I'm in the mood for Italian...

Q. What do you get when you cross 1100 yards of fingering weight superwash merino wool yarn with a 15-month-old?

A. Something that looks like it should be topped with meatballs and marinara sauce.

Argh! So, that is why I have not written since my original post. I thought about taking pics, but the whole thing has just been too painful. Incredibly, I almost have the spaghetti - er, I mean yarn - untangled. It has been a long and tearful process. My husband even suggested that I should just cut my losses and pitch the whole mess (gasp!). Throw away YARN??!! I tried to explain to him that you can't just throw yarn away like so much garbage. This yarn has a future! It's practically a living thing! Alas, my argument fell on deaf ears. Finally, Jeff said that if I planned to spend hours untangling that hideous pile of noodles I ought to at least make it a therapeutic process. Do you see now why I love him? And so, that is what I did. I set about untangling and untwisting each knot and allowed myself to bask in tiny moments of glorious victory. Yes, I know: I really should get out more. But the process is almost complete and I can soon dig into the fun stuff: dyeing and knitting!

Anyway, to cheer myself up, I thought I would post some photos of things that make me happy...my cakes.

This is the cake I made for our friend's 30th birthday. He's a Jacksonville Jaguars fan, so I recreated a jersey for him. This was a super fun project! The inside was chocolate with cream cheese filling. I sealed the cake with ganache before covering it with fondant. Thanks, Em, for indulging me!

The cake I made for a friend's daughter's picnic-themed party. Not a great pic, but a pretty cute cake. The little legs and antennae are made from licorice ropes. It's hard to see in the photo, but that's buttercream "grass" bordering the bottom of the ladybug and the big cake. Chocolate cake sealed with ganache before frosting and decorating with buttercream icing.

My daughter's 1st birthday cake. This turned out to be a rush job the morning of the party, so I didn't have time to do all of the details I had planned out in my head. Initially I freaked out, but I finally gained some perspective on the whole deal (thank you, Jeff) and realized that in just a couple of hours it was going to be reduced to a pile of mush anyway, so I gave myself permission to move on. The ladybug was my daughter's "messy" cake and the cupcakes were enjoyed by the guests. We decided on a pink ladybug (instead of red) so that pics of our precious baby girl tucking into her cake wouldn't turn out looking like crime scene photos. Yellow cake with buttercream icing.

These are my three most recent cakes. I don't do a lot of cakes, but I sure do have fun with them!

Now back to yarn and all things knotty...

In order to take therapeutic breaks from my "therapeutic" yarn untangling, I have been working on a little cardigan for my daughter. I'm using coral Microspun and it is turning ot to be, like, the cutest thing ever. I'm almost finished. Will post pics soon. I had originally purchased the yarn with a different pattern in mind, but my girl is waaaay too big for that now and I'm not smart enough to alter the pattern. As luck would have it, a good friend of mine will be having a baby girl in December, so that gives me the perfect excuse to knit up some tiny treasures and I may still get to knit that gorgeous cabled cardi.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I'm getting hungry and suddenly I'm in the mood for Italian...