Color + Packaging: Opinel Knives

Over the weekend I ventured across bridge and bay to check out a warehouse sale of products made in France and came home with these colorful knives by Opinel. They are sharp(!) in more ways than one.

Aside from a nice block of kitchen knives we received as a wedding gift, we were still using a very dull set of table knives I bought at a discount store about 15 years ago, and had only one paring knife in constant rotation. We hardly need more kitchenware, but in this case there was no danger of buyer's remorse. Luckily, my husband likes the knives too. He said, "You should put those on your blog." So, here they are, cute as a knife can be (if you like cute knives).

Good to the Last Squeeze

Cutest ink packaging ever!

I was thrilled to learn I could buy ink by the quarter pound, in tubes. It's cheaper and space-saving, which is a consideration for the time being. Now, along with my larger supply of whites and black, I can begin mixing more nuanced pantone colors. These represent a lot of the standard pantone colors, and are a mixture of rubber, oil, and soy-based inks.

inspiration: yellow like the sun.

Winter must be getting to me because I am craving yellow. I've chosen (as in: folded the corners of catalog pages) a new yellow rug for the kitchen and yellow chairs, which my husband has yet to see. No doubt he will veto these choices, so in the meantime there are yellow tulips, which have been cheery in the dull, bleak mid-winter light.

I love the combination of film, sunlight, and flowers. The light and blooms remind me of Vermeer (although, to be clear, I'm drawing no comparison between myself and Vermeer), who seemed to rely heavily on natural light in otherwise dark and conceivably cold rooms:

Vermeer seems like a wintertime painter for some reason.

I think these pears want to be poached. Here's a recipe for making poached pears.

i ♥ pantone.

My faux Pantone color guide arrived in the mail just the other day, purchased on eBay for only $20. The Pantone colors are authentic although the guide was published by a now defunct sister company, and while the guide is brand new, it doesn't contain colors developed in the past 9 years. It probably does not contain today's color of the day, for example: Mistletoe PANTONE 16-0220.


Still, a person has to choose their financial battles. The purchase of the press itself, and also this week, the chase, bought directly from Craftsmen Machinery, were sizable enough purchases for the month of August. Eventually I hope to get some newer color guides, including the Metallics, but for now this will do.

I'm going to be starting with a green ink - not because I particularly love green, which I don't, or because of its environmental associations. I'm going with green because limes are ... green. I'm a literal girl.

I came across this article on the Pantone website, entitled "go with green," full of fun facts:

• The green color family is the largest color family discernible to the human eye
• The use and popularity of green colorations are on the upswing in all design disciplines

According to the article, people's feelings about green vary widely, as do our associations with the color - or rather, particular shades of green. "Peridot Green PANTONE 376, signifies renewal, life and the freshness of the great outdoors," for example, while, and unfortunately for me, "The yellow-green shades such as chartreuse evoke the most negative of emotions, according to the Pantone Consumer Color Preference Study which rated chartreuse as the color consumers disliked the most." I'll give that some thought.