The Adventures of the Gingerbread Lady

Yolanda's Scrapbuster

2012-01-27T23:46:00.000+01:00

This is a true scrapbuster.
Nooooo! you shriek. The harmony, the colour palette, the meticulous planning - how could it possibly be a scrapbuster?
Yes, it is. Honest. I just bought one single skein and the rest were fished out of my stash. I'd love to say that it made a significant bite into my bag(s) of yarn, but ...
... it didn't. I could make another - even wilder - blanket without leaving the living room. Let's change the subject.

This blanket will probably go to a colleague's daughter, who loved my blankets and asked for a Kuscheldecke (a cuddly blanket). She likes bright colours. (Of course, she might change her mind when she sees this.) Washed and dried, it'll be packed up and passed on, so I can move to the next project without a guilty conscience.

Granny Square Love - The Joys of Monochrome

2012-01-24T21:03:00.001+01:00

Granny Squares. They're how I learned to crochet - taught, by the way, by my Great-Aunt Christina. Sure, I can do all kinds of fancy stuff, but these are brainless and comforting, the perfect January project. I always have at least one baby blanket on hand for surprise babies (they pop up all over the place in springtime, the little beasties). The colour scheme is one of the familiar go-to colour combos that requires little thinking: the joys of monochrome.

True monochrome should start with a darker colour that gradually becomes lighter, as though white paint was being added to the darker colour, bit by bit. When picking out the colours, though, you have to make sure you do it by daylight or there's a possibility that you might make a colour booboo:

What went awry on the left? Well, I had a nice, cool pastel green plus a cool, woody dark green - and I thought I had a suitable green for the middle. Sadly, though, when I looked at it by daylight, I noticed that the middle green was too acidic, a warm apple green that includes a touch of yellow. In other words, it clashed. So out it went.

Now it's done and wrapped up ready to go. On to the next project - Anny's eagle eyes spotted it in the last post, so as soon as we have enough sunshine to take a decent photo, I'll show you My True Scrapblanket: not a single skein was purchased in the making!

Adultiship? ... Adultery? ... Adultiness!

2012-01-20T22:40:00.001+01:00

For years and years I've felt like a student, even though I'm not. Maybe it's because I'm a teacher - all of the studentiness just rubs off on me. This transitory feeling was reflected in the way I lived: everything seemed to have a temporary feel to it (not helped by my husband's view that packing boxes are a legitimate piece of furniture.) Last weekend, I finally did two things that, in my mind, have established me as A Real Adult.

1) I Bought a Decorative Household Item


"Grrr! Take me to your leader, earthling!" Paintings not supplied by kindly relatives, they're Monet prints that cover a hole in the wall. All other decorative bits were presents from people with a keener sense of the household aesthetic than I.

All about the functionality, me. My minimalist soul is constantly battling with the part of me that clutters spontaneously (how oh how can one be a minimalist and yet be stalked by clutter? I don't get it), so I've always bought furniture, fixtures and fittings that Serve A Purpose. And then I saw this lamp and, mesmerised by its wavy arms and the fact that it was vaguely reminiscent of an alien, I bought it. It serves no purpose other than decoration. I am so proud.

2) I Framed and Hung Pictures
Daddy Gingerbread took the husband and me down to his painting studio and showed us his paintings. We rifled through his private stash and selected two, with which we absconded to Germany. Added to that was a painting by my little sister, Emily, and a small landscape by a friend of ours - and before we knew it, we had enough eye candy for a wall or two. My husband did the technical work - measuring walls, brandishing spirit measure, hammering nails - whilst I was the Artistic Director, which (I think we all agree) is the more important task.

"It's crooked! Crooked! Straighten up that picture or you're fired! How can I expect to work like this?" (flounce.)
a.k.a The Trials of the Artistic Director

Mr G's candlestick. He brought it
into the relationship, along with two
computer monitors, three printers,
a veritable snake's nest of cables
and a chrome bookshelf that, um,
got lost in the move.

Clearly, this signals a new chapter in my life, so in order to celebrate my inner Terence Conran, I borrowed a stack of books (chapter, books - get it? Never one to shy away from the lowest form of humour, me) from the library with impressive names like Moroccan Interiors and Decorating in Provence. I spent a pleasant afternoon looking through pictures of other people's houses. Every time Mr Gingerbread passed, he looked over my shoulder and alternately said, "Yuck" or "No". Our divergent taste in interior design is only becoming apparent now, and it's probably a good thing, as it might have been a pre-marriage dealbreaker. My love of Cuban colonial furniture, Moroccan textiles and Provençal tilework are at odds with his idea that chrome is too pretty to be confined to the bathroom and kitchen. If either of us had enough energy to do anything as dynamic as, say, interior decoration, this might be An Issue in our marriage, but I think the divorce lawyers of Gingerbreadtown needn't get too excited yet.

