Cupcake Sunday

I felt like making cupcakes today, so I did. Actually, I've been wanting to make the edible kind as well. I've got a tasty-looking recipe that calls for chopped up Milky Way Bars to be melted with the butter and whipped into cupcake batter, but I'd like to lose some weight, so I made the inedible kind instead. This took me just a couple of hours. The pattern is by Lisa Johnson, and it's called "Just Desserts," and I bought it on ebay. I bought wool felt from the Primitive Cupboard. They have a fun selection of stuff: primitive doll patterns, some quilt stuff, a few primitive style needlework patterns and a bunch of other things. The wool felt is lots of fun to work with--the colors are great, and it's stretchy enough to allow you to ease things together so they stitch up smoothly. The DMC floss came from my stash. I got the beads on sale at Michaels. I have fiberfill left over from an earlier project knitting little mice wearing dickensian clothes for a Christmas display. Oh! I'll have to find one or two of them (although I gave most of them away) to show you!

I'd do a couple of things differently on the next pattern: I'd add some weighted plastic craft beans before stuffing it with the fiberfill, and I'd stuff it tighter. I'd add the flower to the "frosting" top before I attached the frosting. But overall, it was a hoot to do, and will make a fun little gift for friends having a birthday or celebration. It might make a fun little pin cushion, too.

I knitted some also on the soft yellow sweater I've been working on. Getting the new Vogue Knitting always makes me want to dig out my needles, although it's rare for me to actually find a pattern I want to make in that magazine these days (they've gone unwearably cutting edge, I'm afraid), although I still read the lessons and look at the ads. This week I did just a little more on Tulip Welcome while stuck in traffic on the bus, but didn't do much other than that.

And here's the Sunday Sampler: "Ocean Daughter" by Who Knew? Darn--forgot the instructions/materials list, but it appears to be done in a single color of something on a sparkly/metallic hand-dye. I love the use of the negative space to define the carb, shells, starfish and coral.