Combo Birthday Cake

When you have two kids born within 2 weeks of each other (albeit 4 years apart) party planning becomes difficult. Add to that the fact that Christmas is right around the corner (and Thanksgiving just behind us) and what you get is a combo party for the family to celebrate. We usually do something different for the kid celebrations, and this year was no exception. SweetGirl got a trip downtown to a fancy restaurant and American Girl Place along with a weekend full of friend fun with our good friends from the South.

In the end we came up with an "American Girl Cafe meets Ratatouille" themed party, which SweetGirl aptly named "Gusteau's American Cafe" (Ratatouille movie fans will understand why).

It was a little difficult trying to figure out how to fit an American Girl theme into a Ratatouille theme, so we went with a Mia character and Remy sitting by a Gluten-free toque.


Mia (who looks like a little Mii character on the Nintendo Wii)


Remy and his toque


The fondant is marshmallow fondant, the figures are all made out of fondant (supported by toothpicks). It was a late night the evening before but well worth it to see the joy on their faces when we brought the cake out!

Another Apron

Another apron, this time as a little side gift for SweetGirl's teacher who enjoys cooking and loves ladybugs.

Apron Goodness

A while ago I purchased an apron that I really liked, save for a few minor quirks that I thought could have been handled differently. Using this apron and looking at it for about a year now, the quirks became really annoying and so I decided to make my own with the modifications I wanted. The result is a very similar style apron, but with a more functional, covering bib portion (the original is tiny, it doesn't protect from many of my kitchen messes). This is also fully reversible, which I am told is a function the other style of apron had (just not the one I ordered).

Here is the finished product (this is the one-day project I mentioned earlier), modeled on my lovely lamp*
One side:


The other side:


I am pleased with the way it turned out, the skirt part is still fun but the top portion provides more coverage to protect clothes better. I made this as a gift for a friend, and am currently making another. Not bad for my first go at making a pattern.

* This lamp has a story. I had gone to IKEA one day, with the intent of buying paper lamps. I picked up J from the train station (SweetGirl had made the trip with me to the store) and we chatted about our days. He asked what kind of lamp I bought, to which I answered DUNNO. He looked at me curiously and asked again what kind of lamp I bought, A DUNNO. This exchange lasted for a few moments, with J getting more and more exasperated - "What do you mean you don't know what kind of lamp you bought? YOU WERE JUST THERE!!" He got so mad at me, he was furiously unpacking the car when he found the lamp box, emblazoned in bold black letters: DUNNO. Silly Swedish marketing names :)

The Little Blue Dress

My first go at trying a pattern from a Japanese sewing book. It was so much easier than a traditional pattern and it turned out pretty well. I eventually made a whole slew of them as holiday gifts for my nieces. My favorite touch are the little puff sleeves - so cute!

The penguins came to party

SweetGirl asked for a penguin-themed party. So... the Penguins came to party!

Vanilla cake, strawberry buttercream, marshmallow fondant covered with white frosting for the "snow". The penguins were made out of sculpy and baked. The trees? Frosting piped onto the candles. The igloo was formed out of rice krispie treat and covered in white fondant.


Most of the penguins were kind and only wished Aiko well.

This one carved a special message on the ice...


This one went fishing to catch a good gift...


One of these penguins brought a present but couldn't get inside the igloo because his hat was too big ;)


and one, well one was up to no good.

The Wildflower Sweater continues...

So many flowers, so little time.

The intarsia is getting easier with time (don't get me started with weaving in the ends) and the chart reading is not too terrible. The book's chart is just about as microscopic as it gets and required a bit of enlarging on the printer, but now it is large enough to read easily and is symmetrical, which means that I can go the wrong way on the chart and not have to get angry and frog. Yay for considerate charting!

I admit that I attempted the Russian Join in an effort to avoid weaving in the ends (which is why I had to frog the first attempt), but it just did not work out for me (it was more trouble setting it up than it was worth). It might be that there were too many spools to start and this yarn is too skinny to attempt it. I imagine that with a thicker yarn and less spools to incorporate it would have gone better. Some other project, perhaps...

