I've had a basket of yarn butterflies, swatches and leftover yarn balls for several years. So, for my Make Nine "Yarn" project, I thought I would empty the basket, repurpose the leftovers and make something useful. How about crocheting a kitty bed for our pack of tuxedo kitties?
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| Crocheted cat bed. |
The plan for using and mixing the yarns
How to use this diversity of yarn weights, colors, fiber content and textures? If I held multiple strands together, it would equate to a bulky weight yarn. I would make sure I had one on-going yarn strand when a new yarn strand was attached. This would quickly use up many of these odds and ends.
A bulky yarn would also lend itself to a quick project. My size J crochet hook could accommodate multiple strands. And the various yarn textures and colors would merge and blur together to create a colorful, mosaic-like composition.
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| Crocheting with multiple yarn stands together. |
Starting at the center with a pairing of a boucle and a novelty yarn, the improvisational crochet process began. The miscellaneous little yarn balls began to disappear into the spiral base of the new kitty bed. I'm not sure that the increases (stitches) were equally spaced, but the bottom of the bed was fairly symmetrical and seemed to lay flat—the goal. The textured yarns disguised any inconsistencies.
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| Crochet in the round. |
Once the center was an ample size for a couple of cats (no measuring here), the next step was figuring out a way to build up the sides. The kitties like to feel protected and cozy in a nest-like structure. With a little trial and error and some strategic decreases, the sides began to take form.
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| Finished crocheted cat bed. |
Now, this kitty bed is not like the stuffed, store-bought ones that we put the quilts in. The yarn made it warm, but the bed is not very fluffy. I put it beside the other beds and no kitty went into it.
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| Kitties in the store-bought beds. |
I proceeded to make a quilted "mattress" from an old T-shirt to possibly entice its usage.
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| Cut from an old, worn T-shirt. |
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| A "mattress" for the new cat bed. |
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| Cat bed with cotton knit mattress. |
Still not appealing to the kitties! Even Stan Leigh was sleeping beside the new bed... and dangerously close to falling off the chair!
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| Stan Leigh sleeping beside the bed... nearly falling off the chair. |
A Make Nine Fail
The tuxedo kitties would rather pile up in twos in the other beds than to use this one. I'm not sure if they don't like the synthetic fibers in some of the yarns, if the bed is not cushy enough, or if it's too foreign to them... no one wants to sit in it. ??? Any ideas?
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| Stan Leigh is not interested in the new bed. |
I'm happy the yarn leftovers were reduced, and were upcycled rather than thrown away. I enjoyed the crochet process, but the end result was not a functional cat bed nor satisfactory to the kitties.
Nonetheless, the effort was made... and I'm checking off this prompt on my Make Nine list.
