New Peeps

Just arrived this morning by post.

Let Sleeping Cats Lie

Here Emma models for you the cat bed I just finished. (In fact, she was sleeping in it before I even got it sewn together.)

Loosely based on the Snowball Bed (yet another SnB book find), the sides wound up so wide I stuffed them with an old pair of sweat pants, a pair of denim shorts, and some socks from the rag bag. Can't say Emma seems to care.

The other fun thing about this project was that I used yarn I found in the sale bin at Michael's--yarn I probably wouldn't have thought to buy for anything else. But hey, at $2 a skein, why not? Plus, a princess like Emma demanded a little sparkle and glam. So I used:
Lion Brand Homespun in Coral Gables (part of 1 skein)
Red Heart Light & Lofty in Glow Multi (used 1 skein, which I bought when I started to ran out of the previous; btw, this is not a bad substitute for LB Homespun)
Bernat Bling Bling in Moulin Rouge (2 x 90-yd skeins)
Moda Dea Eden in Flame (part of one 83-yd skein)
Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Spice (1 skein)


If I'd actually paid attention to the pattern, I would've bought more than one skein of the chunky Wool-Ease, and then the roll around the bed would've been sturdier. (It turned out I only had enough of it to knit the base of the bed.) But, as I said, the cats don't seem to care.

Now I'm thinking those crazy stripes wouldn't have made a bad scarf at all!

In fact, old Grey Cat is telling me right now that he needs to be in my lap as I type. Not sure if this is a compliment (he wants to be with me) or a complaint (Emma is hogging the new bed, and it's not big enough for two). Oh well, he'll have to make do for now, because she looks SO comfortable...

More on the Life Blanket

Btw, I got the seed stitch border idea from the "Big Bad Baby Blanket" in Debbie Stoller's Stitch'n'Bitch (pp. 187-88). I'd never tried knitting a pattern before, but with my short attention span, I was afraid I'd get bored knitting all those rows in the middle plain, lol!

The program used to make the stitch pattern is actually for needlepoint, but worked fine for knitting. It takes an image and converts it into a stitch graph, using your input of gauge/stitch count per inch, project size, etc. (It's called Plastic Canvas Design Studio 2.0)

A former coworker of mine found me (& this lil blog) via knitty -- turns out she's a knitter too! You can check out some of the beautiful work she's done (and her two cats, who, like mine, enjoy helping) at Purly Brites. Such a small world!