The back of the Dougie Dog Sweater... not bad for train work. The cable pattern is really easy, no separate cable needle required! It looks giant. I hope it fits him, I had to scale back the pattern from a 1 YR down to 6-9 months because LittleMan is only 17.5 pounds or so. He is tiny so his sweater needs to be tiny.

The Beginnings of a Sweater, Part Two

The beginning of SweetGirl's Wildflower sweater. I will readily admit that the intarsia is KICKING MY BEHIND. I can't knit it on the train because it is too complex (too many bits of yarn to keep track of) and there are just not enough free hours in a day to keep it going at a good pace at home.

I'm probably sour about this project because I got to just about this point once already and had to frog the whole thing because it just wasn't working (was not getting the hang of the intarsia) but this time around it is going much faster and looking far better. Hopefully it is a sign of good things to come with this sweater.

In other knitting news, I'm almost done with the back of LittleMan's sweater - the cabling is simple and fast (which is why that project is my train project).

Knitting on the train has always been pretty interesting. Before the days of iPods, I used to get really distracted by all of the people on the train and their *sometimes* loudly rude conversations. Other times people figured it was a good time to ask about knitting, and for someone who is easily distracted and frogs a lot, it was just not helpful for someone to start asking about "what you knitting?" or "how long have you been knitting?". Admittedly, it's nice that people take an interest but I'm also a little selfish (since having 2 little ones at home leaves very little time to knit and those hours on the train are a nice stretch of time to accomplish things). Now, I just plop my earbuds in and ignore the rest of the world. It makes me seem antisocial, but really I am trying to maximize my time by catching up on my PotterCast and making a dent in my knitting :)

Speaking of dents. Wildflowers call. I need to turn my attitude around on this sweater because otherwise it is nevah going to get done!

The beginnings of a sweater

The Beginning of LittleMan's Dougie Dog Sweater. The cabling is very simple and much easier than I thought, I've been working on it on the train since SweetGirl's sweater is too complex to attempt on Metra. The intarsia is kicking my rear at the moment. Anyway, this progress on both of the sweaters is good, considering the main project of late has been SweetGirl's Halloween Costume (which deserves a kraft korner post of its own).

The Cobbler's Children

Or in our case, the Knitter's Children. Aside from a super-quick blanket I made for SweetGirl just before her second holiday, my kids do not have a single item of knitted goodness. (I started a LittleMan blanket well before he was born but the project was abandoned and the yarn repurposed for other projects.)

This is the year that changes! I have committed myself to making 2 sweaters for the kids for their holiday pictures (yes, it's October but the Holidays come fast for a knitter pressed for time) and a blanket each for part of their Christmas gift. Not just any sweater knitted on giant needles and thick yarn - sweaters made of fingering weight and sport weight yarn. With Intarsia. And cable. I say I have committed myself but perhaps I need to have myself committed. It's ambitious but it is time the kids actually received a knitted item from their mother, instead of watching knitted things come off the needles and into boxes that travel to other places in the country.

All of this came about because in a fit of weakness (cannot resist a good knitting book. just can't) I purchased Lucinda Guys' Handknits for Kids and found myself face to face with some of the cutest kid items that are sophisticated at the same time. Of course now that I have ordered the yarn for all 4 projects I really am committed to finishing everything. Because otherwise I will have spent a lot of cash to enhance my ever-growing stash (OtherHalf's eyebrows will not shoot off his forehead when this box arrives because he TOLD me to buy the yarn. so HA!)

Keeping in mind though, that kid sweaters are a much faster item to finish than, say, an adult sweater, it should not be an impossible task. I am, however, going to force myself to finish SweetGirl's Halloween costume for this year before the yarn arrives (thank goodness this particular carrier is slow to ship, won't receive yarn until late this week or even early next week) and sew the backing for the last blind to be hung. And now that I have told you all my ambitious plans I will be motivated to entertain you all with photos and updates of the projects (and you can all yell at me randomly: "You are posting and commenting too much. That means you are on the internet and not knitting. Back away from the computer and get back to knitting.")

