Chocolatiering away

I had a wonderful time at Complex Weavers Seminars! Three days spent immersed in weaving, talking in betweentimes with equally passionate weavers. In addition to the many interesting seminars, there were some splendid exhibits – this year’s Complexity exhibit was the best show of handwoven textiles I have seen to date. Every piece was interesting and innovative, some using techniques I had never seen before, others using traditional techniques with a twist. It would almost have been worth the trip to Tacoma by itself. So if you are in the Providence area, do check it out during Convergence. It’s well worth seeing.

The Off the Runway show was also wonderful – some of the textiles there could easily have won prizes at any other weaving show. I was seated a little too far away to really take in much of the Fashion Show, but really enjoyed the Marketplace and Silent Auction. And I’m pleased to say that my fifteen small boxes of chocolates raised $333 for the Complexity fund.

Now, of course, I’m back home and chocolatiering. Skybox is launching its second satellite on Tuesday, and I’ve decided to celebrate by making a mockup of the satellite – in chocolate! So far I’ve just created the prototype and poured the slabs that make up the satellite body. Tonight I’ll paint the Skybox-Google logo onto transfer sheets for use in decorating the sides of the spacecraft. And tomorrow I’ll cast the primary mirror and the radio dish, paint them with colored cocoa butter, and assemble the whole thing together. It’s my first attempt at chocolate sculpture so I don’t know how well it will go, but so far it’s looking pretty good. Not perfect, but not bad for a first try either. And I’ll have time on Sunday to fix mistakes.

Here’s the original satellite (actually SkySat-1, but the exteriors of  both satellites are identical):

And here’s my mockup:

The dish and antenna didn’t make it into the mockup, but I’m planning to add them (and the primary mirror, at the bottom of the interior) in the final version. I’ll be casting both dish and mirror in white chocolate tomorrow, using balloons and a small beach ball to get the curvature right.

Here is the front panel, the center tube, and one strut, made in chocolate:

And here is one of the sides, complete with “solar panels” (a mix of blue and black edible sparkles):

I carved the stencil yesterday, then used a foam roller to apply tempered chocolate, and finally sifted the edible sparkles onto the chocolate, gluing them on. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty good!

And where have the cats been? Why, helping, of course! Here are Fritz and Tigress helping me put together the prototype.