Audrey Kawasaki - artist

The human form is very difficult to capture but Audrey Kawasaki makes it look easy.

This is one of her teaser pics (others on My Modern Met) of her preparing for her first solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NY this coming Saturday. The show title Hajimari means beginning in Japanese, and is a word often used in the introduction of a story.

Her work is simply breathtakingly beautiful. Being able to view her workspace brings her closer to us. Seeing how immersed she is in her work with her headphones on causes us to want to be quiet so as not to disturb her.

Repurposing Items

I am a huge believer and practitioner of repurposing any item I can. I believe that every products container has more uses than the one it was designed for. It is our duty as consumers to learn other ways in which containers can be used.

For instance, as I go through my local grocery store I constantly look at how a product is packaged keeping my eye on how that container can be used after the product itself is long gone.

The most common products that come to mind are butter (margarine or near butter) containers. These are great for storing leftovers in the fridge. Just as larger sized Yogurt containers and even whipped topping containers. These plastic tubs of various sizes just scream out “don’t throw me away, re-use me”. Who needs Tupperware or Rubbermaid as long as these little plastic beauties are available?

The small glass jars of artichoke hearts, or yeast, or specialty jellies and jams are just right for making candles in. You can buy a bag of wax at any craft store and pour into your jar of choice in a pan of boiling water and within a few minutes you have a candle for the next time the power to your house goes out. There are a multitude of websites devoted to showing you what you need. Honestly, the double boiler thing is not really necessary.

You can paint these jars afterwards, you can wrap them in jute with a little watered down glue, you can even put contact paper on them to dress them up or leave the label on them if you want.

These jars can be used for keeping loose screws etc in them inside your junk drawer. Out in the workshop they can be used to hold small items. In the kitchen you can store leftover liquids in them. Your imagination is your only limit.

I use small one-cup sized jars to store hummingbird food in the fridge.

I cut milk jugs, vinegar bottles, bleach bottles in half and use the tops as funnels and the bottoms to store kitchen scraps to carry out to the compost pile.

I also use gallon milk jugs to water my house plants with and to carry water out to my bird baths every day.

The lids on some food jars have the little button in the center to be used to check for freshness, these jars are great for putting homemade jelly or other foods in. just put the food in when it is hot, close the lid and wait for the button to ‘pop’ inwards showing it is sealed.

The foil bags that coffee comes in, we use these empty bags to store homemade snacks in when we go hiking.

The tin cans that some foods come in, they are used to store craft items, same as with the small jars mentioned earlier.

Recycling, reusing, repurposing, whatever you want to call it can go a long way towards keeping items out of our landfills as long as possible. Let’s all chip in and help in any way we can.

Product Review – Kauai 100% Hawaiian Coffee

I just recently began drinking coffee on a regular basis so I am a relative newcomer to the caffeinated wonder that is coffee. Late last year I was introduced to one of the best coffees I had ever tasted and immediately became hooked. I had tried various coffees several times throughout my life but none of them offered what it would take to get me to become a regular. In other words, I wasn’t hooked. If 4 to 6 cups a day can be considered regular then I guess I am now hooked.

After drinking my new found hot cup of love for several months, I decided to compare it with other brands. Each brand I tried left me wanting to come back to the one that got me hooked in the first place. All of the others lacked in flavor and they lacked in the much sought after buzz factor. I always went back to my first love, Hawaiian Isles Kona Coffee Company.

The brand I am testing this week also comes from Hawaii, Kauai Coffee Company. The flavor is Chocolate Macadamia and it is a ground medium roast.

The richness of the flavor and the resulting ‘high’ is exactly what I look for in a legal substance. J But seriously, I don’t do drugs and I am not particularly fond of the after effects of alcohol. I do enjoy this newly found rush of caffeine and Kauai Coffee Company delivers just what I currently crave.

Their website boasts its commitment to sustainability and I am all for that. But, I am just cynical enough to take whatever any business says about their “environmentally friendly” status with a grain of salt. You can read about it on the website and make your own determination.

I have learned that I am partial to the flavor Chocolate Macadamia. I make no apologies, I make no excuses. I realize that some coffee-purist will probably poo-poo my flavor of choice as not being truly coffee-based but I have tried pure Columbian, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Ethiopian, Brazilian, and others. So far, hands down, Hawaiian coffee is my favorite and Chocolate Macadamia is my flavor of choice. This may taint my view of coffee adversely and I do apologize for that, but Hawaiian coffee is, so far, the only type where I can find this flavor.

