Where did May go?!  Poor Pikachu has been waiting for eyes while I work on other projects so he’s going to have to sit and stay at 98% done.  I’m a bit nervous about how to do the eyes, I just can’t bear the thought of possibly ruining his cuteness with poor eye execution.  For now I’ll keep thinking about how to do them.  *thinks: black felt circles…*

I haven’t been sitting idle staring at Pika.  I’ve been hook and yarn in hand staring at his eyeless face crocheting fiercely though.  I discovered I needed an amigurumi break and felt that Pikachu was a good final battle; that is, when he actually gets a face.  After a lot of digging around in the crochet section of the interwebs, I ran into a charity called The Snuggles Project.  The project was created in 1996 when its founder was saddened at the thought of all the shelter animals sitting in their barren shelter cages so she set out to create ‘security blankets’ for them called ‘Snuggles.’  This was a perfect interruption to the amigurumi battle that had been waged in my living room since January ’10.  I managed to crank out 12 Snuggles; some experiments in patterns, some basics, some just plain old experimental everything.  This was a lot of fun!  I even tried out a pattern written by a Snuggles Project group member at Ravelry.com.  Which brings me to my new addiction:  Ravelry.com!  So many patterns, beautiful things, and great yarny camaraderie!  I’ve learned so much between the Snuggles Project and the great stuff at Ravelry.  In the Snuggles pictured on the right you can see some of the fun I’ve had this May.  I learned an ‘Abstract Cats‘ pattern by Teresa at The Art of Crochet, which I’ve had my eye on for a couple months now.  The Snuggles are perfect for experimentation.  I created my own little double crochet pattern that shows a cat face.  You can see the black cat on the yellow background, that was my second time with the pattern but first time with changing colors like that.  It turned out ok, not quite as I would have liked.  The red one is the first attempt at the cat where the outline is made of skipped stitches.  I’m more satisfied with that.  I’ll probably try the same thing again but substitute a puff stitch for the skipped stitch which will create a little 3D cat face, and if you’ve watched any movies lately you know everything is better in 3D!  I also added the seed stitch and the single, double pattern to my crochet repertoire.

After making the abstract cats pattern Snuggle I had to adapt it to make something for MY cats.  I made a cat ‘tub’ with the abstract cats as the sides.  Before I even finished Kes was trying to snuggle in it so I knew I had an instant success.  Now that I’m done she is still interested in it which is good.  We’ll see if the interest picks up a bit when the weather turns to fall and winter since it’s rather toasty now.  I think I should have used a smaller hook for the sides so that it would be a bit stiffer.  The base circle is 2 strands of Red Heart and an L hook.  I kept the L hook for most of the cats around the sides before I realized that a smaller hook would be better.  I changed and it tightened up just a bit.  The cat likes it regardless, she’s just happy that it’s soft and snuggly.

My next project was a small pillow to use for sleeping and upcoming travels.  I’ve had a little stuffed animal since I was 10 that I’ve been using as a support pillow.  What’s so odd is that it took a long time to learn how to sleep with it as a child and now as an adult I’m just not comfortable without the support.  I decided that since I’m starting 30 in the eye I should graduate to a pillow of some sorts.  I’ve had no luck finding a pillow with similar dimensions since the stuffed animal (a cat of course) has a long rectangular shape to it.  After completing the cat tub and seeing an item with purpose, unlike all those cutesy amis, I realized that crocheting a pillow in my preferred dimensions wouldn’t be very difficult.  I had a nice soft yarn from Red Heart called “Soft Yarn” in black that just begged to be used for this.  I looked up how to crochet a solid rectangle and once again found myself at Teresa’s site but this time via one of her Youtube instructions.  I started off with the video but found I needed the written directions as well.   For the back, or other side, of the pillow I decided on a single, double crochet for a nice texture without the boringness of single crochet rows.  I noticed that the solid rectangle still has some gaps since it is in double crochet and as with anything that has corners in crochet; corner gaps.  I bet there’s a way to avoid that, I hope I’ll run into it during my crochet travels.  For the pillow stuffing I decided to take an old t-shirt and make an inner pillow which worked beautifully!  I knew the jersey knit of the t-shirt would be perfect for something that needs to be soft and flexible.  I could hardly contain myself as I sewed up the crochet pillow seams and got ready to put in the t-shirt pillow.  It came out perfectly and  I can’t wait to try it out tonight.

So although Pikachu never got the gift of sight this May at least 12 cats will have nice, homey Snuggles in their shelter cages, my cats have a new bed, and I have a new pillow.