Paul Merrill
We found this at a campsite.
Our last hurrah camping trip was this past weekend. (It was far too cold, Heather and I both woke up with aching bodies – but Jay had fun celebrating his seventeenth birthday with some of his buddies in the mountains.)
So what might this be? A dental tool for backpacking oral surgeons?
And as you might have guessed, this went straight into our bin where we collect stuff to give to the charity shop.
This is an amazing watch. Parmigiani, a Swiss company, will sell one to you for about $234,000. The model is the Bugatti Type 370, if you want to dig deeper.
My main comment is that this may be the only watch that has owners grabbing their mobile phones to check the time.
Photo is courtesy of their website. (I couldn’t manage to get a test drive.)
Some of you may remember that in a previous life, I was a graphic designer. (I still do some design – but that’s less than half of how I spend my working days.)
So a few weeks ago, I got another email newsletter – this one from MyFonts, featuring a typeface called Lady Rene. I saw their little slideshow and just wanted to create. That’s pretty rare.
Did I? Well – I’m producing this blog post. Actually creating something with Lady Rene would cost me $59. But I could emulate her.
Maybe later.
This mobile phone is maybe just five years old. I think it’s pretty cool. But it’s no longer useful – just more ephemera.
Thankfully, it will be getting a second life. The organization I work for has a program to recycle them and use the resulting profits for good.
Sort of off-topic… I think mobile phones are getting too big. Yes, I like having a keyboard for texting, but I miss when they were as small as this one. (It folds to half the size you see in my hand.)
If you’re into backpacking, the stuff Mont Bell has to offer is just the best.
Ironically, I don’t even like backpacking much anymore. But I would love to own just about everything they sell. It’s just the lightest, highest quality, finest designed products available. (They are now what Sierra Designs or North Face used to be.) Maybe I’m like like the SUV owner who never puts it into 4WD. I just like the possibility of using the extreme capabilities.
Their US flagship store is just 40 miles from my house. The siren calls…
This lovely shopping bag was crafted by a friend of ours in rural Kenya. She gave it to us as a gift.
You will note that the strap is made from a necktie. The brightly-colored stripes are from plastic shopping bags that were tightly wrapped around natural sisal fiber, found close to her home. And it’s totally hand-woven.
Her husband is very creative too!
Takeaway: How can you use an article in a different way than its original purpose – and come up with something new?
Special thanks to the beautiful model, Heather. More posts on creativity.
Curbside.
I saw this beauty, waiting for the dumptruck to haul it away. I nearly cried at the thought of it entering a landfill.
Grundig Majestic. Made in Germany in maybe 1960. Beautiful rosewood veneer. Shortwave radio, along with a turntable. (Of course it doesn’t work.) If we had room, I’d gut the interior and make it into a cabinet of some sort.
Alas, the house is full, so I sold it on Craigslist. The gentleman who bought it wants to use the shortwave. Triumph!
Stainless steel is perfect.
What other substance is so hard, so rust-free and looks great when it gets scratched?
I’ve written about perfection before. I think all humans long for it at some level. But it’s very hard to find. Maybe that’s why I like stainless steel so much.
(And a special thanks to my friend Dave, who gave me this Utili-key. It’s very useful, but when I had jury duty last fall, the guards insisted that I leave it in my car. “Drop that key! Put your hands up!” And airport security? I just left it home for the last few trips I made – wouldn’t have had time to go back to the car, if that was needed.)
Do you like this latest blog design better?
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So yes, I changed the look of my blog. Do you like it? I’m not stuck on it – you can influence whether I keep it this way or go back to the previous look.
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