A Tale of Two Kitties. .or Three

There's a tradition in our family that started back in 1971 with the birth of my niece.  I knit her a Christmas stocking from an old Mary Maxim pattern.  Subsequently, with the addition of each new child to our family, I knit them a stocking as well. (For the record, that totals 21 stockings each with a different design.)  This was Ruthie's first Christmas and so, of course, she had to have a stocking as well.  Sometimes we wait a year to see if there's a special interest, however, it turns out that Ruthie loves kittens!  I do too, but I have a hard time designing them for some reason.  Nevertheless, I came up with this really cute kitten.  At least on paper it was cute.  Something was lost in translating it from the drawing to the graph paper.  I knew it wasn't right, but I kept thinking that it would work out once I knitted it and did a little embroidery here and there.  Wrong.  It was dreadful and here's the proof:

It looks like a wombat. Seriously. What's worse, I ripped it out, reduced the design a bit and reknit it.  It was worse the second time as evidenced by the above picture.  By now, it was almost Christmas and time was ticking down. I can't tell you how much it was bothering me that Ruthie would have such an awful stocking.  Some of you will say "it's not that bad", but it was.  It was bothering me so much that I decided to start all over again with a completely new design.  This time, it actually looked like a cat!  I knew I was on the right track when the gals at physical therapy checked it out and said "oh, it's a kitty!".

Much cuter, don't you think?  I also think it looks a little more "Christmasy".  I managed to finish it on December 23rd.  Just in the "nick" of time!

On another note, before I started with the stockings, I had decided to knit Ruthie her very own cat.  Something she could cuddle and drag around.  I found this really cute pattern on Ravelry called C is for Cat .

The pattern is very well written and has lots of pictures and detailed instructions so it's a snap to make.  I had a lot of fun making it.  I used Lion Brand's Organic Cotton in French Vanilla and Natural. It is so soft and surprisingly easy to knit with.  We all know how tough cotton can sometimes be!

I like the way that the yarn stripes, although it was interesting that one leg had actual stripes and the other had these diagonal blocks.  I tried several times to get them to somewhat match, but for some reason, it just wouldn't work.  In the end, I decided that it just gave the cat some personality.

Ruthie seemed to really like it and immediately started dragging it by it's ear!  That was the whole point, wasn't it!

This tree that the cat is hanging out in was the only tree we had this year!  With a bed in my living room, there was no place to put our usual tree.  Our great neighbors delivered this one to us and we decided that was all we needed!  Of course, it was kind of hard to slip presents under!