This is not a hat that belongs to an unlucky leprechaun. It is a hat made of unlucky leprechauns, or so the story goes.

On a recent St. Patrick’s Day over beers, whiskey, and Irish Cream, my friend June described a bowler / derby hat made from leprechaun hides (complete with bits of red whiskers) all stitched together with bits of green clothing and shiny buckles.  I love a challenge like this, so she dictated and I sketched and took some notes. The sketch accidentally went though the wash, but I think that gives it more character.

The easiest way to give the hat a good shape would be to felt it, so I started collecting random balls of green wool yarn.  I wasn’t positive that all of the yarn was wool, so I tried the flame test to make my best guess on it.  The smart move would have been to knit sample swatches of all the yarns then run them through the wash for a felt test, but I was too impatient.  I roughly followed the Felted Hat pattern from Cascade Yarns, but switched colors up regularly.  Since it was knit in the round, I wanted it to look more like patchwork than stripes, and I didn’t have enough yarn/patience to pull off intarsia, I flipped the work each row and randomly worked in new shades of green.  Fortunately felting is incredibly forgiving, and even better that the final effect I wanted to achieve was sort of a rough, homespun look.  This is how it looked before felting:

Fingers crossed, I sent the hat through the wash in a regular load of laundry — hot water, cold rinse, with a bit of baking soda.  I lucked out with the yarns I had chosen, but it took a total of 3 washes before it was mostly felted. I stretched the hat over a bowl and used spools of thread around the brim to give it a good shape.

Once it was fully dry, I started to embellish it. I unraveled gold trim to salvage as thread, and started putting patchwork style stitches in a random pattern across the hat.  I also applied upholstery fabric samples to a belt covering kit to create the band.  The belt allowed the fit of the hat to be adjustable (and I think it looks pretty cool!)

Next step was to add a few extra gold buckles then sew on some gold buttons, and a handful of coins.  All told, the hat took me a week to make.  Last weekend was knitting and starting the felting, and I stitched in the details over a few nights this week.

Leprechauns are definitely going to think twice about crossing paths with the wearer of this hat lest they become material for the next one.

What kind of cake do you bake for a 30-something pop culture geek?  An R2D2 cake, of course!  I think it is pretty amazing that Wilton provides decorating instruction PDFs for cake pans that haven’t been available in stores for decades.  This tin was purchased by Aaron’s mom when he was a wee geek.

I used this D*lish Red Velvet cake recipe because the frosting is appropriate for cake decorating. YUM!  The cake itself garnered rave reviews from our friends.  I was a bit shocked when I saw how much food coloring it needed, so between the cake and the frosting I blew through several packages of food coloring. If I do this again, I will be picking up professional grade food coloring, and not the wimpy stuff from the supermarket.

Speaking of frosting, this was an amazing opportunity to use my counter top mixer. I have a vintage Sunbeam mixer that my Nana received as a wedding gift, and I rarely get to use it. This was my first foray into making this type of frosting, and I can’t imagine trying to make it with a hand mixer. Yikes.

If I make this cake in this tin again, I will split it and fill it with frosting. I didn’t fill this one because I was afraid of breaking the cake to the point where it couldn’t be decorated. As a consequence, I wound up with LOTS of extra frosting.

The cake was really easy to decorate because I had official instructions, and it didn’t take very long.  The one catch with this frosting is that it softens quickly, so I used small amounts in the decorating bag and re-filled often from the chilled batch in the fridge.

I definitely need more excuses to decorate cakes.

This is not the red velvet birthday cake you are looking for. Move along.

Here’s a freaky something something that is a treat to serve at any gathering — perfect for Halloween or Zombie Yule, but this can be fun all year round!  I made it today for Aaron’s birthday party.  It’s essentially Krab cocktail in disguise, but oh, what a fun disguise!  To do this the boring way, you drop a block of cream cheese on a plate, cover with shredded Krab, then smother with cocktail sauce.  I think my way it more fun.  You’ll need to start with a gelatin mold in a spooky shape such a dismembered hand.

Ingredients:
1 envelope Knox unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup boiling water
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 Tbsp mayonnaise
Jar of cocktail sauce
Green food coloring (I used the entire little bottle in one of those 4-packs you get at the grocery store, and I still don’t think it is green enough)
Package of Krab
Chunky salsa (optional — used for texture)

Directions:
Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water. Add cream cheese, 1/3 cup cocktail sauce, green food coloring, mayonnaise, and a spoon or two of chunky salsa if desired. Use a hand mixer to blend until smooth. Spoon the cream cheese gelatin mixture along the sides of the mold, leaving a hollow area in the center to fill later.  Put the mold in the freezer while you prepare the filling.

Shred the Krab in a bowl, and pour the rest of the cocktail sauce over it.  Mix well.  When the gelatin is somewhat set, fill the center with the Krab mixture.  Seal it with more gelatin cream cheese if you still have some.  Don’t worry about any Krab that can’t fit in the mold — just cover the bowl and put it in the fridge next to your mold while it finishes setting.  It is usually ready to go in about 4 hours.

Un-mold on a plate and surround it the the remainder of the “bloody” Krab.  Serve with your favorite crackers and be prepared to field questions from your guests on “What the heck is that?” Insert maniacal laugh here.

Savory Jello salads are very out of vogue so I couldn’t find a recipe to emulate.  I made a wild guess at the amount of gelatin to use, and fortunately it worked out pretty well.  I made it once before, but didn’t go as heavy on the green food coloring.  Here are a few pictures from my previous attempt.