Picking Up Speed

Since the designer of the Celtic Knot Stole has a full Excel chart available on her blog, I broke it into pattern repeat sections and told Excel to print each section on one page. So now instead of having to switch back and forth between charts on different pieces of paper, I have one sheet of paper and can go across the row without having to look at different charts. It has made a noticeable difference and I can now get anywhere from 4 to 6 rows done within 20 to 30 minutes.

I have not knitting that much these days--usually only on my lunch breaks at work or when I go to knitting group. Most evenings I spend online playing games and talking to friends (you know who you are). However, the Kansas City Irish Fest has announced that this year the knitting competition will be lace projects. This has actually motivated me to work on the stole more as I am determined to enter it in this year's competition on September 5.




I have actually made some progress since taking these photos. I even knit at the pub last night. One guy saw me get out my knitting and made a comment about how I was knitting too (my friend Brigette knits at the pub and had arrived before I did). I informed him that I am the original O'Dooley's Knitter.

Kim's Cakes

Okay, now that I have managed to get the computer and camera to transfer photos, here are the cakes I did for Kim's graduation party. Kim is finishing up her associates in Mortuary Science, so that gave me all sorts of possibilities for her graduation cake. However, the more I thought about it, I started having serious concerns about doing a theme cake. I am a bit superstitious and something just told me not to tempt fate. So I found a mortuary science symbol and used that instead.


The cake is chocolate with vanilla icing. I now see that one of the T's in congratulations did not get crossed, and I do not know if it is a situation where I just missed it or if I did it and the icing did not stick and went somewhere else.

Lately Kim and some of her classmates have taken to saying they want to go work in the basement. I guess it is a mortuary science thing, but I thought it was fitting for her cake.

Kim also is in the process of getting divorced and wanted a divorce cake. Well, I thought about getting really creative with that, but I decided not to do it. Instead I opted for tasteful.



I decided to do Corneil lace on the sides, but silly me, I did not thin out the icing enough, so my hand was kind of tired by the time I was done.



It is a four layer chocolate cake with chocolate icing. I baked two layers, then leveled and torted (split) them. It turned out really well--the cake was very moist. The decorative icing is vanilla.

Both cakes were a big hit and were pretty much demolished.