Check this out

I've been teaching myself how to use the new SketchUp 7 Pro for about the last week and I'm really blown away by it. Really. Download this thing today! Go to the SketchUp website and try it for yourself.

Hand blown glass sinks. Wow!

Glenn Randle is a glassblower and his North Carolina-based studio, Fire Dancers Glass, makes some of the most beautiful vessel sinks I've ever seen. Glass vessel sinks are not difficult to come by, but I can tell you that I've never seen colors this saturated and rich in a vessel sink before.

His sinks are functional art glass, there's no better description.

His "standard" size is between 15 and 16" diameter and between 5" and 7" deep. The sinks are drilled for a standard 1-3/4" drain and their bases are machined to a 4" diameter to allow for a stable installation. He offers a lifetime warranty on his sinks and he'll also make custom sizes and colors, all you have to do is ask him.

Fire Dancers Glass, the website, is also his catalog and you can see his current collection there.

Glenn also makes what he calls Ribbon Vases, speaking of art glass. The depth and organic feel he achieves with these vases is remarkable.

Here's close up of the side of a Ribbon Vase. Gorgeous stuff Glenn, just gorgeous.

Jonathan Adler has new stuff...

And the emperor has no clothes. Awful, just awful.

Viking toaster recall

This is a $300(!) Viking Toaster.

This is a $40 toaster from Hamilton Beach.

This is the recall notice for the $300(!) Viking toaster.

Why oh why would someone buy a $300(!) Viking toaster in the first place? They are made similar Chinese factories as the $40 workhorse from Hamilton Beach, only the Hamilton Beach toasters aren't being recalled. If you have one of these Viking toasters hang you head in shame because you've been had. You've been had and now you have a $300(!) electrocution hazard sitting on your counter.

A Soviet look back

I love looking back at old catalogs and magazines. I could spend hours in a used book store combing though 40-year-old issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Sears Catalogs. I'm old enough to remember that stuff when it was new and it's pretty humbling to look back at how truly fleeting everything is.

Well in that same vein, I came across a website called English Russia a couple of weeks ago, and the guy who writes that blog posted some pages from a 1983 Soviet Look Book. In the old Soviet Union, all household goods were sold by the state and a new catalog came out every year. I suppose it was the Soviet equivalent of a Sears or Penny's catalog from the same era.

It's interesting to get this kind of a look into the domestic lives of ordinary Russians from the Soviet days. When I think back to 1983, I can remember very clearly wondering what life wasreally like over there. I knew the fires of the Cold War were stoked with a whole lot of propaganda --theirs and ours. And I knew that I'd never get a straight answer until I went over there myself. 

Well  that never happened and I never did get my first-hand look into Soviet life. Russians I've come to know over the years have told me enough of their childhood stories that I think I can cobble together a good sense of how life was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But I have to tell you, this Soviet Look Book from 1983 has really piqued my curiousity all over again. Look at some of this stuff. The appliances in particular are fascinating.

1983 wasn't too long a time ago. Right?