ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

Editors' Notes
Author Archive

In Search of the Perfect Spring ‘Uniform’

Clothes. Shoes. It’s the second week of intermittently nice weather in New York City, and there’s no point pretending I can think about anything else.

Fashion-wise, the arrival of spring catches me off guard every year. In darkest February, the spring catalogs start arriving at my apartment, filled with warm-weather clothing photographed on location in the tropics. I leaf through them over a bowl of oatmeal, and dream about what I’m going to wear when spring comes. But spring itself seems so far off that sartorial thoughts stay purely in daydream-land.

uniform-project

And then a week like this happens. The sun comes out, the temperatures hits 60, and suddenly there’s nothing to wear!!!

Switching gears from winter to spring dressing always feels difficult to me. Cornerstones of the ol’ look—the coat, the boots, the bag—are suddenly inappropriate, and new ones take time (and money!) to find. The result in my case is usually several weeks of fashion awkwardness.

Perhaps that’s why, today, I’ve found myself thinking about people who have the discipline to wear just one thing, day in and day out, season after season. Beginning in June 2009, Sheena Matheiken of The Uniform Project (pictured above) began donning a versatile black dress every day for a year. The dress, designed by Matheiken’s friend Eliza Starbuck, can be work forward, backwards, or open, and Sheena permits herself to “accessorize” with as many items of recycled clothing and shoes as she pleases. She posts a photo of her outfit every day, and loyal readers express their appreciation by donating money to a charity that sends under-privileged children in India to school (which is where Matheiken began wearing uniforms in the first place). Soon, copies of the little black dress in question–aka, the U.P. L.B.D.–will be available for purchase on the Uniform Project website.

But The Uniform Project isn’t the only exercise in extreme wardrobe discipline going. Years ago, I seem to remember reading about a group of people who had taken to wearing a simple gray sweatshirt every day, as a way of protesting consumerism.

And the website 43 Folders, which is all about “finding the time and attention to do your best creative work” has posts from people who are paring down their wardrobes in the interest of cutting down on the clutter inside their minds. Someone has considered going “100% khakis and plain white t-shirts. Short sleeve in summer, long sleeve in winter;” someone else is taking the all tee shirts and jeans route; someone else is keeping it to black jeans and red tee shirts.

What about you? Have you ever tried or been tempted to try some kind of wardrobe restriction—in the name of creativity, thrift, environmentalism, simple living, or simply hating to do laundry? Tell us!

Humble Homes Presents…The Hickshaw!

I am very, very happy to have on my desk a copy of a spiral-bound book about tiny house plans that crawls with black-and-white-drawings and pulses with loopy DIY energy. It’s called Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts, and Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze In Here, and it’s the brain-child of Derek Diedricksen of Stoughton, Massachusetts. The book the kind of creative outburst that makes me inordinately glad to be sharing the world with it, and I’ll no doubt be blogging some goodies from its pages soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this Youtube video of Derek giving a guided tour of one of his Humble Homes creations, the Hickshaw (”a rickshaw for HICKS,” get it?). Derek blogs at Relaxshacks.com, where you can obtain your very own copy of Humble Homes for a mere $15.95.

How to Reuse: Skate Decks

tony_alva_dogtown_and_z-boys_002

So, over on Twitter the other day, @messymagazine* asked me if we had any ideas about how to reuse old skate decks. I tossed the question out to our followers, and the wonderful stream of ideas that came back was enough to inspire me to put together a post. Consider this the first of what I hope will be many “How To Reuse…” columns.

*(That’d be Messy Magazine, an independent art/literary/DIY/music/photography/etc zine outta Cleveland, OH)

How To Reuse Skate Decks

A skate deck is the “board” part of a skateboard. According to Wikipedia,

“Most decks are constructed with a seven to nine-ply cross-laminated layup of Canadian maple. Other materials used in deck construction, such as fiberglass, bamboo, resin, Kevlar, carbon fiber, aluminum, and plastic, lighten the board or increase its strength or rigidity. Some decks made from maple ply are dyed to create various different coloured ply. Modern decks vary in size, but most are 7 to 10.5 inches wide. Wider decks can be used for greater stability when transition or ramp skating. Skateboard decks are usually between 28 and 33 inches long.”

Decks are flattish but not completely flat, and most have a kicktail that turns up at each end of the board.

So how do you reuse these often lovingly decorated objects? Here’s one idea. Read past the fold for many more.

1. A glass-topped coffee table provides a clear view to the decorated skateboards that make up its base. From the “Skate Furniture” gallery at Skateboardpark.com.

comet

(more…)

Hail to the New

In case you hadn’t noticed, this week we welcome three new blogs and six new bloggers to ReadyMade. Lily Kane and Erin Loechner are covering design at our blog Design Binder; Carmela Ciuraru and Melissa Goldstein are all over culture at Media Diet; and Helen Jupiter and Keith Mulvihill are writing about travel and places at Escape Hatch.

