A knitty Finish, and a New Start

Thank you for all the kind comments on my cupcakes, I took them to work for the lads in the office the next day and they disappeared rather quickly, (not the lads, the cakes, lol), so they must have tasted OK:-)

No cake baking this last week, but I do have a finish to share 

with you.

I finished up a small pram/pushchair blanket for Jenny.

I'm pretty pleased with how this has turned out, not your typical baby colour but I showed it to Jenny today and she loved it.  She has chosen a purple pram / pushchair combination, so the grey will be a good match.

I came across this a few weeks ago and thought it so lovely and bright that I really wanted knit it.  The yarn works out quite expensive, and I couldn't find anything similar here in the UK , but after a bit of searching and some help at a local shop I chose Rico cotton, they have a lovely choice of colours but the shop only had DK.  

So, with a bit of experimenting I'm now knitting it on 5.5mm needles using 2 stands of yarn held together. 

I liked the colours used for the one on Purl Bee, so I chose similar colours

I also cast on 128 stitches rather than the recommend 100 to make up for the smaller needles I'm using

So far it's working out OK - I just started on the white this afternoon.

Here's an update photo of the mum-to-be which I took this afternoon.

She is caring most of the weight on her bum and legs and phoned me yesterday and told me her feet and ankles had swollen up - welcome to the delights of pregnancy Jen :-)  

She had a visit booked for a tour of a birthing centre today, James was away at work, so I went along with her.  My how things have changed!  The atmosphere is very relaxing and very low key, this particular centre has three suites, all with birthing pools but mums can't actually book a place there until they are 37 weeks pregnant.  The only drawback is that the centre is not attached to a hospital, there is another centre which is attached to a hospital which they are going to book a tour around in a few weeks and they also have a hospital tour booked at the end of August, so at least they can compare all the options.  Did you know that they only keep you in for 6 hours after the birth now? - wow, I would have been so scared to come home so quickly, what happened to rest!

That's all for now, Saturday night is take-away night and I think my Chinese will be arriving any minute :-)

Missing From The Sky, Big, Round and Yellow, I Believe They Call It 'The Sun'

I'm glad that so many of you enjoyed my photos of our break in Yorkshire, I think that we probably got the best weather the UK has had on offer for a while now, at least the rain kept off for us even if the sunshine was week :-)  

Since we got home i don't think it's stopped raining, seriously, where is the summer!!  If someone is hogging that big yellow thing in the sky, please remind it that it is supposed to be summer here!

David Hasslehoff was on some TV programme or other the other night and came out with a great observation, he said that in the UK we have two Winters, one in the Winter, and one in July!  Well David, you got that right, this year anyway, lol 

I was browsing the books in Tesco this week and came across this gorgeous book on offer.

There are some calorie laden cakes on offer inside, and i tried my hand at one of the recipes this afternoon

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

This is my effort compared to the picture in the book.

Not bad for a first attempt!

Taste wise they are beautiful, i'm not usually a lover of chocolate cake, (I prefer my chocolate to come in a block!) but these are so light and moist, they melt in the mouth, 

I think next time i make any i will use smaller cases though, they were a bit on the large size :-)

If anyone is interested i will put the recipe up in a couple of days (in a separate tab).

Well, that's it, no stitching lately, knitting needles have taken over, but no photos to share, although, remember that Hip to be Square blanket in my last post?  I unravelled it all!!  I tried out the i-cord border, and although every one raves about the i-cord (apparently 'I' is for idiot, as in anyone can do it), i just couldn't get it to look right, perhaps i was being too picky, but one side looked fine, the other side looked odd.  So off it all came and i started again, this time i'm adding a seed stitch boarder as i go.  Hopefully it will look OK this time, i take photos at the weekend and you can judge :-)

Until next time x