Designing your rooms around an ethnic theme can be exciting and fun and allows you to bring elements of other cultures and distant lands into your home. You can be more daring in your approach to colour and with such a wide variety of textures and patterns available, this can collectively add a whole new dimension to your interior design project. Unusual artifacts from different cultures can work very well as focal points in a room and as there are no hard and fast rules to stick to and because there are so many variations, you can go beyond the usual or traditional to portray a style that is not only beautiful, it is unique.

So what do we mean by ethnic?

Ethnic basically means native or indigenous people from a particular area so in relation to Interior Design it means to bring the natural elements that are representative of whatever culture, land or peoples you choose to portray into your own home to define your space.

Naturally the world is your oyster as they say so there are countless cultures to choose from, all you have to do is bring a particular ensemble of colours, patterns, materials and artifacts together to create a "look" that is recognisable and distinctive. What about a Mediterranean flavour, Native American Indian symbolism, or perhaps Tibetan Buddhism? Popular themes include African, Mexican, and Asian but you can go with whatever inspires or appeals to you. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

African Theme

Think of Africa and all that it conjures up in your mind, the landscape, the sounds, the smells, the colours, the mood, and then if you try to pick out the key points, what would they be? Colour schemes might include earthy colours like green, beige, browns and tans, set off with orange and splashes of red. Think about floor and wall coverings, natural substances would probably work best. Finishing touches can include wall hangings, African artifacts, drums, rugs, African fabrics and prints, animals made of stone, clay or wood, ceremonial masks hung on the wall, brightly coloured African bowls and pots, and so on.

Mexican Theme

What does Mexico mean to you? Perhaps desert colours with sandy tones, beige and khaki, along with reddish, rustic colours and hues. Blankets and woven fabrics in bright colours, perhaps terra cotta pots and bowls, pine wood is popular for furniture. Artifacts can include symbols of the South West or from the Spanish influence, or from the Aztecs, Mayans and other ancient civilisations, all of which can add an interesting and authentic Mexican look and feel.

Asian Theme

There are many variations within an Asian theme but two quite popular ones are Japanese and Chinese. Japanese themes tend to lean towards a more minimalist look and have a tranquil and peaceful feel. Consider a futon and using screens to get that Japanese ambiance. Colours tend to be natural and objects from nature often feature as focal points, for example, smooth stones and pebbles, water fountains and bonsai trees. Chinese themes on the other hand might involve brighter and bolder colours, lanterns, dragons and other mythological creatures, artwork depicting the traditional people colours and landscapes and Chinese handwriting.

How to get started

Once you have established which particular ethnic culture appeals to you, browse through books and magazines and the Internet to get ideas that will spark off your own imaginative flair. Identify what elements go together to make up that particular look or feel that you want to create.

Consider the walls, ceilings and floors carefully as this will provide a base for you to work from and then you can add in the details to finish it off. For example, is the texture and appearance of the walls and ceilings rough or smooth? What floor covering is appropriate, should it be wood, stone, tiles or carpets? Will rugs and mats make a difference and if so what are they made of? Are the windows better suited to drapes, blinds or shutters? What style of furniture works? What about plants, motifs, pictures and wall hangings?

The theme you adopt and the way that you choose to portray specific elements of that theme is entirely up to you and your imagination, the end result will be your own unique interpretation of a culture or a place and you will have added a touch of the exotic to your home.

David McEvoy is an expert in interior design. If you are looking for a leather sofa to give the finishing touches to a newly decorated room then please come and visit our site http://www.leathersofa.uk.com/

As you may noticed I’ve added new posting rules to the site. You can see red “View the posting rules” link above each textarea. Just click on it to expand the latest version of the rules.

These rules are not here to restrict healthy woodworking discussions. They are simply the reaction to some recent incidents and are focusing primarily on personal attacks, offensive posts, advertising as well as political and religious controversies. Note that these new rules will not be retroactively applied to any past posts.

