Basket Weave and Moss Knit Scarves

Wanting to branch out and see if I liked to do more complicated patterns, I turned to the basket weave stitch. Through various car trips, these two scarves resulted. The patterns are beautiful. In the end, I decided that both are relatively easy , but I like the basket weave stitch because I like knitting where I can just look to see the pattern instead of counting constantly.

Click here to see the moss stitch explained. The basket weave pattern was a simple k2 p2 pattern for 3 rows and then switching to a p2 k2 pattern for 3 rows and then repeating.

Basket Weave Stitch

Moss Stitch Closeup

Mega Man 1-up Fondant Cake

Another birthday came around and I wanted to make something that could be enjoyed by the geeky friends of mine, especially the birthday boy. Chris and I worked together to make a Mega Man Cake based off of this picture. We used MS Paint to blow up the picture to where we could see individual pixels and then began preparations to make the cake.

After baking the largest round chocolate cake I could, I made some white marshmallow fondant. After frosting the round, I covered it with rolled out white fondant.

I didn’t care if it was smooth because of how I was decorating, but for instructions on how to cover a round cake with fondant, go here.

Next, I enlisted the help of Chris to cut out various colors of fondant. Earlier, I went to Michaels and purchased peach, black, and blue fondant. This meant that all I had to make was the white, and the cyan/turquoise. We rolled the fondant out and cut out squares and placed them according to the 8-bit Mega Man extra life. Here is the result.

Some recipes for fondant:
AllRecipes.com
WhatsCookingAmerica.net
Not So Idle Hands Blog

Crochet Heart Container Pillow with Pattern Link

Last year for Valentine’s Day, I cross stitched my husband a zelda-themed valentine from these patterns. We are in love with Zelda, so I wanted to keep the theme this year. Using my mad Googling skills, I found a heart pillow pattern which I have adapted into a heart container (N64 style)  to tell him he holds my heart. I used this pattern to make it.

I did have a problem with the outside edge being bigger than the edge of the hearts, so I would recommend starting from the point between the two half circles and work your way down and not sewing them shut until the end and then shoving the excess inside the heart before sewing it closed.  In order to make the pillow a heart container, I made a smaller edge than the pattern called for, using three rows instead.

Panda Fondant Cake

Dustin was having a birthday party and themed it around Kung-Fu Panda. I was put in charge of making the cake, so I decided to make a panda cake. I forgot to look at panda pictures beforehand, so I didn’t make the markings on the panda accurate. My instructions will be more accurate.

I baked two round cakes (9” and 10”) as well as a regular loaf pan. After they were baked, I put the 10” in the middle, cut the 9” so it fit on top of the other round. Then I cut the loaf cake to fit as feet, leaving enough extras to make ears and hands.

Make or buy fondant in black and white. I prefer making marshmallow fondant because it tastes good, but it is your choice. I used marshmallow fondant for the white and store bought for the black because black is difficult to create. Frost the cake and roll out the fondant. Cover the cake with the white. Cut out a small circle in white for a pupil. Roll out the black fondant. Cut two square-ish shapes to cover the bottom legs and cone-like shapes to cover the arms. Cut two half-circles for the ears.  Cut a small circle for the pupil and a large circle for the patch around the eye. Cut a small triangle for the nose. Place these in the appropriate places on the panda. Enjoy

Recipes for fondant:
AllRecipes.com
WhatsCookingAmerica.net
Not So Idle Hands Blog