The Baking Darling

I hear you all cry "these cupcakes have nothing to do with yarn!".  And yes, you will all be correct in your reasoning.

Well, I know these have nothing to do with yarn!  I just thought they looked pretty and wanted to share them with the world!  Besides knitting and crocheting, I do love to do a bit of baking.  My friend was having a birthday party for her 4 year old daughter and it was Hello Kitty themed, hence the kitty cupcake cases!

Anyway, that's kind of about it.  In case you wanted to know what flavour they are - just good old vanilla with a buttercream frosting and shimmery pink sugar sprinkle thingys.  I can't even tell how they tasted as I used milk in the cake mixture and frosting and I'm lactose intolerant :/  I have good word from my mum that they were good though!

Crocheted card for the boy!

©The Yarning Darling 2012

I know this looks extremely random...but as always, there's a background story!

Jim and I have become a little obsessed with these Japanese characters created for commercials for a company called 'Mameshiba'.  Apparently mameshiba literally means 'bean dog'.  These little beans give little pieces of nonsense trivia to an unsuspecting and hungry members of the public. Some lovely person compiled all the commercials and you can watch them here!

Anyway, I became so obsessed, that I created a mameshiba character especially for Jim, he loved it so much that he made it his Twitter picture!

©The Yarning Darling 2012

For his birthday (which was yesterday) I decided to make a little Jimshiba applique for his birthday card - and of course, he LOVED it!

It's all made from a single crochet stitch. For the body bean shape, I started off making a circle then extended one side using rows.  The black outline was also crocheted, but actually using embroidery thread and a tiny hook.  It's not perfect - the tie is a little skewed and the outlining bit on the right went a bit weird, but I guess it all adds character :/

Anyway, that's it for now. Got a couple of WIP's on the go so will update when I've finished with them!