I-Matey Dog Coat

I finished the I-Matey Dog Coat. This is so cute. It's perfect for my little "Bad Girl".

I made two changes to what the pattern called for.

First, I used acrylic yarn. I refuse to use good yarn on a dog that's going to go out and roll in poop and GA red clay. Acrylic is so much more washer and dryer friendly.

Second, I used two size 6 circs. instead of the dpns called for. I seem to be allergic to the use of double pointed needles. yuck!

Aargh Matey!

Tough Girl!

Coolest Tin Evar!

I escaped from the mad house this evening. It was time to get away. Too much time around the testosterone poisoned house (one hubby, two boys) is never a good thing for a chic. I took off for JoAnn's and threatened to stay there til closing time. It was that or pack a bag full of books, yarn and needles and move to Tahiti. Actually, that doesn't sound so bad. hmmmm......

Anyway, while I was there I came across this little tin of green apple mints. I fell in love and had to have it. How cute! And it can hold my stitch markers when the all the tiny little mints are gone!

Coolest. Tin. Evar.

So now that I'm back in the testosterone filled atmosphere I am cozying up to a new drink that I created. Sprite, Triple Sec, Absolute Peach. It tastes like summer. Yum! Have no clue as to proportions. At the time this new drink was concocted all I wanted to do was pour. Measurements are for the birds.

Intarsia Central

There's only 6 days left of the Contest. If you haven't left your resolution yet, better hurry!


Being the complete idiot with crafty projects that I am, last night I decided to take on another project that I had no idea how to do. Intarsia. You'd think that I would be happy with the few things that I know how to do with knitting and would combine them and make something wonderful and quick. Well. I don't do things the easy way and let's just leave it at that.

Usually when I tackle something new, I become the master researcher. I learn all sorts of things that I never wanted to know about each project that I do. I learn to ad nauseum. But! I didn't do that this time. I had a pattern, I had yarn, I could do this.

Heh. Heh.

I just about pulled my hair out last night. Truly. I was wading in the deep end without a paddle. I read and re-read the pattern and then re-read it again. It didn't take long, it's a short pattern.

I got up and went to the computer to verify what I thought they were asking me to do. I was right. Yeah! So, I began. and stopped. verified at the computer. began again. Every row that I did was done in this fashion. It was incredibly tedious. I gave up and went to bed.

This morning, I logged into Knitty and did more research and then googled some more. By mid-afternoon I was ready to tackle it again. And this time the project started to really move.

It's not all completely intarsia. I did a little bit of stranding in the middle of the intarsia pattern. I just didn't feel like that part of the pattern warranted me started yet another freakin' strand of color there. Other than that, I think I've figured it out.

I can honestly say that I don't hate intarsia. It's okay, but I probably won't be doing tons of these projects in the future.

I am proud of myself somewhat. One of my knitting plans (I refuse to say resolutions) was to work with more than one color of yarn this year. I've tackled all sorts of things in the past year: lace, people sweaters, dog sweaters, socks, stoles, shawls, etc. But it's all been with one color/colorway of yarn. I can now say I've done it.

The project will take another couple of days, but here's the current state of the knit (from the back) all laid out on the table next to my cup of mint tea next to my big comfy chair where I like to sit while I knit:

Lot's of pink and black!

I'll see you tomorrow. I'm gonna go dive back in now.

Roxie's Impersonation

Roxie's Impersonation of a Drowned Rat:

Where's all the cute fluff?

Roxie says "I am not amused."

Larry Boy Cake

Thank you to everyone who has commented so far in the contest! I haven't been able to reply to everyone yet, but I will. Read on and you'll see why:

We're still recovering from the crud that we picked up at Christmas. The kids didn't have near the trouble with it that the hubby and I did. We've been walking dead for several days now. I started perking up just in time to panic about the Youngest's Birthday party. I'm still coughing my head off, but other than that, I feel fine. Hubby's voice is much more deep than usual. He lost his voice one night and it was so funny. I've never seen him do that before. Anyway.

Friday afternoon I decided to make the Youngest a birthday cake. He's really into Larry Boy from Veggie Tales so I figured that would be perfect. I really did not want to work with icing bags or tips. Nor did I want to just smooth icing onto it. I decided that the best thing would be to make a fondant cake. The only problem? I had never worked with fondant before.

Well, God bless the internet. I'm just sayin'.

Using this site and this picture of a cake that someone else did with fondant, I began. The recipe was super simple and tastes fairly good for fondant. I will definitely be using this again. All you need is a lot of powdered sugar and mini marshmallows. Sounds yucky huh? and sticky.

This was so much fun. I felt like I was playing with modeling clay. The hardest part was creating the fondant and adding the color to it. My kitchen aid mixer is mega tough though and handled the job nicely. I didn't have tons of time to spend kneading everything in. The birthday party was going to be on Saturday.

I wish I had taken some step by step pics. But since I was learning something new and didn't have much time, the camera had to stay on the shelf where it's kept.

To get the Larry Boy shape, I baked a 9 x 13 sheet cake and let it cool on Thursday. Then on Friday afternoon, I trimmed off all four corners to make a rocket/cucumber shape. The extra was used to make the nose and the crest for his helmet. I used licorice for the belt. Fondant was used for everything else. A pizza cutter works great for trimming the fondant. I also used the lids from some of my spices to get the right circular shapes too. The plunger ears were made from cutting a piece of shortcake in two and coating them with red fondant icing.

Make sure you use some buttercream frosting on your cake before you put the fondant on it. It acts like glue and holds the fondant on the cake. I had to use extra for the licorice. It really didn't want to stay where I put it.

Here's how it turned out. Please forgive my camera, it likes to make all dark purple turn to blue and I haven't figured out how to correct it yet.

Meet Larry Boy

See the Youngest's Reaction? I did good.