A month of birthdays, March dishcloth LAL, and getting my feet wet with cables.

My little Princess Paige turned the big 5 on February 27. We had her birthday party this past weekend since my parents need to come from far away so they make a weekend of it. Poor dear had the flu on her birthday and was so sad, she wimpered to me "oh, why do I have to be sick on my birthday?" We partied it up this weekend though and she forgot all about being sick on her actual birthday.

Here birthday cake was inspired by a cake in 50 Easy Party Cakes by Debbie Brown. I have been battling the flu too so I didn't have time to really think about her cake this year. Paige helped me out and picked out what she wanted so I made it for her. We don't use gum paste over the whole cake though since no one really likes the taste of gum paste in our family. I just used it for the cell phone, eyeshadow, eyeshadow applicators, blush, blush brush, lipstick, and flowers. The rest of the cake was made with homemade frosting. It went together quickly and turned out just darling!

Here is Paige with Kim, Lexi, Sam, and Kaden. Our sixth child, Amanda, was sleeping and didn't get into the picture this year.


February was also the month to celebrate my Dad's birthday (February 5th) and my mom got a bithday this year too...yep, she's a leap year baby! She turned a whole 18 years old on Friday, February 29th. For my dad, I knit up a pair of the the Plushy Slipper Socks by Isela Phelps from the January LAL on Ravelry. For my mother, I knit up a pair of cabled fingerless mitts using the cabled mittens pattern from the February LAL on Ravelry. I added the mini cable to the top of the mitts and just love how they turned out! I am so in love with cables now I can't get enough of them. Perhaps I should knit up something from Isela's Learn to Knit Cables on Looms now that I got my feet wet and I have actually made something with cables. They turned out to be EASY AS PIE and not at all as difficult as I was making them out to be!

I am the designer for this month's LAL for the Loomin' Dishcloths group on Ravelry. This month everyone wanted to learn how to do colorwork in a dishcloth so I obliged. I thought I'd give everyone a jump start on knitting up Easter cloths and designed this adorable Bunnies In Love dishcloth for them. The skills everyone will learn with this LAL are intarsia knitting on a loom and reading a chart. With intarsia or colorwork on a loom, learning to read a chart is critical. Although I wrote the pattern out, anyone knitting up this cloth will soon find out that reading the chart is going to be a lot easier since it is a very visual process to do colorwork. From the chart you can see at a glance what color comes next and you can also see when you will need to add a new color or bobbin and if you need to get more yarn for a bobbin. If you are just following the written instructions, this isn't so apparent and will cause you a lot of headaches. Many thanks to the ever so talented Stephanie McElheran for test knitting this cloth for me!