I got up this morning and finished taking the photos and writing up the article for my Complex Weavers February 2010 article. It will be about my 3-strand Celtic braid draft (the one I used for the cashmere coat and for the wedding dress fabric), and will talk about “Theme and Variations” – how yarn choices and fiber choices can produce very different results within the same draft/structure. Like the WeaveZine article, it’s exploring a single structure, but with more emphasis on fiber, yarn, and sett choices rather than color/texture. It’s only a single page, but I hope some people will find it enlightening/encouraging.
We met with the folks at Fleur de Cocoa. The wedding cake will be raspberry and dark chocolate, with a white chocolate glaze. Decorations will be a gold ribbon around the bottom of each tier, plus rectangular pieces of chocolate about 1″ wide and as tall as the tier, printed with whatever we want, placed regularly at intervals around each tier. Asymmetrical bunches of fresh flowers at intervals to soften up the look a bit.
I’ll have to design the graphics for the chocolates, but that shouldn’t be too hard.
Yesterday I finished up everything on my “plate” except for the English toffee, which I decided to defer to next weekend, when I’ll have plenty of time. So I made chocolate macadamia fudge, and dipped candied bergamot peel, jasmine caramels, dried apricots, candied ginger, and coconut fudge into chocolate. (The coconut fudge got topped with an almond after dipping – and yes, I do love Almond Joys!) This week will mostly be paperwork – recording recipes and changing the proportions to something more suitable for my production scale, plus sorting and storing away a bunch of finished candies. (Candies that don’t pass inspection get brought into work, to be devoured by coworkers.)
I will also be working on weaving! So far I have wound three bouts of the 27-yard warp onto the loom, and am hoping to finish beaming on by the end of the week. Since there is only minimal chocolate work to be done this week, I might be able to do it – who knows?
