Tag: cats

Or perhaps the road map playmat of Sods Law. Super cute blanket, but I had a bit of a nightmare making it!

Let me tell you my tale of woe…

I was stash busting, as you know, my current goal being to get that number at the bottom of each post down to skmething bordering reasonable, but Sods Law, I ran out of wool.

Grr.

I needed more but, Sods Law, couldn’t get the same colour…So I then had to use two shades and tweak which squares had which one.

Grr.

This happened not once, but twice. The green and yellow.

Double grr.

After what felt like knitting all the squares I needed twice over, I ran out of green again! Seriously?!

GRR!

So I changed the road layout to accommodate.

Grr.

Finally, I had knit all the squares, and started to sew it up, when Dashie, one of the cats, ran in, stole a square and hid it.

Photographic evidence of Dashie ‘helping’. Sigh.

Upon retrieving the stolen square from where the cat hid it (under the sofa) I found several more complete knitted squares.

I had 39 squares, not the 35 the pattern required.

GRR!

Turns out I did have enough of the second green not to have tweaked the pattern… But was a bit late to do anything by then!

I’m taking this as a sign from the great elder God Cthuhlu to rethink my blanket making strategies…

Wool countdown!

Starting total – 697 balls
Wool used – 17 (Despite the shenanigans, none where used up this week!)
Wool bought – 9

Total – 689

Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Just a short post to say my Easter has been busy but fine – even with all the gardening and the thunderstorms! I managed to mostly avoid being outside during the thunderstorms but the few seconds I was out…

Anyhow. Felix had fun, too much chocolate was consumed, cakes got baked, crafty things were made and the houses was turned upside down only twice.

Amongst this, I finished knitting the squares for the blanket. And some. Will blog later when I feel like I won’t murder my cats and the blanket is sewn.

You can instead look at this mini knit I did during the week:

It’s (another) Miss Marple scarf, present for Engels godmother for her birthday.

There will be a much longer and more entertaining post next week.

Wool countdown!

Starting total – 697 balls
Wool used – 17 (3 this update!)
Wool bought – 9

Total – 689

Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Felix has recently started to refer to herself and her most loved ones (mummy and daddy) as cats. It’s very cute, if not incredibly confusing to everyone not clued in on the cat craziness here.

Seriously, we’re all crazy old cat ladies, without the old part and, in the case of Engel, he’s a laddie, not a lady.

Anyhow I’ve spent the last few days in Edinburgh, seeing the family, and having lots of adventures! By the end of it, Felix’s cat family expanded to include her granny and two cousins as well – that was an interesting thing to explain to an eleven and six year old, why it was an honour too be called a cat…Granny figured it out right away.

She’s used to my crazy.

A little present my neice asked for, quite coincidentally, was ‘happy family – cats and kittens’ from the book ‘Knitted cats and kittens’ by Sue Stratford.

I also made the matching tiny mice. It went down well and sums up the trip a fair bit!

Wool Count down:
Starting total – 697 balls
Wool used – 11 (1 this week)

Total – 686

Tagged with: , , , ,

Something I always wanted as a kid was a Christmas Stocking. A proper big one. A special one, that was just for me.

This year, I made three. One for Felix:

One for Engel:

And mine!

They’re all based on the Pet Love Stocking by Sarah Hood (Free Ravelry download) with a few of the charts chopped and changed to better suit the individual. Felicity has cats, owls and ducks. Engel has cats, spiders, bats and fish bones, whereas I have black sheep, cats and red squirrels. (All the charts are free on Ravelry, full links can be found on the Ravelry Project pages on my Ravelry account)

Its also no coincidence that there are two black cats and one tortie on each stocking – Dashie, Salem and Crumble, our little kitties!

Quick post today – have presents to wrap!

Wool Count down:
Starting total – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 115 (Just 2 this week)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 45

Total – 702

Tagged with: , , , , , ,

 

That’s right. Dice bags.

It all started with this one:

Free pattern – Cthulhu Dice Bag by Arcana Vitae – though I worked this one, and all of them, on 3.75 mm. This is one of about…10? Different colours of cthulhus, backgrounds, eyes, i-cords…

But after my first, I quickly started to use this pattern as a a base and any chart I fancied with it.

So, cats? (Own chart)

Or fish? (Engels chart this time)

Less nature? Alright, Binary code?

(This is based on the free pattern Binary by Christine Domoulin, and this particular bag is coded, it reads – EngelCRLF – the CRLF is the command for carriage return, line feed. Think typewriters!

More geeky? How about the Aquila logo from 40K?

(Logo is from the free Ravelry pattern ‘Warhammer Double Knit Scarf’ by Emma Littlehales)

More cute?

Gotta love Pusheen the cat! (Charts pulled from google)

There’s been more, a VW campervan, fish bones, the 40K ork logo to name but a few, lots get gifted before I get a chance to photograph them!

I have a tradition with gaming group friends in particular – the first birthday they celebrate with the group, they get a dice bag. *Shrug* Its just one of those things. Pusheen was the one I made the other week, the VW campervan the one before…who knows what next! Though I am tempted to make me a new cat one – the red and black one at the start of this post is mine, before I was confident with color changes and patterns, but part of me think I’ll lose all my awesome dice luck if I do…

Till next week, and happy St Andrews!

Wool Count down:
Starting total – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 110 (3 again this past week!)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 45

Total – 707

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

On a dishy…

When the boat comes in!

Now, this post isn’t to do with the fish (though its a lovely free Ravelry pattern ‘striped fish‘ by Nettas Knits, though mine is a plain silver/grey, not striped) its all about the plate.

Yes, the plate.

