690-699: The Building Trades. How to Build Your Own Tiny House

 You guys, I could have read about how to prevent water damage in my home, or manage contractors, or use paint to create 26 fabulous effects, but I am tired, and I just didn't want to. Instead I wanted to fantasize about a project I would never in a million years actually attempt: building a tiny house, courtesy of author Roger Marshall. 

Reason number one I would never build myself a tiny house: The permits! So many permits you need! If you build it on land, you have to think about things like zoning and septic and "soil perc," which I guess I was already supposed to know about. If you want to build it on wheels, there are regulations and laws of physics governing where you can drive and park the thing. Too much!

Reason number two: building a whole entire house is no joke. I have built a bookshelf; I have built a "buffet" (a.k.a. a giant plywood box with legs screwed on the bottom and butcher block screwed on the top); but to build a whole entire house that you would actually be able to live in without freezing to death? Come on, that should be left to the professionals.

So why look at the book at all? Because I have always been intrigued by maximum use of small spaces. Cruise ship cabins, boat interiors, sleeper cars on trains, and three-bedroom houses for 6 people all are so delightfully ingenious! After all, we are hard-wired to think tiny things are cute, whether they are picnic tables for squirrels or Cape Cod cottages barely big enough to sleep in.

That said, I think there might be a better book if your purpose is just to admire the ingenuity of a living space that's bigger on the inside. This book just had too many pictures of how to caulk a window and not enough of how to grow plants and store a wardrobe in 256 square feet.

680-689: Manufacturing for specific uses: Stop Stealing Sheep and learn how type works!

 Would you like this book?

The easiest way to answer that question may be to look at the extensive sample available here. My guess is that you will either instantly fall in love with the sharp graphics, bright colors and varied typefaces featured, or you'll just be left cold. 

I loved it, but that might be because I was a calligrapher for about 20 years, starting at age 14, so I have been thinking about letterforms most of my life. Kerning, ligatures, ascenders and descenders and serifs were a big part of my life for a long time and are still something I can get excited about. Then there's the whole beautiful range of things one typeface family can do. Bold, italic, condensed, extra condensed, the same typeface can grab your attention or fade into the background, anchor a concept or dance across the page. Readability can be enhanced-- you can even cue the reader's speed-- by line length and spacing. And when it comes right down to it... letterforms are just beautiful!

This post was set using the Saira font family, one of the few available in Blogger that has a wide variety of weights. When it comes to fonts, you always have choices-- choose wisely-- and have fun!

670-679: Manufacturing. Stationery Fever!!

from the Wonderfair Website

When you visit my home town, Lawrence, Kansas (that is on your bucket list, right?), be sure to check out my favorite store there, and one of my favorite stores in the world: Wonderfair, rightly titled Print Palace of the Great Plains. There you will find everything to write on, everything to write with, and a curated selection of other unparalleled paper-adjacent delights. If this doesn't quicken your heart, this blog post is not for you.

If it does, you may need the current Dewey Decimal selection, Stationery Fever, by John Z. Komurki. This book is a joy to behold and a fount of information about the origins, uses and unimagined possibilities of everyday objects like pencils, erasers and staplers. Read this book, appreciate its beautiful design, drool over the pictures of hitherto unimagined variations on the theme of "school notebook"-- but beware, because the love of office supplies can be a dangerous -and expensive-- condition. Here are just a few stunning pieces of design that are waiting to beautify your desk or backpack: 

https://cwpencils.com/shapes-paperclips/

Beautiful paperclips, designed by Daphna Laurens. I mean, okay, they're paper clips, but aren't they elegant? CW Pencil Enterprise carries several other charming types of paper clips and pushpins as well.

https://www.stabilo.com/com/products/highlighting/highlighters/stabilo-boss-original-pastel/

The classic Stabilo Boss highlighter, available in 23 colors, is suitable not only for study but also for coloring and sketching, as illustrated above. It is noteworthy as one of the few watercolor pens on the market with a thick, arthritis-friendly barrel. 

