The felted cupcake is a hit! It's making the rounds of the office. When someone does something good (no matter how big or small) the current cupcake holder passes the cupcake on to the good-doer.

I love Leslie's line drawing of the cupcake. It looks better than my felted one!

Last week at work, Leslie held a brown bag about game design. At the end of the session, we had to come up with a game for the office. Some folks came up with this game about passing a cupcake. We all agreed that implementing the game would be great. But acquiring a constant supply of fresh cupcakes might prove a bit problematic. Enter the crafter.

I stopped at Michael's this weekend and picked up a bunch of different colored felt. I found a couple of patterns for felted cupcakes online, so I had a sense of what to do. No offense to all the great crafters out there, but I just couldn't bring myself to pay $8.00 for a cupcake pattern. So I winged it.

I originally thought that I'd have pink icing with colored beads as sprinkles. But when it put it all together, it looked really dorky. So I took off the sprinkles and made a little strawberry (with the help of Lit'l Brown Bird's strawberry pattern).

I love the French knots as seeds! So clever. I'm about 65% happy with how it turned out. But folks at work are loving it. Which is what is most important.

Project: Strawberry Cupcake
Started: May 31, 2010
Finished: May 31, 2010

Please re-post to boost the signal.

They had a fire this morning that destroyed most of their facility and killed several animals. They need donations, volunteers to help with clean-up, and people to temporarily foster pets.

http://www.berkeleyhumane.org/

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15125303?nclick_check=1

I am having the greatest fun working on this sweater. I started it right after the wedding and I just started the sleeves this weekend.

The color doesn't come out quite right on the iPhone. It's a deep mauvy-purplish-red. Just lovely.

Here's the back. The series of increases and decreases makes the point at the back automatically. I just love that little touch.

The cables on the front and sleeves have given me only a bit of trouble. It's not that it's difficult, it's that you have to pay attention. And since I usually knit while watching TV or a movie, well, you know how it goes.

But just look at that cable! I love the little pockets between the cables. It's the perfect size for fingers and feels so fun. Yes, I pet my yarn and knitting. Doesn't everyone?

Susie Hoodie:
Started: August 13, 2009
Finished:

It turns out that the island in the middle of our kitchen is the perfect cutting station. My big cutting mat fits perfectly upon it. And it's the correct height so my back doesn't hurt too much after hours of cutting. Because I can't just craft in reasonable spurts. I do marathon crafting for hours on end. Cause I'm silly that way.

I've started working on a quilt that I originally started about 8 years ago. I'm not kidding. It was the second quilt that I decided to make and I picked out a bunch of the fabric with my mom while on a trip to CT. This was in the days before they charged you an arm and a leg for overweight baggage.

Cutting the fabric is my least favorite part of quilt making. I think it's because I'm not very good at it. I'm just starting to get the hang of actually getting the pieces to be the correct size. But making sure that the grain of the fabric is going in the right direction? That's still way beyond me. I know it will reflect in the quality of my quilts, but oh well. Apparently I can only work on one cutting skill at a time.

I spent a lot of time squaring up pieces that I had cut 8 years ago. There are 2 setting triangles that I will have problems with since they are off about 1/4 of an inch. But all the rest seem good. And I have way more fabric left for the stash than I thought I would. Yay stash!

Since I was in the kitchen, I grabbed a mixing bowl to collect the odds and ends of fabric as I cut. What a great idea! So much nicer than getting bits of fabric caught up in what you are working with, which is what I usually do. I love the way the bowl looks all filled up with fabric. Like I'm baking a quilt.

I can't wait for my sewing machine to get back from the shop so I can start with the piecing!

Egads it's been a long time since I posted here. I'm slowly, finally getting back into the swing of post-wedding life. Crafting has taken a backseat lately, as I'm trying to get used to being at work again.

There are a number of projects that are almost done. I have two more bridesmaids scarves to finish knitting and a baby sweater that is almost done (I gave IOUs to all three recipients).

Today I made a nectarine golden cake, which looked more like a tart than a cake, to take to our visit to E's Great Uncle Joe.

The nectarines were very ripe, so the cake was very sweet. It was quite good, though would have benefited from a dollop of whipped cream. We have a few more nectarines left and a number of peaches. I might try making a peach cobbler next.

Much of my crafting time lately has gone towards wedding preparations. There's a lot of stuff that we have decided to do ourselves. Not because it's cheaper necessarily, but because we are overly ambitious and like making crap.

We decided fairly early on that we wanted to give favors, and we wanted them to be local to San Francisco, and ideally chocolate. Then came the ideas for what to put said chocolates in. Originally we were going to fold fabric into origami boxes, but that quickly was ruled out to the amount of work. We're still going with the origami box idea, but now we are doing them in paper.

Finding the right paper has turned out to be a lot more difficult than originally thought. We've spent a lot of time at Flax, going through their paper books. We tried all different sizes to figure out how much and how many.

We finally ended up going with a paper we found online at PaperMojo. One of the things we loved about them is that they will cut the paper for us. We still have to cut the 336 pieces for the little liner boxes, but that's better than having to do all the cutting. We also have to find a ribbon that we like to make the bow on the box.

Now the fun starts: the folding! I have a feeling we are going to become experts in peak folds.

Last night I finished Super Sekreit Wedding Project #1. I'm so tickled about I couldn't wait to post about it.

I started on Super Sekreit Wedding Project #2 last night as well. This yarn is the yarn I tried with the previous pattern that I realized wasn't working. So the yarn is a bit used. It feels a bit different than with #1, but I think it looks okay knitted up.

Super Sekrit Wedding Project #1
Started: January 24, 2009
Finished: June 5, 2009

You'll never guess what I did this weekend -- KNIT!

It was so lovely. The house is finally unpacked and put together so we can just live in it, rather than be always working on it. So very nice.

I made lots of progress on Super Sekrit Wedding Project #1. Over 2/3 of the way done now. Sadly I can't really show it to you all until after August 8. I have 3 more Super Sekrit Wedding Projects to do too. So as soon as I finish this one I get to jump right into the next one. It's all good. I finally have the pattern down pat. And the yarn is so lovely to hold.

I did go and buy yarn to make the sweater that's in the photo here. It's the Susie Hoodie from the More Big Girl Knits book.

I'm finding that I really want a jacket that I can wear that isn't as heavy as my red wool coat, but is more dressy than a hoodie or the parka shell. I think this will fit the bill.

I don't get to start working on it until I've finished all the Super Sekrit Projects though. It's so hard though. I have 19 skeins of Knit Pick's Wool of the Andes in black cherry that keep calling to me from the craft room.

I'm a bit intimidated by a project this big. But the majority of the pattern is stockinette, so that should go quick, right? I read through the pattern yesterday and I'm a bit confused as to how the sleeves get attached. It seems there is little in the way of seaming. I'm sure it will make sense once I have part of it in front of me for reference.

The Craftzine Blog has been on a roll lately. They have another great link today.

The Haptic Lab makes handmade quilts of maps. They do ones for Brooklyn or you can commission one of your favorite location.

I love the puckering that the stitches makes. I'm sure it feels amazing under the fingers, especially since they make them in dupioni silk. My brain is churning on the best way to get the map transferred to the fabric. There's so much fun that you could have with this. Green thread around parks. Blue around blocks with libraries and schools. Though the single color does add a certain something to the overall effect.

I'll have to add this to the pile of inspiring ideas.