Tag: Cake

Hee hee…I do love a good pun…seriously though, I finished my mystery creation!

*Drum roll*

An octopus hat!

Much like the story behind the aviator hat, Rabbie saw a crocheted octopus hat, and demanded suggested that I should make her one…that was back in March and put on the back burner until now as I couldn’t find anything pattern wise that was remotely doable.

With her birthday coming up, I resolved to just wing a pattern instead. I have to admit, I’m fairly pleased with it! Especially the tentacles!

So cute!

After much debate, I have posted the pattern up as a free pattern! You can find it in the free pattern section, or just click here. Not sure if many people would want to wear an octopus on their head mind you, Rabbie is certainly a one of a kind individual…

Speaking of Rabbie, I’ve just come back from visiting her in Scotland for a birthday bonanza! (More about that on her blog.) In short though, BBQ at other sister’s, murder mystery with this sister, a rather soggy doggy fun day, birthday cake bonanza, Walking With Dinosaurs arena show (so awesome), Kelpies, soft play, trampoline park, back home. That was crammed in between driving up Friday and driving back down Tuesday. No wonder I’m tired!

Oh, another cheer for the Hot Flash Dash on Ravelry:

Knit! Knit! Knit!
The dash will end in a bit!
Purl! Purl! Purl!
You’ve all done really well!

Wool count:

Starting total – 622

Wool used – 57 (1 since last post)
Wool bought – 8
Wool given – 6 (1 as a birthday present!)
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 579 (No change in net total)

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Happy local yarn shop day! And happy free comic book day! I did both, so I have a stack of free comics to peruse and there may have been some wool purchased…but it’s part of a karmic balance I did earlier on!

However, let us first start with the cake part of this post:

Engel is diabetic, so can’t have sugar and we’ve explained this to Felix a few times now, but the other night, after eating all her dinner, she got a post dinner treat, as did Engel and I.

She then clicked that we were all eating the same thing, to which we explained that this was sugar free, therefore daddy could have it too. This led on to explaining about ‘special chocolate’ and ‘special jelly’ etc (in this instance, it was sugar free jelly)

So Felix asked about special cake, to which we had to then explain it was hard to buy as not many companies made it, and fewer shops stocked such items.

After thinking for a bit, Felix asked me if we could make one. So we did. (Not the ‘now’ she demanded which was ten minutes before bed, but one was made at seven the following morning!)

Cake recipe used: sugar free spiced carrot cake

Frosting used: sugar free butter cream icing

I have it on good authority that it was very tasty, Engel is currently hoarding it like a dragon with a stack of treasure…

Alright, on to the tribbles part of the post!

Over the years, I’ve compared my wool stash to tribbles a few times, even made some comics about it:

Just realised that these are over five years old…I don’t draw anymore, but if you want to look at more terrible but amusing doodles of mine they’re on my extinct Deviantart drawing account (I have two, one for knitting and one for drawing)

Anyhow…I joined a stash busting group on Ravelry, joked about my wool/tribbles collection, decided to pattern search tribble (why not) and discovered Tribble by Abigail – 1870pearl. Its a knitted scrubber. Here’s mine:

So seeing as I’m sure my wool stash is actually part tribble, I figured I’d make a tribble out of it and, if it proved useful, I’d make a small hoard.

If it’s a wash out (ha, see what I did there?) Then I’d throw it in the washing machine and Felix can have it for her toy kitchen.

Win-win!

They bred.

So, those wool purchased and karmic wool stash switch I mentioned at the start of the blog?

I had Sisterix over for a play date (her terror is a year older than Felix, so they had a ball, and we had a wooly playdate too, and both the other halves talked computers, so they had fun. Three playdates in all!) I had a good look at her stash a few weeks ago, and a demonstration of her knitting machine, and a look at all her crocheted toys!

