The NorthWesternBelle

This post has been a long time coming, considering this project was accepted in November and finished in December 2017. Better late than never, right? Right. (Edit 3/16/18: I did make a couple of videos about this project! Check them out here: Part 1 & Part 2 .) Spoiler! They're awesome. So, pretty much as soon as I lost my job at the end of October, my mother in law commissioned 30 mugs - 10 cat themed and 20 dog themed - to be Christmas gifts for her pet sitting clients. I'd never taken on such a large project, but I had the time to do it, so I was excited! And also seriously nervous about getting that many mugs through the entire process with enough time to ship them to NM before Christmas. To-be cat mugs. Dog mugs. The dog mugs were thrown to be 4" tall and 4" wide. The handles were all hand-pulled. Right about midway through production of all the cups, the studio hired me as a part-time office assistant. I went from spending two and a ...

If it weren't for YouTube, I'd still be crocheting in straight rows and nothing else. I'll just get that out there up front. I love YouTube for the fact that it hosts videos of ANYTHING you might be interested in learning how to do. Along those lines, I was recently randomly browsing crochet videos and came across this video by the Crochet Geek that I instantly fell in love with. Crochet cats? Sign me up! I gave it a shot yesterday; the video is a bit long winded for me, so I went to the web site and found the written instructions. It's basically three rows of shell stitches (2 DC Sl 2 DC) in each color with a drop stitch for the arms on the first row. They really do look like cats! So awesome! This reds with gray combination was turned into an infinity scarf...Infinite Cats! So awesome. I'll be getting this beauty listed on Etsy ASAP! I've also already got plans for an afghan for my BFF, who is a self-proclaimed crazy cat lady. The sc...