March 30, 2008 - The Ultimate Lamp

Thought you might be interested in seeing what the French are doing for the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower.

It's seems there's been a competition to redesign the Eiffel Tower's public reception and access areas. Serero architect's won with this solution that will extend the top floor plate by grafting on a high performance carbon Kevlar structure. What do you think?

Spring is finally coming! In my first post I showed a photo of my neighborhood street back in February. Here's what it looks like today. We're all amazed at how wide the streets and sidewalks actually are. We've had snow on the ground since December 1st when we got hit hard by snow and ice. That same snow is at the bottom of all these piles, almost 4 months later and over 100 inches later.

March 00, 2008 - My birthday

Row Row Row your boat (your boat, not someone else's)

Gently down the stream (gently, down stream, not against it)

Merrily Merrily Merrily (be happy, enjoy it)

Life is but a dream (I'm beginning to get this)

It's my birthday and I was thinking over the last year. One of my favorite times was taking a trip to Washington Island in Wisconsin with some good friends. It was a magical trip. This is a "self portrait" that I took on Schoolhouse Beach. An amazing beach of smooth white stones. I got lost in the ever changing patterns of the water ripples on the stones. It was a wonderful place just to sit and dream. Today I'm looking forward to spending time with friends. Have a great day.

March 28, 2008 - A Custom Lamp

A friend of mine found an old lamp base, and quite a funky one at that, and asked me to make a custom shade for it. Actually it took some thought. This needed a more traditional shade construction. It needed a wire frame to make it work. I'd played a bit with this in the past, like once, but then I was never one to go the traditional route, and it seemed even more time consuming than the direction I had already gone. But here it was, a fabulous base and the opportunity to play. It took awhile but this is what I came up with.

I didn't want to do the traditional round shade so I ended up using the bullet shaped Bo shade and added a wire framework on the top and bottom. I had to wire in two round wire circles that I had gotten from a lamp part supplier. This was the tricky part and I wouldn't recommend the way I did it, but it worked. At any rate, if you find a funky base out there, maybe I can make a new lamp out it. Cheryl loved it by the way.