Considering that it has taken me two years to hang paintings, these might be
unrealistic aspirations.

The Family Lexicon, or Aunt Christina's Press

2012-01-08T14:07:00.000+01:00

In this post I outlined some of the highlights of the locality in which my parents live in Ireland. Many of you were kind enough to comment on that post and add some of the exciting things to see where you live - Carla's cattle adventures, the church where Liz's husband's relatives got married (perhaps this one? Intrigued, I Googled churches at crossroads in Whitley Bay. This could be it, readers, this could be it - the scene of Aunt Margaret and Uncle Andrew's nuptials!) Or the criminal court in Canada where Barbara plighted her troth (sadly, this one was more of a challenge than my Google skills could handle, so no accompanying pictures here.) In any case, all of these places are important because they're part of your Family Inventory: places, objects, memories that are special to your family and make up part of your Family Lexicon. Every family speaks its own language, every family has phrases and terms that are incomprehensible to people outside of the family circle. Sometimes phrases even emigrate from one family to another: my husband and I like to indulge in a psycho-pee (separately, not together) before we leave the house. This is a trip to the facilities even though you really don't have to go - it's a just-in-case mission. It's short for a psychological peepee, and although mentioning it has already lowered the tone of this post, I believe that it's a very useful term that was lacking in the English language. Thus, it did not surprise me when I recently heard the boyfriend of a friend use it. Clearly it has the potential to become A Thing, like Googling and earworms.

A press. Not Angristyna's press
- hers is bigger and better cared for.

Another example: my mother inherited a large sideboard from her aunt, Christina, after my aunt's death twenty-four years ago. Christina's name is pronounced ChrisTYNA, not ChrisTEENA for reasons no one really knows, and this doesn't make the next part of this story any easier. Although she was, technically, our great-aunt, we kiddies always called her Aunt Christina, too. Actually, we called her Angristyna, all rolled up into one. So now we have a big mahogany sideboard in our living room, which we refer to as a 'press', Irish-style (note: a press in Ireland is a cupboard. If someone asks you to get the biscuits out of a press, open a cupboard and look for cookies) belonging to a dead relative that most of my younger siblings never even met prior to her demise (= because they were still twinkles in my father's twinkly eyes, not because we kept them locked up or anything.)

In any case, Aunt Christina's Press (Angristynaspress) has become a kind of jumbly black hole in our house, the place where all kinds of things end up. A recent peek in the middle drawer revealed a stapler, a single knitting needle, two earrings - not matching - an empty box of matches, a fluffy piece of modelling clay, a lone marble, a piece of Lego, the legs of a Lego man (maybe he crawled in looking for his brick and his torso was eaten by the drawer?), sundry pieces of paper (old electricity bills, prayers to a multitude of Catholic saints, scraps of paper with indecipherable notes on them), rubber bands, dried-out felt-tip pens, a pencil with the nib broken off, part of one of my father's pipes ... and you get the idea. You probably have a drawer like this at home. But you probably don't have an entire sideboard dedicated to collecting pieces of stuff that have no discernible use till they are thrown away ("Awww, flip! I could've fixed this wobbly table if I still had the legs of a Lego man!" etc.) In the twenty-four years that we've had it, the cupboard has defied physics by managing to house more rubbish that can possibly, logically, fit into its modest dimensions. MacGyver could build a particle accelerator that would put CERN to shame with the contents of middle drawer alone.