And you know my sisters are a pair of enablers (this is a good thing) ... I'm still working a sweater from yarn my sister sent me in May and then my other sister sent me deliciously tweedy yarn with JUST ENOUGH yardage for my very own Weasley sweater (literally the exact yardage required by the pattern). I tell OtherHalf that my stash is not entirely my fault. Nor is my pattern book collection (because along with the yarn came a cute pattern book with children's sweater patterns that I now must decide which to make!) But I can't resist yarn! And patterns! And! And! I'm going to have to go work part time at a LYS to curb my addiction (or fund it). Don't get me started about the queue of ladies having babies in the next several months!! If I perhaps gave up sleep I could knit to my hearts content without interruption. Then the Knitter's children would have plenty of handknit items to wear.

Birthday kake

So. After months of drooling over other people's talented creations, I decided to get myself into a Wilton class to learn how to do it. I'm on the very last of the courses (4 total) and will be very happy when it is done. It has been loads of fun and a good learning experience but the amount of time/effort it takes to get ready for each class has been taxing (not to mention all that cake to make!) This weekend I tried out some of those skills on my niece's birthday cake...

Designed around her theme, "Birthday Diva"



The "smash cake" which was covered in fondant
and not as messy as a traditional smash cake.
It was supposed to look like the Birthday Girl's hat.


Because I'm critical of myself, there are things about the cake I wish I could have done better. The fondant creased around the bottom of the cake in parts because I wasn't as patient as I should have been when covering. The fuzz on the hat could have used some more work. The letters from the letter form weren't exactly the same font as the decor but for the most part they turned out ok (aside from some jagged edges).

There are things I liked. The colors worked out well, the leopard print also turned out better than I had thought in my head. I just took the dark pink fondant, rolled it out to double the finished thickness, took little balls of the light fondant and placed it on the pink fondant and rolled out the fondant the rest of the way. Then the shapes were cut out with leaf shapes and pieces were trimmed to make them less uniform.

The cake itself was a vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream frosting.

All in all, a good go at making a full sized birthday cake. Even made the 5p.m. deadline!

Not really exercise

this is probably not the intended use of the machine

Edited to add: That is, for people who do not knit/crochet, a hank of purty yarn that needed to be made into a center-pull ball to knit with. Although, (and this note is for the knitters/crochet folk) I suck at making center-pull balls and wind up just taking the yarn from the outside, thus defeating the purpose of a center pull ball. Anyway. That hank is held by our lovely elliptical machine that I have no energy to use.

Apparently it is time for me to invest in a Swift and Winder to properly take care of these issues.

Or, as Alton says, those things are "unitaskers" and I should stick to multitasking my elliptical machine!!

A Buckeye Vest

Buckeye Battle Cry
In old Ohio there's a team
That's known thru-out the land;
Eleven warriors, brave and bold,
Whose fame will ever stand.
And when the ball goes over,
Our cheers will reach the sky,
Ohio field will hear again
The Buckeye Battle Cry-

Drive! Drive on down the field,
Men of the scarlet and gray;
Don't let them thru that line,
We have to win this game today,
Come on, Ohio!
Smash through to victory.
We cheer you as you go:
Our honor defend
So we'll fight to the end for O-hi-o.

Amazingly enough, I managed to finish the Gigi Vest before his birthday (tomorrow):
Based off of Knitty's Petrol, knit in Plymouth Encore (I know, part acrylic but washability was a must in this project)!


Please excuse the fuzziness, my hand is not as steady as one would hope...

striped sweater

Knitting project for small child, name currently unknown :) for next fall/winter/spring.
Project name: Cleo's colors
Source: The Yarn Girl's Guide to Kid Knits
materials: I chose an acrylic/nylon blend... easy wash and should be nice and light, which is important since I didn't want the SoCal kidlet to get too hot.
notes: although this wasn't the first ever striping attempt, it was more complex than the Harry Potter scarf from last fall. Also, it was the first attempt at picking up stitches to create the button band. Much frogging occurred over that skill.

A FlowerGirl Dress

SweetGirl was a flower girl in my sister's wedding and I whipped up her dress. Dress photos, pre-steaming in Ohio.




I have to admit, this was a feat of many firsts. Shall we list them?
1. gathering
2. putting a zipper in (it still didn't come out perfectly but oh well)
3. working with netting
4. using the roll-edge hem foot on my machine
5. working with chiffon