It's a Piece of Cake

My obsession with knitting food really took off in early 2010. I found a 9-page pattern booklet call Knitted Yummies from StitchinKitsch.com. It was the piece of cake that was of real interest to me. My finishing skills needed a boost so quickly knitting these small projects and then stitching them together would help me.

My first piece of cake (poc) was done exactly as the directions said including the chocolate cake and pink frosting colours. After making a few I decided I didn't like having to sew the small bead of "frosting" on the top of the cake after the fact, so I just knit it in as I went along. Additionally I found it possible to attach the top and bottom to the side frosting of the cake without extra hand work. (So even though I wanted to improve my finishing skills it appears I was doing everything I could to avoid doing too much of it. What a shock.)

One of the first with picot edging

I also wanted the top rim of the cake to be more distinctive so I used a small picot stitch as I developed my own approach to this design. The small rosette was replaced with more complicated flowers as this obsession progressed. In the end I made close to 35 of these cuties in 2010 (almost 15 went to unsuspecting people in my office).

Red velvet with cream cheese frosting

My favorite is this one made for my daughter-in-law, a native Texan. I know she loves blue so knitting bluebells was a natural. The directions for them was found in Lesley Stanfields's 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet.

Chocolate cake and vanilla frosting

Close up of the bluebells

The raffia is a bit out of place on cake but this isn't real, of course, and I think it binds the three flowers together well.

I see lots of these gifts(?) as I enter work each day because just what is one to do with a knitted poc anyway? I say: Re-gift it. It is the lowest calorie piece of cake you can give someone. Thanks Stitchin Kitsch for starting me on this odd craft odyssey.

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