https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/notebook-classic.html

The Leuchtturm notebook is available in readymade versions, but why not specify your own size, ruling and cover color? No matter what you choose, you will also get the most blindingly obvious and brilliant innovation in notebooks known to man: numbered pages and a table of contents. Journal writers, sketchbook keepers, and recipe collectors, you know what this means! For the first time in your life, you will actually be able to find that one thing you put in that one notebook sometime last winter-- provided you kept the table of contents updated!

https://www.uistencils.com/products/everyday-carry-kit

Are you in UI/UX? I wish I was, because is not the above just a beautiful object? It is designed specifically for phone app developers.

https://bellezainfinita.com/es/inicio/24-cuadernos-9788493508739.html

You guys, these notebooks! They just have to be seen to be fully appreciated. I had to order them from Present and Correct in the UK, but they are totally worth it. They are works of art that you can collaborate with as you keep your journal. They just have to be seen to be believed! Go online and look at the photos, but then just bite the bullet (if you live in the US) and pay the terrible exchange rate and the exorbitant postage, as they are the most elegant and inspiring journals you will ever own. Each volume is lined in the way indicated on the cover: ruled, grid, slanted and circular-- but every spread is a different pattern!!! Imagine the possibilities as you unspool your circular thinking or create a newspaper about your day with a page containing beautifully designed lined and unlined sections.

See what I mean? The more you know about paper, pencils, and staplers, the more you realize that these items you use every day can really be inspiring!

660-669: Chemical Engineering. Chromotopia, by David Coles

 Most beginning artists quickly realize that they need to know how to use color. For that, I refer you to the classic and beautiful Interaction of Color (also available as an iPad app!) for which colors to select, and to Color by Betty Edwards for how to create the colors you choose out of a 15-tube palette. Edwards nods to the chemistry of color when she talks about the limitations of color mixing and the behavioral differences between all the hues labelled "blue." But if all that information leaves you wondering, "But why? Why are there so many blues (or greens, or yellows, or...), and why do they have such odd names, and why are they all different kinds of prices, and why do they not do as I expected when I mix them?" -- well, for those kinds of questions, Coles is your man.

Color is chemistry, as it turns out. Well, and physics-- the physics of light. Chromotopia is everything you ever wanted to know about how color is made. Turns out paint-- or dye, or any kind of color-- is not made out of, I dunno, color, or magic light-refracting science. It's all made out of stuff. Everything from bugs to plants to rocks to poop to rust has been ground up, boiled, burned, corroded and/or infused to make pigments that, when added to oil or egg or water, become paint or dye. They are chemicals that react with other chemicals, sometimes with unexpected results--ultramarine can become pink when heated; cobalt can react with other additives to become green, violet or yellow. 

From Egyptian Ceramic Art, by Henry Wallis

People have been making pigments out of whatever they had around ever since the cave paintings, and the whole time they've been trying to solve three problems: expense, toxicity and lightfastness. Expense was the first challenge. Colors that weren't made of dirt and smoke and wood were typically made of ground-up gemstones or of organic matter than had to be highly concentrated, like indigo or tyrian purple. The Egyptians were the first to synthesize a brilliant color, the blue of faience.

However, both natural and synthetic pigments can be dangerous. Vermilion was made with mercury, which was mined by slaves who typically were killed by the work. Lead white has been used since ancient times, but, of course, was recently discovered to be highly toxic. Emerald green is made of arsenic, which you would think would be a dealbreaker, but, no-- It was available for sale until 1960! 

Lightfastness may seem like a trivial problem compared to the others, but any artist who has worked hard on a watercolor only to find its blues and greens disappearing in sunlight will agree that it must be addressed. The impermanence of color has affected our understanding of art history, too-- many medieval paintings seem to represent grass and trees as blue only because the greens they could access were unstable. And the Greeks did not choose to live in a rarified, Instagram-ready all-white world-- ultraviolet light studies have revealed that they painted their statues in vibrant, lifelike colors. Therefore, advances in lightfastness are just as welcome as those in affordability and safety.

PS-- if you want to make your own colors, there are five recipes at the back of the book. However, this book is not really designed to make you a better painter; it will just help you develop your respect for your materials!

