The Ghirardelli project

Before all, it's about a lot of (delicious) chocolate, it's yards of strand and it's a bunch of large, glittering balls. It's a project that came out of nowhere, one evening, that we were munching on what's known as a Ghirardelli Square. This is not your mom's Tobler, Cailler, Godiva or even Leonidas. It's an all-American confection established since 1852 in the San Francisco area.

These square delicacies, while delivering the perfect balance of intense, slow-melting chocolate, are wrapped in colorful Mylar that I always hated to simply toss away. That special wrapper is a polyester film known for its high tensile strength and reflectivity among other reasons. So one day (at least a couple of years ago) I decided to make a ribbon out of one single wrapper, by tearing it longitudinally in small 1/4 inch wide stripes that would be knotted to each other.

Of course, this was much easier thought than done. I had first to open up the chocolate without messing up the paper, then be careful in tearing up the stripes and finally, use all of my dexterity (through some big, fat fingers) to attach them together.

I eventually did it, built up a 10 foot long garland that would later be rolled up, would soon grow into 8 inch in diameter and today, heaps of chocolate later, we have several such balls. Shortly, I'll be shooting a film documenting the whole adventure, but for the moment, I'll leave the details to your imagination.