There are two rules that were especially tricky to define and set – advertising and religion/politics – so let me share my opinion about them:

1. no advertising – we must start getting strict about this since we have real advertisers spending money to advertise on our site. Plus it’s evident that personal business interests can dramatically influence the tone of discussions. There are following exceptions to this rule: you can still label your woodworking projects as “for sale” and you can include your personal business website in your signature as well as in your profile. And I’d like to add premium business membership features in the near future.
2. no politics/religion – although we respect everyone’s views on politics and religion we have found from past experiences that it’s in the best interest of our online community to avoid such discussions unless they are directly related to woodworking (ex. discussing woodworking project from the church). There is simply no better and faster way to derail a topic than to bring in religion/politics. Let’s talk woodworking here ;)

So here are the current posting rules:

=======================================

The goal of our online communities is to provide individuals with a place to share and discuss common interests and to form friendships with others from around the world. We reserve the right to remove any messages that are contradictory to this goal and/or ban the offending member from the site.

READ THE RULES BELOW AND UNDERSTAND THEM BEFORE POSTING

• Be civil, courteous and respectful to all.
• Keep your posts appropriate for our members of all ages to read/see.
• Don’t get personal. A good general rule to follow is, “criticize ideas, not people”.
• We do not tolerate abusive, malicious, personal attacks.
• Postings deemed to be Spam will be removed.
• Don’t discuss politics and religion, as long as it is not directly related to woodworking.
• Don’t advertise directly on the site. If you have a product that you would like to advertise contact our advertising department. Note that labeling projects as “for sale” as well as adding your business website to your profile and signature is allowed. Premium business features will be added in the future.
• Off-topic discussions should be posted in the Coffee Lounge Forum. Please remember to keep such postings appropriate for all our members to read/see.
• Debates with other member(s) that are not beneficial to the site as a whole are to be done through the private message system.
• You are responsible for following the copyright rules. Don’t post photos/content by others without consent/credit given.

LEGAL OWNERSHIP
Each message posted is owned by and the opinion of the original poster. Neither lumberjocks.com nor its owners or webmasters are legally responsible for anything posted on these forums.

The site managers reserve the right to remove any or all of your messages at any time and remove you if they see fit.

HANDLING OF INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT

1. Refrain from responding to such content in a manner that perpetuates the situation.
2. Inform the site managers of comments/contents that you deem inappropriate
3. The site managers will determine if intervention is necessary and what the next course of action is:
   • The offending material may be removed from the site immediately.
   • The individual may be contacted privately and told to refrain from posting inappropriate material immediately.
   • The individual may be banned from the site immediately without any warning.

=======================================

I hope this step will help to further enhance the overall quality of the discussions here at LumberJocks.

So since we're already in the neighborhood talking about Shop Vacs I had a few more thoughts I decided I would share with you.

This time my thoughts on Shop Vacs are a lot more positive than in the last episode and I have a few ideas about what to look for in a good Shop Vac.  Some are pretty obvious and others might seem frivalous but I think they're important to me.

While I don't think Shop Vacs are good for a central dust collection system I do think they have an important role in the workshop.

For anyone interested, coming up on April 11 & 12, 2008 there's a great little tool demo and woodworking school openhouse going on at J. Miller Handcrafted Furniture in Chicago. The details can be found at Lie-Nielsen.  There will be some great demos by a number of well known woodworkers and I'm planning on checking it out myself.

For comments, questions and schwag entries drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com.

 

Listen to today's show by clicking on the player below

powered by Podbean.com

I now have the cabinet case, back panel , and front doors installed and adjusted. Everything looks fine at this point, with my next emphasis on the interior of the cabinet. Afterwards, I will finalize the design of the cabinet stand. With respect to the interior, I have a design idea in mind and have begun to make a few sketches. I will most likely leave the left hand side of the interior free and clear and build up the right with two stacked drawers and perhaps a third drawer further up. This design allows the right hand door to be opened independently in the sense that drawers can be accessed without the need to open both doors. This part of the design is interesting and helps me to resolve the division of the interior compartments.The client has indicated I have carte blanche to design the interior as I wish with the only requirement to have one large and one smaller space for art objects, along with two drawers. Sometimes less is more and in this case ( no pun intended) the larger the non-drawer compartments, the larger the objects which can be showcased.

In the photo, I use tape as temporary door pulls while I decide on the door pull design. I'm debating whether to simply have one pull located on the right hand door. If I decide on one door pull, I will elaborate on the thought process leading to this decision.