Aunt Christina's Press has become the last refuge of the lazy looker: missing something? Why bother search for it? At some point you're going to pull open one of the side doors and your missing knitting / magazine / baking bowl / running shoe / sunglasses / comb will simply fall out on an avalanche of assorted bric-a-brac. "Check Angristynaspress!" has become the answering roar to any questions that start with, "Have you seen my ...?"
Sometimes, Angristynaspress is so self-explanatory that we forget that it actually isn't. When my German husband wanted to know where he could find a pen, I told him to check Angristynaspress - like, of course. I found him bumbling around the living room, checking the coal scuttle for a writing implement (?). Annoyed, I tapped the top of the mahogany sideboard and explained (sigh) that this was Angristynaspress. Like, of course. His blank stare reminded me that there was no way that he could have known that
(a) in Ireland a press is actually a cupboard, a sideboard, a dresser or basically any wooden box with doors
(b) it used to belong to Aunt Christina
(c) Aunt Christina is my mother's aunt
(d) she died in 1988 and my mother inherited her sideboard
(e) and, contrary to all logic, we continue to refer to this piece of furniture as Aunt Christina's Press as though my parents' home were so chockablock with cupboards that its deceased former owner was the only means of differentiating it from the sundry other mahogany cupboards knocking around my parents' living room.

Readers, I was stunned. Not every home has an Angristynaspress!!! Or maybe they do, but they call it something else, like the jumble drawer, or the curiosity cupboard, or Mummy's Craftroom. Astonishing! Of course, I had to give my husband a tour of Angristynaspress ("And this is where my mother keeps the napkins - behind the Christmas decorations, the year's supply of old TV guides, the broken remote control and tin of throat lozenges") and show him how to delicately extract something from a thundering landslide of accumulated junk, whilst simultaneously shoving the whole mess back inside. He was very impressed and even found an interesting-looking copy of the Reader's Digest from 2009, which he kept to read over a cup of tea.
Mind you, we never found a pen, but the miraculous middle drawer coughed up the stub of a green crayon and that did the job.

So come on, readers - share some terms from your Family Lexicon!

Horrid Craic With Apple Pies

2012-01-07T16:26:00.002+01:00

Grrr. I'm having a bad crochet week. I have lots of ideas for new projects but everything I touch turns to ... rubbish. One project took me ages to make but has turned out useless: it's 25% too big, due to a mathematical booboo on my part. Yes - maths = my nemesis.

In any case, the husband and I returned to Germany on Tuesday, flying east over the continent and away from a brewing storm so big that it later that day dislodged a bus shelter and whacked it against a plane at Edinburgh airport. As you know from previous posts, disaster follows when we travel (volcanic eruptions, blizzards, tsunamis and nuclear reactor meltdowns), so a flying bus shelter was relatively mild, given the previous catastrophes unleashed by our wanderlust.


A teddy bear not having the craic. (It's a gratuitous picture. I just liked his knitted sweater. Bear with me. Haha)

Our stay in Ireland was - to use a bit of Hibernian English - great craic. Craic is a very useful Irish word, it means 'fun' or 'a laugh' (as in, to have a laugh) and its intrinsic link to fun and general frolics is only underlined by the fact that it's pronounced 'crack' - which means you can frighten the wits out of non-Irish people by saying things like, "I had great craic last night!" or "I don't think it's possible to have too much craic!" or the ecstatic declaration that something was "the best craic I've ever had!"

It's a wonderful word and has many different meanings. For example:
What's the craic? = Is there anything newsworthy you wish to share, my good fellow?
The craic was mighty! = Jolly good fun was had by all!
We were only having a bit of craic! = No ill-will was meant, we were simply having a spot of fun.
There are regional variations to craic - in some places it has been awarded a definite article: the craic (as in "Are you having the craic?" = "Are you enjoying yourself?") and in other places it has even earned supplementary (and baffling) adjectives, like horrid craic. My brother James assures me that having horrid craic is all the rage in Sligo, in the west of Ireland. Having spent two days in Sligo, I am willing to believe that just about anything is possible there.

Anyway, Mr Gingerbread and I had many interesting discussions of the following variety:
Me: I'm going to visit my Auntie Dell (= or substitute name of random relative here)
Him: Is that the one with the two sons?
(I'll just interject at this point to tell you that my mother is one of - brace yourself - fifteen children. They in turn are a rather fertile bunch. Having two sons really does not narrow it down and he should know this. He was at our wedding, after all. He has seen - nay, he has participated in - a number of family photos.)
Me: She has lots of sons. You know my Auntie Dell, you've met her a dozen times -
He holds up his hand to stop me.
Him: Wait. Does she live in town?
(Again, this does not help. My mother's family has multiplied rapidly but in a geographically-restricted area. Most of them still live in or around the town they grew up in.)
Me: No, she's -
Him (triumphantly): Wait! She bakes the apple pies!

