What lasted for me from our darling daughter's eight-month adventure in Wisconsin was an abiding interest in working up my mom's yarn stash into cat mats for the Angel's Wish Foundation (http://angelswish.org/about/). The first photo above is the last batch of cat mats turned over the day she left Wisconsin. The top one is kind of embarrassing; I was gleefully crocheting up a pattern, then discovered I didn't have enough yarn to finish it, and had to add completely different colors to finish it. DD calls this one "broken television." The pink one is made of a very soft chenille yarn that I should have stabilized before donating, but what can I say, I was in a hurry and distracted by the upheaval in our house.
The lower photograph is of a batch of mats that I hope to pack up and walk over to the post office today to send out. The top one is actually made from a sport weight yarn; my mom crocheted it in the hospital, just a couple of days after suffering a stroke a few years ago. I stitched a piece of leftover fleece to the bottom to stabilize it and added the fringe to help it lie flat. It really represents a triumph over adversity and I hope its future owner loves it.
I'm about to run out of rug yarn soon, so future mats will probably be made of double strands of worsted or sport weight yarn. There is a seemingly never-ending supply in my mom's house, so I'm looking forward to trying out some new stitch designs on those unsuspecting kitties. This project would be a real triumph if I could get my mom, the master crocheter, to start making them, too. (Are you reading this, Thelma?)
