So - another round-up of what I’ve been up to since my last communication….I actually started writing this nearly 2 weeks ago, around the time of my eldest daughter’s birthday and the kick off for Hat Attack but then someone came and asked me to switch the tv on/tell their sister to stop it/get them a drink please (choose any one of these or a combination), the post got kicked into draft and has remained there.

So first, Bratz. Now, anyone out there who does not have children (or more specifically girls) may not be aware of these evil voodoo dolls (think Barbie with a serious Paris Hilton fixation) but my eldest thinks they are the best thing since sliced bread so we have them everywhere….I find them and their “accessories” under the sofa, in the kitchen, on the bathroom floor…so when her birthday was approaching and we asked what sort of party she wanted the answer was inevitably “Bratz!”

After a few days of thinking she came back to amend this to “a Bratz makeover party” - oooookkaaaay……..after questioning a few other parents and toying (very briefly) with the idea of painting nails and applying lip gloss to a group of 8 year olds myself I found a wonderful beauty therapist who organises such parties for little girls. All I had to do was provide them with some food, put up some decorations …. oh yes, and bake a cake.

My eldest has coeliac disease so no chance of just walking into Tesco and buying a Bratz cake - oh no - mum has to make a gluten free sponge then ice and decorate it. So for a week this is what I was doing -

here is the cake fresh from the oven

and here is Yasmin (her favourite Bratz) in construction

This was all cut from regal ice in various colours (after a trial run with the kids play-doh!!!). I then covered the cake with white regal ice and decorated it with spray-on food colouring in blue, purple and gold lustre to get this -

- I was quite pleased with the overall effect and the party and the cake were a big hit!

Right in the middle of this week of Bratz Baking, blowing up balloons, wrapping presents etc etc Hat Attack kicked off. Having done no swaps/competitions/kal’s in about a year I was doing a very rare spot of browsing around on the net a month or so ago and came across Hat Attack….a bit like Sock Wars except your weapon of choice in this particular battle is a hat…so in a moment of madness I signed up….to then discover the pattern was coming out a couple of days before the Big Party…oh well, I thought, at least I’ll get a nice hat.

I actually managed to get a fair bit of knitting in that week and found the pattern fairly easy so got the hat completed in about 3 days and it was posted off by the weekend.

One kill in at least I thought. I then waited for either a WIP from my target or a bullet through the head from my assassin….both of which arrived on the same day. Which is probably why I realised there was something a bit off about the weapon fired at me.

This is the two hats together, bear in mind that all the way through the game, and for several weeks before, the organisers have been banging on and on about gauge and how important it is and how we are only allowed to be off by, at most, an inch either way in size….

The smaller one was the WIP (yes, I know it’s a finished hat - it was agreed to be a misfire on account of one row of pattern being missing) the larger is the hat destined for me….a little large? Well, this is me wearing it and I didn’t pull it down hard or anything

and this is my hubby wearing it….

now, he’s 6′4″ and has a notoriously large head. We never find hats that fit him. His head is so large that when he was born the doctors thought he had encephalitis and told his mum that he might not live, they performed tests for a week - including a spinal tap - before his granny came to see him and just mentioned to one of the nurses “Of course I had the same problem when his dad was born, his head was really big, we couldn’t get baby hats to fit him” at which point they decided there was nothing wrong with him….apart from the freakishly large head of course. Actually, this fact is the one thing that I console myself with when thinking about not being able to give birth to my own children…at least by adopting I avoided having those large headed babies……ouuuchhh!

So, to get back to Hat Attack - the powers that be agreed it was a misfire so it ricochets right back to my assassin and I live some more. I unpicked and reworked the other hat and sent that off last weekend. Kill no 2 done.

I am now awaiting the arrival of hat no 3 which should be here tomorrow however I know that my new assassin is working on my hat as we speak….I don’t know what stage it is at but I do know the hat I’m getting is already at the decreases near the top so has only a few rows left to do. I then discovered that my new assassin (Ravelry name purps) goes to the same knitting group in Birmingham as RooKnits so if you see her there could you just accidentally unravel the hat or stab her in the hand with your needles or something? Ta!!!