I pause. He's right - kind of. All of my aunts bake apple pies, or apple tarts, as we call them. But my Aunt Dell makes my favourite apple tarts. Each aunt has a tiny variation on a standard shortcrust recipe, some add cinnamon or nutmeg to the filling and some don't, but every pie is different and unique to the piemaking auntie in question. And sometimes - genetics are a funny thing, my friends - the children of the piemaker commit the heresy of preferring the pies of an aunt to the pies of their mother. I am one such evil child. I love my mother's apple pie, I swear I do. But I also love my Auntie Dell's apple pies just as much ... and on some days a tiny bit more. This is something my mother and my aunt are both aware of and when I visit my Auntie Dell, it is not uncommon for her to produce a freshly-baked apple - or rhubarb, I won't say no - pie, which she'll place on the table with a flourish that might be a shade more triumphant than strictly necessary in the presence of my indignant mother.
"Hrrrrmph!" my mother snorts, as she helps herself to a slice of appley nomminess. I know she's thinking: Ungrateful wretch. But it doesn't stop her eating the pie, though. She'll even have a second slice to confirm to her own self that her apple tarts are better.

However, this Christmas we dropped by unannounced for a quick visit and there were no apple tarts - not even a paltry rhubarb tart, for that matter. I don't want to make a big deal about it but, quite frankly, I was utterly devastated - it has taken me a full week to recover from the disappointment and blog about it. A poor start to 2012 indeed.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T23:22:00.001+01:00

After many days of excessive eating (whine - there are so many delicious things to eeeeaaat!), Daddy Gingerbread, the husband and I decided to take a walk in The Nature. We went up to the remains of a great big hill fort called the Rock of Dunamase, with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside:

The walls are more than two metres thick in many places and, standing in the bitter wind atop a high hill on the first day of January, we shuddered at the thought of the hardship people endured when the fortress was inhabited.

Having had a brisk walk up the hill, we headed home for a cup of hot tea and a slice of toast.

Exciting Times in Ireland

2011-12-29T15:17:00.001+01:00

Hello readers!

The Gingerbread Lady finds herself at home in windy Ireland in the bosom of her enormous family. All of the Gingerbreads send you their best regards, but I've already received dire threats to my well-being if any of them feature personally and named on this blog. Frankly, though, none of them have done anything interesting enough yet to feature in a blog entry ... with the exception of one brother who has a new girlfriend and is refusing to produce her for us to check her out. Apparently, the gimlet glare of eight mischievous Gingerbread siblings is the trial by fire that no young relationship wants to endure. Which is a pity, really, because we've already compiled a list of Interesting Things In Our Locality to show the new girlfriend :

1. The Swing
We have a pear tree with a frayed rope swing on it. It's very exciting. You can see it from the kitchen window, but nonetheless it's worth walking down to the bottom of the garden to see it in all its glory.

My nephew and niece, enthralled by the cattle grid.

2. The Cattle Grid
A cattle grid is a shallow pit covered by bars at the entrance or gate to a home. They're quite common in this part of the world, because local farmers often herd their cattle down the country roads when moving them from one field to another. Theoretically, they're supposed to deter frisky bullocks from paying you a social visit, though we've had occasions when a bull or bullock, hopped up on the excitement of a jaunt down the road, take a flying leap over the cattle grid and come thundering down the avenue of my parents' house (this is v. scary). In any case, a slow, ambling walk to the top of my parents' lane often culminates in an examination of the cattle grid, mostly because local wildlife falls down it quite a lot. Thus a simple stroll might even up in an emergency rescue operation to retrieve e.g. a recalcitrant hedgehog. This used to involve gardening gloves and a lot of bad language (hedgehogs like to roll up into balls, did you know that? And they're rather spiky, the little devils. And in their roundy state they're very hard to wriggle through the bars of a cattle grid.) Nowadays we would just build them a little ramp and sprinkle it with food and hope to goodness their little hedgehog brains figure out the rest.

3. The Place Where the Water-Pump Used to Be
Our local attractions were slashed considerably when the villagers of Ballyroe took our water-pump (our = it was at the crossroads down the road from my parents' house). It was a quaint, functioning water-pump from a time before indoor plumbing was common, when local families had to drag buckets of water from this pump at the crossroads. I'm sure it was the centre of all kinds of gossip and malarky, but in recent decades it had become a curiosity rather than a necessity. One day the local council removed the pump and - coincidence? I think not - a remarkably similar pump turned up at the recently-renovated village centre at the heart of Ballyroe, five miles down the road. Aside from bitterly muttering, "That's our pump!" or "They stole our pump!" when cruising through Ballyroe, little else was done to recover our stolen property or, indeed, to even establish whether that pump really was ours. So nowadays we walk down to the place where the pump used to be and stare mournfully at the stump it stood on. We take visitors with us to indoctrinate them into this culture of begrudgery, so when they pass through Ballyroe's smart new village centre, they know they have to grumble at the thieving wretches who stole our pump.

