Miaow

June 28, 2015September 5, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)93 Comments

Working on this new pattern on and off over the last year has been an exciting and slightly novel thing for me. It’s the first time I’ve made a pattern from scratch with the intention of it being a pattern, if you see what I mean. All of the other animal patterns have come about because I wanted to knit them as finished items rather than with the original intention of sharing them in pattern form and so for most of them I had years of tweaking and lots of knittings before arriving at the final patterns.

This time I started off with a basic idea sketched out and then knitted up some trial runs (the earliest of which did not go well). But I’ve persevered and after lots of rejected test samples I arrived at one that I was pretty happy with. Then it was just down to playing around with ear placement, head length, tail tip and a few more little bits of fiddling and tweaking. Anyway, I’m satisfied enough to now release the patterns, so here is my little cat boy and girl, both clad in plaid 🙂

It was hard to decide exactly what sort of cat should be in the pattern – after all there are so many different breeds, from refined pure-bred Persians to lowly but loveable moggies. So because I couldn’t decide I’ve included in the pattern 4 extra head designs which are interchangeable, so you can make either a plain coloured cat, or a cat with a white blaze, a cat with an eye patch, a Siamese cat or a tabby. There are little bits that you can combine from these different designs to make your own unique looking cat, a bit like a selection box (sorry I couldn’t resist taking this photo – hope it’s not too creepy!)

Here are some of the heads I’ve made so far from the pattern (all instructions and details of yarns used for these are included with both patterns)…

As usual with a new pattern release I’m on tenterhooks, waiting for the first projects to appear on Ravelry. It’s so exciting to see what other people have made from the patterns so please come and add yours to the group if you give any of the patterns a try.

The new patterns are now live on both Ravelry and Etsy . I so hope that if you give any of them a go you have fun knitting from them x

Puffed out

May 21, 2015 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)72 Comments

Firstly, thanks so very, very much for all the wonderfully kind comments on the previous post about Tobys hair. I was so touched to read them and wish I could share them with Toby and have him understand all of the lovely compliments you gave him.

Secondly, sorry to not have been around much recently. I seem to have done something to my elbow and it's needed some rest as even typing for more than a short while has been a bit painful. Scraping down the chicken run every few days probably hasn't helped but I think making these puffs may be the main cause…

Puffs1

A couple of weeks back I decided to start a cushion to match the blanket that I'm slowly working on (see below) and I've always loved Alicia's Sunshine day afghan, so that seemed the perfect choice of pattern. Once I got going on the puff making I became a bit hooked on them and made lots in one day. The following day I paid the price for my puff over-indulgence with a very sore elbow and it's taking ages to feel better.

Needless to say this project is now having a snooze at the bottom of my knitting bag. I really like how it looks and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up when my elbow doesn't hurt so much. In the meantime small bursts of knitting seem to be OK, which is a relief as I'd get incredibly grumpy rather quickly if I wasn't able to knit!

And here's where the crochet blanket is up to so far, but with my sore elbow it will be a while before it gets much bigger.

Blanket2

Blanket

In other news, the garden is blooming. My squash and courgette plants are now in their permanent home and growing fast. The kale and broccoli are all doing well under the netting but the poor bean and pea seedlings have been decimated by slugs who come out to munch on them each night. Still most things are faring better and the chives are exploding like little flowery fireworks.

Chives2

Chives

Viola

Woodruff

Garden

The chickens are happy and laying an egg each most days – evidently I need to make more things that use eggs as we've built up quite a stock! You'll see there's a particularly large egg in the middle which I'm pretty sure is a double yolker as we've had a few already. I've not yet been able to work out which of the ladies is laying these but I don't remember having any with our previous hens so these are special.

Lotsofeggs

Eggs

The weather this week has been all over the place, sunshine one minute and huge cloud-burst downpours of rain and hail the next – not fun if you get caught out in it but the rainbows after the storms have been especially bright and lovely.

Rainbow4

Rainbows

Next week is school half term break but I hope to be back with some knitting news once we're back into our term time routines again. Until then, thanks for visiting and best wishes for happy times x

crafts & knitting · new patterns

monkey business

April 26, 2015September 5, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)44 Comments

They’ve been a while coming, but at last I’ve finished working on the monkey patterns and they’re now available on Ravelry.

As usual there is a boy and girl version of the pattern.

The boy has shorts and two options for making a houndstooth patterned sweater – one that is worked in stranded technique using two colours on each row (shown in bottom of 3rd picture) and the other which is worked in single colour stripes and uses slipped stitches to create the pattern (shown in top of 3rd picture). I’ve included both because I know that not everyone likes working with 2 colours at once, so the second sweater is easier from this respect.

The girl pattern also has 2 clothing options – one dress that is worked in stranded technique with two colours on some rows and the second that has a textured dot pattern knitted in a single colour. There are also instructions for making a bow decoration and for adding decoration to her shoes.

Hopefully anyone who uses the pattern will have fun making their own little monkey and I’m really looking forward to seeing the first finished monkeys popping up in the Ravelry group.

We’re having a very quiet weekend here without the usual music that comes constantly from Amys room – she’s away for the weekend doing her Duke of Edinburgh Award practice expedition. She left yesterday morning in her walking boots and waterproofs with a rucksack almost the same size as her strapped to her back! She’s walking around 10 miles with a small team from her school and they then have to pitch camp, cook their own food, spend the night, pack everything away again (this will probably be the hardest part for Amy!) and walk the 10 miles back. Typically after weeks of dry weather this weekend has had a lot of rain so I’m expecting a very damp and tired daughter back at 5ish!

Hope you’re having a good weekend where you are, see you soon x