I was given 7 skeins of chenille “Fun, Mesh Scarf yarn” recently – a barista at our Sunday morning Guilty Knitters Coffee shop had rescued it from the bin when a friend’s shop was shutting down.

She thought of us knitters and I wasn’t going to let the fact it was truly “Fugly” yarn make me waste a generous gift.  (NOTE: Fugly = “Flipping Ugly” or sometimes the language is stronger…)

The colours were not bad – Black, White and Grey but the yarn – Urgh! It is pure synthetic and the type of meshy yarn used to make fro-fro flouncy scarves. About as far from my taste in knitting and scarves as you can get!

This is the yarn construction…

What am I going to do with that?!

I was pondering how to best this yarn when Ziggy saw the skeins on the floor. She purred. She pummeled it. She then scrabbled it into a nest, curled up and slept on it.

So. Cat Blankie it was!

Rather than use the mesh properties of the yarn I decided to treat it as one very thick stand and knit it on my thickest needles – 20mm.  Knitting it was a performance piece and amused the Guilty Knitters!  It  made my arms ache to do  but the fabric was lovely and dense and squishy – Purr-fect for lazy cats…

Not Fugly at all!

This was not the situation for clever patterns or stitch details – a garter stitch square it was!

To make sure I used all the yarn but made the biggest cat blankie possible, I used the technique I last used on my conservatory cushion’s back and knit diagonally…

i.e start with one stitch – increase at the end of every row – when half the yarn is used, start decreasing at the end of every row – you end up with a perfect square 😀

I was cautious and had a little left over so I made some cat-toy pompoms for the corners. I’m really please I didn’t let my “yarn snobby” first impressions get in the way of my imagination.

But the real question is, did Ziggy and Kitty approve?

I’ll let you decide…

It is acceptable!

Pompoms!

So good they were prepared to “Share”

Snugly Blissful dreaming