And because Irish country people have elephant-like memories, people from our crossroads will still be whining about the stolen pump several generations from now.

4. The Big Tree
It is, as the name would suggest, a big tree. We like to walk visitors down the road to look at this tree. It often ends in confusion, as the Big Tree's attraction isn't instantly identifiable: it's a tree, people. And it's big. Look on it and be awed.

No doubt you need a stiff dram of whiskey after all of that excitement. You probably have to smooth your hair down after this rollercoaster ride of a post. Perhaps you're even thinking of booking a flight over here as soon as possible to view the swing and the stump of the pump with your own little peepers. So why oh why doesn't the Gingerbread brother want to show his girlfriend all the delights of our locality? She just doesn't know what she's missing.

Message in a Bottle

2011-12-25T19:29:00.001+01:00

When I first started this blog in January two years ago, I felt horribly self-conscious. The internet is, like, massive. It's vast. It's huge. There are thousands of blogs, and possibly millions of websites and there I was, typing away on the keyboard of my rickety laptop, wondering if anyone was ever going to read anything I wrote. I mean, read it voluntarily and not because they were obliged to do so by the bonds of blood. Writing anything at all on the internet was like putting a message in a bottle and sending it off across the waves. You might watch it bobbing around for a bit but you have no idea if anyone will ever read what's inside.

Two years, several dozen blankets, quite a few patterns, a yarnpire, mermaids, the Bayeux Tapestry and a couple of dishcloths later, I feel like I'm not whispering in a large room, I'm talking to a very nice and kind group of people - that includes you. Yes, it does. Thank you very much for reading.

So Christmas greetings to everyone who celebrates, and I hope that those who don't are enjoying the calm of a quiet day. Special greetings to you if you've spent the day alone or are lonely: a virtual hug to bridge the vastness of the cyber-ocean.
I'm glad this bottle washed up on your shore.

Part of Gift

2011-12-21T23:02:00.001+01:00

At this time of year, I often while away the time spent in the serpentine queues before cash desks thinking about a story that appears in a Christmas reader for our students. Blithely ignoring the woman behind me, who's decided to remove the skin on my shins with her child's pushchair (no, really, misssus, shoving the vehicle in the back of my legs will not make the fifteen people before me magically disappear or even make them move faster), I think of the story of a teacher at an African school who explained the meaning of Christmas and how Christians celebrate - and how they give each other gifts in the Christmas season. Some time after, one of the children turned up at the school with a sea shell, which he presented to the teacher as a Christmas present. The teacher realised that the shell could have only come from the coast, several hours' walk away.
"You didn't have to go so far to get me a gift," the teacher said.
"Long walk part of gift!" the child replied.

This is my zen-mantra during the worst periods of Christmas shopping. While waiting in line for a free counter while the post office workers chat to each other beside the parcel depot, I grin brightly and think, "Long queue part of gift!" When poked in the legs by errant rolls of wrapping paper, I think "Weird bruises part of gift!" When I suppress the urge to smack the bottom of the wally that thought it would be a good idea to bring their red setter puppy on a last-minute Christmas shopping expedition at our city's crowded mall at 4 p.m. on the 21st December, I breathe deeply and think, "Great patience part of gift!" By the same token, when I hold the door open for someone and that person looks me in the face, smiles and says, "Danke schön!" I also think, "Small kindness part of gift!"
I hope the recipients of my clumsily-wrapped Christmas presents appreciate all the extra intangible bits and pieces that have been wrapped up inside them, along with the gifts themselves.

In any case, I am simultaneously disorganised (72 hours and counting down!) and breathtakingly organised at the same time. First of all - the organisation:

I decided to knit a couple of soap socks for the colleagues that I work most closely with, the ones I see every day. Five or six, I guesstimated. (Pause for laughter.) Twenty socks later, my apartment smells of Yardley's Rose and Lavender soaps, and I can only thank the heavens that my husband has been struck by the near-death experience of a mancold (= do watch this. It will be familiar to many of you), rendering him incapable of smelling anything.

