Dotty cat bed
Dec. 19th, 2009 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meretia posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
knittingpixI went through a thing in college of making Kitty Pi's (pis? Pies?) for people as catwarming gifts. I graduated over four years ago. The bed my cat has now is the crappy first Kitty Pi I made for my old cat, and it's looking a little sorry. I also had a bunch of Berroco Jasper to use up and thought that it would look cool in the dotty pattern. I just finished the goddamned thing earlier today. My earliest pictures of it are dated October 18.
Jack likes it, but he doesn't really fit it very well.
(
This is why it's so flat. I knit it at two-thirds again times the normal size for him, but his lardbutt still managed to squash it flat. Poor old porky boy.)
Jack's fifteen years old and he's started spending his day migrating between the various heating vents in the house, so I figure he deserves a bed he can cuddle up in. Time for something new!
It was over two feet across before I felted it and it didn't shrink much in the wash. There's nothing we have big enough to stretch it over. That's the top of a cake carrier, with newspaper wadded up around the edges to hold the bottom of the bed out flat and a copy of "American Gods" for... moral support, I guess. I don't know. I'd meant it to weight down the bottom, but it doesn't fit in the cake thing flat. And since prima donnism runs in my family and I was unhappy with the way the colors came out, I think the thinking at that point was something like "fuck it, it doesn't fit but the mediocre book (Neil darling, I love you, but that really wasn't your best work) can keep the mediocre cat bed company and I don't care look at me not care!" I do like the way the edge beyond the rim of the cake carrier curls over, though.
The thing started out 270 stitches around and the pattern says to decrease every third row. I ended up alternating between decreasing every second row and every third row, and the bottom still came out a little too big. The bottom doesn't lay quite flat. It's 29.5" by 22" laid flat in its pre-felting comical hat shape.
The light in my house is abysmal after about 3:00 in the afternoon this time of year, so the only place to get decent natural light was on the floor by the front window. Kitty help is the best help for photographing things on the ground!
Folded over to show the right side of each pattern and to hide the big fricking hole in the middle of the bottom while it was on the needles.
This one shows the color of the inside best of the pictures I have. The spots on the outside are in Berroco Jasper in the Rosso Asiago colorway, which is kind of a plum/red/wheat/orange with a black stripe through it. The stripes and the brown honeycomb are Knit Picks Wool of The Andes. I kind of fudged the first stripe sequence, which I realized when I was into the second one. I decided not to frog it because yeah, 275 stitches around.
This is what I thought the spots were going to come out like and I...guess they did, in a way. I mainly did the bed because I had five skeins of Jasper to use up which looked too busy when I tried to knit anything I'd wear. The yarn is actually really bright, and I got the idea that it would look good with a deep brown. But when I knit it in stockinette, it worked out so that the black stripe through the yarn ended up on the right side of the fabric half the time and the brown WotA just ate the dark colors in the Rosso.
See? It is bright and pretty! It just kind of doesn't felt that way.
Maybe there's just too much orange and white in it and that's what messed it up.
I wasn't so sure Jack got the idea that it was a bed, because he'd run up to see what I was doing when I set it on the ground and he slept on it a few times, but he seemed just as interested in the wrap I made last year out of ten-bucks-a-skein merino wool. But I got the idea earlier tonight that the bed might dry out faster if I moved it closer to the space heater in the half-finished addition (where I'd already put it anyway because it's too big to put up anywhere and I know what I'm picking if I have to choose between the carpet and plywood we're replacing anyway smelling like wet sheep). Then when I went to turn the heater off a minute ago, that's what he'd got up to. Before I startled him, he'd shoved the mat forward so that he could sleep with his little head planted against the side of the bed.
Jack likes it, but he doesn't really fit it very well.
(
This is why it's so flat. I knit it at two-thirds again times the normal size for him, but his lardbutt still managed to squash it flat. Poor old porky boy.)
Jack's fifteen years old and he's started spending his day migrating between the various heating vents in the house, so I figure he deserves a bed he can cuddle up in. Time for something new!
It was over two feet across before I felted it and it didn't shrink much in the wash. There's nothing we have big enough to stretch it over. That's the top of a cake carrier, with newspaper wadded up around the edges to hold the bottom of the bed out flat and a copy of "American Gods" for... moral support, I guess. I don't know. I'd meant it to weight down the bottom, but it doesn't fit in the cake thing flat. And since prima donnism runs in my family and I was unhappy with the way the colors came out, I think the thinking at that point was something like "fuck it, it doesn't fit but the mediocre book (Neil darling, I love you, but that really wasn't your best work) can keep the mediocre cat bed company and I don't care look at me not care!" I do like the way the edge beyond the rim of the cake carrier curls over, though.
The thing started out 270 stitches around and the pattern says to decrease every third row. I ended up alternating between decreasing every second row and every third row, and the bottom still came out a little too big. The bottom doesn't lay quite flat. It's 29.5" by 22" laid flat in its pre-felting comical hat shape.
The light in my house is abysmal after about 3:00 in the afternoon this time of year, so the only place to get decent natural light was on the floor by the front window. Kitty help is the best help for photographing things on the ground!
Folded over to show the right side of each pattern and to hide the big fricking hole in the middle of the bottom while it was on the needles.
This one shows the color of the inside best of the pictures I have. The spots on the outside are in Berroco Jasper in the Rosso Asiago colorway, which is kind of a plum/red/wheat/orange with a black stripe through it. The stripes and the brown honeycomb are Knit Picks Wool of The Andes. I kind of fudged the first stripe sequence, which I realized when I was into the second one. I decided not to frog it because yeah, 275 stitches around.
This is what I thought the spots were going to come out like and I...guess they did, in a way. I mainly did the bed because I had five skeins of Jasper to use up which looked too busy when I tried to knit anything I'd wear. The yarn is actually really bright, and I got the idea that it would look good with a deep brown. But when I knit it in stockinette, it worked out so that the black stripe through the yarn ended up on the right side of the fabric half the time and the brown WotA just ate the dark colors in the Rosso.
See? It is bright and pretty! It just kind of doesn't felt that way.
Maybe there's just too much orange and white in it and that's what messed it up.
I wasn't so sure Jack got the idea that it was a bed, because he'd run up to see what I was doing when I set it on the ground and he slept on it a few times, but he seemed just as interested in the wrap I made last year out of ten-bucks-a-skein merino wool. But I got the idea earlier tonight that the bed might dry out faster if I moved it closer to the space heater in the half-finished addition (where I'd already put it anyway because it's too big to put up anywhere and I know what I'm picking if I have to choose between the carpet and plywood we're replacing anyway smelling like wet sheep). Then when I went to turn the heater off a minute ago, that's what he'd got up to. Before I startled him, he'd shoved the mat forward so that he could sleep with his little head planted against the side of the bed.
