A plethora of pleasant packages

Four delightful packages arrived on my doorstep this evening! I got a pair of sandals I’d ordered, six kilos of fine cotton/polyester yarn, and a package from Chocolate World (in Belgium) containing a pair of books both mouth-watering and revelatory:

The first book, which is a large coffee-table book, contains nothing but luscious food porn. My attempts at taking photos with the iPhone mostly failed, but this outstandingly poor photo will give you some ideas of the sensuous delights inside:

Everything in the photos is, of course, made of chocolate. Stephane Leroux is considered one of the grand masters of chocolate, and particularly of chocolate sculpture.

While Book 1 is luscious, it’s the much smaller Book 2 that I immediately snatched from the boxed set, because Book 2 explains how to make all those luscious chocolate sculptures/decorations! The only thing that could possibly be better than gorgeous food porn is the ability to make (and eat!) your own food porn. And chocolate! How much better can you get than that?

Here’s a shot of the interior of Book 2:

Yep, step by step instructions on how to make your very own amazing chocolate satellites, er, I mean decorations. (Did I mention that there’s another satellite launch coming up this year?)

Anyway, I probably won’t have time to read through the books immediately, but I’m putting them on the top of the pile for post-surgery reading. I can’t wait to pore over them!

I saved the best for last, though. The final package contained not one, but two new Bluster Bay end-feed shuttles! I had sent Terry a package of exotic woods a few months back, and he was gracious enough to make me one shuttle each of the granadillo and zircote woods. The resulting shuttles are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Here are some photos that unfortunately really don’t do them justice:

Both woods have beautiful figuring, though you can’t make out most of it in the photos. I am madly in love with both shuttles and can’t wait to use them!

Sadly, the loom is acting up again, so no weaving until it’s repaired. Mike and I are going to make one more repair attempt this weekend, and if that doesn’t work, I’m going to have AVL send a tech to look at the loom. I am fortunate enough to live within reasonable driving distance (about 200 miles, or about three hours’ drive) of AVL, so while it will be expensive to have someone come down, it won’t entirely break the bank. I’m currently checking with AVL to see when they might be able to send someone.

Also in weaving news, I will be delivering two programs at the Seattle Weavers Guild next Thursday. The first one is about evolving designs, the creative process, and Autumn Splendor; the second one is titled “Wedding Dress Adventures,” and is (as you can probably guess) about the saga of the wedding dress. So if you are in the Seattle area, don’t miss Thursday’s guild meeting! I look forward to meeting you there.

Finally, Tigress has started taking an interest in fashion. She started by claiming my clean laundry as her personal domain (actually folding such laundry is verboten, of course):

And now she is taking to lurking in Mike’s clean laundry basket, perhaps to guard against Fritz the Sock Thief, who is fond of digging in the same laundry basket to find socks to steal:

With such fashion-conscious cats stealing my clothes, I may have to take up weaving again in order to have enough clothes to wear! But perhaps I can convince them that their beautiful fur coats are quite sufficient, and they don’t really need human clothing.