My Summer Caking

This summer I spent much of my evenings and weekends looking for the St Louis 250 Birthday Cakes.  I traveled long and far to collect photographs of these crazy cakes.  It became this quest which required a list, google maps, instagram, and gas.  Good thing I drive a Prius. 

 

What started as just taking a few photographs of the cakes close to my house became an obsession which drove some of my friends on facebook crazy.  In the process I re-discovered my city, found parks I never knew existed, and drove to the ends of the St Louis metropolitan area and then some.  I found 252 cakes and even made a silly little video.  I enjoyed myself and regret nothing.

The Venice Café Cake is my favorite.

The Daniel Boone House Cake is one of the prettiest designs.

 

 

 

The Aerie's Winery Cake has the best view.

 

 

The Malcolm Martin Cake is the most surprising location with its geyser and pristine park.

 

One of my favorite details is the Elephant on the Eads Bridge Cake.

 

 

And my favorite photograph at the St Charles Heritage Site is the one with my dear friend, Kim, who inspired me to start cake hunting.

 

 

My summer was full of cakes, and in the end finding them made me happy and I regret nothing.

Color Block Blanket and the Tribe Grows

A member of my knitting tribe is getting ready to adopt a beautiful, little girl, and we all got very excited about a wee one being added to our community.  With some guidance from one of her nearest and dearest a Color Block Blanket by BacoKnitter to match new momma's nursery was decided on.  Several of us joined the group popping out squares for the blanket.  I knitted 3 basket weave squares in magenta for the project.  Unfortunately, I was out of town for the seaming party. Truly wanted the experience of seaming with my tribe, but hopefully will be available for next group seaming.  I enjoyed the whole project, the covert knitting, the secretive emails, and the fun of being part of something so joyous.  To my tribe I say I love you guys.  To the new mom and dad I say much, much happiness. To see a photo of the project go here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/starmonkeybrass/8007495807/in/photostream) I am not smart enough to figure out how to steal the image for my blog.

To myself I said, hey this pattern would be perfect for all that Muench Big Baby I have been hoarding for the last few years.  Granted this was the middle of summer with temperatures in the low 100s and knitting a blanket is a bit on the mad side of things to do.  However, I was inspired by my tribe and told myself I would just work on the green basket weave squares.  I could do just one ball at a time and a 10X10 square that is not so bad, right?  Right.

Well after tearing through 10 of those in about 2 weeks, I thought well why don't I just work on some of the other colors too.  I mean I can just stop at any time and do something else.  It is not like I am going to finish this thing during a heatwave or something.  But then after another 2 weeks I had finished all the squares and I kind of wanted to see how the blocks would look together.  I thought if I sew a few of these together, I can preview the product to come.

Obsession is never pretty and in this case it was hot and ugly, but in a week I had all the blocks seamed together.  Once to this point I thought I wanted a crochet border.  Problem was I needed a jump start on the border.  I have used this border before, but I wanted some guidance on starting the crochet.  You see I only use crochet when I have to.  Not that I don't like crochet, but I really only know how to do a basic stitch.   My friend Robin, another member of my knit tribe, kick started me and the border was growing, as in seven rows of border for the blanket.

Madness, I know, but by now I realized I might as well weave in the ends and call it done, and so I did.   I even managed to make a little pillow with the scraps from the yarn.  Timing is everything and working on a heavy microfiber blanket in summer is not a suggested project, but come winter me, the blanket, and the pillow will be enjoying each others company on many late nights.