Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Making the best of a bad situation
I was hoping to be able to report on the first ice candles of the season, but it didn’t quite freeze hard enough over the weekend, and now I’m out of town for a couple of days.
Ice candles? Actually, they’re more properly ice candle holders. A few years ago I found that if I left water outside in a 5 gallon plastic pail in the winter, after a couple of days below freezing it would have frozen in a couple of inches on the top and the sides, leaving a liquid core. Turn it over, dump out the water, and you’ve got a big ice cup that you can set a candle in. Here’s one of last
year’s to give you an idea.
A spirit of full disclosure compels me to admit that this idea is not original to me: my wife read about some gardener in Alaska who wanted something decorative in the non-growing season.
Different temperature conditions will create different types of ice – some of the best ones I’ve had have had lots of cracks that reflect light in great ways (refract? – anybody know the physics?) I tried adding food coloring to the water once for a different effect, but frankly it wasn’t worth the effort.
If it’s windy, the candles tend to blow out, so I’m always on the lookout for robust candles. Interestingly, the ones that seem to burn the best are the ones with the most obnoxious odors – I got a bunch of half-price end of season things from Pier 1 that stank so badly my wife would barely let me bring them in the house, but they burned like crazy.
The neighbors like them, and I have fun doing them, but I have some rules that I mostly obey, in order to keep this on the right side of that fine line between hobby and obsession. I use only rain and snow-melt – no filling the buckets inside. Only freeze outside – I’m not getting a freezer in the cellar to speed the process. Only buy candles on sale.
There’s a Japanese guy who claims that by exposing water to different words, it will show different crystalline patterns. Freeze it inside a container that has “Peace” written on it, and the crystals form a very regular, beautiful pattern. Write “War” on it and the crystals are all jagged and irregular. Maybe, maybe not.
Note to neighbors: if you see me talking to my buckets, it’s time for an intervention.
Ice candles? Actually, they’re more properly ice candle holders. A few years ago I found that if I left water outside in a 5 gallon plastic pail in the winter, after a couple of days below freezing it would have frozen in a couple of inches on the top and the sides, leaving a liquid core. Turn it over, dump out the water, and you’ve got a big ice cup that you can set a candle in. Here’s one of last
year’s to give you an idea.A spirit of full disclosure compels me to admit that this idea is not original to me: my wife read about some gardener in Alaska who wanted something decorative in the non-growing season.
Different temperature conditions will create different types of ice – some of the best ones I’ve had have had lots of cracks that reflect light in great ways (refract? – anybody know the physics?) I tried adding food coloring to the water once for a different effect, but frankly it wasn’t worth the effort.
If it’s windy, the candles tend to blow out, so I’m always on the lookout for robust candles. Interestingly, the ones that seem to burn the best are the ones with the most obnoxious odors – I got a bunch of half-price end of season things from Pier 1 that stank so badly my wife would barely let me bring them in the house, but they burned like crazy.
The neighbors like them, and I have fun doing them, but I have some rules that I mostly obey, in order to keep this on the right side of that fine line between hobby and obsession. I use only rain and snow-melt – no filling the buckets inside. Only freeze outside – I’m not getting a freezer in the cellar to speed the process. Only buy candles on sale.
There’s a Japanese guy who claims that by exposing water to different words, it will show different crystalline patterns. Freeze it inside a container that has “Peace” written on it, and the crystals form a very regular, beautiful pattern. Write “War” on it and the crystals are all jagged and irregular. Maybe, maybe not.
Note to neighbors: if you see me talking to my buckets, it’s time for an intervention.
