Violent cakes

Item: "Bleeding Heart Cupcakes"
Made for: Valentines Day 2010
Time they took to make: About 3 hours? Make cake mix, bake cakes, allow to cool, inject with jam & decorate. Not a huge amount longer than regular cupcakes, but a lot more bother!
Materials: Chocolate cakes, Pink food dye (for cake mix - adds to the gore), Raspberry Jam, Icing, Piping bag + 2 tips (fine tip for drawing & filling in the hearts, long tip for filling cakes with jam).

Ordinary cartoony-heart cakes except...

They bleed!

Backstory: Some of my friends were not having a very good time with their love-lives & I was cheering up one friend with the Owl cupcakes (pic coming soon...) & she was saying that the only way I could do a better job of cheering her up would be to slake her blood-lust with something violent, bloody & full of gore. So, naturally I joked about making gory cupcakes & she laughed & said those would be perfect... & then I realised that I could probably do that! So I did. And everyone loved them. They made a HUGE mess though (the jam wanted to go everywhere except in the cupcakes).

Fishbowl Hat

Item: "Fishbowl Baby Hat"

Pattern: from the book "Designer One-Skein Wonders".

Made for: Some baby I'm sure I will have one day.

Time it took to knit: Wasn't tracking, probably about 2 evenings or so? It took me a bit longer this time because I stuffed up the sewing-on of the top bit the first time, so I had to undo & redo it.
Yarn: Bendigo Woolen Mills Classic "Poseidon" #743.

Notes: This one doesn't photograph well... in real life the fish shape is really obvious... as is the fishbowl rim & the gravel at the bottom of the bowl & the waves at the top. Also, it doesn't really hold it's shape well on a stuffed toy, but it looks like it would be fine on a baby... not to mention the colour is WAY prettier in real life! As for the pattern, BWM Classic yarn knits to the right gauge, so no adjustments were needed. I decided on sewing the top of the bowl on with reverse-stockingette facing out, as the pattern was not specific.

Shrug

Item: "Shrug This"
Pattern: from the book "One-Skein Wonders"
Made for: Me!
Time it took to knit: I wasn't timing it, but it was shockingly fast... about 2 hours!
Yarn: Bendigo Woolen Mills Classic "Dark Plum" #738

(Pictured here on me, photo co-starring my gorgeous niece Bridget who was (obviously) in a non-photo-posing mood at the time)

Notes: BWM Classic yarn knits up to the exact gauge & tension, so no changes needed there. This patten involves NO SEWING at all (aside from weaving in the ends which doesn't count... plus there's only 2 ends to weave in!) & it's super-amazingly-incredibly easy! The pattern looks complicated & I remember thinking "I have no idea how this is meant to work..." but it did! And it doesn't even use up 1/4 of a ball of wool (so MAXIMUM wool needed is 50g). The only catch is... it doesn't like breasts & tends to recoil from them in horror & hide in my armpits. Luckily, this is easily fixed with a small amount of Hollywood Tape/Fashion Tape (Fashion Tape comes in several shapes including curved, which works best considering where the tape goes!) & when using the tape it won't budge all day!