Stay tuned Monday for our favorite picks from BKLYN DESIGNS. I browsed the exhibits earlier today, and there were some familiar faces and a lot of new ones. 2007 is the five year anniversary of BKLYN DESIGNS with a great cross-section of Brooklyn designers exhibiting.

Pentago, a Swedish board game released in 2004, has won scores of awards for its ingenious gameplay. The rules are simple: place a marble and rotate one of the quadrants, if you get 5 in-a-row you win. Easy to play, difficult to master. The clean and simple Pentago board itself would be great to have around the house and it gives your brain a little exercise too.

I love the Juki Flatfold Chair by Aimee Less. It comes flat packed and you lace it together to create the final form, with lots of fun colors to choose from. Also interesting is the Pinch refillable spice pouch, which allows you to eliminate waste (both the grocer’s bulk-bin plastic bag, and the spice jar at home).

Via design*sponge.

Mark Bittman at the New York Times put a really nice little piece in the paper yesterday titled “A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks”. It basically outlines how to setup a kitchen that can handle pretty much anything for about $300. The catch is that you won’t be cooking in style. I am all for the Bowery and commercial kitchen equipment places. But when it comes down to it, your personal kitchen equipment has a life and story of its own. I agree with Bittman that you can easily setup a kitchen with commercial grade stuff and it will work. But who wants to use a $10 chef’s knife? I would liken it to taking a driving tour through Tuscany: you could do it in a Ford Taurus, but wouldn’t it be nicer in a Maserati?

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while…Thanks to Grace for the reminder! Artstream’s current exhibition looks amazing – it features the work of Penelope Dullaghan, Lisa Congdon, Ashley G, Flossy-P, and Lisa Kirkpatrick. You can purchase pieces from the show (at affordable prices!) here.

How many ways can you skin a cat? There are only three things you need to tighten/loosen on a skateboard: mounting bolts, axle nuts, and kingpin nuts. The tools above do those three things in wildly different fashion. Manufacturers from left to right: Destructo, Fix Stix, Almost, and Lucky. There are probably another 20 different tools by other companies, all different and all patented.

Hello! Sean and I are starting a new feature – Sub-Studio Ideas (see the right-most column). With mother’s day and father’s day just around the corner, we decided to pull a few of our favorite gift ideas from around the web. We will update the Ideas column with items that follow a common theme, centered on a typology, color, seasonal event, holiday, pattern etc. If you have an idea you would like us to explore, just drop us a line at blog (at) sub-studio (dot) com.

Love this porcelain USB flash drive from Mokkatanten! Gorgeous form, and it’s a nice change from all the metal and plastic drives.

Via Bloesem.

Some cool products from The Swedes, a Stockholm-based design collaborative.

I have been a big fan of Ben Schlitter’s work since he sent us an email last year about his geography postcards. Ben has an Etsy shop that is full of really great prints and paintings. The Drumlin print (above) is a digital reproduction an original vector illustration and is available for $15. You can find more of Ben’s work here.