As part of the cat commission I did a while ago I was asked to knit a replica of the plate they used to eat from, and a little snack too. So, here’s the original plate:

And here’s the knitted one:

The plate itself was easy – pinwheel increase, blue purl edge, pinwheel decrease, plastic plate inside with holes drilled in to allow the wool to be fixed and shaped.

The embroidery though! 3 hours! Worth it though for the look of shock it received.

Never again though. Never!

In other news – busy week. Been dying of the plague at work, craft fair Friday, and two of my friends had joint birthday celebrations on Saturday. I did knit a little something for the occasion, but I’ll blog about that next week – there’s a saga involved and I need to get quite a few photos together!

Wool Count down:
Starting total – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 107 (3 this past week!)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 45

Total – 710

Tagged with: , , , , ,

Yesterday was my birthday. Its generally an occasion I celebrate at home, generally pretty small, and usually with very little fuss. My circle of friends however has grown quite a lot, and not the kind of friends you hang around with cause they work with you or whatever and its convenient, proper friends.

And I take my hat off to them. Best birthday ever.

Really!

I mean, seriously, how many people out there would toss aside their usual inhibitions, put on cat ears and tails and play Cathulhu (yep, Cat-thoo-loo) just because they know its what you kinda really want to do but not really want to make them do cause its just a bit mean?

IMG_20150822_165105348

(That’s what was left this morning, I made more, but they went home with their new owners! No pattern, just winged.)

They even organised one of the others to GM so I could play (I was polydactyl calico cat with a fair bit of 1920’s streetwise attitude and those thumbs of mine could open doors and windows…it was awesome.)

They also spoiled me rotten (not important, but I was worried they were fed up with my GMing Cthuhlu and seeing the pile of Cthuhlu scenarios I got and expansions, not so worried!) and made me an awesome cake!

IMG_20150821_191549928

Three layers of super yummy chocolate cake, tons of yummy frosting and 90% cocoa on the outside…gorgeous!

Other thing that made my weekend? I got pounced on by Felix in my bed, she was wielding an amazon box and yelled ‘Happy Birthday Mummy! Present! Can eat monkey cake now?’ Sarah Keens Noahs Ark was the present, but that moment in time? Priceless – the girl takes after her mum most definitely!

Only used one ball of wool as, like I mentioned on the post last week, only little projects! Lots of ears and tails!

Wool Count down:
Starting total (28Feb15) – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 20 balls (so far)
Wool used – 66
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 3

Total – 708

Hope everyone else has had as awesome a few days as I have!

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Its been one of those weeks knit wise. Everything I’ve tried to knit just hasn’t worked.

I used needles to big on a cuddly toy and had to frog it. Reknitting on smaller ones (photo to come when finished)

And there was a tiny gauge issue.

Ok, a big one.

Alright, alright, an enormous one!

Engel wanted a light blanket (seeing as all mine tend to be garter stitch and wool held double for extra coziness, none where suitable for the task of a light summer blanket) so I had a look on Ravelry, spotted a mesh type pattern that would be suitable, grabbed my biggest circular needles (8mm) and cast on as many stitches as could fit the 20cm cable.

Previously I’d cast on 10, did a few rows and reckoned I’d need 350ish stitches…which was what I had roughly on the needles.

I knit an inch, and it was hard going the stitches were so tight together, but hey, it was looking good size wise.

I knit another inch. It was looking quite roomy.

I knit another inch. The stitches were really opening up now, and it was getting bigger.

I knit another inch, looked at the mass of wool (6 balls worth for 4 inches here) and decided to pull it off the needles and compare to an actual blanket.

Yeah…

It could go from the foot of the bed to the head, then back to the foot, then back to the head…

I did realise I only needed 106 stitches for a rather roomy double however.

So frogged the lot, took a good hour winding the wool back up and I’ve cast it back on. I’m only at two inches and barely any wool used…

In fact, because of the fiasco, not a single ball of wool this week has been finished.

Sigh.

But in other news, my cthuhlu campaign has gone absolutely crazy, and its brilliant, but I’m only just keeping the whole thing reigned together. Felix is learning and growing scarily fast, we’re getting to her stringing words together into almost sentences. Lastly, Engel had an accident with his finger and an axe. Its still attached, but he’s chipped the bone, it needs the nail removed and then the flesh drained.

And he wonders why I’m so stressed!

Enough of such things, lets distract you readers with a few knitted goodies from the archives that aren’t on the blog yet!

Today: Roly Poly Kitties!

Its a free online pattern by Karen Null, and its adorable, quick, and great for scraps!

Till next week.

Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Finished a large commission yesterday – three fairly decent sized toy cats made to look like the persons actual kitty cats. (Or Meow-Meows as he insists on calling them)

So without further ado, cats!

All three are based on ‘Clematis Cat’ by Sue Stratford in ‘Knitted Cats and Kittens’.

I haven’t used up any wool this week – spent most of the week sewing. The three cats above got put together, as well as about…thirty bunnies? More on those next week though!

Have a good weekend!

Tagged with: , ,

For the Age of Ultron movie to be released, I went and knit for me:

Nick Furry!

Ok, its Nick Fury from the Avengers, as a cat (Catvengers!)

Isn’t he cute with his little eye patch?

Engel received a Catvengers t-shirt ages ago, and its something he kept asking for. So he’s getting the set. Thats only 9 kitties…

Onto actual news, been a manic fortnight (hence the lack of a post last weekend) but its all work stuff an then catching up on chores and family time.

But you’re all more interested in the wool stash, right? 5 used this fortnight, and I may have ‘accidentally’ bought one…

Wool Count down:
Starting total (28Feb15) – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 10 balls (so far)
Wool used – 31 (Yeah!)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 1

Total – 730

Tagged with: , , , ,