Please pay them a visit and catch their self-introductions here, here, here, here, here, and here. Think about sending Keith some of your best “travel porn.

Print

Also later this week, Megan Jeyifo of Urban Casita is going to be making her debut on our home ‘n’ garden blog, Inside, Out.

So as you can see, we’ve been pretty busy around these parts. Now that we’ve got our eight-count-’em-eight blogs in place, we’re looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting down to the business of bringing you all the DIY ideas, decorating tips, design news, small-spaces hints, book/music/art notes, craft projects, fashion and style news, armchair travel destinations, real travel destinations, ‘how did you get that f*&%ing awesome job’ interviews, and visual and mental candy that we can.

As always, the ReadyMade blogs are a work in progress; if you have feedback or there’s something that you’d like to see here, feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Things We Like: PMO Design’s Sweater Mugs

ribbed mug cozies

While browsing the aisles of the New York Gift Fair a few weeks back, Andrew, Amy and I stumbled upon the small stall belonging to PMO Design, the small Montreal-based company of Kwok Wai Lau. Lau makes ceramic and wooden goods that manage to look elegant and whimsical at the same time. We were especially taken with his asymmetrical mugs—topsy-turvy when set on a table, they’re meant to balance naturally when held in the hand, and his handle-less mugs with knitted sweater cozies. I don’t know if it’s the long Canadian winters that inspired such a brilliant mash-up of two elements of cold-weather comfort into one, but I definitely like it.

(more…)

Friday Houseblogging: Frank Lloyd Wright-Inspired in Wisconsin

1115721461

Maybe Midwest is best. $220,000 won’t buy you a studio apartment in the latte-quaffing cities of the East, but it’s the price tag on this Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired, 2-bedroom, 1.5-bath house in Waukesha, Wisconsin, 20 minutes west of Milwaukee.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and a landscaped patio for glamorous indoor/outdoor living—in the non-snowy months.

1115721537

[Via.]

Craft Vocabulary: Kantha

I learned a new word at the New York Gift Fair a couple of weeks back. The word is kantha, and it refers to a quilting technique practiced in the Bengal region of India, by which used cotton saris—which are, in themselves, giant pieces of flat, patterned fabric—are fused together in layers, using a simple running stitch, to create blankets and other useful items.

throws

I noticed a few vendors exhibitors featuring kantha or kantha-like items, but the most impressive examples came from Jeanette Farrier’s booth. Her kantha throws and baby blankets are made by women who work out of their homes in two villages in West Bengal. The throws consist of five layers of discarded saris stitched together. The juxtaposed colors and patterns are hapy-making, and the pieces really stood apart because of their heavenly softness, cotton being one of those fabrics that seems to keep getting better with use: think of the broken-in effect of your favorite old shirt, in blanket form.

Which gets me thinking…kantha quilt made of old tee shirts, anyone?

[Image credit]

Glamping Down on the Farm

I’m suddenly quite taken with this new term, glamping. A portmanteau of the words glamour and camping, glamping refers to camping in a more than ordinarily luxurious manner.

A New York Times travel piece in September 2008 described the rise of “hip hotels of camping”—places where you can enjoy nature from the comfort of a well-appointed, semi-permanent tent erected by someone else.

Just recently, a piece in the Wall Street Journal predicted that glamping’s reach will expand considerably in the near term, since “camping with amenities” will appeal to Americans who want to experience a little luxury and novelty but are feeling too recession-strapped to travel overseas.

Both articles mentioned Clayoquot Wilderness Resort near Tofino, British Columbia as a kind of gold standard of glamping. But glamping spots are cropping up all over.

Just recently, in fact, I’ve been noticing examples of what you might call a glamping subgenre: rustic yet luxurious farm stays. It seems a little Marie-Antoinnetish, or at least ironic (19th & 20th centuries: Americans struggle to leave small farms; 21st century: Americans rush to spend their vacations on small farms), but perhaps only natural, given the recent upsurge of interest in organic agriculture, eating local, fresh produce, food origins, etc. And it’s hard to deny that the destinations look pleasant as all get out.

maryjanes farm tent

You can ponder your own Omnivore’s Dilemma during a tent stay at MaryJane’s Farm in Moscow, Idaho (pictured above), or at one of the three locations of Feather Down Farms, a mini franchise that places luxury tent accommodations on small-scale, working family farms (pictured below).

feather down farm tent

(more…)

Build Your Own Treadmill Desk

A lot of times, office work seems like the mortal enemy of fitness.

