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.