another year over!

no, I didn't fall asleep during january and just woke up to discover the new year! but when you have kids you might just as well measure the years in how they grow:)) DS is 11 now, easy to remember his birthday (can a mother forget her kids' birthday(s)?) - because he just made it in time to be born on valentine's day! and every year I have to "invent" a new cake. a few years ago it was a graveyard scene (inspired by one I saw in a book about fancy cakes), the year after it was a wizard's castle (dito - and a huge cake to boot - we ate castle for days afterwards:). we also had a hp cake - but this year it was to be the kids series "avatar - the last airbender" as inspiration. now, as I admitted before, my drawing and painting skills are nothing to write home about - so painting an avatar on top just wasn't a good option. I had planned to fill some coloured buttercream into piping bags and draw the signs for the 4 elements onto the cake - but the powdered food dyes (red for fire, blue for air, greenish-blue for water - and natural cream for earth - because I accidentally had used up all the chocolate one:)) made the buttercream separate, so that wasn't a good idea. eventually I drew the lines onto baking parchment, melted some chocolate and drew over those lines. this was reasonably easy to do, so I just used the slightly funny looking coloured cream as a base and put the cooled chocolate signs on top. bingo - son was happy, the cake was a bit more managable than the giant castle and it tasted good as well. I added some of the melted chocolate to the buttercream inside the cake. I wonder whichever fancy will take him next year....

enough about food. I did some knitting as well. I finished another "harmonia's rings" - but this time I changed the pattern slightly. I only worked 5 rows of pattern for each repeat, but the main change was, that I finished the upper rim with an attached i-cord with "loops" (= a few rows of unattached i-cord) instead of adding beads. and I finished the lower part with an attached i-cord instead of the rolled-up purl rows - which makes a nice rounded edge at the bottom. this one I'll keep for myself (at least that's the plan:)), very soft and cozy, but not too warm. both are actually the same blend, 70 % superwash wool and 30 % silk, handspun, 2ply. the dyed one was knitted with needle size 5, the white one was more tightly spun and plied and I worked it with needle size 4, albeit with a few more stitches all over.

this is a larger pic with details of both borders - the one with the "holes" could be used on another garment instead of button holes?

tomorrow we're off to Dublin for a visit to the zoo - so I better make sure that I have a small knitting project at the ready to get through the train journey without major boredom attacks!