Birthday Cake

Happy Birthday Anna!

After the first two cake slices I knitted I happened to check out a book from the library called (what else?) Knitted Cakes by Susan Penny. This book had some good ideas for lots of variations on the cake as well as simpler instructions from the previous cake directions I had, mostly in knitting the sides of the cake:

Cast on 48 stitches in main color
Rows 1-10: St st
Rows 11-14: St st in “filling” color
Rows 15-25: St st in main color.
Cast off.

I also decided to use a knitted flower for the cake topping which I found directions for in the book:

Cast on 8 stitches in flower color
Row 1: knit
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: Knit increasing every st (16 st)
Row 4: Purl
Row 5: Knit increasing every stitch (32)
Row 6: Purl
Row 7: Knit increasing every st (64)
Row 8: Purl
Row 9: Knit, increasing every 4th stitch across row (80)
Cast off

The flower allowed me to do something I wanted to do special for this cake which is to have a removable birthday candle. I used the directions from the original Ravelry cake for a candle and just kind of made up directions for knitting the flame (don’t know what I did so can’t repeat it, sorry) and then sewed the candle into the middle of the flower.  Since this particular cake is for a birthday present, I made two flowers in different colors, one with a candle and one with out, and used velcro on the top of the cake so that the flowers could be switched out on non birthday days if preferred.

Same cake slice, but without the candle.