This is a happy story. That’s how I start telling people about what I’m doing. I say, “This is a happy story. My oldest friend died and -”
Eyes glaze over. People want to protect themselves from other people’s sorrows, and who can blame them? I can’t. We all carry about as much as we can handle. But not everything is what we expect, and some things can still be pretty goddamn funny. You may or may not remember that when I started the cat blanket project with the lovely Georg, I was a reasonably terrible knitter, but who cared? Cats don’t! The two points were to comfort shelter cats and keep yarn out of landfill. After I made dozens of knitted blankets, I learned to crochet and we were off to the races. Crocheting the same amount of space-filling fabric is much faster and I suck at it so much less. Plus, it’s a lot like performance art: no one knows what you meant to do. Maybe you meant to do that!
Here, we see two of Trout’s sweater project panels. I pulled these panels out of the bags, separated the yarn balls and cut off the strands of mohair, to which I am allergic. Probably. The jewel tones were so beautiful it was almost worth hives and possible gasping explanations to EMTs, but honestly, there are only so many times you can say, “I knew I was allergic, and I was stupid enough to go ahead anyway” before you say to yourself, “Hey, so: give that shit away.” On Friday, a friend of the family stopped by, left the engine running and took away three large bags of mohair yarn.
I knitted these panels off their needles, then crocheted borders to extend these panels into cat blanket sizes. It’s important to remember one thing:
I continue to suck as a knitter. Trout was a fine, right-handed knitter with a tight gauge, and I simply am not. I’m left-handed and haven’t knitted much in years. However, cats do not care. Thanks to Trout, cats will have two more cozy blankets. Hooray!
If you stitch, there’s a shelter near you that needs blankets. You can help even if you suck at it!
Poor Impulse Control 