I adore her crocheted Vlad the bat! (Pattern is lalylala VLAD the vampire bat by Lydia Tresselt)

So this time, she got to look at my stash and…well, with the size of it, we didn’t get much further than that. After a bit of thought, I pointed her in the direction of my cotton which I barely/rarely use and my good stash karma began!

It made me laugh, her partner kept asking how much swag she was bringing back. First one carrier bag, then another and then I just went and got a giant IKEA bag. I think he may have been a little speechless by the point…

Now after my little trip out today, my karma balance stands at being ten less balls than I started. I gave up 43, and came home with 33. And seeing the deals that were available, I could easily have walked away with three times that…

So, wool count!

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 41 (2 this week!)
Wool bought – 33
Wool given – 49
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 632

I’m never going to get to 600 at this rate…ah well, I’ll console myself by cuddling my new wool purchases!

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Let’s start with that pesky crocodile!

Photographic evidence of him prowling around the farms livestock… Felix has actually been having a ball playing with him as part of her farm, though she now insists that I need to knit some tiny ducks to keep him company in the pond.

Company, eh? More like snacks…

Anyhow, cuteness aside, I just finished another little project:

A pair of ‘magic mittens’ – I’ll get to the story in a moment, details first. The mitten pattern is a free Ravelry download called The World’s Simplest Mittens by tincanknits – and it’s true to its name.  There’s schematics for different sizes of mittens in all different weights, and it’s clear and concise. Definitely a keeper of a pattern. The elephant chart itself is from another free pattern – Elephant Hat – Child Size by Kathleen Taylor.

Story time now. My bosses little one, and Felix’s ‘best friend’ has really bad eczema. And of course, it itches. As a sufferer of eczema myself, I know just how hard it is not to scratch. She’s three. She wakes up looking like she’s been butchered in the mornings from scratching so much.

So, Magic Mittens it is! Lightweight cotton mittens in the colours she picked out with an animal of her choosing on them, and ties that can be double knitted so she won’t be able to pull the blasted things off.

I was made to wear wooly mittens as a child. In summer. These are a much kinder alternative! Fingers crossed they’ll help – if she can stop scratching long enough for her cream to work…

And last but not least: St Gertrude’s Day.

On March 17th, also known as St Patrick’s Day, it happens to be St Gertrude’s Day too. She is the patron saint of cats, gardeners and mental health. When we fostered cats, as we never knew their actual ages let alone dates of birth, it became habit to celebrate all the cats birthday on St Gertrude’s Day. This year, even though we know Dashi’s birthday, we still don’t know Crumble’s (we reckon she’s getting on for eight years old now!) so the tradition continues.

Felix was particularly happy to help celebrate the cats birthday, there was presents and special cat came too – tuna cake with salmon paste ‘frosting’.

I personally think yuck, but Engel happily ate one of the spares and went on the prowl for more. Not that the cats lefts much in the end!

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 25 (1 since last post)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given – 46
Wool gifted – 16

Total – 655 (So close to getting back to that starting total!)

 

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Cthuhlu phtang!

This time last year I posted about how awesome my friends are. How they all donned on cat ears and played Cathuhlu all just for my birthday.

They out did themselves this year, and I have to say, my friends are more than awesome, they’re amazing!

I mean seriously, look at this cake!

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It’s the Necronomicon, as a cake!

It’s not the first amazing cake that particular friend of mine has made for my birthday, two years ago, it was this tentacular beauty!

Tentacle Cake 2~2

In case you haven’t all guessed, I’m obsessed with Cthuhlu. I’ve read all of H. P. Lovecrafts mythos stories, own numerous RPGs (Call of Cathuhlu, Delta Green, The Laundry, as well as numerous source books) I even created my own knitted Cthuhlu pattern!

It also happens to be my literally just now finished project:

Cthuhlu mittens!

This is based on the free Ravelry download Cthulhu Mittens by Lyle Stafford. I changed mine so that I can, let’s say, rather than pet Crumble with mittens:

I could…

Scritch her with my fingers instead!