I've also made some yarn-covered pens. This idea is from my sister Emily, who has been doing Trojan work on her blog, coming up with quick and easy gift ideas for every day of Advent. Really: if you're reading this post with cold sweat running down your back, your pulse racing at the thought of all the uncrafted and unbought gifts on your list, have a look at her blog here. The yarn pens are super cute and quick to make (mine are a lot less neat and a lot more woolly than hers).

The disorganisation? No decorations up. No tree bought. No presents wrapped. No washing done, no floors vacuumed, empty fridge. Oopsie.

And how did the soap socks go down at my school? Well, after the astonishment that I'd actually made them myself had died down, and after I'd explained what they were and that, no, you didn't have to actually use them, you could also stick them in your among your bed-linen or use them to scent your drawers, one of my colleagues did a quick tally of the soaps knitted and said, "How many did you make? Have you been knitting non-stop for the last week?"
More or less, I thought. Long knit part of gift!

The Plight of the Acrylic

2011-12-18T15:37:00.003+01:00

You can tell by my silence that I've been a very busy woman - I don't need to tell you that Gingerbread Ladies have to work flat-out in the Christmas season. But because we are encouraged to think of others at this time of year, I would once again like to indulge in some seasonal do-goodery and prick your moral conscience on a topic close to my gingerbread heart: The Plight of the Acrylic.

So grab your tissues and be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster. This post is especially for Susie from Useless Beauty, who is equally unafraid to tackle hard-hitting craft-related issues.

Once upon a time, there was no more common sight in Merry Olde Englande of the 1960s than the pastoral idyll of the Acryllic Shepherdess. These ladies - dressed impractically in poufy hoop skirts and big bonnets - kept a loving eye on the baby acryllics as they frolicked around the pastures and meadows of England's green countryside, occasionally sticking to trees in an excess of static electricity or burning to a small puddle of plastic when struck by lightning.

The yarn spun from these little creatures was highly desirable: in fact, entire generations were clothed from and comforted by it. It was a desirable alternative to the scratchy wool favoured in the past: it didn't felt when washed inappropriately and, more importantly, the wearer didn't smell of wet dog when it got damp (and, frankly, if you lived in the British Isles, woolly socks and jumpers got damp a lot.)

But in the past decade or so, something has changed. Other yarns - fancier yarns with artisan titles - became more popular. In fact, slapped with adjectives like "sumptuous" or "luxurious" or "decadent", yarn became sexy:

And with it came a nasty wave of anti-acrylic sentiment, leading to some very regrettable bullying:

While I appreciate the value and craftmanship of some of our finer yarns, and have even blogged in a similarly-passionate fashion about the exploitation of mermaids, I would urge you, the crafter, to be gentle in your assessment of the role of the little acrylic. It has a place in our crafting world and we should not look down our noses at it.

In fact, if I may leave you with a final thought: if and when there should be a zombie apocalypse, my gut feeling is that the only things that will survive are cockroaches, granny square blankets and those tough little acrylics. So choose your side carefully before you disparage or condemn this yarn.

TUTORIAL: Crocheted Cupcakes

2011-12-04T22:05:00.003+01:00

You can download this pattern as a PDF here: this link leads you to an external PDF hosting site called MediaFire.

You need:

scraps of yarn (cotton, WW or DK acrylic) in brown (for the cupcake base) and some pastel colour for the icing / frosting.
hook - use a hook that's one or two sizes smaller than the one recommended for your yarn weight. You want a firm, tight stitch
stuffing - I buy cheap cushions at the 99c store and re-use their innards. You could also use chopped up tights / nylons, or yarn scraps
buttons or sequins to decorate
a sewing needle to attach your cupcake decorations

This is more of a guideline than a pattern. You will have to experiment a little bit to adapt it to your gauge. But don't fret - we'll get to that later!

This pattern uses American terms. The British terms are in [brackets]. Stitches used are:
ch = chain
SC [DC] = single crochet [double crochet]
HDC [HTR] = half double crochet [half treble crochet]
ss = slipstitch

Cupcake Base
Use a brown or biscuit-coloured yarn.
Start with a magic loop or by chaining 3 and joining with a slip stitch to form a little circle.
Round 1: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below (this counts as your first SC [DC] here and throughout), then do 7 SC (DC) into the circle. Join with ss to first SC [DC]. (8 stitches in total)
Round 2: Chain one, then do 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch. 2 SC [DC] in next seven stitches. Join with ss to first SC [DC]. (16 stitches in total)
Round 3: Chain one, then do 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch, *1 SC [DC] in next stitch, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch.** Repeat from * to ** around, ending with 2 SC [DC]. Join with ss to first SC [DC]. (24 stitches in total)
Round 4: Chain one, then do 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch, *1 SC [DC] in next two stitches, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch.** Repeat from * to ** around, ending with 2 SC [DC]. Join with ss to first SC [DC]. (32 stitches in total). Chain 2, yank tight and cut yarn.

