Till I stumbled across the picture of the pink one here. Hey. Color Transplants R Us. That’s IT! That’s what my subconscious was trying to push out of the memory banks. I’ve seen that before but I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been.
During the few years of my life I wasn’t knitting much, I was making smocked gowns and dresses for my own babies, and that round patterning around the neck, called a bishop style, was something I made over and over. A knitted sweater that echoes that, a generation later? Perfect.
I hadn’t ever realized till I took the photo just now that the reverse holds true too: I designed a smocked dress back then for Michelle with a sheep front and center.
Meantime, today was my monthly trek to Los Gatos to buy birdseed. There in front of my car as I parked was a signboard for a shop at the far end of the plaza–where I had never been nor really looked. A chocolatier? There is? Okay, that’s worth checking out.
You walk in and there’s an intricate haunted house at the front with figures and jackolanterns and all kinds of detail. And it’s chocolate. All chocolate. All made in-house by hand. We are talking someone who plays with chocolate like I play with baby alpaca and silk.
I decided to try just one piece to test the place out, just one framboise.
Oh. My. Goodness. Change the metaphor to qiviut and silk. Richard exclaimed later, You didn’t get ME one? But I had no idea till she rang it up what it was going to cost vs the amount of cash I had on hand for an impulsive try-out.
To give you an idea, I later got in and out of Trader Joe’s without buying a single chocolate thing. Not even a plain good dark Valrhona bar. It would only have been a comedown.
The one thing I regret? I didn’t eat it till after I’d left and the woman didn’t get to see my whole face light up. She certainly earned that. I’ll have to go back, and Richard needs to come too.
Okay, right about here a good essay would pull the knitting and smocking together with the chocolate shop. Does that sentence count?