Something for the chemistry nerds.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Whose birthday am I noting today?
December 6, 2016
Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers and students in various cities and countries around Europe. Today is his feast day. Christmas is just around the corner.
What am I celebrating today?
December 4, 2016I am not sure why National Sock Day is celebrated on December 4, but there you go.
I made these. These are not my feet.
More socks:
What am I sappy nudibranch blogging?
December 2, 2016
This tiny fellow is a member of the nudibranch family. Nudibranchs (naked gills) are gastropod molluscs that shed their shells early in their lives and swim around naked and free.
What is Wednesday’s Wonderment?
November 30, 2016“Building a gingerbread house is a common family tradition for the holidays, but Nemacolin Woodlands Resort has taken the tradition to a whole new level this year.
Visitors can walk through the doors of the life-size gingerbread house, which is built with 500 pounds of flour, 600 pounds of powdered sugar, 10 gallons of eggs and 200 pounds of assorted candy.
Photo shows the building under construction
Pastry chef Scott Tennant headed up the effort to build and decorate a 12-by-12-by-14-foot gingerbread house inside the lobby of Chateau Lafayette, one of the Farmington resort’s hotels.
The resort’s carpenters started the process in October by building a complete wooden house in two- to three-foot sections that could be separated, carried through the lobby’s front doors piece by piece, and reconnected.
By mid-November, the pastry shop was busy cranking out 2,500 gingerbread bricks. The workers laid the bricks against the wooden walls, plastering them together with royal icing “mortar.” That’s about 700 to 800 pounds of gingerbread.
Pastry makers decorated the outside of the house with Gummies, hard candies and other confections. Mr. Tennant said the workers aimed to add splashes of color without going “over the top” so they could create a relatively realistic effect.
The final gingerbread bakery
Indoors, the house has gingerbread planks resembling paneling along the lower third of the walls, with a gingerbread chair rail lined with candy. A baker will offer samples inside the gingerbread house for a few hours each day through Jan. 1, and on Jan. 2 the house will come down.
For several years, Nemacolin has built gingerbread displays: a castle, a train, a Snoopy’s Christmas display, and last year, a large gingerbread house. But this is the first year the resort has built something the public can actually walk through.
When the resort first started making gingerbread displays a few years ago, all work was done in secret, behind a curtain. When workers decided to change things up and construct their displays out in the open, they immediately attracted a following. People would stop by to watch the process and exclaim over how good the gingerbread smelled.
“The workers would take extra pieces and put frosting on them and give them to people,” Mr. Tennant said.
That’s what got him thinking about building something people could walk inside.
The final product has taken a team of 15 people a total of 600 to 800 hours to make.“
By the numbers:
600 pounds powdered sugar
500 pounds flour
200 pounds assorted candy
120 pounds honey
120 pounds molasses
110 pounds brown sugar
60 pounds shortening
15 gallons egg whites
10 gallons eggs
6 pounds baking soda
5 pounds ginger
Whose birthday am I noting on tattoo Tuesday?
November 29, 2016
Today is Louisa May Alcott’s birthday. She was born in Philadelphia in 1832.
“Alcott, a suffragist, abolitionist and feminist as well as a writer, was born in Pennsylvania in 1832. She volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War and was active in the women’s suffrage movement; she became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Mass.
As a novelist, Little Women was her first success. The book is a semi-autobiographical account of the lives of four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, from childhood to womanhood. Written in two parts in 1880, the novel was so successful initially that it sold out and it has remained a popular children’s classic more than 100 years later.” – Time
This quotation is from Little Women.
At what am I marveling?
November 28, 2016
“Merging botanical forms from England with the delicate plant shapes from her childhood in Japan, ceramic artist Hitomi Hosono produces delicate layered sculptures that appear as frozen floral arrangements. Often monochromatic, the works are focused on carved detail rather than color—repetition of form making each piece uniquely beautiful.” – Colossal
Hosono works in porcelain. As a potter myself, I find her work absolutely amazing – and not just a little OCD.
What did I see on tattoo Tuesday?
November 22, 2016
This morning on the way to work at Fancy-pants University, which is in what we call an urban setting, I spied this guy off on the grass – actually there were two of them. I quickly took a photo and if you zoom in on it you will see . . .
I don’t know where they came from, but clearly they were making a break for it.
Gunsmoke and Knitting 