A nice story in the Daily Mirror by Laurette Ziemer about Colin Carlson whose traditional homemade wooden toys business Creations in Wood - which he started from his garden shed - is doing exceptionally well. Laurette writes:
"The turning point for Colin came after he sold his small company that made plastic office equipment. He says: "There I was at 51, in effect having taken early retirement. I was rattling round the house bored. It all came to a head when I needed a tin of carrots for lunch and couldn't find them. I told my wife Ann it would be good to make a stock inventory so she knew what was in there. She threatened to hit me with the tin of carrots unless I 'got out of her way and went to the bloody shed'!" He did as he was told - and to pass the time began making wooden toys."
While garden offices are almost all marvellous, they're not always that capacious. Hooray then for the LaCie Hub. Here's what they say:
"Experience the art of connectivity with this fun, stylish USB & FireWire combination hub for your PC or Mac. Designed exclusively for LaCie by Ora-Ïto, the Hub’s round shape, glossy white polycarbonate finish, and flexible cables give it a distinctive, modern look. Add 4 USB ports and 2 FireWire ports to your computer system and connect up to six devices simultaneously. Bundled with 8 flexible, twistable cables (5 USB 2.0 & 3 FireWire 400), a USB fan, a USB light, a USB extension cable and a FireWire 400 extension cable, it comes fully equipped for easily making all of your connections."
Shedworkers will know that there's no more ideal spot for a green roof than a garden office. Here's a great new idea from Liveroof whereby essentially you buy already good to go (recyclable) modules of fully grown green roof to save you the hassle of actually growing it yourself. It's quite heavy so you'd need to be a bit careful and check on your roofload capacity. Via Treehugger
A lovely little structure and very much the future of shedworking by Cyril Brulé of atelier Correia called Le Cabanon in Villiers-en-Morvan, France: it's just 20m2 and Cyril lives and works in it. The Cabanon has all kinds of nice elements - Northern Fir siding, duck feather insulation, an interior lined with formaldehyde-free OSB panels; a rubber floor and an Ikea kitchen. Via shed champion Justin at materialicious where you'll find lots more interesting pictures including this one below of the interior.
Brighten up your shedworking atmosphere with a nice computer wallpaper which tells you the time. This is what the always excellent Lifehacker has to say about it:
"Freeware applications Wallpaper Clocks and Desktopia set time-specific wallpapers to your desktop, providing you with a fun and effective way to keep an eye on the time with attractive wallpapers. First, Wallpaper Clocks refreshes your wallpaper every minute to display the current time and (when applicable to the wallpaper) date. Alternatively, Desktopia changes your desktop wallpaper at user-defined periods for an effect similar to iGoogle's sunlight-to-moonlight themes (though you could set completely different wallpapers to remind you to change work modes or tasks). Wallpaper Clocks and Desktopia are freeware, Mac OS X only."
The clever folk at Enterprise Nation have a nice little rundown of fast facts about home businesses. For example, 86% of home business owners want to grow their business, without leaving home. Worth a swift browse. There's also a link on that page to EN's recent home business report which is required reading for all shedworkers and homeworkers.
It's a commonplace that shedworkers need compact solutions and they don't come much more compact than this marvellous design by Kevin Fawley, built for Tom Monteyne's "Business Studio" (Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba). Called HUT (Habitat for the Urban Tribe), Kevin describes it as "a portable storage unit which comes apart to furnish a living room set with two chairs, a loveseat, coffee table and shelf. It facilitates and ritualizes the nomadic nature of the urban tribe."
Pictured above is how it looks all packed up. Pictured below is what it looks like all unpacked. Marvellous.
A nice story in the Daily Mirror by Laurette Ziemer about Colin Carlson whose traditional homemade wooden toys business Creations in Wood - which he started from his garden shed - is doing exceptionally well. Laurette writes: 
