Meet the Frigidaire Flair

This is the focal point of a kitchen I'm about to start renovating.

It's a Frigidaire Flair and unfortunately, the ovens no longer work. Its owners decided to renovate their kitchen based in a large part on their frustration over not being able to find replacements parts and a service guy willing to work on it. *edited to add: the ovens DO work, it's just the springs in the doors are spent and won't stay in the upright position on their own.

It's unfortunate because the thing's in pristine condition. The owners are planning to sell it so if anybody out there's both handy and feeling nostalgic let me know, I think I can hook you up.

The Frigidaire Flair was introduced in 1962 when Frigidaire was a subsidiary of General Motors. The electric burners roll in and out of the appliance on a surface that functions like a drawer. When they're not in use, they just slide out of view. The double ovens (one's a full-size and the other's a Dutch oven) sit right at counter height. The oven doors lift up instead of swinging out. Aside from its unconventional looks, the design of the Flair makes a whole lot of sense and I can imagine that cooking on one is comfortable and efficient.

This is an ad from 1962. Frigidaire promised the Flair was The happiest thing that ever happened to cooking... OR YOU!

In an interesting side not, the Frigidaire Flair was the range in Samantha's kitchen in the TV show Bewitched. Here's a very proud Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha showing of her Frigidaire Flair.

Here's another set photo of actual food being prepared on it. Check out the open tray base to the right of the appliance in this shot.

This shot from the same set shows the oven door flipped up. Pretty slick!

What a cool appliance. I never see actual cool stuff when I'm looking over a room to be renovated and most vintage appliances I see are filthy and broken. This Flair on the other hand is in pristine shape. It's been loved and used by a woman who raised a family with food prepared every day on that range. Cooking appliances made today tend not to last for 40 years. But by the same token, people don't take care of appliances they way they once did either. So which do you think came first? Short-lived appliances or people unwilling to maintain the appliances they already have? Hmmmmm.

The Fabric on Demand sample arrived and it's fantastic

On 3 July, I wrote a profile of an Internet start up called Fabric on Demand. Fabric on Demand prints small runs of user-designed fabrics affordably. After that post appeared, I started a lively e-mail correspondence with Rysa Pitner from Fabric on Demand. During the course of these exchanges, Rysa offered to run a sample yard of any design I wanted to submit to them via their website.

To keep this a group exercise, I put out a request for designs from my readers the following day. I knew that I wanted something brightly colored and on a white background because I wanted to see how this process worked clearly. The ever delightful and energetic Kelly James from Design Ties sent me some illustrations she had from a previous project that sounded like what I was looking for. In fact, they were perfect.

Kelly's design consisted of four pool balls, and based on her description I asked me to send me what she had. So Kelly sent me her medium-resolution .png files. Here they are.

I submitted the files to Fabric on Demand through their website. I asked Rysa to put them together into an half brick repeated pattern, though that's something I could have done myself. Fabric on Demand's website is extremely easy to use and that I didn't do a complete layout is no reflection on their site. Rather, it's a reflection on my being in a hurry. With that said, Fabric on Demand has an art department that's ready and willing to help anybody with the technical side of on demand fabric printing. There's nothing intimidating about this process. Use the website and if you run into a snag, they are standing by to help.

Within a day, Rysa sent me a hi-res proof and then an idea of how the pattern would look spread out over a yard of finished material.

Proof

Sample yard

I was impressed at this point and when I forwarded the proofs to Kelly, she got so excited she ordered a couple of yards for herself. She's planning to do something fantastical I'm sure, so be sure to follow Kelly's blog over the next couple of weeks to see what she does with her Kelly James original fabric.

About a week after I OK'd the proof, my sample arrived and here it is.

I am impressed mightily by how well all of this came together and the fabric sample Rysa sent me is perfect. I had these pool balls float because I wanted to see how crisp the edges would be once they were printed onto fabric. The whole print job is far cleaner than I was expecting. Further, the colors are richly saturated without making it feel like there's a ton of ink weighing anything down or stiffening things up. This fabric sample moves and handles as if it were an unadorned and unprinted woven sample. There's no real bleed though to the back either.

How they manage the level of color saturation they do while maintaining such sharp edges and minimal bleed through defies my ability to figure out how they do it. I'm stumped. All that matters though is that it looks fantastic. Fabric on Demand is really onto something here and if you've ever thought about taking a stab at fabric design I can't encourage you to do so strongly enough. Contact Fabric on Demand today!

Touch this faucet!

Delta's using a new touch feature on some of their new kitchen faucets. This feature is what Delta calls Touch₂O™ technology and it's pretty slick. Here's a demo video from Delta that shows how it works. I'll explain how it works in a bit.

So what's going on here is that the faucet and handle have an incredibly faint electrical current running though them. The current's supplied by a battery pack that's installed below the faucet. The power level is so low that it's imperceptible and since it's coming from a battery pack and not household current, it is physically impossible to get a shock from this system. Please make a note of that.

The lynch pin of this low-level current system is a solenoid valve in the base of the faucet. You can see the solenoid in section B of the illustration below. It's the box the water supply line runs through. A solenoid valve is essentially an electronic switch, and in this case it works like a master switch. When someone turns on the faucet, the solenoid comes to life in a manner of speaking. With the water turned on from the source and the temperature set, all you need to do to is touch the faucet spout or handle and the water will turn off. Touch it again and the water turns back on. Since this is a battery-operated system, the batteries will need to be changed periodically. Delta took this into account and integrated an indicator into the faucet. At the bottom of the fixture, there's a small LED light that shines blue when the system's activated. When the batteries start to go low, that blue LED will flash red.

