It’s all about the cakes

When it comes to hobbies if knitting is my first love then baking is my second. I have recently been thinking about setting up a new blog solely devoted to baking, but then I thought that the perfect accompaniment to your knitting has to be cake! So from now on my knitting posts will be interspersed with cakey bakey ones too.

It was my sons 3rd birthday yesterday, I always make my boys birthday cakes myself (except for  the one year when the oven went bang!) I dont have anything against shop bought cakes, they often look brilliant, but, and this is a big but, the more ornate/fancy/decorated the cake is the less tasty it is. My sons hedgehog cake could never be called handsome but it sure is tasty, rich chocolate cake with chic fudge filling and covered in chocolate ganache. In my opinion a tasty cake gazumps a pretty one every day!

Summer Knitting

Small children and knitting are not always a great mix, I have a 2 year old who finds all balls of yarn unbelievably fascinating, he has a tendency to wander off with them and hide them in his truck, this is not a good thing when they are attached to my knitting! So with 2 demanding boys my summer knitting has somewhat dwindled this year.

 

But knitting thing for small children is great, the picture on the left is my Alpinia pattern that I have resized, this is the tiniest at 0-3 months, but am working on sizes up to 10 years.

There is so many great things about knitting for babies and children; they are uncomplaining models, the item knits up quickly and you can make something with a small amount of yarn. This tiny cardigan used just under 50g of DK yarn, making it an inexpensive, but very pretty gift.

I am going to be concentrating on patterns for small items over the next month or so, things that are perfect for quick gifts. As well as this cardigan, I have patterns that just need writing up for a baby hat and mittens set, a baby socks and hat set, an adult cowl and another hat in a wide variety of sizes.

Now all I need is some quiet time to get all of these patterns written up! Venation shawl and Alpinia Cardigan patterns will be available really soon too, it’s bank holiday weekend here in the UK this coming weekend, so hopefully I may find some time to get on with pattern writing.