650-659: How to Succeed, How to Succeed, How to Succeed in Business

Ugh. Okay. I've read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. I've read The Search for Excellence. I've read Who Moved My Cheese? I've read The One-Minute Manager and The Black Swan and even Selling the Dream . But the how-to business book I would read again (or at least watch the movie)? The one, the only, the inimitable How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, by Shepherd Mead. 

I first read this book when I was approximately 9 years old (I was a precocious child). I have no idea why I would have picked it up-- maybe I liked the cover. Maybe I liked the hit song that came from the musical: "I Believe in You," as sung by Michele Lee. But once I started reading, I was completely intrigued by the idea that anyone-- anyone!-- could game their way up the corporate ladder with just a few simple tools. Learn to say, "Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes;" ease your way into an empty office; be sure to invent reasons to be absent during work hours but visible evenings and weekends; oh, and disregard all the references to "men." Surely that's "men" as in "all men are created equal," not "men" as in "men's room." 

As you might have gathered, aspects of the book have not aged well (all those "men;" how to write a six-page memo), while others (how to crib, er, generate impressive ideas) are more relevant than ever, as the new and charming introduction by Stanley Bing explains. The important point, however, is that unlike Lean In, Lead from the Outside, Dare to Be Great, and even How to Win Friends and Influence People, Mead's classic has two unbeatable advantages. One: it will not make you tired before you even start reading it. And two: there's a musical version widely available for 3 bucks on streaming services. 

So, if you want to succeed, go ahead-- do it without really trying!

640-649: How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen

Do you ever look at a book list and think to yourself, "Check, check and check?" That's how I felt when I went to the 640s-- because, dear children, I came of age before the Internet. That's right, kids-- no YouTube, no food bloggers-- in fact, no HDTV. If we wanted to know how to do something around the house, we had to hie ourselves to the library or the book sale and darn well touch dead trees to figure it out.

Cookbooks? Um, yeah! I learned to cook-- well, actually, from my mom, but she told me to read cookbooks, not just look up recipes in them, so I read More with Less and The Joy of Cooking. DIY around the house? A book taught me to build in bookshelves and construct an extra kitchen cabinet-- they weren't works of art, but they got it done. Another one showed me how to paint fake wood panelling (hint: immediately) or staple fabric over it. Fashion, hair and makeup? Not really my biggest thing, but I might have read a slim volume or two in junior high and high school-- and I definitely jumped on the Color Me Beautiful bandwagon. Living your best life around the house--there's a book for that. De-cluttering-- hm, I could write the book on that. I can throw your crap away like a boss. In fact, I can even get rid of things you actually wanted! Just leave them at my house without explanation-- in six months or less they will be out the door. Marriage? I speak all five love languages and know what animal my spouse is. I was a FLYLady until I found out that meant I had to put shoes on first thing in the morning. I dared to discipline and hugged a porcupine and parented with love and logic and definitely raised some readers. But one thing I never did was find out How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen. It is a sort of sequel to How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and was written by Faber's daughter, Joanna Faber, and Joanna's friend since childhood, Julie King.

I'd sort of vaguely heard of the earlier book, which came out in 1980, but, shame on me, I never bothered to read it. I thought I had a plan, and when that plan started to reveal its limitations, I had no plan B. And then everyone grew up and it was a moot point. And then they started having kids... and I knew that as a grandparent, I wanted a new plan A.

It was actually one of my sons who recommended How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen to me. He pitched it as not only the best book on child-rearing but also the best book on communication, period, that he had ever read. And now that I have read it too, I am sold.

People, don't do what I did. Don't miss this book. Don't miss these ideas. You need them now. You need them yesterday! They are powerful. And, bonus, you will not hurt yourself reading this "survival guide." It is full of scenarios and real-life experiences of people using the tools and/or failing to do so... and, you guys, every one of these stories, not surprisingly, features a kid between the ages of 2 and 7, so they're all adorable!

