Yesterday afternoon here in Lawrence, the remains of a body was found hanging in a shed near campus. A sad, but not entirely unusual occurrence - except that according to this article, the body was found so decomposed that investigators could not determine its race or gender. The only unique indicators found were a yellow North Face backpack and a ball cap bearing the name of a bar in Kansas City.

The shed is in the backyard of a rental property. All of the people living there currently, as well as former residents, seem to be accounted for. I drove by the house earlier today to gawk (who me, morbid?), and the house and yard are overshadowed by trees and brush. It would appear that the mystery person had just happened upon this semi-secluded shed, in a very high profile location (the area is known as the “student ghetto”), and just randomly decided to kill him or herself there. Alone and in seclusion, surrounded by many unsuspecting strangers.

How bizarre, and how terrible? I can’t imagine how long the body must have hung there before someone noticed. Is there a family out there still searching for this kid, and do they have any idea where he or she might have ended up? I’m guessing the person did not want to be found, but why that spot in particular? The truly horrifying aspect of this, to me at any rate, is the sheer anonymity of the person. No driver’s license, student ID, not even a Blockbuster card. We just know that the person was a student (from the North Face gear). In a day when things like mydeathspace.com exist, and media outlets print every single salacious detail to be wrung out of any newsworthy death, an anonymous death is quite a feat.

Hopefully they’ll be able to identify the person over the next few days. I’ll keep updating this as information comes out.

While I finish up the Portland writeups (I haven’t even gotten to Lucas yet, it’s already old news, and I’m about to go on yet another trip!), I’d like to share with you a little ditty I made for a friend’s birthday. I had planned on baking him a cake, and when he replied that he liked carrot cake, went to look up recipes. During this process I realized that 1) carrot cake is complicated and 2) I suck at baking, who am I kidding?

So I decided to knit him one instead:

All the frosting and none of the calories.

As a bonus, this time I actually thought to jot down coherent pattern notes as I was making the thing! (Well, if I posted a picture of what I actually scribbled, it would look like moon-writing to most people. But I understand what I wrote. I think.)

Carrot Cake Pattern - easy, scrumptious, and adaptable to other types of cake as well. Just change the colors!

Ingredients:
2 balls heavy worsted weight yarn - 1 in a frosting-ish color, 1 in a carrot cake color (orange with speckles works nicely to convey the carroty texture).
Size 8 needles
Tapestry needle
Filling - I used a combination of stiff pillow form and soft polyfill.
Some felt for the “marzipan” carrot embellishment (alternately you could knit this too, but I chose not to because I was working against a deadline!)

I assembled the carrot cake thusly:

Anatomy of a carrot cake.

Pardon the crudeness of these drawings.

Instructions for the layer part (note, the bottom layer is knit first):

1. CO 28 sts in cake color.
2. Knit in stockinette (knit first row, purl the next, alternating rows) for 8 rows.
3. Knit 2 rows in frosting color.
4. Knit 6 rows in cake color.
5. Knit 4 rows in frosting color. Bind off, leaving a long tail of yarn.

That was easy enough, right? Now, on to the frosting part:

1. CO 12 sts in frosting color.
2. Knit in stockinette for 20 rows.
3. K2tog, k until last two stitches, k2tog. (10 sts)
4. Knit in stockinette for 3 rows.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have two stitches left. Knit one more row and bind off, leaving a long tail.
6. Turn the piece around, and making sure the right side is facing you, pick up 12 stitches on the other side.
7. Repeat steps 3 - 5 for this side.

Now, the piping - I did this with i-cord trickery:

1. CO 3 sts in frosting color.
2. Kfb all sts.
3. Knit 4 more rows in i-cord fashion (see knitting help for instructions; scroll down towards the bottom on that page).
4. K2tog all sts.
5. Repeat rows 2-4 until the length of the piping matches the width of the cake. Bind off, leaving a long tail, and sew the piping onto the cake. (Note: the pipettes (or scallops, or whatever you call them) didn’t turn out as emphasized as I’d like them, so I fixed that when I sewed the piece onto the rest of the cake.)

Now you can weave in all your ends, stitch the sucker together partially, and stuff. Then you can sew on a felt carrot (or rosette, or cherry - use your imagination!), and finish seaming the cake. Bon appetit!

Looks good, but do not try to eat this. Um. Just trust me.