A sweet birthday surprise.

I’m so excited to share my latest completed crochet project (I always have at least 3 or 4 going on at one time!)

My sister’s birthday was last month and she is a pastry chef so it seemed only fitting to make her potholders with cupcakes on them! Sometimes when I get these super awesome ideas there are zero patterns to assist my creative muse. Not this time. Apparently cupcakes as potholders is a fairly popular idea (there are thousands of results on google image search!)

The pattern I settled on is this one (from ravelry). Doni Speigle’s potholders are incredibly cute and I couldn’t wait to make my own!

First I had to pick out my color combinations. Sister loves yellow or black & white so I started with that and went with a white-based holder. I made a yellow cupcake with “chocolate” (black) frosting and red sprinkles.

Vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting & red sprinkles.
(This one didn't photograph as well as the others.)

Originally I was just going to make that one potholder, but while I was playing with my yarn stash, I started seeing a couple of other color match-ups that I really wanted to try so I went ahead and made them anyways!

My lucky sister ended up with three incredibly cute cupcake potholders :)

Blocked, stitched, and ready to go!

I also wanted to take a moment to comment on the importance of including all the finishing details.

Sad cupcake has no sprinkles :(

The difference is in the details!

See the difference once I added the sprinkles? So much better!

Without blocking, the square naturally curls up,
which  makes it not as pretty and more difficult to work with.

Never underestimate the power of blocking!

After blocking, the square lies nice and flat :)

And the absolute must: a quick border in a coordinating color to join the front and back pieces! It really finishes the potholders and makes them look so nice and polished! I also didn’t have a plastic ring to make the “cherry on top,” so my cupcakes had to go without, but I’m okay with that :)

Too pretty to use!

The best part of the story was my sister’s reaction: she loved them. In fact, she refuses to use them (even though that’s how I intended them) because as she claims, “they are just too pretty to use!” She plans to put them in shadow boxes and display them in her kitchen! How’s that for a compliment??

I’m so happy that even in the midst of her super busy schedule (and the fact that I wasn’t there) I was able to make her birthday a fun day.