Rainbow Cake At a Family Picnic

The husband's brother, his daughter and grandson came for a visit. Granny hosted a family party.  You can tell from the pictures that the kids had their pictures taken several times over and had good times.

It was just the right occasion to have a rainbow cake that Cakity on Blogger first featured.

This is her colorful cake:

  Using two white cake mixes, four round pans, three cans of prepared white frosting and food dyes in four colors along with one tsp. vinegar for each dye batch, I came up with this cake, sprinkles courtesy of Michael's.  

The kids liked it.

Breast Cancer Update on Julie

Just an update on Julie to say she will have three tumors removed from her left breast next week.

After several months chemotherapy, the tumors have shrunk enough to facilitate their removal. The largest is one inch, and the smallest is 1/6 of an inch.  A mastectomy is not a viable option for her due to complications from VA shunt tubing that goes to her heart

Then following surgery, Julie will go back on chemotherapy for an undetermined length of time.

She and her husband face many trials, with cancer being the most recent hurdle to wheel through.

From a fellow blogger comes this motivational sign.

  (If you go to her website, you can download the slogan in various formats.)

For sure, Julie and Jack are examples for accomplishing hard things.

Your prayers for her well being are appreciated.

Stained Glass Blanket

Crocheting hexagons from left over sock yarn has become my new comfort needle art project.  No need to think, just watching the magic come out of my crochet hook, almost like "creating lace in the air", like my SIL Charlotte once said.  These are the hexagons I've made thus far:

After a gadzillion of these are made, they will all be put together in one color jewel toned yarn that will hold all the little hexagons together from an independent yarn dyer (maybe from Sweet Clement on Etsy).  I'm thinking of getting this color BFL yarn:

Another blogger friend, Kepanie, showed her blanket on her blog, found here.  She always has beautiful photography, so please visit her site and tell her I sent you!  Here are Kepanie's hexagons:

An here are a few hexagons made by pennywenny:

If you like video podcast about knitting, don't miss Sheila and Wendy's Knit1HeartToo show.

There are many patterns where crocheted hexagons are detailed.  If you click on the "R project button" below, it will take you to Jessie's pattern.

From Crochetaboutdotcom, here is an easy way to crochet a hexagon:

Starting Chain: Chain 6. Join with a slip stitch in the first chain, to form a ring. 

Rnd 1: ch 3 (counts as first dc), 2 dc in ring, (ch 3, 3 dc in ring) 5 times, ch 3, sl st in top of beginning ch-3 of this round. 

Rnd 2: sl st in ea of next 2 dc, sl st in ch-3 sp, ch 3 (counts as first dc), (dc, ch 1, 2 dc) in same ch-3 sp, * ch 2, skip next 3 dc, (2 dc, ch 1, 2 dc) in next ch-3 sp **, repeat the directions between * and ** 4 more times, then ch 2, skip next 3 dc, sl st in beginning ch-3 of this rnd. End off. Weave in ends.

Aspen Leaves Turn Gold in Colorado

Our Sunday afternoon in the nearby Colorado high country is displayed via YouTube.  Weather in the national park yesterday was in the low 60F temperatures, the sun was bright, the foliage brilliant in yellows, golds and rusts.  Just a few blue-grey thunderclouds foretold that rain was on the horizon.  (I hope you will enjoy the scenery and music as much as I did while producing this short video.)

Found on Facebook Today

I laughed.

and a baby porcupine:

A Knit Along with Podcaster Paula

One of my favorite podcasters, Paula, who hosts the Knitting Pipeline, is starting a knit a long (KAL) today.  I'm in.  Here is the Shaelyn pattern that several dozens (?) of us will be knitting simultaneously:

And here are two yarns I will be using; the main color is a madelintosh pashima in the colorway of "Manor" and the variegated color is from Farmhouse Yarns in a sock weight called "Grapes on the Vine".

The darker color will be used on the lace panels, while the "Grapes on the Vine" will be the solid stripes.  With a KAL, there will be lots of people to help if any of us get pestered by the pattern details.

If this sounds fun, join us here and enjoy some bagpiper music, too.

PS: 907 people on Ravelry have knit this pattern with gorgeous results.  You can view most of them here.

Leafprints Shawlette

After two weeks on the needles (small, very, very small..size 3 circular needles), the pretty blue Leafprints Shawlette by Anne Hanson is completed.  YEA!  (Note to self: purchased here)

The picture above shows the shawl after completing Chart A, and ready to begin Chart B.

The edging (shown above) was clever in its execution.  There was a bind off of two stitches every fourth row.

