The Zoot Yarn

  For my birthday, to make up for pissing me right the fuck off with a gag gift, my sister gave me some Zoot yarn.  Which is not yarn made from Zoot's fur (thank god), but yarn in Zoot colors and with a kitty on the label.

Since I've been watching a lot of Hoarders lately, it's occurred to me that I need to throw out all of my possessions and start using up my yarn stash.  So, it was time to find something to do with the Zoot yarn.

I tried using the Zoot yarn to practice shell stitch, but the end result wouldn't have looked good.  Next solution: practice making granny squares.

After I reached a certain point, I decided, "I am just going to keep going until I've used up all this yarn."

When this actually happened I decided it would be better to end the row I was working on and to use the leftover yarn to make a cat toy.

The toy is a circle:

Ch 2, 6 sc in the first ch
Inc around (12)
Sc, inc around (18)
Sc, sc, inc around (24)
I think about two or three rows of 24 sc
Sc, sc, dec around (18)
Stuff with polyfill and a little bit of catnip
Sc, dec around (12)
Dec around (6)

For the tail I made a chain, and then did single crochet back down the chain until I reached the ball.  Except I misjudged the amount of yarn I had left so I had to pull out some stitches and make the chain smaller.

Some of you may have managed to avoid this incident, but Zoot swallowed a piece of yarn last week.  I spent a lot of time on the phone with the emergency vet and thinking about how I am history's greatest monster.  Zoot just did cat stuff and spent about a day with an inch of yarn hanging out of her ass.  We have both made a full recovery, but yarn scraps are no longer toys, and this toy is probably going to be supervised play only.  Until I forget how stressful this week was.

Zoot has not deigned to actually sit on the mini-afghan I lovingly made for her.  And why the hell should she when there's leftover dog bed materials available?

Stuff I've recently made

 A wine bag for Jamel, full of her favorite racist wine.  Well, half full.

An elephant for Thessaly to replace the one whose trunk was horribly gnawed and whose tail was either chewed or pulled off.

Did I take a picture of an elephant using the MySpace angle?  You bet your ass I did.

A pill and some soap for Dandan.  I like making soap.  It's pretty easy--even someone like me can quickly whittle a little cross like that--and it makes people wonder if I feel their personal hygiene isn't up to my rigorous standards.

Karate belt displays for Kate.  The cases are doll/toy display boxes from Michaels which at the moment are 50% off, making them much cheaper than actual acrylic belt displays.  And these are big enough that I finally found something to do with all my belt test certificates as well!