After my return from a ski trip this week I will be dedicating the next few days to finalizing the design of the interior and beginning to create it. On this ski trip, my wife and I are staying in a small resort town with surrounding towns that have plenty of small shops and boutiques. We both plan to glean some fresh design ideas from other visual objects, not necessarily wood objects... and inspiration for this piece of furniture and other, future designs along with inspiration for her wood inlay jewelry designs.

Hi! First of all I want to thank you for the sweet comments and emails. I´m happy to share my work with you and give you some ideas and tutorials, and I´m even happier that my work is useful!!

Today I want to show you a very looooooooong necklace that I made: I used very small beads, so it takes me more than an hour to finish the work.

The good thing is that I can use this necklace as a bracel: just put it around the wrist many times….

You can visit other posts for more ideas:

Strange earrings

More handmaded earrings 

Handmade jewerly

My earrings collection… they´re all handmaded!

Handmade bracel with wire and beads

Step by step: how to make a necklace with beads

A necklace with beads 

Bye bye,

Fran

This time, I´ll give you a complete tutorial to make a very nice sweater.

The first rows: double elastic stitch (10 rows).
After that rows: start the desing.

1st design row:

1 -Pass the first loop from left needle to right needle. (pic. a - b)

pic. a

pic. b
2 - Make one lace, as you can see in pic. c.
pic. c
3 - Pass another loop from left needle to right needle. (pic. d) (*)

pic. d
4 - Knit one stitch. (pic. e)
pic. e
5 - Pass the third loop (the one you made on step 3) over the las one you knit. (pic. f)
pic. f
6 - Knit three stitches (no pic)

7 - Knit two stitches together (pic. g)
pic. g
8 - Make a lace.

9 - Knit one. (*)
10 - Make a lace

11 - and start all over again since the first * to the last *.
Lace.

The last stitches of the row are: - Knit 2 stitches together - one lace - Knit one. (you have to finish like this if you want to follow this pattern)
2nd row: Purl all the row (including the lace loops - that way the little holes appears)
3rd row:

1 - Pass the first loop from left needle to right needle.
2 - Knit one
3 - One lace
4- Pass another loop from left needle to right needle. (*)
5 - Knit one
6 - Pass the fourth loop (the one you made on step 4) over the las one you knit.
7 - Knit one
8 - Knit two stitches together.
9 - Make a lace
10 - Knit three.
11 - Make a lace (*)

4th row:
Purl all the row.

5th row:

1 - Knit three.
2 - make a lace
3 - Pass one loop from left needle to right one (*)
4 - Knit two stitches together.
5 - Pass the third stitch over the two stitches you knt in step 4 - this way you close the upper angle of the triangle.
6 - Make a lace.
7 - Knit five stitches.
8 - Make a lace.
repeat from (*)

6 a 12 row : rice stitch

Start all over again from the first row of the design.

Here you can see a complete view of the pattern:

And here a closer view of the “Lace” design.

You have to use a thin yarn and thin needles to make this pattern.

Try it, it´s not so difficult and the outcome it´s great.

Kisses,

Fran

Visit this sites for more ideas: Knit n Purl Zen , Little Purl of the Orient.

I have two pretty and small bags I made last week to show you. I used “unuseful” pieces of felt (that were useful in this case). Using my sewing machine I made, in no more than ten minutes, two little bags.

The handles are made, as you can see, of crochet (just a simple chain with a combining color).

The eyelets are made of crochet too… I made both of them and sewed them with my needles and thread, that´s all!

You can sharpen your woodworking skills with helpful tips and techniques from the editors of Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines. Get a FREE tip sent to your email address each week! Go to WoodworkingTips.com and sign up today.

Here?s last week?s tip from ShopNotes online editor Phil Huber:

The router table in my shop gets lots of use. But it?s always difficut to make fine adjustments to the fence. So I built the micro-adjuster you see in the photo above using spare parts I had around the shop.

The adjuster is easy to build. Start by drilling and tapping a strip of ¼? aluminum to accept a piece of threaded rod. And then bend the aluminum strip into an ?L? shape.

Next, drill two holes in a hardwood adjusting block. One horizontal hole for the threaded rod and a vertical one for the hold-down. Then you can cut a dado at the bottom of the fence to hold the piece of L-shaped aluminum in place.