Its picture was taken this morning after being washed and blocked yesterday.  Here is the link for Soak, a product for bathing woolen objects.  It could have been further stretched since its scallops look like more of a wave than a tip.

Another note to self: ensure that at LEAST 400 yd of fiber is on hand to make this shawl.  I will make this again.

This is the Leafprints Shawlette shown on Patternfish ... that lucky mannequin.

Pink Saturday

Beverly hosts Pink Saturday.  If you go here, you can see lots of pinks from bloggers who participate.

Here is my contribution, a double pink hollyhock:

Now that fall is here, the hollyhocks are a little worse for wear.  Those dang leaf hoppers have been getting to the leaves.  Believe it or not, just two days ago I found a leaf hopper and took his picture before he flew off to the cottonwood tree, never to be seen again.  This is his 15 minutes of fame:

Iced Sweater

Here is the very chunky, heavy sweater just finished from the sweater design named ICED by Carol Feller.  The pattern is free and can be found here.

It took 8 skeins of chunky weight Lamb's Pride wool (85% wool, 15% mohair).  And after all that knitting and pattern revision, I ended up with only 27 inches of leftover yarn.  That is right living.

See that yarn?  That is the 27 inch left-over tail end from the 8th skein.  (Mug by Jenny the Potter.)

It was a bit large, so I threw it into the dryer while it was still damp from water blocking.  That helped it come down a bit to size, but the front of the sweater has an uneven edge, likely because I have no chest!

Revision details can be found on Ravelry here.  I would knit this up again sometime, but it will be a long sometime before I do it again due to the bulkiness of the project.

NPR Provides Great Fall Recipes

A link for summer garden bounty use:... click here

(all pictures by Susan Chang for NPR)

The garden season will end soon enough, in a fanfare of potatoes and squashes and pumpkins and gourds. As the weather gets colder, they get starchier and more like breads themselves, so it takes less and less effort — a little egg and sugar to sweeten and bind them — to get them to shine in a loaf pan.

Quick Zucchini, Carrot and Pumpkin Breads all found here.

Artist Bloggers and Urban Sketchers

In looking at artists' works on the internet, I came across Urban Sketchers and some beautiful pictures.  You might find some of the artists' work exceptionally appealing.

Urban Sketchers is a web site that features artwork from over 100 invited artists from 30 different countries.  Imaginative, delightful images are found there; it is an absorbing site and a feast for the eyes.

Above is a watercolor from Caroline who lives in Brittany.  Her blog is An English Artist in Brittany, where she shows some of her watercolors.  She says about this piece:

This beautiful 'maison de maitre' at Dinard was built in the late eighteen-hundreds and is called 'Les Roches Brunes'. It was bequeathed to the town and exhibitions are now held here.

 Here is a sketch by Rob entitled Budenfest found here, painted at a train station in Germany on September 10, 2011.

And below is another sketch by Rob from May, 2011, found here on Urban Sketchers where he writes:

It's been a very dry and warm spring in southern Germany this year. I've been zipping around on my little 50 cc scooter with my sketchbook, looking for little scenes like this to enjoy and draw. I pulled off the road at this spot near the village of Hertingen, watching a tractor plowing up the dry soil and enjoying a field of buttercups before me. Warm. Dry. Wonderful! 

Liz on Sketching Architecture featured this picture on Sept. 10, 2011 where she said...

I love the fluidity and forcefulness, the bold 3-dimensionality, adventurous complexity and all the fun games that are played with curved vs flat surfaces and all the crazy decoration. Today while tidying up my study/studio I came across a print out of a photo I took in Rome last year of a building that I didn't have the energy to sketch at the time.

Judy from the Netherlands sketched this on September 9, 2011.  She can be found at her blog where her sketch was featured here where she said...

The room is filled with the colours of the cyclamen. The flowers are totally odourless but when I let their colour "bleed" into the background, I always feel that I am painting flower fragrance.

Below is a scanned copy of my watercolor worksheet.  If you are not familiar with this "painting tool" mixture of colors on a grid, it is merely the original color of a certain named color down the left hand side of the page with its associated color painted to the right of the name.  Across the top, in the same order, are those same colors.  By mixing the colors, one on top of the other (after each color dab has thoroughly dried), the resulting hues are the combination of the two colors listed on the chart, going from left to right and top to bottom.  In using this worksheet, one never needs to wonder exactly what shade will result in the mixing of colors.

This is one of my watercolors from 2001 painted from a photo I took before a luncheon meal outside Volterra, Italy:

This is one of my watercolors from a vacation in Greece in 2001:

(size 11" x 14")

And thus concludes a blog foray into sketch art from various climes and times.