I'm getting my chocolate molds back!!

I had loaned my chocolate molds to a chocolatier friend, because I wasn’t using them, but he dug them out of storage at my request and I’ll be able to play with them over Thanksgiving! These are really cool…not your usual cheap plastic molds that bend out of shape, these are the chocolate molds that professional chocolatiers use—solid, hard plastic, and damn near indestructible. I haven’t used them for years because they’re also rather fussy and require much more attention be paid to the chocolate, but since I’m doing smaller batches of chocolate this year I might be able to use them again. I’m really looking forward to it!

I’m really enjoying this year’s round of candymaking. Normally I pile everything up into four frenzied days at Thanksgiving—nothing but chocolate morning, noon, and night—and wind up being completely exhausted at the end of it all. This year, I’m doing it in stages, so all I should have left to do by Thanksgiving will be the truffles. Granted that truffles are still quite a bit of work, it’ll still be easier having all the other candies done up, put in little candy cups, and prepacked to save time later. I also have a few “extra” weekends so I can try some more exotic stuff—like, cinnamon candied orange peel? Quince fudge? Lots of ideas, so little time. Life is so short.

I’m getting started on interviewing a fresh batch of people for my book on AIDS Lifecycle. I don’t have quite enough stories at the moment, so I’m finding people who rode in AIDS Lifecycle 3 and interviewing them to get their stories. I’m still incredibly nervous about it—I wish I were writing about goldfish or computer manuals or some ordinary topic. It’s such a magnificent subject—and so personal for the people involved—that I don’t see how I can possibly do it justice. I’m amazed people ever manage to write books at all.

Fortunately, things *are* starting to get a little easier. Some days I even feel like I could do this.

Started rough-spinning some mohair

I decided to take a break from precision spinning and spin up some rough-carded mohair. I teased some white wool, blended it with some GORGEOUS steel gray kid mohair, and have been spinning up the results. It produces a lovely medium gray, lustrous yarn that I think I will use for socks. (Socks being my generic small project--I mean, what else can you do with four ounces of yarn?) The end result has noils and thicker spots, but I'm letting it be what it wants to be (picking out only the worst offenders)--the whole point is to get away from persnickety precision work. It's fun!

Candy-wise, I made a batch of maple fudge and a batch of lavender-lemon-white chocolate fudge yesterday. The maple fudge was easy, the lavender fudge was a real challenge. Keeping it from caramelizing with all the milk solids in it was really hard. Next time I may try it using water instead of cream, to cut down on the milk content.

I'm thinking of making a pure mohair sweater out of this steel gray kid mohair (it's that beautiful)--how hot is it going to be? I've read that mohair is warmer than wool, but I'm not sure how much warmer. It seems like a crime to blend this stuff and lose some of that AWESOME luster (and color).

I have finished my chapter outline, hurrah!

It's amazing what a difference having a writing coach is making...half of it is just knowing someone will be there reading what I write, but the other half is his gift for breaking things down into pieces. I keep getting intimidated by the sheer mass of the bloody thing--keeping track of all the anecdotes, imagery, photos, etc. is like trying to wrestle an octopus--but he keeps me focused by doing very specific, small writing assignments that, put together, lead up into something "real". I like it.

(This is actually his online writing class, not coaching (yet). I recommend it highly--though, if you don't have $400 to spare, you can get a lot out of reading the course description.)

Anyway, I have completed my (draft) chapter outline and have thought up a gimmick to tie the book together into one neat package--now it's back to my notes, to see what elements I can put into which chapter.

The one downer is that my cat chewed through the cable on my mini-speakers (he'll chew through any cord that's not armor-plated), so I have to go out and get a new pair before I can start going through my (computerized) audio notes. Foo.

By the way, I got the 8" suri alpaca and it is BEAUTIFUL!! I was expecting something long but coarse, like Lincoln or Coopworth, but it's very fine, very soft, and oh-so-long-stapled! The only downer is that the color is more like a chocolate brown than an auburn--I had been hoping for auburn. It's also a little tangled/felted--flicking it produces beautiful long fiber, but also takes out a good chunk of it, more than usual. But it is beautiful stuff. I just wish I had a use for it; I'm not planning to make a chocolate brown shawl anytime soon (read: "ever"), so that means I won't be using it for anything soon. If anyone wants some beautiful suri and is willing to take it off my hands, it's 10-11 oz of lovely brown suri for $20. (It may be slightly less than 11 oz now that I've washed all the dust out of it.) Gorgeous stuff, though. Send me an email if you're interested--my email address is on the "About Me" page of my website, or you can just leave a comment. Wish I had a use for it!

