Cupcakes and Hats

I did a bit of baking this week; miniature King Cakes to take to a club meeting:

Yes, blue is not a traditional Mardi Gras colour, but I added
it as it's one of the club colours, and I figured most wouldn't
know anyway since a lot of them seem to come from New York.

I've decided that if I do these again (IF!) I will not make one long piece to cut into smaller pieces, as filling leaked out in the baking.  I'd forgotten to account for it.  Next time (NEXT?) I will cut individual pieces to fill and roll and twist, so they should stay sealed.  The end result was very tasty, even if the paper cases stuck a bit in places.

Next month the club is viewing a documentary about The Automat (those were before my time, but my father went to one while on a Boy Scout trip to New York and told me about it) and I signed up to make Rice Pudding.  They want people to bring Automat-themed desserts and I hoped for peach pie as I have a lot of peaches in the freezer from the summer, or cocoanut cream pie which I love, but the only options were apple (which I cannot make as well as my mother, by a long shot), blueberry, or chocolate cream.  So rice pudding it will be!  I found a recipe online that is allegedly from Horn & Hardart, so will make that one.

No progress on the sweater, as I switched to a community project for which I am the putting-together person.  I need to add borders to all the squares that came in and then sew together and put on the final border.  At least one square has gone missing in the mail, but it's high time I did my part so I've started.  I will have to re-do at least one square as there are too many border stitches and it is rippling, but I'll go back to it after I have a number more done and a better idea of how many stitches I need on each side.

I did work on a couple idiot projects, one of the inevitable garter stitch scarves, and a hat of the long-discontinued Lion Brand yarn Keppi that I mostly made during the club meeting.  The yarn moves from one colour or type to another so a very plain project looks interesting.  Each ball came with a pompon and instructions for making hats of all diameters, but you were supposed to use all the yarn for each hat, so the ones for smaller heads were more like a stocking cap and those for larger heads closer to a beanie.  I did a larger size.  And then, needing another no-attention item, I made another:

Clearly another hat is going to happen.

I finished my second library challenge book.  This time I selected "a title that has been on your TBR list the longest".  It's a little difficult to figure out which are the longest items on my To Be Read list, but I have a facsimile copy of Alice's Adventures Under Ground that I thought would probably qualify.  It was interesting to read the history that was added as introductory material, and then the manuscript itself.

I think the next book may be from the library, but it's bitterly cold today and I don't feel the need to hurry and get it.  I was going to do some preparatory lookups of the booklists they have as suggestions but the QR codes on the pamphlet aren't working, so I'll see if they have lists onsite.