Month: September 2014

Crayon Holder!

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You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to make one of these things. It’s just never seemed very practical seeing as most packs of crayons have at least 16 and that is a lot of little slots and a long roll to lug around. But these are dry erase crayons that only come in eight colors, making it actually practical and necessary.

I even included space for the cleaning cloth and the crayon sharpener. Much neater than the plastic bag everything was just thrown in before. Plus, I labeled it so it won’t get confused with all the non-existent crayon holders.

(Sorry for the blurriness. I could’ve sworn that was in focus when I took the picture.)

I used some of the leftover fabric from the bicycle I refurbished a few weeks ago, some elastic, and some buttons I had taken off a pair of shorts that had to be retired to the trash can when they ripped to pieces. The words are just written in my trusty chalkboard markers, with a few layers to make it actually stand out.

Impromptu, Uneccessary Gloves

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I picked up a lovely (now discontinued) skein of Chroma in Buttermint with my last Knitpicks order and was looking for something to make. Then I found these puff stitch gloves.

They call for an 8-ply yarn, but Chroma just so happened to be a 4-ply yarn. For the math-challenged, that means I could hold the yarn doubled to make it exactly the right weight. The pattern also includes the puff-stitch, which was a new-to-me stitch, so it made it a learning opportunity as well.

The Chroma yarn is really soft and fluffy, which made it nice to work with. It also bloomed nicely when I blocked it so the gloves themselves are extra soft.

They are really comfy, except not exactly wearable. Don’t get me wrong, I will probably be wearing them all fall long. But it is nowhere near fall temperatures here. That’s right, I just made a pair of fuzzy, wool gloves right before an over-100° heat wave. It’s so hot they had baseball practice with water balloons on Saturday and cancelled soccer practice today to keep the kids from melting in the park. So these will stay in my drawer for a bit longer before they actually get used.

You can find slightly more technical details on these on their Ravelry project page.

Icing The Trash Truck (Birthday Cake Semi-Tutorial): Part 2

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So yesterday we baked a cake. Now it’s time to frost and decorate.

We have two sheet cakes that were left to cool all afternoon, now we have to truck-ify them. Yes, that’s a word. A word I just made up. Anyway, starting with one cake, cut the corners off one short side and the top of the other. Cut the other cake in half and place it next to the first cake. Now take a circular cookie cutter that seems like a good size for the wheels and cut two wheel wells into the body of the truck and one into the front. Then cut three wheels from the remaining half-cake and put them into place. Also, cut the front at a slight angle to create the windshield.

Now is time to make the frosting to hold this thing together.

Again, gather your ingredients. Then, start by measuring out your powdered sugar, your shortening, and add another 1/4 cup of sugar because you accidentally used a 1/4 cup rather than the 1/3 cup measure you meant to grab. Here’s where I changed it up again, I used 1 teaspoon of strawberry extract rather than the vanilla called for in the recipe. Like the recipe says, this looks nothing like icing at the beginning, but let the mixer run and it will soon smooth out.

Now you can mix in colors and “glue” all the pieces together with it. You want to thin it out and make a crumbcoat first. That has to sit overnight at least. Then you will also thin out the icing you use as your base color.

Make more icing, using the original vanilla flavor this time, to use for decorating. I used the “grass” tip to add texture to the wheels, a flat tip to fill larger spaces, and a number 2 tip for piping lines. Here’s the end result:

The icing sweat because it had been kept in the refrigerator overnight, but other than that it turned out perfectly. It’s still really delicious, and it is now nearing a week old.