Nuovo Progetto-Crochet Appena in Tempo per Corsi Estivi

This is FAR too large for where it's supposed to fit, so I'll have to take it down and rebuild it.  I'm using a pattern from a French magazine (lots of charts- hurrah!) but of course it's not good enough for me.  Future updates will probably look nothing like this.  :)

Torta Triplo Bacca

Yesterday I visited my parents and whipped up a couple of pies with my dad.  The next couple of days will be very delicious.

Forchetta-Cucchiaio

Torta al Limone Ricetta di Ricerca

Ohhhh Lemon cake.  I've been working on a lemon cake recipe for years.  This time, I took my usual lemon recipe (prone to sinking in the middle... causes a sink-hole of frosting when you cut it) and crossed it with my old Joy of Cooking recipe for white cake.  What I got was this.

Isn't that beautiful?  The cakes turned out wonderfully coloured and didn't fall down.  However, I found this recipe to be devoid of lemon flavour, and ridiculously dense with a very large crumb.  I considered sharing the recipe here, but it's really not the best cake ever, so I've withheld it.  It tastes a little bit baking powedery, and a little like corn bread or biscuits or both.  It isn't bad, but it's not really cake either.

On to the frosting:

I've done a lot of frostings on the fly before, they're not too hard to trouble shoot if you know which order to put things in, but the problem here was I wasn't paying attention and poured ALL the lemon juice from one lemon into it instead of 3 Tbs.  Whoops!  Now I've got all the lemon frosting EVER hanging out in my fridge.

All that lemon caused the butter to separate into tiiiny particles.  It doesn't taste bad at all, but it looks weird and it's too thin to spread properly.  The large lumpy bits are lemon zest, by the way.

Awwwww, isn't it cute?  I used my fantastic 6in pans for this cake, and put it on a desert plate.  You can see all the rather-too-thin icing coming out the center.  I mixed julienned almonds into the frosting for the center.

And finished!  It came out rather lovely, despite the frosting sinking down the sides a bit.  The outsides are coated in coconut, and there's a ring of more julienned almonds 'round the top.  This cake took 4 hours to bake/build, tasted pretty good, but wasn't perfect.  I think I'll try again in a few weeks.

Luminarium Membrana Piscis

Today's title is Latin instead of Italian.  It's the name of this piece and thus seemed appropriate.  This is my collaboration project from my Electronics in Sculpture class.  Honestly, I think it's pretty ugly and should have stayed a concept in my sketchbook, but the prof seemed to like it, so I said nothing.

Here's the plexi form put together and wired up.  It's kind of challenging to photograph clear things.

Aaaand then we shrink-wrapped it in a shower curtain.  For real.  I'm kind of ashamed of this, and I'm pretty sure it got uglier the more we did to it.

Here's the mess of electronics before I wadded it together and encased it in an electrical tape chrysalis.

And now, the fruits of our labor.

Doesn't it look infinitely better in the dark?

Mare Scuro Completato

Uncinetto Polso Scaldini

Double post day!  The silence of the last two weeks was due to everything ever being due at once.  Since that time has now past, I get to show just what I've been up to.

I started these back in April with the caveat that I may only work on them in my art history class.  It kept me awake, and now I've got some lovely crochet done.

These were from a pattern, which I had to modify to accommodate my tiny wrists, and then added a modified trim, because nothing is ever pretty enough for me.

Saturday I bought several pieces of kinda broken furniture from the thrift store for a total of $20.  For another $20 I got everything I needed to fix them and went to it.  I got a coffee table with an unpardonably ugly top, which I promptly tacked wooden place mats to, which reminded me rather of Trading Spaces, but what can you do.  I also got a charming side table who's drawer came in 3 pieces, and a couple of chairs who's legs were coming apart.  There's nothing quite like fixing things to feel accomplished.

Occhiali Artico

Fina set of eyewear is complete.  These are my images for the portfolio book (will post that later).

Somehow these look desperately depressed in photos.  I think it's kind of interesting/funny.

"Oh god.  Why do I even bother?"

copper, silver plated copper, steel bolts, rabbit fur

Forchetta-Cucchiaio è Completato

         

Delicious.

Progetto Forchetta-Cucchiaio Spiegato

First, the original inspiration.  Or rather the second.  The first fork-spoon I ever saw was in Rome, and I apparently wasn't allowed to take photos.  This one here I saw in London.  Since I first laid eyes on these crazy utensils I've wanted to build one.  So 1.5 years later in my casting class, I finally am.

I've been attempting to do research on these things, but have been unable to find a name for them besides "folding (specifi name) fork with spoon bowl".  Which is really ridiculous.  And despite having its collection online for searching, the V&A in London has neglected to put up its fork-spoon.  However, I was able to find a few more photos, and a weeee bit of history.  It seems they were made of silver, one was found in gold, and I found one in bone (yuck), and they were carried by wealthy merchants.  I assume that these merchants wanted to show off how wealthy they were by having these silver utensils to eat with (a novelty at the time) with ornate handles.  But let's not spend too much money on this, better only pay for one handle and still have two utensils.  Also, they were only popular from about 1580 to 1620.

Okay, now on to my project.  We're required (in our metals casting class) to use a non metal object six times, and not cast things.  Yeah, I know.  So I'm making this fork-spoon, cast in silver, with exotic wood carved handles.  Basically I'm making it kind of pointless to have a detachable spoon bowl, since there will be 6 handles for this thing, but that's besides the point.  I've decided I want this object to be really luxurious and covetous.  I think by the end of it I'll be clutching the box to my chest and not letting anyone touch it, because honestly I'm really loving the luxury of these materials.  Did I mention the box?  Well.  It's going to be a partitioned thing, about 13"x4"x1.5" and made of rosewood.  The wood came in today and it's gorgeous.  Also, I'm going to cut foam bits to fit in each slot with valleys cut into them for the pieces to sit in, and these will be covered in silk charmuse.  Yes.  

Now on to the images!

I've already shown the one handle I carved first, as well as the fork end and the spoon bowl.  Here are the rest of my wood pieces, post lathe trim and (mostly) pre carving.

More carved!  Actually, this isn't even up to date, I'm almost finished with the walnut one.  And, they're labeled now.  Except I can't remember what the last one is.  Something with two words, the second beginning with C.  Irrelevant.  I still like my first one best, but the project is due in 1.5 weeks, so I had to crank two out on the lathe for the sake of time.  Also, Ziricote will not be carved!  Well, it will, but it'd have taken all the time ever and have looked shallow and cylindrical.  That would have sucked.

These are for the bottoms of the wood pieces, to be threaded and thus screwed into the fork.  

See?  Here they are almost finished, except that they aren't buffed, and the stems are too small.  Not sure how I'm going to fix that either.  I might cut them off and attach... something... to the ends instead.  Ugh.  Maybe I can get the right size wax rod for the next set and just cast extra bits to solder on.  That'd probably be best.

And last, her are all my bits togetherish, because it's fun to take photos of things to see how they'll look.