Felted Bag

This is the second successful felting project I’ve had and it turned out pretty well. I made this using a pattern called “The Tube Bag” from the book Uncommon Crochet by Julie Armstrong Holetz.



This is the bag before felting. I ended up running it through the washer twice because the yarn I used didn’t want to felt much the first time. Two times really did the trick, though. The pink yarn at the top was just to keep the opening of the bag from getting distorted or stretched while felting.





Here’s the finished bag. I think it looks great. The handles have a tendency to slide, but I like that because I can carry it either way I like. This bag is large enough to fit the book I’m reading plus my wallet, cell phone, keys, and other incidentals. It’s a good medium size.

The pattern was really easy to follow. In the book, she used ribbon as the handles, but I didn’t like that look as much. Plus, I had some extra purse handles lying around from some forgotten project and I felt like I should use them. It took me a really long time to complete this because I just couldn’t find a ribbon I liked. I finally found a really pretty one with birds on it, but didn’t buy enough and couldn’t get any more because it had been discontinued. Ugh! I finally found this one, though, and am pretty happy with it.

I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on this bag since finishing it a couple weeks ago. I’d say this was a pretty successful project!

Yay!!!

After three years of applying and improving my application and working my butt off, I was finally accepted into vet school this year! I don’t start until August, but I’m already making plans about moving and finding an apartment and buying a new computer and everything. I am so, so excited.

Promoting Adoptions

Pet Connection has a post up about increasing adoptions to end euthanasia in shelters. The idea here is that there are enough homes in America to take in all of the shelter pets euthanized, it’s just that most potential pet owners aren’t going to shelters. While sheltering can be a contentious topic (especially the whole “no kill” vs “traditional” thing), I don’t think anyone could argue that increasing shelter adoptions is a bad thing. And here’s where the problem comes in.

As I see it, many shelter and rescue workers simply do not put their best face forward. When someone walks into your organization wanting to adopt a pet, do you:

(a.) Greet them in a friendly way at the door and offer to help them pick the perfect dog for their family or
(b.) Tell them to sign in at the desk and complain to a coworker that there’s just too many people coming in as they leave to peruse the dog selection on their own, with no real background on the dogs?

I think we’d all like to hope that the answer is “a.” However, because real people (and real, stressed out people) are working at the front desk, it doesn’t always happen that way. Part of the problem here is that most people enter this field because they love animals and want to help them. That is absolutely not a bad thing. However, when you’re an “animal person” and you work all day with “animal people”, you start to lose touch with ordinary families. And that is not okay.

Those of us who have worked or do work in shelter need to remember that, in order to help the animals under our care, we need to serve the people who come through our door. These people generally do not care about the plight of puppy mill dogs or about the pet overpopulation crisis. They just want a pet.

Every kennel worker, vet tech, and dog walker in the shelter needs to be working on customer service at all times no matter what. Even if you’ve been having a terrible day and you’re overwhelmed with kittens, you need to put on a happy face and be helpful to the people coming in. The members of the public are not your enemy. They’re the people you rely on to adopt the animals you care about. You can’t do it without them.

Also, lecturing is not okay. It’s so, so easy to step up onto your podium and start lecturing potential pet owners on everything from puppy mills to dog parks. When someone is talking to you about dogs and says they’re thinking about purchasing a golden retriever because goldens are “so smart”, don’t automatically launch into a tirade about breeders, and about millions of shelter dogs dying, and about the horrors of puppy mills. Instead, start a friendly dialogue. Tell them about the cute shepherd mix you have in the shelter who’s really, really smart (”he already knows how to sit and how to shake hands!”) and very sweet (”he just loves kids and is great at all of our adoption events!”) Set up a meeting so that the potential owner can see that this dog, right here might be the one for them. Show them that he’s just as sweet and smart as the golden they were imagining. Sure, throw in that they’d be saving a life, too, and that shelter animals need a home and they’d be doing a great thing by rescuing one. Just don’t focus on the doom and gloom.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve told current coworkers or friends about how I used to work in a shelter and they’ve told me that they wanted to adopt, but just couldn’t find the pet they wanted there. You know what? It’s often true. For all they know, that dog or cat wasn’t there. They couldn’t find him because nobody at the shelter was willing to jump up and facilitate a match in a friendly, non-pushy way.

More shelters and rescues need to make customer service a much bigger focus. This may sound over the top, but lives depend on it.

Dog Genetics

Genetics was one of my very favorite courses during undergrad. I thought it was fun and interesting. I’m sure it’d get pretty boring eventually, but my intro, 300-level class was really cool.

I recently found this talk by canine geneticist Dr. Elaine Ostrander on the NIH’s podcast list. It was presented as a Wednesday Afternoon Lecture way back in October. Of course that means I finally got around to listening to it earlier this week. It’s an interesting lecture – especially for anyone interested in all of the weirdness that goes on in purebred dogs. She touches on things like the genes for certain coat types and even on the genetics of “bully whippets.” Some of this may be a little heavy if you’re rusty on your science skills, but I thought it was fun to listen to while I was at work.

Dr. Ostrander also has links to her lab’s work up on the NHGRI dog genome website.