Assembly. Put the pieces together by slipping the threaded rod through the adjusting block and adding washers and locknuts, like you see in the drawing and detail below. This allows the aluminum strip attached to the fence to be moved forward and backward one thread at a time when you make fine fence adjustments.

Fence Adjustment. To use the micro-adjuster, you?ll first need to lock down the opposite end of the fence. Then lock down the micro-adjuster by tightening the knob on top of the adjusting block. Use the turning knob to adjust the fence to the desired position. Once the fence is located where you want it, lock down the other end of the fence. Then all that?s left is to turn on your router and you?re ready to go.

If you?d like even more great ideas for getting more from your router, go to: Router Tables at PlansNow.

Good Woodworking,

Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

Send for a preview issue of ShopNotes magazine

Want to see your shop get national magazine exposure?Do you have the kind of shop other woodworkers like to visit? Is your shop filled with clever ideas that help you work smarter, faster, or safer? Have you designed and built special tool racks, machine bases, cabinets, jigs, or other shop helpers you think your fellow woodworkers would find interesting? If so, the editors at WOOD magazine invite you to submit your workshop or individual shop projects for review and possible publication in future editions of America’s Best Home Workshops. Your shop doesn’t have to be big or nit-picky clean. The ideas could be storage solutions, task-specific jigs, shop tips, or the special way you designed, built, and outfitted your shop. Mail your entry to America’s Best Home Workshops, WOOD Magazine, 1716 Locust St., LS-221, Des Moines, IA 50309, or go online at woodmagazine.com/homeshops.

"...the experience of seeing one's own ideas evolve was a back-of-the-neck tingling experience for me as a student. I discovered the "oh wow" adrenalin rush that, for the creative person, leads to the absolute need to make it!"

?Stephen Hogbin
from his forthcoming book "Evaluating: the critique in the studio workshop"

When I was a kid, all of my bedroom decorating ideas, and my bedroom decoration itself, came from my parents. It was really easy. All I really needed was my tonka toys and a comfortable bed, and I would be happy. My parents came up with all kinds of great bedroom decor ideas on their own. They put up a picture of the solar system on my wall and even got me a bed that looked like a spaceship when I became interested in astronomy. Another time, they decorated my bedroom to look like one of my favorite cartoons.

All in all, they had fantastic bedroom decor ideas for me, but as I began to enter adolescence, I knew that I needed to take over and make my room my own. After all, aside from the clothes you wear, there is nothing that you can use to express yourself better than the way your rooms are decorated. I became interested in wood carving years ago as a way to add personality to my surroundings. Ask me for some ideas - I have tons of them :)

(ARA) – Most people think the first impression of their home is made by the color on the walls or furniture in a room; but in reality, it’s made by what’s under your feet – the flooring. If the carpet is dirty and worn, tiles are chipped, or the wood floor is warping, it’s time for a change.

So what’s holding you back? A lot of people are hesitant to jump into a home improvement project involving flooring because of all the work involved. First you have to remove and dispose of the old material, then invest the time and effort necessary to get the base surface ready for the new material before finally putting it in.

“Do-it-yourselfers are overwhelmed when they learn how much work is involved in redoing a floor. But it doesn’t have to be that way,� says Scott Day of Forbo Flooring. Forbo recently introduced a new product that’s turning a lot of heads in the remodeling industry.

Marmoleum Click is perhaps the easiest flooring surface there is to install. No adhesives or fasteners are necessary. The panels simply lock into place with a tongue and groove system. “If you have an existing resilient floor, no need to remove it. The planks and squares can be installed right on top of the old surface. If you have carpet or tile, you just need to remove and dispose of the old materials and start clicking the Marmoleum tiles together right over the subfloor,� says Day.


Marmoleum Click comes in 18 different colors and is available in two different sizes: panels that are 12 inches wide and 36 inches long, and 12-inch by 12-inch squares.
The panels and squares can be mixed and matched to create a wide variety of patterns and color combinations.

“It’s really cool. You can mix and match colors to create a space that is uniquely your own,� says Day.