Cupcake Side

Row 1: Chain 10. In second chain from the hook, do 1 SC [DC]. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in the next four stitches. Crochet 1 HDC [HTR] in the remaining four stitches.
Now turn this wriggly little chain in preparation for the next row. Take a look at it - from now on, we're going to have a front and a back to our work, and to make this clearer, we are going to work in the front or back loop of the previous row.

Row 2: Chain 1. Crochet 1 HDC [HTR] in the front loop (the one closest to you) of the next four stitches, then 1 SC [DC] in the front loop of the next five stitches. Turn your work.

Row 3: Chain 1. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in the back loop of the next five stitches. Crochet 1 HDC [HTR] in the back loop of the next four stitches.

Look at your work. You should have a clear ridge on one side of your work. This is the front. It might help to thread a bit of coloured yarn or a stitch marker through one of the stitches to remind you which side is the front.

From now on, you will crochet into the back loop when the front of your work faces you and into the front loop when the back of your work faces you (Aha! So now you understand why it's not a bad idea to have a visual signal for the front and the back!)

Continue like this till the skinny side of your, um, curvy trapezoid fits around your cupcake base when you stand it upright in its cupcake shape. I recommend that you make it smaller rather than larger than the base.

Now, here's where you cheat. Take two strips of the yarn you used for your cupcake base and thread them through the top and bottom of your curvy shape on the back side. (I've used a contrasting colour, so you can see it. You should use the same colour so it can't be seen.) These two pieces of yarn will give your base a better shape and some stability.

Sew the base to the side, with the ridge on the inside. Sew up the opening. Tug the pieces of yarn to pull in the cupcake's sides and tie it when you think your cupcake base looks suitably cupcakey. Turn it inside-out (so the ridge is now on the outside).
Stuff it with as much stuffing as you can fit inside it.

Cupcake top

Use a pastel-coloured yarn. Start with a magic loop or by chaining 3 and joining with a slip stitch to form a little circle. Crochet as per the instructions for the base (rounds 1-4).
Round 5:Chain 1. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in same stitch, then 1 SC [DC] in each stitch around. Join with ss to first SC [DC].
Your circle should be approximately big enough to sit on top of your cupcake base.
Round 6, 7, 8: Chain 1. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in same stitch, then 1 SC [DC] in each stitch around. Join with ss to first SC [DC]. You should have a little dome that sits atop your cupcake base like this:

We now have to widen it a bit to fit on top of the base better. We do so by increasing with double SC [DC]s
Round 9: Chain one, then do 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch, *1 SC [DC] in next four stitches, 2 SC [DC] in next stitch.** Repeat from * to ** till you come back to your starting SC [DC]. Join with ss to first SC [DC].

Round 10 and 11 (optional): you can continue by doing 1 SC [DC] in each stitch around. The cupcake top should be approximately as tall as the base.

The dribbles
When your cupcake top is tall enough, create 'dribbles' of icing/frosting, by crocheting stitches of different heights around the edge:

Sew your buttons and sequins on top and stuff the cupcake with as much stuffing as you can get into it.

Now the tricky bit: sew the two pieces together. You will probably find that these two pieces don't actually want to be stuck together, and you may have to pin them in place beforehand. I usually use the pastel yarn and sew the top to the base along the last row of SC [DC], leaving the dribbles free to ... well, dribble. You will probably find that you'll need to stuff even more filling into the cupcake before you sew it up completely. They need to be really, really full.

And there you go - cupcake completed! But be warned - once you've made one, you'll have to make many more ...

Crochet Chores

2011-11-29T20:45:00.001+01:00

"Would you ever change your blog post?" my mother said. "I'm sick of looking at a picture of knickers with a question mark on it."
As many of you might have suspected by now, my parents believe that this blog is for them and that they ought to star in it on a more regular basis. Sadly I have to disappoint them this evening, because today we're going to talk about the one time of the year when crocheting becomes a chore: Advent.