Meanwhile, tomorrow I am dreading taking my cat in for her vaccinations, and I'm also planning to dye some silk for my mother and make some fudge. Lavender-Meyer lemon-white chocolate and maple walnut for sure, after that I might get exotic and try strawberry or something like that. I have a LOT of leftover preserves to use up. Raspberry fudge doesn't sound too bad either...or maybe a rosewater-white-chocolate-cardamom fudge, a la the Afghan dessert called firnee (which is gelatin, milk, rosewater, cardamom, and maybe other spices, and is very yummy). Dunno exactly what else I'll make--that's what life is for, to experiment. :-)

Just bought some suri alpaca!

I was tempted by some auburn suri alpaca on eBay, and I won the auction! Mostly all I want to do is try spinning with some extremely long fiber--it occurs to me that I can probably spin finer with superlong fibers than with shorter ones. This one has a staple length of 8-12 inches, and I'm eager to see how it spins up. I don't expect to use it in projects, since adult suri tends to be coarse, but it will make a nice "thought experiment" on longer fibers.

I'm having trouble finding space for all my fiber. As fiber stashes go, mine isn't all that huge--only four or five boxes of fiber--but at the rate I use fiber, it's a lifetime supply plus some. I really need to cut back, esp. since I don't believe in dragging around excess belongings. So I will probably sell on the rest of the suri alpaca as soon as I play with it a little. I may see if I can find some long-stapled, fine baby suri for the stash--that I might actually use. (Of course, I have no idea where to find suri cria, but I'm sure some will turn up eventually.)

Made chocolates over the weekend--this year I'm starting early, and making lots of smaller batches rather than one enormous batch of chocolates. I'm starting with the nonperishables, so I made chocolate-covered apricots, chocolate-covered dried pears, chocolate-covered candied ginger (yum!), and chocolate-dipped caramels (my favorite). I made the caramels, of course. :-) Next week: maple walnut fudge, lemon-lavender white chocolate fudge, English toffee! I LOVE making candies. (Good thing I don't like eating them, or I'd weigh four million pounds!)

Speaking of weight, I've lost five pounds on my diet! I'm really excited. If I drop ten more pounds I'll be perfectly happy. :-)

Found a writing coach!

I had no idea such things existed until a friend, who has published two books, suggested that I talk to one. (I was, once again, completely stuck on the book.) So I went to talk to his writing coach, and darned if he didn't get me un-stuck!! Now I'm working my way through his nonfiction writing course, which is an online course targeted at getting your book proposal finished and out to a publisher. It's fantastic--really helping me get focused and understand the reader. I now understand the structural problems I was having, and why it just didn't "feel right".

If you're curious about this guy, check out his website: http://www.halzinabennett.com .

Never go shopping when you're hungry...

I went to my local chocolate wholesaler this morning, and bought 42 lbs of chocolate:

13.2 lbs Valrhona Pur Caraibe (for truffle centers)
13.2 lbs Valrhona Extra Bitter (for dipping)
6.6 lbs Valrhona Guanaja (because I like it)
8.8 lbs Valrhona chocolate "pearls" (spherical bits of chocolate)
2.2 lbs cocoa nibs (to add crunchy chocolate texture)

Then I went out and bought a more modest 4 lbs of butter, half a gallon of cream, and ten pounds sugar (but that's just for the next week's work).

Yes, it's truffle season again, and time to start making yummy bits of rich chocolates and caramels. (There is special irony in this since I'm currently on a diet (lost four pounds so far!) and will probably not eat any of these chocolates.) On the slate for this weekend are caramels and possibly a bit of English toffee (that's what the butter is for); next weekend I'll do fudge, and the weekend after that is getting on towards Thanksgiving, when I throw caution to the winds and spend the entire holiday up to my elbows in chocolate. At the end of it all, I'll have my full set of Xmas presents for the year--chocolates and bonbons for the entire family, friends, coworkers, etc. Usually about 30 lbs of chocolate.

So tonight and tomorrow, I'm making caramels. Yum!

curiosity knitting

I think I've finally accepted being a knitting researcher at heart. My shawls are complex and intellectually interesting, and sometimes beautiful--but elegance takes a backseat to something complex enough to keep my mind engaged. the shawl I'm currently working on promises to be one of these: it's a circular shawl done up as a series of rings, and it's been teaching me a lot about how to make shawls. It's very simple: for every n rows, you must add roughly 4n stitches to keep the shawl flat. That's all there is. Whether you add it in a single row with lots of increases (Elizabeth Zimmerman's pi shawl technique) or an even number of stitches every row or every other row (square shawls and octagonal shawls), whether you add it evenly over the entire shawl or concentrate it into the "corners", doesn't matter. If you're knitting in the round and add an average of four stitches every round, you'll be doing fine.

