Gratuitous post about Uncle Herbert. It has taken us a while to fully appreciate his many qualities! We were lucky enough to meet his mother, Lily, and he is just like her. Sweetest boy ever.
Still haven’t done any knitting.
L x
Whew! It’s taken me long enough to finalise this design, but here it is. Listed and live on Etsy and Not On The High Street.
I’ve even updated my profile to show them off.
Mad Cat Baskets in 5 funky colours
After getting to grips with the quirks of t-shirt yarn, I’m really enjoying working with it. Many, many hours of working and reworking and unpicking and re-calculating have gone into these five cat beds. Because the yarn is totally unreliable – could be super-chunky, or just a bit chunky – each basket comes out a different size.
But they will all comfortably accommodate a small or medium-sized cat.
And Herbie, at a push.
All tucked in!
Till next time,
L x
Some fab new colours have arrived from Hoooked Zpagetti.
New arrivals
So far I’ve made a purple basket
and a yellow one. But Herbie has chosen purple.
I love the bright colours and how the light makes the giant stitches pop out.
More colours coming soon – and a cat cave!
Till next time
L x
How about a shocking pink knitted cat basket? I think so!
The basket is normal-cat-sized. It’s just that Herbie is BIG. Still, he’s happy to model for me.
The pink basket is going to be part of my new range of cat beds in all the colours of the rainbow. I’m using upcycled t-shirt yarn, and it has many little quirks. One of them is that each cone of yarn is a slightly different thickness. Which means that every time I start a new basket, I have to assess the thickness of the yarn and decide whether to use a double strand or not.
On the plus side, the range of colours is glorious and never-ending, so inspiration is never far away!
Oh, and Monty likes the pink basket too. But he kind of flattens it.
More yarn, bigger baskets!
Till next time,
L x
I knitted my cat basket in t-shirt yarn. It turned out much better than I expected.
I have had this cone of t-shirt yarn on the shelf for more than 6 months. I never thought it would work. T-shirt yarn is quite floppy, not stiff like the semi-felted wool I was using before. That’s why I thought it would never work as a basket – the sides have to stand up unsupported. But I was wrong. The sides stand up beautifully.
Until Larry came along and curled up on top of it.
Larry flattens the new basket
It was good to get Larry’s seal of approval. But I have to make an adjustment. The new yarn is thinner than the semi-felted wool, so the basket knits up smaller. Larry is using the entire basket as a pillow.
Time to make a bigger basket. Here goes with the next size up. I’ve got just enough t-shirt yarn left to make the medium size. This works out a lot better for Larry.
Larry in the medium basket
The t-shirt yarn is delightfully easy to work with, maybe because of the generous stretch it has. Fortunately I can use the same set of doublepins I already have. Most exciting of all, t-shirt yarn is easily available in every colour under the sun. Wow, how exciting is that?
I went online and ordered a load of fabulous colours.
Knitting – me and you are back on!
Till next time,
L x
Such a long time since I picked up the needles. Crazy busy few weeks in the day job since January.
I had the pleasure last weekend of knitting a bamboo flute warmer for a musician friend. The size was 60 cm long by 3 cm diameter. So I knitted a long, long rectangle, eyelets at one end, and sewed it up. I added a double ribbon drawstring and a few beads. It was simple and quick, and my friend loved it. I thought, how I’ve missed knitting!
Now I have a few days off the day job and some space in my head for other things. I finally got the t-shirt yarn out which I ordered ages ago, and cast on using 12mm needles.
It looks OK! But does it stand up?
Yes it does!
I see potential. Could this be the start of a new range?
Till next time
L x
The very last cat basket I have is a size Small which I made a while ago and sent as a sample to Anthropologie. They didn’t go ahead in the end, which was just as well, since the wool has been permanently discontinued. So they sent the sample back to me and it’s my very last one.
Then today my boss announced she has just reserved a new kitten in the local rescue centre – a ginger and white cutie – to keep her older cat company. Could she buy a cat basket for him? A pleasure that my last wool basket is going to a home where I can see it again! The kitten is going to be called Jimmy – how adorable is that?
In case my own cats are disappointed, I’m sure I could pull together some scraps and offcuts, maybe undo a couple of smaller prototypes, to fashion the very very last ever basket to keep them happy too.
Herbie would appreciate it.
Till next time,
L x
Politics, Raising kids, being a wife and mother from a conservative perspective!
Making Autodidacts Great Again.
The life and times of Peter Reynolds
Fighting the Culture War, One Skirmish at a Time
A father's thoughts for his children ... and other stuff
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. ~Albert Camus
Books, Knitting and Other Good Things
adventures in baking and crafting
Creating with fiber, one stitch at a time
Stumbling through life one knitting project at a time.
