Chocolate

As I got off the highway and stopped at the end of the ramp on the way to the longarm quilter, I turned to say something to my Mom, who was sitting beside me. I was distracted, however, by the Lindt Chocolate sign. "There's a Lindt chocolate store right there!"

"We should stop on the way home," my Mom said, I could use a bit of chocolate."

So we did!

What would a day be without chocolate? Boring, that's for sure. I got two pounds of the individually wrapped milk chocolate pieces (above left), because that helps me resist temptation. But the big bars** were, "buy two get one free," and my resistance disappeared. I had never seen the Dark Chocolate Coconut, or the Dark Roasted Almond flavors, so of course I had to try those, and the stuff in the bag on the bottom was also on sale, and I love that little crunch. I had a Lindt points card, so I got that bag for free.

I won't tell you how much money I spent, but I know it was worth it.


** Yes Megan, I can get the big bars at my local grocery store as well, but they don't have all the flavors.

Chocolate, Revised

The more I looked at the letters I had made for CHOCOLATE, the more I thought they were somewhat plain. I kept remembering what my friend Julie said, that I should "go for it" when I made these words. "Go for broke" is what she meant.

I remembered an article I read about creativity (in the business world, no less.) It said that most groups stopped thinking when they came up with the first idea. The article said you shouldn't stop when you have a good idea, that you should keep thinking of MORE good ideas; that you would then be forced to come up with better ones.

A brown word, CHOCOLATE, made using novelty chocolate themed fabrics - is that really original? Nope. Throughout my colors quilt I have tried to make the style of each word unique in some way. What I had with CHOCOLATE was good, but I wanted it to be better.
I liked some elements of this Showcard Gothic font (above). I liked that the letters were wider at the top than at the bottom. So I played with that a bit, (you will have to click the photo to enlarge, then click it again to see my drawings), but the letters looked like teeth, and that didn't remind me much of chocolate. Then I tried alternating the letters, but they just looked too blocky.
As I looked at the color words I had already sewn, I realized I did not have a word where I mixed up sentence case or the size of letters. I thought that might be a good thing to play with. So I played around a bit more, exaggerating angles and bumping the letters out of their horizontal boundaries a bit. I like this a lot, and it adds a bit of fun to the word.
Here are the first two letters. Yes, that's a piano and a double bass in the "H". Both say JAZZ, which while not necessarily chocolate, definitely say smooth to me. But don't worry, I'm definitely gonna get those chocolate novelty fabrics in there!