A video intro to - and tour of - the 65-square foot Tumbleweed House, from Fair Companies.

A nice video tour of Pasadena, including Bungalow Heaven and the Gamble House.

I'm trying a little test today - "automatically" selected video from YouTube, that will hopefully be on-topic and at least somewhat interesting. I won't use this too often, just as a space filler to give you folks something to look at when I'm out of town or on a slow news day. The video may be different for different viewers and at different times, so feel free to reload the page for something new if the first channel isn't doing it for you.

Detroit's Model D TV aired this episode on this past September 25:

Pewabic Pottery is a living Detroit treasure and offers visitors a glimpse of a little known part of American history.

Founded in 1903 during the Arts & Crafts Movement, Pewabic is nationally renowned for its tile and pottery in unique glazes. Today it is a non-profit ceramic art education center, welcoming 70,000 visitors annually to its building on E. Jefferson in the Villages.

Producer-director Tom Hendrickson takes us on a visual tour in this week's episode of Model D TV. Watch it here or go to YouTube.

Reader Amie Kershbaum writes to tell us about an interesting take on reality TV, coming to the DIY Network this coming August 16. Over the past several weeks, that television network gave watchers and visitors to their website the chance to vote on the design of a traditional log / timber cabin; the construction itself is viewable now as a time-lapse video, and starting on August 16 (at 9 pm EST/PST), the entire design/build process will be the subject of a new series hosted by Amy Devers, who was not very happy about the bugs she was told she'd encounter during the filming out in the back woods of Tennessee. Blog Cabin will run through September 27.

Lots of folks have put great videos up in the last few weeks on Google Video / YouTube / GooTube / whatever you want to call it.

• installing a sitting rail - some fellows from Quillian Craftsman installing a rail during the restoration of a pretty Seminole Heights bungalow;
• pre-renovation video of a Byrne Street bungalow in Woodland Heights. Where's the post-renovation video?
• a tour of a $238,000 bungalow in Winlock, Washington, and a similar tour of a 1918 home in San Diego's Banker's Hill neighborhood;
• an unfortunately shaky video of a beautiful Greene & Greene-inspired coffee table made by John in Pasadena, author of the Fixin' up the Bungalow blog, which is full of interesting and useful articles on cabinetry and carpentry in general;
• ten seconds of shaky video from the outside of the Gamble House (why is this one even on here?); and
• a nice documentary on the Lodge at Torrey Pines Golf Course, one of the Greene Bros. masterpieces.

The always-dependable Douglas Anders notes on his Frank Lloyd Wright Newsblog that there will be two good FLW-related documentaries on Wisconsin Public Television this week, one tonight and one Wednesday:

Expo: Magic of the White City is on tonight at 8pm. I saw this documentary a few months ago and it’s not bad (despite the cheesey historical re-enactments). Some of the photographs and other images are jaw-dropping awesome — including some of the Japanese section (the Ho-o-den) that so influenced Frank Lloyd Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo will air Wednesday, March 21 at 7pm. this hour long documentary follows the friendship of Wright and Darwin Martin, and the buildings that they built in Buffalo. This is worth watching, but I thought that it was too short — an hour isn’t long enough to do justice to the three buildings Wright build for Martin (the brevity of the Larkin Building segment will make you weep). But it is still a good effort, and great introduction to this aspect of Wright’s life.

AOL, long thought to be way behind the times, is actually making some free and useful videos for woodworkers and other do-it-yourself types. They are part of the produced content on their video service - an attempt to compete with YouTube, I guess. They've even signed up some pretty good hosts - for example, a whole suite of home-improvement videos starring Eric Stromer, who hosts the Clean Sweep program on TLC. The site also includes print versions of the instructions for each project, so that you don't need to watch the video over and over while building your table or bench or what have you.

The specialization of HGTV continues with HGTV Kitchen Design, a portion of the website that contains numerous videos culled from their many programs. Unfortunately, they are not embeddable, or I'd include one here every week, so until they open the site up a bit you'll have to go there to view close to 500 videos, including:

• learn to build around traffic patterns 
• use renewable resources in your new kitchen
• getting started with a kitchen remodel
• updating a 1930s bungalow kitchen
• updating a 1920s Spanish Revival kitchen
• attempting clutter control
• Victorian to Shaker: a primer on cabinet door design

Most are useful and interesting, but some are a big miss: somehow the folks at HGTV (and many designers all over, unfortunately) think that Craftsman style, which is based on a lack of subterfuge, and the modern trend of hiding appliances, are related.