A short, but excellent TED talk from Marcin Jakubowski of the Open Source Ecology introduces the “Global Village Construction Set”.  What are the 50 tools that are needed to start a civilization?  Can they be made by “normal people” so that they are affordable, efficient, robust and and can last a lifetime?  Watch the video to find out!

A trivet is a quick and easy project that can be used either in the kitchen or as part of a more formal setting in the dining room, depending on your needs. The project can be easily built from start to finish in a weekend (indeed in a day if you use fairly fast-setting glue). We used some left-over scraps of Cherry to build this trivet, but you can use any hardwood – particularly as the wood does not come into direct contact with the hot pots and pans.

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