Crafting for Charity: Critter Blankets & Toys

I’m returning to an earlier subject, today’s charity is once more the construction of blankets for animals in shelters. Blankets and toys, in fact.

One of my surfing jaunts led me to the “Crafty Critters” section of something call the Best Friends Network - it’s a social media site for folks that love animals to meet and perhaps to do something nice for some needy animals. It’s pretty cool to look around, worth a look if you are an animal person as I am.

While on the charity forum, I ran across an article from Charity Guide on making toys and blankets for animal shelters - a way to give a few hours of your time and help out pets without homes. They had some interesting new information for me

• Blankets & toys aren’t just for the animal’s comfort. A shelter is a strange and frightening place for most animals. Having the comfort of a blanket or toy makes animals more social and friendly, increasing the likelihood of adoption. (Compasssionate Action Institute)

• A number of shelters participate through the Cage Comforter Program. It’s not something centralized, but a program that folks begin to serve shelters in their area. Your local shelter might participate in one.

• You can also donate the fabric or yarn (or the funds) for these projects if making blankets and toys isn’t your cup of tea. These programs run off of donations, and all are appreciated.

Places to go to get connected to these efforts:

• The Snuggles Project (a project of Hugs for Homeless Animals), which has resources, patterns, information, etc.,
• Cage Comforter Program of the Compassionate Action Institute, and
• Lily Pads program that I posted about in November

Know of another? Feel free to add it in the comments.

As a side note, I’m an animal lover due to the quiet, gentle influence of my cat, Caper. Beautiful, sweet Caper, over there on the right, is such a quiet cat that most people don’t know he exists. He has lived in my bedroom for 13 years. He comes out to look around sometimes, but he’s very shy and timid. He and his brother were my first pets, and came to live with me when they were 2. He’s now 15. Caper is very loving to me, very funny, with delicate features that contrast with his oddball behaviors. I know his life wasn’t easy before he came to live with me, but I think his last 13 have been good.

Sadly, as happens often with older cats, Caper’s been diagnosed with kidney failure, and has a year or so left with careful treatment. I’ll be so sad to lose him, it’s hard to say goodbye. So my animal advocacy is really for him in recognition of the love and comfort and joy he’s given me, in hopes that more abused and homeless pets can find good, loving homes and live full, long lives.

Dinner is Served: Rosemary Tenderloin & Orzo

I made a couple of holiday meals this year - but about that time I was in a blog slump, so I’m just now getting around to posting some of the yumminess that I concocted back then.

This particular recipe is for the slow-cooker, because I’m in a slow-cooker phase, since I have a new one. This turned out about 20X better than I hoped for. It was so good. This is actually a request from my mother-in-law (hi Jennifer!) who was one of the taste-testers on Christmas.

The finished dish, with a sprinkle of cheese.

The inspiration was a recipe from Made Simple (Side Note: would you believe this book is not available from Amazon? First book I’ve ever seen not available there.) I don’t know about you but I’m completely unable to follow a recipe, so after el jumpo you’ll find my approximation of page 64’s “Rosemary Pork.”

Continue reading Dinner is Served: Rosemary Tenderloin & Orzo…

A few fun things from last week …

Transparent desktops on Flickr (via NY Apartment Therapy) are pretty cool, and took a lot of time and effort, and who has the time to do these things, anyway? Puts me in mind of this for some reason, also a lot of Photoshop work.

Pictures (above) from a Swedish blog of an unbelievable craft space. If I had that many tools to work with, I’d be happy forever. Well, probably I’d just want even more, but that’s a personal issue I need to work on.

The most unusual Scarf I’ve seen this week from “mmm fiber” (I didn’t make that name up) … a series of interlocking rings in sunshiny colors. (right) I can just see myself trying to make this, getting horribly tangled in rings and yarn.

The Underground Quilt Controversy? Interesting article from the Quilting and Patchwork blog on whether or not the underground railroad used messages encoded into quilts. Never heard of this before, how intriguing!

This crochet lace bowl is completely awesome, so awesome I might want to investigate how they managed to make it stay in that shape. Aparently salt crystals make doilies do this?

And finally, some Nerd Craft from Becky Schaefer- Lara Croft (guns and all!) in a lovely pastoral setting … all done in needlepoint. Bet Ms. Croft loves her some needlepoint. And barns! That’s hysterical. I love the little birdie there right by her knee. (Via, via this, which is via this)