Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Sugar sticks - buying and making

   I was first excited and impressed by sugar crystals on sticks at Friends Restaurant in Pinner. Then they stopped making the sugar sticks.
  I was looking for wooden flat toothpicks on the internet when wooden sticks brought up ads for sugar crystals on wooden sticks. You can buy readymade sugar sticks at about £20 for 100 for dinner parties or events from Galloway.co.uk.
   The internet also has instructions on making sugar crystals. You basically bring sugar to the boil in water and then let it cool to 50 degrees and dangle into the cooling sugar mixture something non-toxic. Add food colouring or flavouring if wished.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Colours On Ebay

   I buy a lot on ebay. Colours are always guesswork.

   I recently bought an item described as blue. The picture looks bright slightly mauve cobalt and fuschia in the picture, arrives as dirty slate grey-blue with dull red.

   Could I dye the item? Send it back? Probably the seller would claim that my laptop colour was at fault.
    However, my husband liked the matching jacket and scarf.

   But this is a common problem. The picture doesn't match the item described.

  You get a lot of bargains from China. But sometimes items from China are pictured one colour described another and if not careful you click to buy wrong colour.

    I feel there should be some way of giving a standard for colour, as with paint, colours have standard numbers. Or to adjust your screen until the colour shown matches the number given to get an accurate picture.

  One day somebody will solve this. Maybe you will be supplied with a rainbow colour disc with numbers. You as buyer will turn your colours on your screen to match the numbers. The seller will have turned their screen to match the item to be sold.

   What if the fault is the lighting under which they took the photo? Or their camera? Then they should be able to adjust the colour after loading, as I can with my photo editing program. But instead of just editing the picture to look what they consider a pretty or popular colour, they should hold the item photographed against their screen to get a match.

   The problems with colour and fabric or material and size always used to be a problem with catalogues. In the old days customers were very wary of buying from catalogues. Now big catalogue companies offer free returns.

  But the problem of co-ordinating the sellers and buyers' screens remains.  Help - somebody must be able to solve this problem.