Battery de Cuisine

Inspired by a recent NPR story about the installation of Julia Child’s battery de cuisine at the Smithsonian, we decided to build our own.  Julia’s is bigger.  And blue.  And she has more knives than I do.  But I still think mine’s pretty cool.  

We went with orange. 

Installing hooksThis is serious businessVery serious businessNext, we will install the armaments.  

Choose Your Own Rambling

I know there are about five of you out there who occasionally read this blog, and in the interest of giving a vague appearance of audience-awareness, upcoming blog posts may be chosen by you. Here’s a list of things I’ve been doing and thinking about. Let me know if you care to hear more about any of these things, or if you’d like to suggest a topic for rambling.  In the absence of actual votes, I will, as usual, ramble randomly.

1. A pot of chili. For dinner.

2. The Magic Wheel of Chores. In which I could tutorialize the creation of a device to order and maintain offspring chores, and in which I could further pontificate that it may not always get the children to DO the chores, but that it has worked better than I ever expected as an organizational tool.

3. The Pouf of Using Up T-shirts. In which I could talk about the construction of a device for sitting, or napping, or whacking a sibling.

4. String Theory. In which I could tutorialize the almost magical transformation of two lowly (free) string backpacks into one (free) messenger bag. With pockets!

5. Free Parking. In which I could share photos of Partner’s clever (free) solution to the pile of bikes and skateboards in the garage.

6. Upcycled personal portfolios. In which I could tutorialize the transformation of fabric scraps and a sheet of corrugated plastic (found in the neighbor’s trash) into sketch portfolios for our vacation this summer.

7. Mama Ray Jack (and her brother Monty). I won’t talk about her yet, except to say that she’s a bit Cheesy, and she might be the subject of my NaNo novel this year. Unless I come up with an actual Real and Serious idea before November.

8. Books books books. In which I could review the books I’ve been reading, starting with the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. Or perhaps you’d like to wait and hear aboutThe Strain when I finish it? No? Too scary? Maybe.

9. More pictures of those Sonars and some rambling about the amazing/annoying/cute thing(s) they’ve been doing.

10. The supposed separation of church and state in United States public schools. This one would likely be a rant that wouldn’t be pretty. It might go something like this: I respect everyone’s right to their own religious beliefs and practices, but draw the line when they judge my children and make them feel inferior in the name of that religious ideology, especially if a person is employed by the government and directly or indirectly responsible for my children’s education. On second thought, Let’s not go there.

11. The frog. You want to see the frog? As far as I can tell, she has no religious ideology or educational prerogative. But she does like to eat fish.

Heeeere, fishy fishy.

T-shirt pants

I made a few pairs of these t-shirt pants a while back, following 24 Blackbird’s very cool tutorial.  We didn’t have the right size shirts to get some pants on Sonar X6 though.  This week, we have been gifted with some freshly handed down t-shirts in just the right size.  On the back (not pictured) there’s a tennis camp logo.  

These pants are so clever.

Cherry flavored sock

Well, I assume it would be cherry-flavored if I actually licked it.  Maybe a wooly-cherry.  It’s definitely cherry-scented.  This will be a sock for Sonar X6.  Maybe he’ll lick it and let us know.

Bomb Pop Sock Yarn, 2x2 rib sock over 56 stitches on US2 needles, with some pins, a ruler, a sock bag, and a peek at some white t-shirt pants

Bomb Pop Yarn

We are not powdered-drink-mix drinkers, but I love a little Kool-ade for dyeing yarn.  I had a little yarn left over from  some kilt hose, enough, I hope for a pair of kid socks.  I’m experimenting with the concept of the sock blank.  Take two strands of yarn, knit them together into a basic rectangle (or in this case a tube, because I love to knit in the round), dye them, then pull them back apart into two balls of yarn and knit the socks.  In the best of all worlds, the socks will then have the same pattern of color changes throughout.  

That is the hope.  Where is the ice cream truck?

The sock blank in KnitPicks Bare, superwash sock weight, dyed with Cherry and Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-ade. I love that red.

The yarn was a little wubbly when I pulled it apart, so I put it through the tea kettle steam to even out matters and then onto the swift to dry.

On the swift. Yes it is made of K’nex.

These cherries hold an ice-blue secret at their hearts.