Combining computer work with calorie-burning exercise on a slow-moving treadmill desk isn’t a completely new idea (this Good Morning America segment about treadmill desks from 2007 estimates that walking at 1 MPH while working can burn around 100 to 130 calories an hour), but it’s fair to say it hasn’t caught on widely yet, either.

But Eric Wilhelm’s recent Instructable on how to DIY a treadmill desk—depending on how cheap of a used treadmill you can find, he estimates you can build one for around $150—seems a step (ha!) in the right direction.

Vanity Barcodes Add a Little Oomph to Your…Barcode.

barcodes

Nothing says “generic” like a bar code, right?

Not anymore. As if in order to prove there’s nothing that can’t be customized, Ruben and Yael Miller will create a fully-functioning “vanity barcode” for your product or business.

Working together as Vanity Barcodes, they offer a couple dozen pre-made barcode designs at $375 each, and they also take on custom orders.

Has anybody spotted a vanity barcode in the wild?

[Images via Vanity Barcodes]

I Want This Bedroom, Please

PonyGarden03

A room in the Pony Garden, by Atelier Bow-Wow. A wood-frame building in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan, built 2008. This space appears to be in the upper part of a barn-like house. Looks like a great space for napping, no?

[via Atelier Bow-Wow]

HDYGTFAJ: Andrew Schechter of Animal Planet, Puppy Bowl Referee

Mondays suck. Especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can now look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process.

Andrew Schechter of Animal Planet talks about the glory part of his job—that’d be being the referee in the Superbowl’s cutest competitor, the Puppy Bowl—and the workaday aspects of being a production assistant, which frankly sound pretty cool, too. And he disabuses us of some of our fondest illusions: there are no roosters answering phones at the Animal Planet offices, nor chimps making copies.

puppy-bowl-1

VITAL STATS
Occupation: Puppy Bowl Referee/Associate Producer for Animal Planet
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Age: 25
First Job: Production Assistant for Discovery Kids
Best Job: Puppy Bowl Referee
Greatest Professional Challenge: Cleaning up puppy “fouls” of all shapes, sizes, and colors
Salary During 20s: Mid 50s

1. Hi, Andrew Schechter. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
I’d like to think it was my calling to ref adorable little puppies pretending to play football but, in reality, I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Three years ago, I was at a production meeting for Puppy Bowl IV, and when the topic of “talent” came up, I jumped at the opportunity. I have a background in acting and improv, so I thought it could be fun and volunteered. At first, the room erupted in laughter (who would want to pick up dog “fouls” for 12 hours?), but once everyone thought about it, they were like, “why not?”  It’s been a match made in heaven ever since!

2. Can you tell those of us who may not know, what exactly is the Puppy Bowl?
Well, of course Super Bowl Sunday is known for the NFL game, but at Animal Planet, we recognized that some people might want another option—and so Puppy Bowl was born. Puppy Bowl is two hours of puppies pretending to play football in a miniature football stadium. Puppy players take the field every year to entertain millions of viewers with terrier tackles, fido-first downs, puppy puns and all the cuteness you can possible handle. We have a lot of elements that mimic the big game, including a starting line-up for the best puppy players, a Most Valuable Puppy award and a kitten halftime show that rivals the best Super Bowl performers. New features for this year include the Twizzlers® Blimp, which provides aerial shots of all the action thanks to its hamster pilots, and bunny rabbit cheerleaders. It’s ridiculously tongue-in-cheek, but the real message of Puppy Bowl is that pets need to be adopted. All the puppies, as well as the kittens, hamsters and rabbits, are adoptable and from no-kill shelters. There is a perfect pet for everyone at your local shelter.

(more…)

Home Tip: MacGyver a Clipping Clothes Hanger

bindercliphanger

ReadyMade’s marketing director, Kara Szalkowski, has a home tip I can imagine putting to work in my own less-than-tricked-out closet: improvise a clipping coat hanger by pressing a couple of binder clips into service.

Snazzy, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day from ReadyMade

winter condom

This Valentine’s Day, we at ReadyMade have just two wishes for you: Stay safe, and stay warm.

['Winter condom' by Drus Dryden]

And the Winner of the Corinne Grant Hand-Hammered Bracelet Is…

It’s official…the winner of the fetching gold bracelet in our ‘ReadyMade Wants to Be Your Sweetheart‘ giveaway on Twitter, as chosen from all you entrants by Random.org, is….

il_430xN.120888443-300x214

…@ennuigo!

random_org

Also, if you can believe it, there were exactly 69 entrants in our Valentine’s-themed contest. I think that’s gotta be auspicious, or lucky, or something. Thank you for playing, thank you for reading, and most of all, thank you for being awesome. Happy Valentine’s, sweethearts!

xo,

Team ReadyMade