tiny tool

On the Norwegian side of my family, I had some gay uncles, brothers, Teddy and Jolmer. They lived by a lake in Minnesota, down the road from their sister Ruth. Teddy played rousing, dramatic songs on the organ and cooked, and Jolmer carved and fixed things. All three of them fished. They are who I think of when I hear Le Tigre's Les and Ray, even though they lived in the country and didn't share walls with anyone.

I guess it's only speculation that they were gay, but they lived together, both single, for their entire lives, two gentle men. I think Ruth had a husband and children at one point, but would have to ask my mom to be sure. She lived alone when I knew her, and mainly just spent time with her brothers.

I only have two tidbits of Jolmer's carving remaining: a tiny basket and a tiny monkey, both carved out of nut shells. For many years, my favorite piece, now lost, was a pair of tiny working pliers. It may be the OCD inside of me that loves so much care put into a tiny nut shell, but I like to think it's just appreciation.

Jolmer's pliers plus my love of hand tools were the reasons I had a little bit of weakness for "tool" jewelry when it became popular. But when I saw these tiny tool carvings by jeweler Laurie Brown, I was way more excited & sentimental.

I'm obsessed with craft that is useful, but apparently I can be excited by fragile work that only hints at usefulness!tools from aesthetic outburst.
sporks from andothersuchthings.

tool talk - open sesame

I have a little tool I love called a "slicky." When I went to look it up online, I learned that slicky means either "the biological moistening (slickening) of one's vagina in preparation for penetrative sex" or is "GI slang in Korea for a thief used since the Korean War." When I went to the website, I found a big picture of a cookie. Zowie. My slicky is an innocent little sesame seed grinder.

I could spend a year of tool talks on Japanese tools, since there is cultural importance placed on the ritual of everyday tasks: tea cups fit perfectly in ones hand. But I recently got this silly little plastic sesame seed grinder, and love it as much as I'd usually reserve for tools made of stone or wood or copper. Sesame seeds are one of the oldest condiments, and contain lots of good-for-you minerals, including copper, and grinding them releases their wonderful oil and scent.

Last night we went to a friend's noodle shop. There people were making mochi (rice cakes) for the new year in the traditional method: pounding rice with big wooden mallets in a hollowed out tree trunk. Fascinating, but I'll hold on making my own mochi for the moment. For now, how about roasted radishes with soy sauce and sesame. An easy way to try out some of those radishes from the root cellar and the slicky, both!

A call out to Kiosk, the wonderful little gallery slash shop where slicky came from. They specialize in everyday tools from around the world that have outstanding aesthetic qualities. Get your dowsing rods here! Thanks, too, to The Perfect Pantry for the photo, and the lovesong the slicky inspired in her.

tool talk - ecofan

Somehow this desert rat ended up living in the frozen north. Well, not the most northern part of the world, nor the most frozen, but cold enough to make heating a big issue. Living in a big, old, drafty house that's heated by oil is not comforting: The house is still very cold, the oil is outrageously expensive, and the use of resources is impossible to make peace with.

A couple of years ago we got a wood burning stove. The decision was hard. Pellet stoves are more efficient, but there often seem to be shortages of available pellets, especially the winter after Katrina, making it obvious that pellet ingredients are not local. Corn burning stoves are interesting, but uncommon enough that it's hard to get fuel unless you have your own cornfield. Solar heat is the best answer, since there's no pollution involved and no shortage of sun. Unfortunately, solar prices are going up and the tax deductions down, making it still an unreachable goal for us low income types. (It's still in future plans!) We looked around our area at all the deadwood lying around, all the branches from storm damage, all the cut trees stacked up at roadwork sites, and decided to buy the cleanest, most efficient wood burning stove our scraped together dollars could buy.

Last winter we moved the heat around with a little electric fan salvaged from a computer, given to us by our bio-diesel brewing neighbor. (Love the frugal and tinkering neighbors!) This year, we tore down a wall to allow the heat to penetrate the whole house. And we got an eco fan.

The computer fan did the job, no doubt. But it required electricity, and was loud. This lovely little number sits on top of the stove and is propelled by the heat. Light the stove, and the fan starts running. And it's perfectly silent, letting you enjoy that cold-night-by-the-fire ambiance thing.

There's a whole explanation that comes with the fan about the physics of how it works, but I didn't bother with that. To me, it's just beautiful magic.

tool talk - p style

I guess transmen know all about this, but I didn't know. There are tools that allow women to urinate standing up without depantsing and without making a mess. They are useful if, well, you want to use a urinal, or a filthy toilet without getting close to it. Or in situations where you're not comfortable or safe taking down your pants and squatting. Or if you physically can't take down your pants and squat.

