since the early seventies.  I was a custom home builder for many years but now, becoming older, (hate to say it), I’m starting to build tiny structures.  

The attached little chapel was inspired by Sidney Poitier’s comment in “Lilies of the Field,” “I’m gonna build me a chapel!” So I did. I guess really it’s more of a meditation space, only 24 square feet. I built it to try my tiny house structural designs since I wanted something not too expensive to test them out.  Everything worked well so now on to bigger stuff, (on a 16′ flatbed trailer). Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the inspiration. 

There’s a terrible tiny house show on the television where two guys build generic structures with conventional framing that are ugly and are guaranteed to be difficult to pull, and to burn out wheel bearings. The prices they quote are astronomical. My little chapel cost only $600 and $300 of that was for the western red cedar siding. The work you show is a complete opposite of that. I really appreciate the work you do to communicate such admirable possibilities in a time when this whole idea is catching on.

Take care and enjoy your day,

Klaus Eyting

Hi Lloyd,

On first looking into your Shelter book in 1973, my fate was sealed. Since then, I have made my own ceramic tile, been a tile setter for 35 years, and am a serial remodeler and builder of tiny houses. Pictured here with my original Shelter book. I recently came upon your Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter, and have been inspired anew. Rage on!

Sincerely,

Fred Ross

San Anselmo, CA

Shameless Commerce Dept:

Our books make great Christmas gifts: Go here —https://www.shelterpub.com —click on the yellow bar at top. and use code: gimmeshelter

for 35% discount.

1. Working on Small Homes.

2. Doing the “social media” thing. A lot of effort in these early stages, what with coordinating Instagram, Twitter, et al. Still some rough edges to smooth out. I’m not sure if this will pay off, but we’ll give it a try in the next year.

Just rebuilt by Rick

Shooting on my new iPhone 6s Plus. What a tool!

Check this out on your phone:

managed bySean Hellfritsch

And, our new website, also by Sean (Squarespace format):

This is the most vital, vibrant time of my life. A lot of things are falling in to place, or about to.

I look around these days, at the garden, or the book production process, or attempts to gather, hunt, or fish for food, or my workshop—and think, this is pretty good. A lot of it a long time in the making.

The book SMALL HOMES continues to unfold before my eyes. I’m in daily touch with, typically 4-5 contributors (as many as 25 emails in some of the folders), getting large enough photo files, editing text, doing pasteup. Not in any special order — well actually, in the order in which it comes in.

I’m really excited about getting a new iPhone 6 (s Plus) (hoping tyo make my way through the AT&T maze so as not to pay full price — I have another year to go on my present contract). I think Instagram will be perfect for my daily photos, I may be wrong, but it seems Instagram is replacing blogs — at least with the millennials. BTW, there’s a good article on this age group (11-33-year-olds)by James Wolcott (an excellent writer) in this month’s Vanity Fair. I think I can get a journalistic flow going this way, and use blog for the writing impulse– like here (and link them together).

We’re revamping our website (being built in SquareSpace as we speak by Sean Hellfritsch) and it’s lookin elegant. By the end of the year, we’ll have a completely different looking internet “presence.” It’s important for us because we have so much”content” — maybe 15,000 photos, a good portion of these on homes and building. We’re also going to redesign theshelterblog and make good on my promise of getting mostly original stuff there, rather than recycled material that’s already been posted (much of which, however, is great and worth sharing).We’re going to build it, with the hope they will come.

I’m negotiating with publishers in Russia,China, and Brazil about foreign translation rights for our book Stretching (now in 24 languages).

Got my (12′ Klamath aluminum) boat with15 HP 2-stroke recently rebuilt Evinrude motor working well and improving my lame backing-up-of-trailer technique.

Going to build a sleeping platform. I got really excited yesterday laying it out — 10’x10′, — just putting 4×4’s on pier blocks, 2×6 joists on top of them made me realize that I miss building. This is gonna be fun!

The Monarch butterflies are back in greater number than years, there are big flocks of quail patrolling every corner of the garden, a beautiful young fox appeared this morning, scaring the chickens, and them scaring him too. At the beach yesterday, windy, high tide, I got 3 weathered 2x4s, 3 bird skulls — each a different bird — a lot of dead birds the last month, big bag of seaweed for garden, and check out this bit of avian skeletal artistry, what is I believe the sternum with cortacoid/clavicle still attached by one remaining tendon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfJRX-8SXOs