What are these tools, you ask? Here they are, just in the order they appear in the first half of the book:

• Acknowledge feelings, with words, writing, art, or even just quiet attention
• Validate feelings by giving in fantasy what you can't give in reality
• Make a chore into a game-- and appreciate progress!
• Offer acceptable and meaningful choices
• Put the child in charge
• Instead of commanding:
• Give information
• Say one word
• Describe what you see and/or how you feel
• Write a silly note
• When necessary, take action without insult
• When something goes wrong:
• Express your feelings strongly
• Show your child how to make amends
• Remove the object or change the situation that's causing problems
• Ultimately, maybe reconsider your expectations
• Problem-solve:
• Acknowledge your child's feelings
• Describe the problem
• Brainstorm ideas without criticism
• Decide what ideas you both like
• Try out your solutions!
• Praise specifically, not generally:
• Describe what you see
• Describe the effect on others
• Describe effort
• Describe progress
• For kids who are differently wired (to use the authors' term):
• Join them in their world
• Take time to imagine and verbalize what your child is experiencing
• Put into words what your child is trying to communicate
• Adjust expecations and manage the environment rather than the child
• Use notes, checklists, pictures, songs, gestures instead of just endless words
• When all else fails, ask yourself: 
• Are they hangry?
• Are they sleepy?
• Are they overwhelmed?
• Are they just not ready for this situation?

...and that's just the first half of the book! The whole second half applies these tools to various situations: food, mornings, siblings, shopping, lies, tattles, cleaning up, doctors, hitting and sleep. There are even chapters about what to do when parents get angry and when the tools don't work.

These tools make a great combination with the concepts in Parenting with Love and Logic. Love and Logic is built on the concept that you can't control anyone else, you can only control yourself, and that if you set boundaries around your own behavior so that you avoid frustrating situations, you will be able to more calmly respond to whatever other people bring at you. How to Talk teaches you how to not be a jerk while setting those boundaries. And these two ideas --controlling your own behavior so that you get more of what you want out of life, and respecting other people's feelings and desires whether you can grant them or not-- are vital for everyone!

630-639: Gardening Books in February

Today is a good day-- it was above freezing for most of the daylight hours. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground... maybe 6 or 7. It's hard to know, with the freeze-and-thaw, snow-and-rain cycle that has been February 2021. Is this just the snow from Thursday? Did we have snow Monday, too? Constant shoveling has created a small mountain of debris that is starting to avalanche back across the sidewalk. 

And of course we're still in quarantine lite, so there'll be no eating out or going to the movies while we wait for spring. Our new entertainment is looking at the stories told by the animal tracks criss-crossing what once was our lawn. 

In light of all that, what better way to occupy an hour than with a gardening book? Good Weed, Bad Weed  is a delightful guide to the stuff that actually *wants* to grow in your garden. The author, like me, is a big advocate of a lawn sprinkled with tiny flowers. I have a rule never to mow till after Easter, and even then sometimes I leave patches of of "lawn" that are full of snowdrops and buttercups for another month. The borough has yet to come after me-- if you make the patches look tidy enough, I guess they come under the classification of "weedy garden" rather than "unmowed grass."

A close-up of my lawn last spring

The book confirmed a lot of things I already knew or suspected. Thistle must be eradicated, preferably by pulling rather than digging. That stuff I thought might be crabgrass? It is, and my lawn would be better off without it, even though it *is* green and sort of vaguely grassy. Wild garlic and onion can absolutely be eaten, which is a good thing because it is almost impossible to completely eradicate them from the lawn and garden. Violets and buttercups are a joy and should be encouraged wherever possible. Fleabane and wild aster are not everybody's thing, but there's nothing wrong with cultivating them if you like.

I did learn some very useful new information. Don't pull dandelions until they are blooming, because the blooms are cheerful and the plant won't spread till it goes to seed. The best approach to a lawn overfull of crabgrass, wild onions, and henbit is to reseed the lawn every year in early spring. (The book says to seed again in fall, but in our situation, when we are still raking in mid-December, that would probably be pretty ineffective.) Plaintain (not the fruit, the broadleaf weed) only grows in compacted soil, so an aerator will discourage it. The thing I always thought was bugleweed is probably henbit, and the thing with the little yellow trumpet-shaped flowers is not clover but wood sorrell. By any name, both are welcome in the grass, and neither in the flower beds!

Now if only the snow would melt, I can get out there and start pulling my weeds and appreciating my wildflowers!