I sense more mittens in my future as I had a lot of fun with these, but there are other projects to be done first…so many projects, so little time…

In other news, I went to the pop up knitting show in Port Sunlight (as it was pouring with rain, good ol’ British weather!) And accidentally bought myself a very nice little ball of wool that was positively singing to be a shawl. So that is what it shall be.

And that is what will be in my needles next!

Starting total – 697

Wool used – 91
Wool bought – 10
Wool given – 4

Total – 620

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More play food for Felicity, that happens to tie in nicely with the time of year! Its a free Ravelry pattern, ‘Natural Look Halloween Pumpkin‘ by Caroline Lord.k

Also working well for the time of year, some baking that Felix ‘helped’ with.

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Its amazing how much fun a two year has mashing bananas…the recipe itself is a sugar-wheat-dairy free banana and date cake. Though to help the coffin appearance, I used some 70% cocoa chocolate and a few spoonfuls of cream to make a dark frosting. I’d say it went well at he party I took it to, but Engel made it clear it was his and everyone else should eat the sugar filled cake he couldn’t have…

What else have I been making?

Market bags!

Lots of them! Its another free Ravlery pattern, ‘Grrlfriend Market Bag‘ by Laura Spardin.

Rather than wrapping all my christmas presents with paper that would then just be thrown away, I opted to ‘wrap’ presents in market bags! The super colourful one was my prototype (and for Felix to play with) and I learnt one important lesson. Make the strap short, once any weight goes in that bag, its going to stretch.

Felix needs to grow a foot before shes going to be able to get any actual use out of hers!

I made five more afterwards, only got four photographed (and even then in poor lighting) and I may well make more, but thats all I had time for as I was giving them to all my family in Edinburgh when I was up for my mums birthday a fortnight ago.

What else to say? Its all been rather busy! Eh…oh, I’ve had a few queries as to how one accidentally purchases thirty balls of wool. Quite simply when the wool is only sold in packs of ten and I wanted three different colours. What a shame…but hey! Nine balls used since the last post, and not all of them little ones either!

Wool Count down:
Starting total – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 98
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 45

Total – 719

Annoying, despite using nearly 100 balls of wool, I’m only down by about thirty in my collection…

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Yesterday was my birthday. Its generally an occasion I celebrate at home, generally pretty small, and usually with very little fuss. My circle of friends however has grown quite a lot, and not the kind of friends you hang around with cause they work with you or whatever and its convenient, proper friends.

And I take my hat off to them. Best birthday ever.

Really!

I mean, seriously, how many people out there would toss aside their usual inhibitions, put on cat ears and tails and play Cathulhu (yep, Cat-thoo-loo) just because they know its what you kinda really want to do but not really want to make them do cause its just a bit mean?

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(That’s what was left this morning, I made more, but they went home with their new owners! No pattern, just winged.)

They even organised one of the others to GM so I could play (I was polydactyl calico cat with a fair bit of 1920’s streetwise attitude and those thumbs of mine could open doors and windows…it was awesome.)

They also spoiled me rotten (not important, but I was worried they were fed up with my GMing Cthuhlu and seeing the pile of Cthuhlu scenarios I got and expansions, not so worried!) and made me an awesome cake!

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Three layers of super yummy chocolate cake, tons of yummy frosting and 90% cocoa on the outside…gorgeous!

Other thing that made my weekend? I got pounced on by Felix in my bed, she was wielding an amazon box and yelled ‘Happy Birthday Mummy! Present! Can eat monkey cake now?’ Sarah Keens Noahs Ark was the present, but that moment in time? Priceless – the girl takes after her mum most definitely!

Only used one ball of wool as, like I mentioned on the post last week, only little projects! Lots of ears and tails!

Wool Count down:
Starting total (28Feb15) – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 66
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 3

Total – 708

Hope everyone else has had as awesome a few days as I have!

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