http://travelingtiger.com/blog The Traveling Tigress at Home Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:57:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I finally managed to twist the fringes, wet-finish, press, etc. the changing-colors shawl today at lunchtime, so I couldn't resist posting a new set of photos.  I've Photoshopped them in an attempt to get the saturation to where the shawl actually is, but it's just about impossible to capture the ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/19/reprise/ Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink) has just come out with a new book, Outliers: The Story of Success (which I have just ordered - it was only released two days ago!).  The thesis of the book, in the excerpt I read (in the NY Times, I ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/19/effortful-study/ Today has been a frustrating, yet inspiring, day.  I got up early this morning and made a marvelous batch of lavender-honey caramels, which tasted divine, had perfect texture, and were exactly what I had been hoping for.  Then Mike accidentally splashed them with dirty dishwater (and no, they were NOT ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/18/frustration-and-inspiration/ Made a batch of my jasmine-vanilla caramels last night and another batch of lavender-honey caramels this morning.  The air in the apartment is rich with the scent of honey, caramel, and lavender - I'm practically gaining weight just breathing it - making for a very pleasant morning. Caramels, it turns out, ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/18/caramels-are-tricky/ Yesterday I was too busy running around to get anything done, but today I had a nice quiet day and promptly took advantage of it.  (Mike has an injured ankle and decided not to go riding, and I'm behind enough that I decided to skip riding as well.)  I made ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/16/the-fun-begins/ Here, for the curious, is the final list of items to be included in this year's chocolate boxes: Fudges: Chocolate macadamia fudge Chocolate ginger fudge White chocolate - lavender - Meyer lemon fudge Coconut tequila lime fudge Coffee cinnamon white chocolate fudge Coconut almond fudge Dipped items: chocolate covered ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/15/final-flavor-list/ After a few days spent frantically writing specs and weaving obsessively when not writing specs, I decided to take the evening "off" and finish reading my new chocolate books.  There's lots of cool stuff here! One idea that I think is particularly cool goes like this: You take a supersaturated sugar ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/13/back-to-chocolate/ I got up this morning and took some photos of the shawl.  I have mixed feelings about it. Close up, the colors are gorgeous.  But when you stand back five feet it looks like a series of stripes, and almost like a plaid in the places where I got the warp ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/13/more-pretty-pix/ If I've been pretty quiet the last few days, it's because I've been busy with Weavolution: frantically writing specs to feed to our newly-hired technical consultant.  Also prepping wireframes to go to our soon-to-be-hired graphic artist.  But mostly writing pages and pages of specs.  Not done yet, either, but I've ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/12/woven-but-not-wet-finished/ The colors are coming out just as gloriously as I had hoped!  The combination of red-to-gold and fuchsia-to-turquoise is producing all the vibrant colors of a sunset: the red-to-gold giving all the shades of sun, and the fuchsia-to-turquoise reflecting the many shades of the sunset sky.  There is tremendous color ... http://travelingtiger.com/blog/2008/11/09/pretty-picture/