There's also an automatic, four-minute cut off built into this system. If the water's left running for four minutes with no activity, it will turn itself off. A further cool feature of this technology is that it never takes over the manual operation of the faucet. At any point, someone can turn on and off the faucet conventionally, at the lever.

The whole point of this kind of switching technology is to be able to avoid touching a faucet handle with the dreaded "chicken hands." It's a perfectly valid concern by the way, "chicken hands" are an obvious source of cross contamination woes. Anybody who's suffered a bout of salmonella poisoning will tell you that practicing sensible hygiene around food is a very good thing indeed. Touch₂O™ makes it easy to be smart and sensible and congratulations to Delta are in order. You can read more about Delta's new products on their website.

Finally, someone asked me on Friday if one of these faucets can be turned on accidentally by a meandering cat. The answer's an unequivocal no and a better question is why do you allow your cat climb around on your kitchen counters? Now the answer's a no because a human being has to turn on the faucet's handle from the get go. Unless you have a cat that can turn on a faucet manually, you're fine. Well, you're fine so far as the cat turning on the faucet goes. Clamoring cats bring with them a whole raft of other cross contamination woes, but I guess that's part of the joy of cat ownership. Right?

Hey! The ice cream (or gelato) in a bag thing works!

I just whipped up a batch of licorice gelato using the method I picked up from The Consumerist and wrote about last week. Spurred on by Kelly's rollicking success with vanilla ice cream last weekend, I adapted the recipe to make gelato in the best flavor there is --licorizia.

I mixed some cream and milk and set it on simmer until it frothed slightly. Then I took and egg yolk and a tablespoon of sugar and whipped it in a bowl. Once whipped, I poured the warmed milk and cream into the bowl and whisked everything it until it combined. Then it was back into the saucepan over medium heat. I stirred it as it heated up and started to gel. Once sufficiently gelled, I removed it from the heat and popped it into the fridge for a couple of hours to chill. Once chilled, I poured my now gelled egg, sugar, cream and milk combo into a quart sized zip lock bag. I added two teaspoons of licorice extract I brought back from Rome. Then I filled a gallon sized zip lock half way with ice and then added six tablespoons of rock salt to the ice. I set the smaller bag inside of the larger bag, zipped it up then commenced to shaking for the required five minutes.

I didn't believe it would work. However, after five minutes I stopped shaking and removed the smaller bag. I couldn't help but notice that it was noticeably larger than it was when the whole shaking thing started. I rinsed off the top of the bag and squeezed my plastic bag gelato into a bowl and tucked in.

The lights grew dim and I could hear the sound of a distant, lone mandolin. The taste of that gelato transported me to the Piazza Della Rotonda. I could hear the water spashing in the fountain and before me blazed the blue neon sign of the best gelateria in Rome. Ahhhh.

Then I opened my eyes and cleaned up the mess left behind from making gelato in a plastic bag.

This 'n that 'n bric 'n brac 'n things

The title of this post is a borrowed line shouted by the incomparable Jennifer Saunders as her character Edina Monsoon in the funniest sit-com ever, Absolutely Fabulous. Ab Fab has its own channel on YouTube if you'd like a refresher on all things Patsy and Edina.

Anyhow, in my meanderings through the Internet every day, I come across all kinds of things that I think are funny or interesting. Most of them have nothing to do with my niche and the ones that do wouldn't make good posts for whatever reason.

So let me empty out my bookmarks on this fine Sunday morning. Here goes.

OK, this video swept across the wide expanse of the web last week and on the off chance that you missed it, the is the wedding video that has everybody talking.

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At the beginning of summer, the great City of New York opened a new park and with it came a whole new definition of what a park is.

The High Line was a freight railway that ran on an elevated bed from the Meatpacking District to Hell's Kitchen on the West Side. It was built in the early 1900s and was officially de-activated in the 1980s. It was never torn down and was allowed to turn into an elevated grassland that was blocked off from the rest of the city. Fast forward about 20 years and it's now been cleaned up, replanted and turned into the world's first elevated, linear park. The High Line park has its own website and it tells the history and future of this great new resource for the people of New York. It's also one more thing to love about the de facto capital of the world.

Walking the High Line from dihard on Vimeo.

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Gary: Landlord of the Flies, is a blog written by a man named Gabe. Gabe is embroiled in a security deposit dispute with his landlord Gary. Gary's not the brightest of men, but he is one profane, racist homophobe. Because Gary has proved himself to be beyond reason, Gabe started a blog to document the carryings-on of his landlord Gary.

Gabe's posts have to be read to be believed. His blog is filled with obscenity laden voicemails and all other manner of ridiculousness exhibited by Gary. Read it and be grateful for your living arrangements.

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The girls at the Mogg Blog are where I turn when I need a design-related laugh. To wit:

Only the Mogg Blogg... And thank God for them.

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If you're looking for some timeless housekeeping and grocery tips, this is for you.

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Florida has an introduced iguana problem to go with its introduced python problem and its introduced water monitor problem. Not to mention its walking catfish problem, Brazilian Pepper problem or any other problem out of the thousands of problems caused by the wanton importation and release of non-native, invasive species.

Something else Florida has in great supply is men and women who are quick to exploit an opportunity to make a buck. Floridians' resourcefulness and general willingness to discard what's expected is one of the many reasons I love living here. Along those lines, a quick thinker in nearby Sarasota has stumbled upon what could be a goldmine. With it comes a bad pun I'm powerless not to use. I'm calling this video from the St. Petersburg Times, "Iguana eat an iguana."

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Finally, the Paint Quality Institute has an enormous amount of information on it on topics that range from the essentials of color theory to what are the hot paint colors right now. It is well worth reading and smart people will bookmark it for later reference.