People mention liking them for car trips and outdoorsy times. I can think of quite a few situations it could prove useful. And I can now officially attest to the easy use of the P Style, which is available at my local feminist bookstore, and maybe yours too. (There's also the WhizBiz from Australia, which looks like a long funnel, if you're more into that.)

If I post a picture of "abovegroundpool" written in the snow, you'll know what happened.

tool talk - sewing machine

I don't know how to sew.

There I said it. But it hasn't stopped me. My mom gave me this Featherweight as a hand-me-down. She's an amazing quilter, and wanted some special features. The Featherweight does one stitch style only, and has no bells or whistles. It's tiny and fits in a travel box with a handle. It's easy to use, easy to thread, easy to fix. It's why we were made for each other.

I began slowly enough, hemming pants, altering clothes that didn't fit, making cat toys and simple pouches. But as someone who has always loved fabric, and possessing a d.i.y. gene, I decided I could make other useful things, linens, quilts, bags, draft blockers, banners, the stuff of daily life.

We've had four good years together, and we're still going strong. Since my machine is a pre-1950 model and works perfectly, and I can come up with an endless list of items that I or my friends or my neighbors need or need repaired, I expect we have many years of working together to come.

guerillas

Guerilla Gardening means all kinds of things, from beautifying neglected public spaces, to growing food in those spaces, to harvesting unused food on public land, to making political statements with shrubbery.

Years ago some friends and I had fantasized about delivering a public message to a homophobic religious group who happened to have a large, freeway-facing lawn. We planned to write our message in vinegar, letting the grass die over a number of sunny days. (It's just a less toxic version of leaving a message in glass etch on a shop window.) This project never happened, alas, I still look at horticultural messaging with longing. A teen friend showed me up by mowing "fuck you" into her parent's lawn when pressed to do chores. They thought their lovely daughter was so brilliant they had a hard time being angry.

Sometimes, the plants speak for themselves. Other times you need to deliver a botani-gram. Here are one|two|three! methods for moss graffiti that are very enticing. I'd stick with beer or soy yogurt instead of buttermilk to keep it vegan.

tool talk - the scythe

Everyone likes to talk about their reel mowers, and feel proud of them. Including my own little reel mower moment. I even saw a t-shirt this week "advertising" how cool and strong people who use reel mowers are. I don't feel quite that cool. Or strong, for that matter.

However, I am adverse to gas and oil guzzling equipment, and hate hate hate loudness. Sometimes to my detriment....I hate vacuuming, even. So when I come across a fine hand tool, I'm very happy. My Japanese pull saw is a beloved item, as is my worn wooden spoon for making relief prints (and sauces!). I have quite a collection of beautiful old hand tools that are still in service.

As you know, we've still got grass. (So suburban! So 1950s!) Go ahead, get your gripes out. We'll still have grass when you're done. I've refused to use a noisy, dangerous, weed wacker, and instead break my back doing yard work with nippers and trimmers (oversized scissors, really). We've got a big yard, so some of it suffers from neglect. i don't mind weeds, generally, since it draws all the neighborhood groundhogs to come and crunch. But this time of year we have lots of tall, DEAD weeds, and even I start to feel shabby.

All this is to say that a casa de abovegroundpool got a scythe. Except it's not really a proper scythe, since it has a shorter blade with two serrated edges. Ours is called a grass whip, though what it works great for is tall weeds. I don't know the proper name for this thing, but I know I'm excited about the new manual tool. We look like "proper" neighborhoodies now, and after only a couple hours of swinging.....the same time it would've taken someone with a nasty, noisy weed wacker.

Be strong. Be cool. Be quiet. Be modern. Use a scythe.

grass

Today was the day. We moved into this house from Brooklyn four and a half years ago. In the garage at the time was an old reel mower. I wanted to refurb it, but it was too rusted out, wood rotted, etc., and I was told it wasn't worth all the replacement parts and work it needed. Alas, with a yard of grass and neighbors who glare when it grows wild, we settled for what we could afford: an old $20 gas mower at a yard sale.

After 4 summers of struggling with that stinky, noisy thing, I mowed the lawn today with a quiet, non-polluting mower.

I know some of you out there are saying, "A lawn! Any real environmentalist would have rid of that silliness by now." We have a big yard, growing lots of edibles and I'm continuously planting perennials (edible and otherwise). And I haven't had the money or time to pull up all that grass. When I do, the priority will be pulling up the nasty asphalt driveway. The lawn stays for now!

The reel mower feels like a good solid step in the right direction. The neighbors are already giving me looks.