and then...

after the wine auction in September, i got an email from 3 Vines Cafe in Sleepy Hollow (visit here). they saw my cookies at the auction, and could i do the same cookie for their dinner party, and once again, i turned cookie dough into wine. ok, pictures of wine.
since their logo features red grapes, i stuck to the red/purple shades, and kept the "glass" gold. after getting a feel for it once, round 2, to me, looks quite improved. it was October, and i was getting a little 5-year-oldish about Halloween coming (death! candy! blood! glitter!), and i feared a repeat (and large) order would get monotonous, and i would get frustrated, and then i'd slop it all up. of course i was wrong. i reminisced about my October wedding, and made them all elegant and sparkly, and pouted when i ran out of cookies.
you know i actually used to fear that if i did what i loved, every day, i'd eventually hate it? i have a kind of ADD when it comes to arts and crafts--i crochet, paint, bead, sew, repurpose, wield a camera, (write long droning blog posts) and can make pottery on a wheel, but eventually i put it away and months go by. cookies i could do. every. day. i get that arrived-at-my-happy-place feeling, like a toddler with a blanky, or a stressed college kid with a cigarette.
but now that sounds like i'm addicted, a word which to me speaks to a more self-conscious and anxious frame of mind. and that happy-place is the opposite. i rarely make a cookie design that's an expression of Me. you're not meant to understand me, human, katie, artist, when i make a cookie that looks like a football helmet. it's either a request from someone else, or an attempt to convey something more archetypal to an audience, which by definition is also "someone else." there is a story to be told about [a change, a milestone, an event] and it needs at least one visual. one picture, for the first thousand words. when i'm decorating cookies, i'm part of the illustrative process. in a way, i created nothing especially new. foodwise, it's the same cookie. but in decorating it, i also convey, translate, reveal, represent... i enjoy how it is to be a conduit between "that concept" and "this cookie."
hubby Jeff loves the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but i love the 'making-of' bonus features. (remember, i used to strive for a special effects/make up career, and LOTR spared nuh-thing.) the crew devises a way to mold PVC into metal-looking rings (plastic is lighter) and 2 gents got to work essentially making the chain mail for every actor in every battle in all 3 movies. every day, linking little rings. every work day. for 4 years. !! then the camera was pointed at one and he said, "i wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything, it was the most amazing thing i've done in my life." i toast my wine cookie to that dude.
and also to 3 Vines, for enabling my happy little compulsion, and letting me translate their concepts. owner Flicka emailed that they were stunning. (i bow.) my pleasure.
coming up, i lend a hand to another fundraiser, i mix crazy colors for a bake sale, i make Vanessa some nude cookies (it's only sorta what you think), a lone shoe, lavender snow, poinsettias, choir bells, (award winning!) Bill-Cosby-sweateresque ornaments, Santa Frog, and more ornaments from an evening of (omg!) teaching!