Olio is a word I learned recently. It means a miscellaneous collection of things, or a variety show. What a useful word, and I never even knew it existed. Anyway, today’s entry is a bit of an olio—a little of this, a little of that.
New Denizens of Catasterist World Headquarters
When I send myself emails—which I do pretty much constantly with reminders, internet findings, and other miscellany—I usually just type in ‘cat’ and let autocomplete do the rest. Well, now that abbreviation is more appropriate than ever. Meet my two new pals, Scout (black and white) and Jo aka Mojo Jojo (striped), the Kitten Sisters. Right now they are sleeping all wrapped up around the heating pipes:
But sometimes they are awake:
You can see more pictures at the Flickr set reserved for them, Kittens!
The kitten sisters came to me from a foster/rescue nonprofit called Anjellicle Cat Rescue, who rescued them from the Brooklyn Pound. Jo survived 2 weeks of pneumonia and an eye infection (you can see in her left eye it’s not totally healed yet). She’s one tough critter! They both are, and they’re both lively beasties as well, but total sweethearts happy to cuddle up. And they are gonna help me study for the ARE. I’m working on teaching them how to hold flash cards right now.
Having kittens around definitely makes me look at my apartment differently. I cleaned thoroughly in anticipation of their arrival, but they still find dust balls to roll in every day. And no one is more aware of vertical space than a cat. These girls are young enough (they’re about 11 weeks old) that they often miscalculate jumps, but they’re amazingly springy, and they’re also small enough they can shimmy under drawers and squeeze behind anything.
Cats are yet another thing that make me jealous of people with big, blank, loft-like spaces. It would be so fun to design a space for cats. Something along these lines. Fun!
I have to say one thing that always put me off a bit about cats is the design of cat stuff. Man, 99% of cat stuff is UGLY. I’m getting them some nice vintage Pyrex for food dishes in lieu of the horrible cheesy dishes more commonly on offer. Their bed for now is a box with a $3 blanket in it, which is more aesthetically appealing to me than the usual bows, ruffles, and pink polka dots. I foresee a lot of DIY cat projects in the near future, especially since what modern cat stuff I’ve seen is kinda pricey.
Candela Update Coming
Hey, I’m working hard to *finally* update the Candela website with all the info from the show. Expect an announcement when it’s up, hopefully within the week.
Decorator Refrigerator
Check out this ad for a ‘great new kitchen idea’ from International Harvester. Yup, it’s the new Decorator Refrigerator, which is apparently a fabric fridge front. Wow, what a pain in the ass to clean. But how cool to be able to make that hulking machine in the corner a little cheerier. Maybe oilcloth would work better? Or if the fabric can be removed and washed, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to clean after all. Hmm, maybe I should do some experimenting…
Thomas Beale
Thomas Beale is an artist who has done a couple of interesting architecture-related projects: Emergency Arts, enclosing walls and a sink with found wood and tin:
…and Dream Raft, a raft for, as it says, dreaming:
Bamboo Bicycle
If I had $1,000 that needed spending, I would love take this build-your-own-bamboo-bike project:
Technical Note
I’m aiming to update the hopelessly out of date Wordpress version that’s powering this blog sometime in the next few days. So if catasterist.com is down for a bit, don’t panic! Just go outside and play, and by the time you come back everything should be better.
Architecturally yours,
cat.
coming soon...
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