Call me Martha

Actually, call Sandy and I Martha.



We made this awesome, high maintenace, vertiucally layered, rose cake.

The Cake.





Chilling in the fridge, pre eating.


Icing the roses.




Assembling the layers, high maintenance vertcal layers.




The cakes, mid slicing and layering.


Sandy baked four layers, two chocolate, two yellow and glued them together using simple syrup (no icing) into one tall chocolate cake and one tall yellow cake.

After freezing them to help them stick together we cut them into concentric circles and reassembled the rings of cake into bullseyes.

Then we used more simple syrup/glue and froze them again.

We made buttercream icing and Sandy applied a crumb coat to the cakes. She made me do the roses.

We then force fed it to the regular crew after Sandy fed them lassagna and roasted chicken & vegtables.

Icing the roses was easier than I thought it would be. I'm probably never going to do the vertical layers again, they were so much work, and they fell apart when you tried to cut the cake. Next time I'll do regular layers and ice the roses.

Cat, no hat

With fish!

This is my first completed crochet project. I'm already making another one, and I have plans for a third.

I stitched up her little fish too.

I'm very pleased with myself. My cousin Laura taught me the basics more than a year ago when we were in London. I started two scarf/shawl type patterns, but never completed them.

I saw this pattern in a book (Hello My Name is Amineko) at Borders. The book was on a super sale, and the cat looked basic enough that I could figure it all out. It was a great first project. It's all single crochet, but you learn how to increase, decrease, and change colors. There is one fancy decrease on the mouth that I may not have done 100% correctly, but it looks ok to me.

Feast

This is what happens when I have an extra day at home.

Chopped veggies.

Blanched brussels sprouts.

All the veggies ready to roast.

Roasted.

The turkey breast, it fell over in the oven, still tasted great.

I also made cornbread stuffing and gravy, but they weren't very photogenic.

Peanut!

Two skeins of Peanut, ready to be knit up into something awesome.

A close up shot of peanut.

Peanut ended up becoming about 100 yards of three ply yarn. I had one thicker single and one skinnier single. I plied the skinnier single back onto itself, but it was all overspun and coiled because I hadn't put enough twist in when I was plying. The thicker single was also coiling up on itself. So I plied the two ply with the single, and voila, it all ended up a pretty calm balanced three ply. Not exactly what I had planned, but it should work out just fine.

New Favorite Yarn

I ordered this blue green yarn from an online shop.  It is super soft, very cushy.  I made everyone pet it.  

I think I'm going to use it for a gift though, so I hunted online and in real life for more.  

I bought this at Jo-Ann Fabrics, and I'm going to order some in a pale pink from e-bay.  Yum.  

Cable Baby Blanket

The blanket for Melissa's baby.  

It's a boy, and her wallpaper has a really cute fish design on the chair rail portion.  So I figured that blue and white would be good, with a little cable detailing.  

This is the blanket, blocked out on our futon.

The corner (while blocked).    

The center of the blanket.  

All folded, ready to gift.  

Dirty Sheep!

More Peanut!  I've been spinning up the second batch of washed wool.  You can see that it isn't quite as washed as the first batch.  The new batch is to the right, the first batch is under it, to the left.  It's not too different, enough that I feel like a slacker though.  I'm pretty sure that the rest of the dirt will come out when I wash the finished yarn.  We will see I guess.  

You should see the floor under my wheel!  I pull out the little burs, plant stems, and short bits of wool as I go.  It gets pretty bad by my feel.  I need to sweep.  

Peanut Gets a Bath

I've run out of clean Peanut, time to wash another batch.  I never took pictures of the process last time, so here goes.  

Very dirty wool, full of hay and poop.

I put on my "poop gloves," a pair of yellow dish washing gloves, now dedicated solely to wool cleaning.  Then I pulled hay and debris out of enough wool to fill a turkey roasting pan that is also dedicated to wool cleaning.

You can see the dirty wool in the pan, contrasted with the clean spun wool on the bobbin.    

This is the wool in it's second bath (already a whole lot cleaner) next to the gross water from the first bath.  

And the third bath, next to the second bath water.  

The fourth, and probably final, bath.  You can see my poop gloves as well.  Peanut is now much much cleaner.  I'll let her soak for a bit more, then I'll take her out and let her dry on a towel before starting to spin her up into more singles.  

    

Playing With My Wheel

I finished spinning the ball of brown roving I was working on.  I have another ball partly spun up on a drop spindle, and a ball of pink/purple to go with it.  

Then I started in on Peanut.  This photo is  a little deceiving because I transferred what was on the drop spindle to the bobbin and continued spinning.  But I did get a fair amount done tonight.  I'm almost out of cleaned Peanut.

Even More Bear!

They just dont stop!


Melissa's bear, with team spirit.

More Bear!

Another guy for a coworker. No name yet.
Photo taken with my iPhone instead of a real camera.

Japanese Short Rows

Sunday afternoon with Sussana Hansson.

Probably the best samples I've ever seen.  Super clear, well mounted, examples of what she was talking about.  Awesome handouts as well.  

This technique isn't necessarily easier than a wrapped short row, but it looks much nicer in the end, no little lumpy bit where you wrapped the stitch.  

Ethnic Textured Stitches

Friday, all day, with Joan Schrouder.  We learned about Scandinavian Twined knitting, Bavarian Traveling Stitch patterns, and making bobbles.  I don't really like bobbles.  

Details of Large Swatch:

My twined knitting.  You knit with two strands of the same yarn, alternating stitches.  Creates a very smooshy fabric.  

The Bavarian Cable I knit up.  They cable a twisted knit stitch for a raised more defined pattern.  

Another Bear - Francis

Just finished another bear, two more to go!  

The Pink Bears

I knit up a little bear from a pattern that I found online, back in March. There was a lot that I didn't like about the completed bear, so I wrote a new pattern. A friend ordered one, and wanted it to be pale pink. Lion Brand doesn't make the yarn I'd been using in pale pink, so I bought a bunch of white and dyed it. Unfortunately I didn't dye enough. I had knit everything but one leg when I ran out of yarn. I ripped out the leg, arms and body, and reknit them on smaller needles. When I got an order for a second pink bear I bought and dyed an extra skein. I completed pink bear number two with yarn to spare.