Poppy Cakes

A week or so after Poppy was born, I had a couple of peeps over my place for tea and cupcakes. Poppy was conceived on the same day that my folks planted their first crop of carrots so I decided to make carrot poppyseed cupcakes in her honour.

I took the recipe from Maxine Clark's wonderful book, Comfort Food. Her recipe for carrot cake is the best I've ever come across, full of carrots, poppy seeds and pineapple. Just writing about it makes me want to cook up a batch.

The poppy's I improvised as I went along. I rolled out marzipan, cut out poppy shapes and painted them in three coats of red food colouring. Then I painted them with red icing and topped them off with some liquorice. The leaves were made in the same way but with green food colouring.

21 March 2009 - Poppy is Born

Clo's bubby was born on 21 March 2009, brave Clo delivered Poppy on gas and air only. Isn't she beautiful....and in the Debbie Bliss Cardi I knit for her, it's a little big now but with sheer quantity of milk she demands she'll grow into it pretty soon.

Baby Boom - Dr Zeuss Cot Blanket

I finished this in December 08 and I can only just bring myself to look at it now. Me and my sis Clo used to love the Dr. Zeuss books and at age 9 (or thereabouts), Clo reproduced the front cover of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, which Ma framed and hung pride of place in the dining room.

So when Clo announced that she was "with sprog", I thought I'd knit up a Dr Zeuss cot blanket. Designing it was the fun bit, I love graph paper and coloured pencils. But knitting it!!! Oh the pain!!! Apart from the fact that I'd never attempted intarsia before (check out all the scruffy outlines) I used 2mm circs and somehow managed to create a mobius twist so I had to steak the darn thing a quarter of the way through.

Then we come to the choice of yarn. I decided to buy online and couldn't for love nor money find a decent yellow. Why is yellow yarn so difficult to find? I ended up buying cones of machine knitting cotton. I hand knit with MACHINE KNITTING COTTON, I must be crazy, it was so thin I found it near impossible to get a good tension.

It took near enough two solid months to complete, I backed it with a cute blue and white polka dot fabric and gifted it to Clo for Christmas.

I quite like it now five months later, but never ever ever again.

Baby Boom - Sharky The Cat

Taken from one of those Bazaar knitting booklets. Naff City!!!

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not cut out for knitting toys, apart from the fact that I found the knitting really tiresome the bloomin' thing looks rather dopey.

Named after a childhood pet, meet Sharky the floppy moggy.

...and the original from the Bazaar booklet.

Baby Boom - Debbie Bliss Booties

These were so quick to make and so cute. I'm a bit Debbie Bliss'd out now...

Help! - The Lost Pattern

!!!WANTED!!!

I desperately need the pattern to knit this alien. It's my boyfriend's childhood "teddy" and my sister has demanded one for her bubby. Please help!

One Skein - The Shibori Experiment

It's frustrating that I can't knit up some of the beautiful patterns that I'm lusting after, but I can't give up one week into the stash challenge. Anyway, choosing a pattern for the yarn rather than the yarn for the pattern requires a completely different mindset that is pushing me to be more creative.

I had a beautiful skein of black 100% alpaca but no idea what to do with it, so I googled for a bit and then decided to get on the shibori bandwagon. Cue a day of stocking stitch with my trusty 4's. Yawn. But I kept going because I knew the fun bit was to come.

I couldn't cast off quickly enough! I don't have enough control with my washing machine as there is no way of prising open the door mid-cycle (it doesn't stop the bl**dy thing leaking though), so after I shaped the material with five and two pence pieces secured with elastic bands, I immersed the lot in a vat of boiling water.

The water quickly turned pee-pee yellow and although I have never encountered an alpaca, after a couple of minutes on the stove I had a pretty good idea how one smells.

Three minutes in, I checked how the felting process was getting on. It wasn't.

10 minutes later I checked again, and swooshed my scarf round the pan for good measure.

After 30 minutes I gave up. It hadn't worked.

I achieved the below effect with a hairdryer and my boyfriend's hairspray. I'll never be able to get it wet ...therefore I'll probably never be able to wear it out ...therefore it's a totally unpractical scarf.

Lesson learnt: Knit a sample before you commit to knitting a garment up for felting. Thank heavens it was only a scarf.

As an afterthought. My fellow likes the smell of soggy alpaca.