Adventures in Photos

Adventure #1: (Nearly) vegan birthday cakes, ironic Christmas presents, and new cake decorating sets.

My friend Charan celebrated her (second) 25th birthday yesterday, so I baked her a cake. I got Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for Christmas (along with Vegan Vittles and, from Mike's grandparents who clearly don't know me very well, The Hamburger Cookbook), and I used the recipe for the basic Vanilla cupcakes, but baked it in my new springform cake pan, and used butter instead of margarine. The frosting is the basic Vanilla Buttercream from the same book, again, with butter instead of margarine. Yummy!

Adventure #2: Swatching! I never swatch. Never. I think it's a waste of yarn and time. I'd much rather be working on the actual project!
However, I'm making Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts and needed to decide whether to do a yellow background or a navy background. I think navy (er, rather, Midnight).

I really like the colors together- I got the Finch when I bought the yarn for the Minimalist, and the Midnight yesterday with a gift certificate Mike got me for Christmas. We both really like the colors together, so I'm trying to think of these as Starry Night and not Hannukah. It's like putting red and green together- you can't help but think of Christmas, even if it's July.

Adventure #3: More Christmas gift certificates!

An enormous, lap sized tome of the complete novels of Jane Austen. I have visions of being curled up in a nice overstuffed easy chair, snuggled in with a blanket, the fire crackling in the background, this book open on my lap, Lizzie Bennett dashing over the moors to Mr. Darcy's estate... but switch out the overstuffed chair for our garage sale recliner and the fire for our electrically-troubled ceiling light. (Our house has been crazily dim this whole winter and I finally went out and got new lightbulbs, to discover that fully HALF of all our lightbulbs have been burnt out!! I replaced them all, and all the sockets that were burnt out seen to have some sort of electrical problem that results in flickering and buzzing when the lights are on. Mike says he has an idea to fix it.)

And, Interweave's Favorite Socks! I'm quite excited for this one, as I love all the projects from it I've seen on Ravelry.

To sum up: Christmas gift certificates are great, because you get to keep getting new stuff for so long! Christmas cameras are also great, because you get to show everything off!

Presents

Look what came in the mail today!

My books from the KnitPicks summer sale, and my yarn for Lelah! It's five balls of Shine Sport in Grass. I love it.

I flipped through The Opinionated Knitter and I love Elizabeth Zimmerman's prose. She writes about knitting in an incredibly captivating way. I can't wait to read the whole thing and attempt one ofher designs.

I've also glanced at the patterns in Fitted Knits- they seem rather repetetive. All top-down raglans, and all the cardigans are practically the same! They're pretty cute, though.

I knit up a (teeny tiny) swatch for Lelah, on the smallest circulars that I have (US 6), and got a gauge of 6 st / inch. It's a rather loose fabric, so I think I'll use the 6es for the lace and go out and get myself a pair of US4 circs for the bodice. I think I saw on Ravelry that's what someone else used for this top when they used sport weight. The pattern calls for worsted, but I want it to be more delicate than that.

I'll probably knit up a swatch in the lace pattern on the 6es, just to make sure that's what I want.