In addition to being decorative and easy to install, Marmoleum Click is made from natural materials consisting of flaxseed oil, pine rosin, limestone and jute. It also has anti-static and bactericidal properties, meaning it’s easily kept dirt and dust free, and is resistant to such micro-organisms as Staphylococcus. These qualities make it especially popular in bathrooms and kitchens – and in places young children play.

“Marmoleum Click is the ideal do-it-yourselfer’s surface,� says Scott Day of Forbo. “We’ve received a lot of feedback from customers that it’s the easiest material they’ve ever worked with, and they’ve had a lot of fun with it.�

For design ideas, or to find a retailer near you, log on to www.themarmoleumstore.com.

Courtesy of ARA Content

Visit A1 Wood Flooring for more on wood flooring and laminate flooring.

Between bites of salad, Kevin Drake pauses to take a close look at the common chair sitting in our local Panera.
 
When I look at the chair, all I see is your typical bent-lamination, factory-made, comfortable-for-about-32-minutes padded chair.
 
But Kevin, the founder of Glen-Drake Toolworks, sees a lesson in Japanese aesthetics and composition by Japanese arts teacher Shozo Sato. What is the dominant focus for the viewer? What is the sub-dominant; the subordinate?

I was chewing my food at the beginning of the explanation, but by the end I was listening so intently that I forgot about the baguette soaking in my own mouth juices as I finally "saw" the chair.

Nothing makes me happier than to have lunch with someone whose brain is on fire with ideas different than mine. Someone who sees the same world with different eyes.

Which brings us to handsaws.

It's a common thing to read in woodworking texts that the ripping teeth in a Western saw (power- or hand-driven) are shaped like chisels. And that crosscutting teeth are shaped like knives.

But when Kevin sees sawteeth, he sees something different. He sees the function of the teeth relating more to its "rake," which is how forward or backwards each sawtooth leans. On a handsaw, teeth with the cutting face straight up have "zero rake." Teeth that lean forward into the cut have a more aggressive rake. And teeth that lean backward have a relaxed rake. (Whether the rake is "postive" or "negative" depends on whether it's a power tool or hand tool user describing it.)
 
To Kevin, Western ripping teeth don't look like chisels; they look like scrapers. Scrapers attack the work in an almost vertical position – like a zero-rake sawtooth. I can see this (see the photo at the top of this entry of a wooden model of Western sawteeth).
 
And to Kevin, it's the Japanese-style sawteeth (shown above right) that look like chisels. They lean forward like a chisel being used for paring. And I can see this, too.
 
So Kevin then asks three questions:
 
1. What type of wood scrapes better, hardwoods or softwoods? Easy. The harder the wood, the easier it scrapes.
 
2. In general, which woods are harder, Japanese woods or Western woods? Again, it's an easy question. Western woods are harder.
 
3. When you scrape a wood, is it easier to push the tool or pull it? You can do it both ways, but I definitely prefer to push the tool.
 
"That," Kevin says, "is why I prefer Western push-style saws."
 
That statement was like a Zen Buddhist riddle (called a koan) for me. Thanks Kevin. Now I'll never look at my saws (or the Panera chairs) in the same way ever again.
 
— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. This coming week (May 19 to 23) I'll be teaching at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, so there won't be many (if any) updates to the blog. Enjoy your vacation!

HI Folks
Went to the Ally Pally Woodworking show yesterday (with Waka as my trusty sidekick!) It's the fourth year in a row I've attended - we had a good time but there's no avoiding the horrible truth. It's getting smaller every year :( I don't know if there is a single reason for the decline in the size of woodworking shows but I do hope they don't die out completely - it is a great day out and a chance to see tools in the flesh, watch skills demonstrated and meet other woodies in person. Support your local woodwork show while its still there!!!
Met up with a few of the chaps from UK Workshop (Hi Paul, Dave!!) as well as Andy King, Phil Davy and Bruce Manning from Good Woodworking magazine. Andy was filing away at hand saws most of the day - hope your eyesight returns, Andy ;) Also had a good chat (and a coffee!) with Ben Plewes, the new editor of The Woodworker magazine. Sounds like he has some exciting new ideas for the mag!

