(no subject)

[wellinghall]

[Poll #1223595]

ETA: Approximate answers are fine.

Comments

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

Actually, I suspect I may have more than that, although I don't use them all regularly. I probably have 4 or 5 that I use regularly.

[chainmailmaiden]

I couldn't honestly say without looking, but certainly more than 10.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

.. what she said.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I have three sets of professional knives, loads of small ones that I've picked up over the years, and John favours those serrated ones with the prongs on the end. If I'm going to someone else's house to cook, there are two I would always take.

Are we talking bread and steak knives as well? I don't have a good cleaver.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

We have loads, but I only really use one of them. Then again, I'm not a very good cook.

[meglorien.livejournal.com]

We do cook a lot, but looking at other people's comments, we don't seem to have enough knives...

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I've heard more than one professional chef say that really you don't need many at all, so if you are comfortable that what you have does the jobs you need them to do then I wouldn't rush out and get any more. They need to be good quality, and SHARP, though.

We rarely use more than 2 of them and have no more than 4, and we cook lots of things from scratch which people seem to like eating, and carve occasionally but with decent results. (A small one with a pointy end, a large one, and bread/carving knife does the job in our house, although perhaps we would need another on for steak, since we don't eat steak, but that would still only be 5).

[emperor]

[x] I don't know without counting them. There are 3 I use regularly.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

A quick count reveals 16 in normal use (I'm sure we have a couple of gift sets somewhere that have never been opened). I'm including a potato peeler, two cheese knives and a bread knife in that total.

I desperatley need a proper, old fashioned steel...

[tree_and_leaf]

People give knives? *is superstitiously shocked*

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Well quite!

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Why not? As long as you remember to pay them in silver (it's a lot more expensive now than in the days when you could get away with a silver thruppeny bit.)

We also won two of the rather nice paring knives and a cutting board in a raffle.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think we were trying to make the distinction between "giving" and "buying".

(But - can't a 5p count as silver? And can't a 3d count as silver, even though it's no longer legal tender?)

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I think the superstition must be a regional one. My grandmother always insisted that if you received a knife as a gift you should make a reciprocal gift of silver in return to avoid 'cutting the friendship'.

5p is worth a lot more than 3d (three times as much), though I suspect that a silver 3d these days probably costs more than 5p.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I don't believe in superstitions so I would happily give knives if I felt like it.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Based on how others are answering this (including cheese knives, cleaver, potato peeler, carving knives, etc.), we must have at least 20. But it isn't enough.

[tree_and_leaf]

Can I ask a shockingly ignorant question? I know what the median result means, but what is st. dev? (I assume that stands for standard deviation - but what does it mean?)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It does indeed stand for standard deviation. It is a measure of how widely the results are spread around the mean - the higher the standard deviation (often represented by a lower-case sigma), the wider the spread.

So, if there are two sets of numbers like this:
1, 3, 5, 7, 9
5, 5, 5, 5, 5

then both sets have the same mean, but the first set has a higher standard deviation.

And it's only shockingly ignorant if you consider my ignorance of theology, Old English, or German to be shocking (and if you do, you are polite enough not to say so!)

[romancinger.livejournal.com]

I didn't think to include cheese knives, or the carving knives that sit in a drawer most of the time. Or the knife I bought recently, which is a kitchen knife used by me as a table knife because I need a really sharp knife to cope with my arthritis.

Of the eight knives to hand in our kitchen, three are spares, the rest are frequently used, but if it wasn't for one or two needing washing up at times, we'd really only use a couple.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

... We've just combined two knife blocks. Had you posted this two months ago my answer would have been six.

[findabair.livejournal.com]

Seeing as I share a kitchen with five other people (who were strangers when I moved in) and had no hand in stocking the kitchen with utensils, I have absolutely no idea how many kitchen knives we have :)

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I don't have any cheese knives either (and considering I really like cheese, and have no trouble cutting any type of it, clearly cheese knives are also at least in part another gimmick to get people to buy stuff). I suspect we have a potato peeler but since it rarely gets used (as we always have potatoes with their skins on) and doesn't look very knife-like, I am not counting it.

[estiel.livejournal.com]

17

[lalwendeboggart.livejournal.com]

I don't have many, considering. But I do have lots of steak knives, and I use one of those to carve small joints of meat as they do the job very well so my knives 'multi-task' ;) But I do have a very nice, and very trusty Swiss Army Knife so I own the knife-of-all-knives ;)