I shot a bunch of photos around our house for my talk at the solar energy festival last weekend, but there was no electrical hookup, so I’ll post a few here now and then. I’ve made a number of tables out of used 2″ Douglas Fir floor joists. We eat meals at this table, and look out at the constantly-changing bird world on the ground, in the bushes, at the finch feeder, bathing in the bird bath.
Our friend Yogan just sent us this link to photos of a number of his projects in France: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=856784&id=1127561109
Yogan’s website: https://yocharpentier.ifrance.com
SolFest got so popular that it was too large for the small town of Hopland. It was cancelled in 2009, but is back on this year at The Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah, Calif. Info: https://www.solfest.org/
Professional book packagers would be aghast at the way I put together a book. Assemble material (photos and text) for over a year, store in file folders, then at certain point pull best material out and begin laying out a spread — 2 pp. at a time. Random, no order. No plan or outline, no idea how things will fit together; just here the requirement that shelters be under 500 sq. ft.
It’s a wild mix so far — about 40 pages roughed out — and the book has now got its first trace of a mojo workin.
Book starting to run through my mind all the time. I’ve read how novelists get into a thing where they (authors) are just transmitting what their characters are telling them. Or maybe it’s muses at work. It feels a bit like that now, a natural process, a seed growing. Exciting! This is the best part of my job, watching all this unfold.
Great website Lew discovered, with tons of info: making bows and arrows, atlatls, flutes, a dugout canoe hollowed out from a redwood log, tanning hides, building an Ohlone tule house (San Francisco Bay tribe). Scroll down on right side to see all the subjects. https://www.primitiveways.com/
Below comment on my posting of last week revealed that the entire out-of-print book (a treasure) is available via Google. Here’s one of the color paintings (not by Sydney Jones):
“depatty has left a new comment on your post Old English Country Cottage”:
Just FYI. Old English Country Cottages is available from Google Books at https://is.gd/eLCqO for viewing and PDF download. Thanks for posting about it, it has some really nice illustrations!
Dave”
Sydney R. Jones was an English artist around the turn of the century who did exquisite drawings of English country life. Back in the 70s, I collected a number of books (via printed catalogs and mail order) with drawings and photos of English cottages. This drawing is from the book Old English Country Cottages, published in 1906. Note the four beehives (skeps).
Our hexagonal tower with its new shake roof. Shakes hand-split by Bruno Atkey on Vancouver Island, applied by Billy Cummings (I was recovering from a wrist operation). There’s a 6-sided copper cap, a piece of 3/4″ copper pipe, which is flared out at the end and holds a quartz crystal from Nepal (that I got at the Green Festival in San Francisco). If you’re standing in the right spot at the right time of day, it sparkles in the sunshine. (Got the idea from my friend Louie Frazier.)
Dear Lloyd Kahn and Co.,
My 45 year-old English husband, who has a log house-building qualification from the Log and Timber School in Vancouver, and I, a 35 year-old New Yorker with excellent knowledge of gardening and gathering wild foods (notably the growing of herbal plants), are looking for a suitable training opportunity to commence as soon as possible.
I am selling the 20 sided house that I built in Topham, VT ten years ago. The house is almost round and has great southern exposure with lots of windows on the south side. It has a massive central chimney made of old concrete road culvert tiles that holds heat well and distributes it throughout the space. The main timbers for walls, floors and roof are softwood poles harvested locally. The top floor is wide pine boards, with some 24″ boards. The sole source of heat is a woodstove and the water for the clawfoot tub is heated by a gas fired on-demand hot water heater. Water is gravity fed and comes from a spring.
Joe Golden