I have only just begun to scratch the surface of the wonderful and very prolific world of coffee and am still very much a novice. I can only voice my opinion on what I have personally tried and of the brands I have tried (Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Kona, Millstone, Eight O’clock, and several others) Kauai is now my hands down favorite. I have found all of the others lacking in any richness and complexity that, in my humble opinion, any coffee drinker should demand, otherwise, what is the point? A good buzz, sure, but really flavor should rank at the very top, right?

I have seen coffee priced over a very wide range and have decided to forego the cheaper priced ones (thinking there is probably very little substance to them) as well as the most common brands, i.e., Maxwell House, Folgers, etc. Perhaps this is because I am growing ever more weary of name-brand anything. My distrust of mainstream products runs deep for many reasons that will become the topic of future posts. Suffice it to say that I prefer to swim outside the mainstream and do my business with smaller companies that tend to try harder to gain their market share and therefore build up their reputation.

I drink my coffee with milk to help cut down on the acid and I do not add any sugar. I really don’t think milk changes the flavor very much if at all. it certainly does not mask it.

I have a Krupps 4 cup coffeemaker that serves my purposes just fine. And as long as it continues to do so, I am perfectly happy with it.

If you are a coffee drinker looking for a little something more out of your cup of Joe, then give these guys a try. You won’t be disappointed.

This product review is done completely on my own without any compensation or prompting at all. It is something I enjoy doing and I do it all on my own.

I Just Made Laundry Soap

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time now and I finally got it worked into my schedule. Actually, as usually happens, I woke up this morning thinking I’m going to make it today.

I have a hard time sleeping past 3 or 4 am so when I get up I’m alone and can get into all sorts of things. :)

The materials were all sitting altogether in their own little pile patiently waiting for me to get around to them and I just took them all towards the kitchen and began making detergent.

I found this recipe on Tip Nut awhile back and wrote down recipe #1 on a post-it note and attached it to one of the boxes of materials for future use. I used Fels-Naptha because the name just sounds old-timey and exotic…plus I know from personal experience that it works real well at getting out tough stains. Anyway, it took one half of the bar to get one cup because I cut the recipe in half and still ended up with a lot of detergent.

Today…Tuesday…is my laundry day and so I’m using it now. I wanted to have some of my regular detergent in case this stuff didn’t work but it is cleaning our clothes quite nicely. I’m currently using a concentrate I bought at CostCo. When I figured the cost of materials to make my own vs. the CostCo product the total cost per load of laundry using my own detergent is slightly less than CostCo brand. But compared to what you pay for laundry detergent at say WalMart and other stores making my own is cost effective. In the future, I plan on experimenting with other bars of soap etc to see if I can get the cost down.

Several factors that appeal to me about making my own is that the laundry washes out clean (does not leave any residue), is a lot more environmentally safe than many commercial detergents, and so far is cost effective. I have read about how stubborn stains come out easier than with commercial brands but honestly…Fels-Naptha…if used according to directions…gets greasy and oily spots out as well. Also, I like the idea of somehow connecting with the old ways of doing things…so making my own will probably become a regular routine for me.

Focused? I’m Focused

Who says you have to be focused on one topic at a time? I can focus on a bunch of different things.

We have a country harvest table that has seen quite a few years of use and I decided it was time to refinish it. This photo is taken from the internet because my digital camera is on the blink…or the software is…I’m not sure which.

Anyway, I love this old table…it has six chairs that are beat up where they get pushed into the table and where people’s feet have scraped the paint away. So far, I have only started on one chair…sanding with 60 coarse grain sand paper to smooth out the really rough patches…and then 150 fine grain sandpaper to smooth everything down so when I paint it the nicks won’t show. The final surface is really smooth now.

As far as focusing goes, for some reason, it’s really hard for me to stay on one project for very long so I’ll work a little on this project and then move on to something else. It has taken me four days to get to the point where just one chair has its first coat of primer…no worries…I’m not too concerned because I have been this way for a very long time. The result from having several things going at one time is…each gets completed in its own time…sort of like how ideas first begin to form and then become clearer and then come to fruition. There really is no truly linear process and every eventually gets done. In the meantime, I may have several piles of materials sitting around for each project that is being worked on…but it all gets done.

Right now, I am doing these chairs and table…patching some holes in all three bathrooms…patching a hole in a hallway ceiling…melting a bunch of used candles down into more useable ones…tearing down the garden for the year…making picture frames (I have about thirty picture frames laid out on the basement floor while I decide on a pattern to hang them on a wall)…making frames for the basement windows to put plastic on for insulation…redesigning and building a new seed transplanting table in the plant room downstairs…building a plant-shelf ladder because I have way too many indoor plants taking up way too much space, as well as the plants I had to bring in to over-winter…waxing leaves to place on ceramic tiles to hang…ummm, somewhere. Plus, several other projects on the computer.

Well, now its time to pull something together for supper because my wife will be home soon. See ya all later.