Advent is not that much of a deal in Ireland, but it certainly is in this part of the world. Not least because the fourth Sunday before Christmas marks the traditional opening of the Christmas markets. Much of the profit made in pre-Christmas Bavaria is probably generated by shoppers buying their seasonal presents with a couple of beakers of mulled wine (Glühwein - literally, glow wine) inside and the Christmas markets are to blame/thank for that. Anyway, the opening of the markets makes me shudder because it usually coincides with an avalanche of pre-Christmas exam correction and a tsunami of crocheted gifts.

Oh, handmade gifts. Sigh.
I hate buying presents - I basically want the giftee to tell me what they want and I'll just wrap it up - but making gifts is even hairier. For example, I thought I'd give my sister-in-law some nice cushions for her dark red sofa. Her apartment has lots of wood and bright, quirky colours, so I made some nice granny square cushions in bright, quirky colours:

Fortunately - I say 'fortunately' now, but at the time, there was a lot of inner teeth-gnashing and fist-shaking - I showed her photos of some of my cushions the last time we met in a casual, "Oh-what-do-you-think-of-these?" way. She thought the above cushions were nice, but she thought these cushions were lovely:

So I've gone back to the drawing board - or, in this case, the teeny-tiny hook and the super-skinny sock yarn. And I have two more of these to do by Christmas Eve.
Sob.

Underwear Under There

2011-11-23T23:13:00.001+01:00

Okay, I'm being upfront about this: this is going to be a post about my undergarments. I'll have some nice crochet pictures for you tomorrow or Friday, but today I have to write about the sorry state of my bloomers.

See, I had an appointment with a dermatologist today. In fact, Mr Gingerbread and I - being rather moley creatures - decided that we ought to have someone cast an eye on our markings. It's all part of being grown-up and taking responsibility for our health. We'd been avoiding doing it for a long time, as it involves stripping down to your unders and having a strange man look at bits of your body through a magnifying glass. This, many of you might agree, seems like a scene from a modern-day version of Dante's Inferno especially designed for women. There are bits of me I would prefer that no one saw, not even from a great distance and obscured by fog, so I'm less than enthusiastic about a total stranger eyeballing them at close range. In any case, we made a joint appointment so we wouldn't be able to wuss out.
And that appointment was this evening.

As the moment of our stripping approached, I discovered with horror that my underwear drawer is a bleak and joyless place. Many of my favourite knickers are a peculiar shade of porridge: the dull grey of careless washing at high heat. They're immensely comfortable, to be sure, but not the kind of pants you'd put on to, say, seduce someone. As I was rifling through a wad of tights (that's panty hose for American readers - bilingual, c'est moi) that had joined forces like some kind of hosiery-style Gordian knot or an orgy of octopussi, I also established that none of my underwear matches. And then I remembered a girl called Mary, friend of my college roommate Neasa, who liked to remind us at regular intervals that you should never leave the house without matching underwear because if you were run over by a bus and the ER doctors had to cut your clothing off, you (and your mother - or your parents' upbringing in general) would be severely judged by the nurses and doctors present. My mind boggles. Imagine, if you will, the conversation going on while your battered body lies motionless on a gurney:
Doctor: Good Lord! This woman is wearing washed-out white knickers and a black bra!
Nurse: That's not all, doctor! The lace of the bra is ... ripped!
Paramedic: That's how we found her at the scene. We debated whether we should just leave her to bleed out.
Doctor: No, no. We took the Hippocratic Oath. We're obliged to save her and her substandard undergarments. But, nurse, get me a Victoria's Secret catalogue in here stat!

Or maybe not. But it's a frightening prospect, nonetheless.

Anyway, after much searching, I located underwear that looked reasonably similar and of the same vintage, and along with my suitably underbepanted husband, set off to be examined. Sadly, though, this tale of underwoe was cut short with the anticlimax of discovering that Mr G had got the dates mixed up: we turned up at the doctor's office to find it in darkness. So we have to re-schedule tomorrow.

I'm definitely going shopping for underwear before the next appointment, though.

Waahlaah!

2011-11-17T23:28:00.000+01:00

Embarrassingly late, here is the result of the Advent Sock Kit giveaway ... (excuse the shaky photos, but they were action shots: I tried to pull a name without looking and photograph it at the same time. Multitasking, how are you? Thank you to everyone who took part and congratulations to Lorraine / Loveelle!