For the last few months, we’ve been working with leather more and more. With one of the benefits of the material (it’s rigidity and thickness) come hurdles when you want to design with it. Namely, the ability to sew it together properly.
We’ve been in the market for getting a new machine that would handle the weight and amount of leather we’ve been working with and found out about a great little place up in Toledo, OH called (quite applicably at that) Toledo Industrial Sewing Machine ltd.

Here we met Bob Kovar, owner and head repairman, who showed us around his warehouse full of sewing machines.

We finally settled on a wonderful refurbished Cutline 226r. We’ll be doing a post about this machine soon!

While we were in Toledo, we decided to spend the beautiful day walking around and look at some sights. One of those sights was the Toledo Museum of Art. Unfortunately, we picked the one day of the week that it was closed! Determined to spend time there, we just walked around the grounds, checking out the glass pavilion and the sculpture garden. We were sad not to see the interior of the pavilion (designed by SANAA in 2001), but there were a couple of students working in the glass blowing area, and that was fun to watch.

We were all set to just go home, when on the way back we caught a glimpse of a giant warehouse on the side of the road in Findlay, OH. Jade and I had never been to an antique store together and figured we ought to take the chance. We arrived there around 4:30pm and spent the next hour and a half browsing around and trying to check out as many of the hundred of booths that they had open before the doors closed at 6pm.
Most of the booths were unique, but all shared a similar time range of products. A couple of our favorite things in there were:

1. An old typewriter filled with obscene writing from visitors.
2. Some huge wooden mallets, bigger than Jade’s head.
3. Zombie Santa.
4. Old games and toys that we used to play with when we were little kids.

So, if you find yourself in Findlay, OH and have an hour or two to spare, make sure to visit Jeffery’s Antiques. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!

This beautiful bag was commissioned by a good friend of mine, and fellow Masters of Architecture graduate from the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State.

This bag features a couple of awesome things.

1. A reclaimed seat buckle from an old cadillac.
2. A super vibrant and beautiful teal seatbelt strap with high contrast rough stitching
3. Part of the 2009 Lecture Series tarp from KSA

The design of the bag was inspired by bicycle courier bags and the needs of a travelling architect (plenty of room for sketchpads, pens, and your laptop.

We love doing this kind of custom work, so contact us here for your inquiry!

We’ve been spending a little time over the past 3 months developing and designing this latest update for our Website.

Look forward to more products, more updates, and more information about us and the things we do!

Also, to help break in the new ground, here’s a coupon for 10% any item in our store.

I read this quote and could not help but smile – and I thought “ I don’t think there’s a more fitting title for this blog post.” I’m sure if you have (or have started) a garden, then you can understand. Gardening is a beautiful, creative experience that I wish everyone would partake in.
We here at Aeolist have finally taken our hand in gardening – our first outdoor garden consisting of a plethera of tomatos, peppers, beans, corn, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce, carrots, flowers, basil, oregano and rosemary!
Of course there were some doubts, and we questioned our abilities to be “good” gardeners – but the more I thought about the similarities between gardeners and designers – and of the traits we here at Aeolist share – the more I realized how fitting this experience is, and how excited I am to learn what my garden has to teach me. I believe that this quote describes my feelings with absolute perfection -

“The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.”

~Vita Sackville-West

It doesn’t take much to start – we obtained most of our seeds from a Seed Exchange Party our neighbors hosted (a really great and fun way to get good information and tips about starting a garden if you’re a newbie…and of course seeds) and have invested about $150 into starter kits (which are about $7 at Lowes), large planters, soils and manures, and a few basic tools. The rest in just lots of TLC, water and sunshine!

We had so many plants started that we were literally giving them away to people we saw walking down the street – and they were more than happy to take them and try their hand in gardening.
So create a garden – indoor or out – you will get so much more out of it than fruits, veggies, flowers and dirty knees.

Congratulations to our friends Chelsea Cabot and Kris Koniezcko, owners of the boutique home store, Objects for the Home, on there lovely new store!

Objects opened in June 2010 in a small location in Clintonville, Ohio and after much love from the community here in Columbus, have upgraded to a brand new space in Grandview.

With the goal of bringing the old and the new together  - the shop features an eclectic mix of found and re-purposed pieces from estate sales, flea markets, and barns across Ohio. In addition to these found items, they support fellow creatives and carry a few lines of handmade items ranging from soaps, to jewelry, to bags (including some of our own)! I can’t forget to mention that they have spread their wings into furniture making as well, and the new location features 3 beautiful tables that are more than deserving of a new home.

They have received much love from the press and community here, and we want to wish them continued success!

If you are in the area stop by and check it out, you can find more information about Objects here:         objectsforthehome.com or on Facebook

This year, we made a resolution to grow a bigger and more vibrant garden.  Thanks in part to an impromptu “seed exchange” put on by our neighbors, we were able to score a ton of various seeds donated through a local food initiative.  We decided to plant an array of vegetables, including corn, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, radishes, and shallots – along with about 8 varieties of flowers.

To accomplish this, so early in the season, we picked up a couple of indoor starter kits from our local hardware store.  These are basically just little bound clumps of peat and soil situated within a makeshift greenhouse.  They start out as tiny, hard cakes that you saturate with warm water and they expand to at least 300% of their original volume.  Then you just sow the seeds, per instructions, and voila, ready to grow!

After sowing, you basically just have to wait a few days until they begin to sprout and gradually introduce them to full sunlight.  From there, it’s only a matter of time until they’re ready to be transplanted.

We are hoping to start construction within a few days on two raised bed planters to go alongside our apartment.  We will post images of the process, as well as some before and afters.

I’ve been developing this website for the last 3 months and it’s finally live! I’m sooooooo excited to see all of it come together.  I’ve built about a dozen website in the past, but never with as much intelligence and thought as this one. I took a class this quarter on web design and development and was able to brush up on my technique as well as learn a few new things. Most of the new things I learned had to do with javascript and jquery. I had been familiar with these programming languages in the past, but only knew how to implement them (not really understanding what I was doing). But now, thanks to great resources such as Jquery.com, Smashing Magazine, and my best friend Google, I was able to get all of the inspiration and advice I could handle.