Last weekend was a long weekend for us – I had all these plans to finish up some works in progress, especially my Graham Scarf, so I can start on some bigger projects. Instead, I ran out of the Stroll Tonal I was using on Friday afternoon (completely my fault, nothing to do with Erica‘s wonderful pattern.)  Luckily, Jenny is also working on a project in Goldrush & had some leftovers!  But this meant that I wouldn’t be able to work on it all weekend.  And none of my other projects just seemed to appeal to me and I just fell into a blah mood.

So I decided I needed cute quick projects to make me smile.

I got out the brightest Swish colors in my stash and my E hook & had some fun!

First, I did a couple of the adorable Chubby Owls by Tara Schreyer.  When Tara first submitted it, I thought it was such a cute pattern & couldn’t wait to make some little owls to have around my house.

Mine look very different than the originals – I used a worsted weight rather than sport for one thing, but that’s the beauty of amigurumis – you can use any size yarn & they still look cute!  For the larger one, I used Wonderland Heather and followed the instructions for the medium size.  The smaller one is in Canary, leftover from an afghan I made earlier this year.  I didn’t have any white felt (or appropriate buttons) so I just stuck a couple of large safety eyes I had laying around.  I also used Tara’s suggestion of using popcorn kernels to weight them down – what a great idea!  This was a really fun quick project – the small one only took me a little over an hour to crochet!

Then I came across Susan Morishita’s free Juggling Cats pattern.  And I couldn’t stop making them!

Each of these little kitties only took about an hour from start to finish and they were so much fun!  I used various scraps of Swish Worsted again, including leftovers from the Owls, and 6mm safety eyes.  I even had to make one to resemble my own tuxedo kitty, Rorschach.

Well, my kitty doesn’t have blue whiskers!  I put catnip in a couple of them & will probably give them to her – she loves chasing balls & these are about the same size as her favorite toys.  Otherwise they might just keep me company on my desk!

These cheerful little creatures made me very happy.  I think I need to make more!