Managed to grab an hour in the workshop today, when the Wife wasn't looking. And finally did something I've been meaning to do for a while - make veneer. I am planning another Krenov style cabinet so thought the best place to start would be the timber. My last cabinet was built from solid timber and, although I have had no problems with the doors warping (thanks to well seasoned quartered stock) I would like to veneer this cabinet with "home grown" veneer. A big plank of spalted beech has been drying away for a few years in the workshop and it was time to see what it held. I cut off a piece 9 1/2 inches wide by 24 inches long, 3 inches thick. And I ripped it down on the bandsaw (with a fresh blade installed) giving 2mm thick slices. It turned out really well and I didn't lose a slice, which was lucky. A fresh blade makes all the difference!
So I need to sit down with the various book matches and see where inspiration takes me.

And for you guitar fans - I'm still tweaking the Tele scratch plate. Pics tomorrow, promise ;)

Cheers
Philly

First of all - Happy New Year to all you Folks out there reading this! Its amazing how quickly time flies by, so.....

First up - Operation Norris. Remember the rusty old Norris I was going to restore? Well, to kickstart the year I have made some progress. Sadly, the rosewood I put aside for the infills was half an inch too short for the tote. After much head scratching I had to use something else - so Bubinga it is. I have made the replacement tote and two side sections and I'm shaping the front bun at the moment. Once the woodwork is done I can concentrate on the metalwork side of things. The adjuster mechanism will be a challenge, but hey, its a new year!

I am finally going to start building the new porch for the house, too. I had a new path and step built to the front of the house and the bad weather has put me behind with construction. I have loads of gorgeous European Oak sat in the workshop ready to be broken down. Stay tuned.

I've also had some great plane ideas over the holidays and shall be turning them into reality in the coming weeks. Can't beat Xmas t.v. to get the old brain daydreaming....... ;)

Cheers
Philly

Matt Vanderlist has just posted a podcast of a conversation he and I had last week. I hesitate to call it an interview because it sounds a lot like us just goofing around and joking about woodworking.

So I guess, it actually just sounds a lot like a day at the office.

In any case, we discuss handsawing, premium tools and how we generate story ideas here at Woodworking Magazine and Popular Woodworking. Plus Matt and I brainstorm an idea for a shop garment that ensures you never have to take a break while woodworking – and it composts the yard. (If anyone has a good name for this product, post it here.)

It was a fun conversation and if you have some time at your desk and want to look like you're working… I highly recommend it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Purely original thoughts are rare. I hate it when I come up with a great joke and then find someone else has been using it for three years.

Here is the best joke I wrote last week. Just wait…it will probably turn up on Comedy Central in a few months in an act that was filmed in 2005. So even though I think this is an original Skiver…odds are someone else wrote this joke first:

Is a deaf mute with Parkinson’s disease considered to be a stutterer?

Well, with that lead in, I want to present a really cool sharpening trick I learned recently from Chris Gochnour. Putting a chisel or plane blade into a honing guide requires one to accurately set the blade at the desired angle, and there are many techniques for this. Some people put the blade in the honing jig while sighting against a protractor in the background. Others make jigs that register a given blade projection for each desired angle they want to use with their honing guide…ya know…extend the blade X.XXX inches for 25 degrees and Y.YYYY inches for 30 degrees, etc. That kind of jig is excellent for getting repeatable angles with a given honing jig. However, it still suffers from the question of how the angles were measured the first time the jig was created and assembled.

Mr. Gochnour put me onto using the Wixey or Beall digital protractors for setting the honing angle. THIS IS BRILLIANT!!!! I don’t know why I only considered using my $40 digital reader for my jointer fence and table saw blade tilt, but Chris’ idea is the most accurate method I have seen to mount a blade in a honing guide at a desired angle.

Chris Gochnour is a very savvy woodworker. He finds (or invents) amazing ways to accurately perform woodworking tasks that are too often looked upon as requiring gifted dexterity. I mean…you can put a four year old on a two wheel bike and let him struggle to learn to ride it, or you can bolt some training wheels onto his bike for a while as he develops a feel for balance. Chris seems to come up with all kinds of helpful ideas (training wheels).

I don’t know if Chris invented this idea of using the digital protractor box for setting a honing guide. Perhaps this has already appeared as a workshop tip in 5 different magazines. I just know that I learned this from Chris, so for now he gets the credit…

Now back to important considerations…like shaky sign language…