And Now For Something Completely Different...

 The weather has turned chilly and Christmas-like, and while folks around me complain, I wait for that first snowflake excitedly!  Winter is beautiful here in east Tennessee, mostly because if it does snow, we know it'll be gone before we're tired of it.  No tire chains or engine warmers for us!  But just enough to know it's winter.
  In France, they don't have wedding cakes for their celebrations.  They have Croquembouche, a tall stack of cream puffs dipped in caramel and piled around a cone, usually of styrofoam covered in parchment or foil.  Two weekends ago, we had a wedding at the farm, and the bride asked for a Croquembouche, something I hadn't made since the middle term of culinary school, sixteen years ago!  I got out my notebooks and pondered this for a couple of weeks, and on the day of the wedding, I got busy.  It was a humid day and the spun sugar didn't hold all that well, but I got a photo before it let go.  Behind it is a Macaron tower, with lemon, chocolate, strawberry and spice macarons.  To the other side are chocolate petit fours.  Many people took photos, and most promised me some, of the whole display, but no one has come through yet.  All you can see now is the one awful iPhone photo!

Another new adventure for me is the log cabin warp I've put on Jenny.  It's thick red and thinner black chenille, the black bulked up with a thread of black bamboo.  You know how I like patterns that develop quickly, and this one is fun to watch evolve.  The sett is a little more dense than I wanted, but my only 15 dent reed is in the double weave sampler on Nancy.  I just decided to forge ahead.  If it's a little bulky, it'll keep the wearer warmer! I hope to have a couple done tomorrow, though I'd love to spend this windy, frosty, ugly day in the loominaria, banging these scarves out!