Blue Shrug

This was completely free-handed. The stitch I used throughout is half-double crochet, chain one, half-double crochet. I always worked into the chain space, not into the actual stitches. Basically, I crocheted a rectangle, which I then folded in half and sewed into sleeves (just like the Lovers Knot Shrug.) This stitch and yarn combo wasn’t as stretchy as the Lovers Knot was, so it wouldn’t meet in the middle of my chest like I wanted. To make it do so, I extended it out across the front. Then, I made the extended out part wider on the top and bottom as I felt necessary. I tied the whole thing with a ribbon to keep it closed. I intended to sew buttons to hold it, but the ribbon came out so well that I decided to keep it.

The yarn I used here is something made by Bernat. I didn’t save the label, so I don’t know the name. It came in a HUGE skein that I bought on sale a few weeks before Christmas. It’s light blue with some sort of shiny thread in it that sparkles. Like I said above, it doesn’t stretch much. If I made this shrug again, crocheting a little more loosely and with a stretchier yarn, it would probably come out more like the Lover’s Knot shrug and I could hold it together with a pin. I may try that out in the future. I really like the way this stitch looks.

This is why I need a bigger bed.

I haven’t posted here in awhile because not much is going on. I’ve been incredibly busy with family things and am anxiously awaiting replies from vet schools. That’s about it. Hopefully, I’ll finish more crafts soon.

Halloween!

I haven’t posted on this in a really, really long time. Mostly, I blame vet school applications. I’m finally done turning all my apps and supplementals in. Yay! Anyways, for Halloween this year, KB and I did a couples costume. I know things like that are kind of disgustingly cute, but ours wasn’t so bad. I went as the big bad wolf and he was red riding hood. We didn’t get many good pictures of us or anyone else at the Halloween party we went to – they all came out pretty blurry, which sounds about right if I’m the one behind the camera.

Anyways, here’s one of both of us.



My hair looks disgusting and greasy. This is because I have really straight, really smooth hair and it just wouldn’t be messy enough for my costume. I had to buy this gooey stuff to make it look all messy and gross (or “beachy”, as the label on the goo puts it.) By the end of the night, when these pictures were taken, my hair had calmed down from really messy and fun to just looking like I hadn’t showered in awhile. Ew.

KB’s costume is basically what you can see here – a red hoodie. Pretty easy. Mine is below.



That is a flannel dress I got at Target on Halloween. It’s cute enough, but waaay too short to wear alone on a normal day. It ends pretty much where the picture does. For warmth, I had some cute knee socks that went with my costume pretty well. I don’t normally wear knee socks (or socks, period) but they worked here.

The party we went to was really fun. It was at my friend Sarah’s house and there were a lot of cool people in fun costumes there. My friend Chris was Anderson Cooper, which worked out really well. He even had a cool CNN type election map on the TV in the background. He wrote his own captions below the map – they were really funny. Also at the party were people dressed as salt and pepper, an angel, a kitty who’d used up all her lives, a superhero team, an old man, and Batman. Basically a pretty good mix of people and costumes.

Perry Hat

I had some leftover black yarn from a shawl/wrap thing I tried to make last year and quit working on. (It was just taking way too much concentration and I didn’t have the time.) Anyways, for Halloween, I decided to make a kitty hat. I know they’re pretty ubiquitous, but I’ve never made one before, so I decided to try it out anyways. This is what I came up with while watching Top Model.



Perry is really, really hard to photograph. He just doesn’t sit still much. This is actually a pretty good picture of him!

Lover’s Knot Shrug

I made this shrug a couple of years ago for my sister. It’s a great pattern – it works up beautifully in a very short amount of time. Also, you can use just about any yarn and hook size you want. I believe I used a size K hook. The yarn is Plymouth Galway Highland Heathers in color 750.

This is the front of the shrug (that’s my sister, not me.) It’s held closed with a flower shaped pin right now, but I think sometimes she wears it without any closure. It looks fine either way.

This is the back of the shrug. It goes down to about the middle of her back and has short sleeves. It’s a pretty clever pattern – the whole thing is worked up as a rectangle, so there’s really no shaping involved.

The pattern is here, on the second page, second post down.

Kitty Pi Bed

This is my version of the Kitty Pi Bed. Mine is crocheted because I don’t know how to knit, and I made it in stripes using some wool lopi yarn and a really big hook. It was my first experience felting something in the washing machine and, I have to admit, it was pretty frustrating. The lopi yarn doesn’t felt very easily, so I had to send it through cycle after cycle until I finally got it evenly felted. Still, I think it turned out pretty well.

Unfortunately, my cat Perry has absolutely no interest in it. I’m going to leave it around for a little longer, but if he doesn’t decide he really loves it, I’ll pass it along to a kitty owning friend. Perry would much rather sleep on my pillow.

Here’s the cat bed before I felted it. (The dog whose head is barely visible in the corner is my sister’s dog, Rex. He wouldn’t get out of the picture.) You can see the stitch definition and also the really floppy sides.

Here’s the bed after felting. It’s much fuzzier now and the sides actually stand up. I’m hoping to get a picture with Perry actually in the bed. If he decides sleeping/sitting in it isn’t completely beneath him.