Lego Ninjago Cake and Crochet.

Sorry the blog has been quite lately.  It's been a busy time between work and home.  My son has recently discovered the Lego Ninjago cartoon series.  When he discovers something he goes all in for a while and watches the episodes on Netflix repeatedly.  He had a birthday recently so I attempted to make a ninja cake.  If you check out some of the google images results for a ninjago cake search you will see that the sky is the limit for making a complicated cake design.  I choose to do a more simple version.  I made a double layer, 10 inch round white cake using a box mix.  Some people may be able to make a cake from scratch, however I am not one of them.  The one time I tried to do that, it came out hard as a hockey puck.  Little dude loves the color green so it had to be the green ninja.  I used Wilton food coloring in leaf green to get his green.  I think the yellow was labeled lemon yellow.  I free handed the eyes so they are a bit wonky but overall the end result came out ok. 

Usually when he discovers something new (or in this case new to him since the series has been out for a few years) and doesn't have a toy related to the series and asks me to make him one.  He did this with oogey boogey from The Nightmare Before Christmas made from fleece (with a Velcro pocket to hide glow in the dark bugs), the lorax, a viking hat like Hicupp from How to Train Your Dragon, the little cheese curl guys that chase the veggie tales characters in the veggie tales Jonah movie...I could go on. 

I made up my own pattern to cut out oogey boogey and just crocheted a cylinder to make the cheesy guy from Jonah without following real patterns from someone else.

He hadn't expressly asked for a stuffed ninja but I knew he would like one.  I found a crochet pattern to use to make one. Even though I don't care much for crochet I attempted it anyway.  I have issues with loosing count of stitches and things coming out shaped completely wrong.

I did a Ravelry search and found a pattern for a ninja.  I finished him in about a week and surprised him with it right before bed (right after I finished off the last stitches on his black belt thingey he wears.  My son was very surprised when I presented it to him and asked for a couple modifications: to give him hair and to attach his hood to him so it doesn't fall off.  I will get right on that...