Cross stitch pattern off Gabumon from Digimon. Head over to my Patreon to download the PDF and PNG files.

Grid Size: 100W x 92H
Design Area: 7.14″ x 6.50″ (100 x 91 stitches)
Colors: 14

My Patron, RinHikari23, is a Ceramage known for creating personalized funerary urns. Before you die, you can tell RinHikari23 about your life while they’re throwing your urn on the wheel and the story will be magically recorded into the clay itself so that when it is fired and eventually filled, people will be able to feel your story in their hearts when they touch it.

Now for my much lighter bottom text. I often write these at different times, so…

It’s that time of year again, the time when chocolate oranges go on sale and you can snag um for 50¢. I love these things and I lucked out to find one Terry’s in the midst of all the Brach’s so now I can compare them.

I picked up two dark chocolate oranges and they look nearly identical except for a few details. The foil around the Terry’s is nicely pleated so you get crisp lines emanating from the sticker and it’s a sophisticated gold color rather than Brach’s more realistic orange colored wrapping.

But it’s the inside that matters. I like to whack my chocolate oranges on the ground instead of a counter because it makes less noise. My downstairs neighbors must love me, but at least it’s only once a year.

The actual chocolate looks very different. Brach’s is much lighter and doesn’t have that neat orange peal effect embossed on the outside like Terry’s does. The slices are about the same size, but the indented orange texture is night and day. Terry’s is significantly better looking. Both textures are obviously there to reduce the volume of the chocolate, but Brach’s is really obvious that they’ve just hollowed out a chunk where Terry’s tries to hide it with a frankly beautiful representation of an orange segment.

But, like, who cares what it looks like. What does it taste like? I bought the dark chocolate versions, and the Terry’s orange really delivers on a nice rich chocolaty taste, but the Brach’s has a much stronger orange flavor even though the chocolate kind of tastes like faintly darker milk chocolate. And I like faintly darker milk chocolate! Don’t get me wrong. 55% is my jam, but when it says dark on the packaging, I kind of expect dark chocolate, you know.

So I’m kind of torn. I really like the Brach’s because I personally like a lighter dark chocolate and that orange flavor is nice and strong, but the Terry’s is so much more decadent and fancy with it’s presentation. Terry’s feels more mature, I suppose.

I think my solution is to buy milk chocolate Terry’s and dark chocolate Brach’s.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.