I have had the pattern for Amy Butler's zinnia pillow for quite awhile now.  I originally thought that it would be a perfect gift for Emma but I was always a bit intimidated by the amount of work that it appeared to entail. This year, I finally faced my fear, bought some fabric at the Cloth Shop and started to work.

It actually came together pretty quickly - until I got to the part with the button. The petals all have interfacing which makes it pretty hard to get a needle through from front to back and back to front. My first attempt to attach the button resulted in the needle breaking into three pieces - inside the pillow. I didn't think that Emma would want a pillow with floating pieces of metal inside it so I unstitched the pillow cover and the pillow insert and fished out the bits. It then sat on my craft desk for a couple of weeks, taunting me. I finally got a replacement needle and managed to finish it up without anything breaking, though the end of the needle was definitely bent.

Will I ever make another one? Unlikely. But I must say that I am pretty happy with the end result... 

It was Trish's birthday on Friday and she graciously hosted a cake walk. For those of you who don't know, a cake walk goes like this:

1. Everyone brings a cake that they have made.
2. Everyone gets a tag with a number.
3. Everyone stands in a big circle in the kitchen/living room/office (sometimes all 3) and then tapes their number to the floor creating a continuous numbered path - the cake walk.
   
4. A cake is chosen at random and is paraded around the circle for everyone to see.
5. The music starts and everyone walks/dances along the path. When the music stops a number will be called and whoever is standing on that number takes the cake!
6. It is possible to win more than once! It is also possible that at the end of the party you won't need to eat cake again for at least 3 months.

I brought a cake that was decorated in the manner of one of Ashley G's bearded men. We are big fans of her work and I hope she doesn't mind too much. My cake was called "Have we met yet? I'm Trish's husband." And don't go thinking that all the cakes are featured here - there were many more!

For Trish's Easter present, I whipped up Josephina. She is quite pretty and very proud of her super fluffy tail. And she perfectly matches her environment...

1. Baking (Oatmeal Raisin Cookies -  I added Chocolate Chips)

2. Knitting (Welted Rib Scarf)

I was getting pretty tired of the limited number of stitch patterns that I knew about so I consulted my Encyclopedia of Knitting for some new ideas. The trickiest part is keeping track of where I am in the pattern. It's worked over 12 rows with a multiple of 6 stitches:

Row 1: K1, P1, K1, P3
Row 2: K3, P1, K1, P1
Row 3: K1, P1, K1, 1, K2
Row 4 & 5: P2, K1, P1, K1, P1
Row 6: K1, P1, K1, P1, K2
Row 7: K3, P1, K1, P1
Row 8: K1, P1, K1, P3
Row 9: K1, P3, K1, P1
Row 10 and 11: K1, P1, K3, P1
Row 12: K1, P3, K1, P1

And perhaps more importantly, I learned a new and improved way of casting on. I was using a 2 needle method that I always found a bit annoying and slow but have now moved on to the thumb cast-on and will never look back.