Elizabeth Zimmerman's pi shawl technique uses this: you double the stitches every time the row count doubles. So, you have

row 1 8 stitches
row 2 16 stitches
row 3 16 stitches
row 4 32 stitches
row 5 32
row 6 32
row 7 32
row 8 64

which compares well to

row 1 8 stitches
row 2 12 stitches
row 3 16 stitches
row 4 20 stitches
row 5 24 st
row 6 28
row 7 32

Looking at it this way it's clear that Zimmerman does her stitch increase early, so there are initially "too many" stitches, but the correct number at the end. Knitting is fortunately stretchy enough that this doesn't cause problems, though the difference in density at the changeovers is pretty obvious in pi shawls (often it's disguised in a pattern change).

So from here it's clear that if you want to use the rings technique, you just add 4n stitches to the shawl before you start a pattern with n rows, e.g. if you want to do a ring 40 rows long you need to add 160 stitches to the shawl before starting the ring. That's all there is to it; the rest will work itself out.

There's also no reason you can't mix the ring technique with gradual increases--all that matters is that you average adding four stitches per row. If you want to create something with corners, just add the stitches in the same place every time (square shawls). If you want a round shawl, scatter the increases around the circumference. You can even increase in a pattern if you like, creating a lace pattern with the holes. There are endless possibilities.

Anyway, that's my insight for the day: you just need to increase 4 stitches for every row. It doesn't matter where.

Free! Free! I'm free of all those rules and patterns w/r/t shawls in the round. I understand it now.

3 weeks at Macromedia...

I'm starting to settle in there--faces are becoming familiar, I'm learning my way around the building, and life is no longer a confusing blur. It helps that my product manager is also new, and is frantically setting up meetings to introduce himself and learn about the product. Since he invites me to all these meetings, all I have to do is tag along in his wake.

Which is a good thing, because right now there's not a whole lot for me to do. I arrived at the tail end of a release, which would normally mean I'd be going crazy with lots to do, but since I very sensibly decided not to stick my fingers into the machinery and bollux it up with my ignorance, that leaves me mostly sitting and staying out of people's way until the release is out. At that point, the next release should start kicking in, meaning I get something to do.

Mind you, I'm not being idle: I'm meeting bunches of people and reading through piles and piles of documentation. But the real meat of my job won't happen until the next release starts happening.

Meanwhile, I'm learning all about Macromedia Flash. I have an undreamed-of luxury in that regard: Macromedia employees are able to drop in on any official Macromedia classes (if there's room in the classroom), meaning I can get training for free. So I took a two-day class on how to use Flash--which was really helpful--and am trying to get in for a three-day class on how to use ActionScript with Flash. If I can do that and the Advanced ActionScript class, that will set me up well for using Flash Lite. I'll never be a professional developer, but then I don't need to be. :-) I just need to know how to use the product well enough to get a "feel" for how users will interact with it.

I also need to get better mastery of Dreamweaver--they use it internally for just about everything (meeting minutes, etc.), and my understanding of Dreamweaver is relatively basic. So I am poking around that as well. (It's not a bad thing: my website badly needs updating, so I have a venue in which to practice.)

I think one of my first projects will be creating (working) Flash buttons on my website, and maybe adding some pizzazz to the front page. Also replacing the photo: that one's eleven years old, and while I still look pretty much like that photo, it's embarrassing to have ancient photos on your homepage. But of course, first I have to have someone take a new photo.

(Hmm...maybe I'll use the photo of me from Farang magazine. OK, maybe not.)

I've also discovered knitting on the train! It's a 35-45 minute train ride to work, and I've started bringing my knitting with me. It's not super fast knitting since the train is pretty bumpy, but it's going pretty well. I've gotten the first thirty or forty rows of my latest shawl knitted. I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but I think it will look OK once it's finished. In another 20-30 rows I should have a better sense for it.

But my main project right now (aside from work) is learning Dreamweaver and Flash, and that promises to be loads of fun. I just have to figure out what I want to BUILD with Flash! I'm not a graphic designer, so whiz-bang graphics don't come easily to me. Most of my webpage seems perfectly happy as a static site, so I dunno...I'm gonna have to get creative. :-)

Oh, and the best news of all: being a Macromedia employee, I get to buy the brand-new Studio 8 for a whopping 50 bucks! (For my own personal use--I get a free copy on my work laptop, of coruse.) Considering it retails for $999, that's quite a deal. :-)

Peter S. Beagle needs help

Noted fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle is in a fight with his publisher (and is experiencing financial woes, mostly related to the care of his 100-year-old mother) and is asking for help from fans--
http://www.conlanpress.com/youcanhelp/

I think Beagle is the best fantasy author ever to walk the earth (he's best known for The Last Unicorn, by the way), so I'm passing it on. (It's also an excellent opportunity to get autographed books and other stuff in the online store--check it out here. Some of these books are not available anywhere else!)

I chipped in a couple of bucks to his legal defense fund and also did some shopping in the bookstore--if you're a fan, please consider doing the same!

Please pass this on, if you know any forums where it might be welcomed.