Come on in the Meerkat's lovely

Knitted Meerkats. Are you into Meerkats- do you ‘get’ the whole Meerkat thing? Is it all ‘simples’ to you? Hmm you know I find it a bit irritating, give me the Cadbury bunny or the Smash robots any day. So I wasn’t exactly excited about this book……until I looked inside. Sue Stratford who wrote this book is obviously very pleasantly mad. I like mad, mad is good. Mad makes this book so much fun. These Meerkats are cute , diminutive, they have character, bags of character and babies, they have babies, in little baby carriers- yep seriously- well not that seriously- which like I say is the really good thing. I knitted a grown up Meerkat, I didn’t use the two strands of special wool recommended, I just broke out some fawn mohair and it seemed to work fine. The parts knit up quickly and are brilliantly shaped. I made up and stuffed as I went as all the little bits could get confusing and that way I could see my little guy emerging from the fluffy chaos. The book recommends that you place two coins in the base of the body and this does give the model a good stability. Anna asked me to make the ‘Fluffy Flippers’ kat , but there really is something for everyone, from brides to punks. I think the yarn I used for the cream stripes on the swimming costume was a 3ply rather than 4ply so it does pull a bit over my slightly chubby guy. I also found it hard to find the colours I wanted to use in 4ply, as you only need very little quantities I didn’t want to buy lots of new wool so made do a bit with some cotton sewing thread. These figures seem up for that though; a bit of fiddling about, personalising, chopping and changing.

This title is a hard back with lovely thick pages, that nice matt paper which smells like almond shells. The pictures are lush and inspiring and I can put my hand on my heart and say that the patterns I followed Work and I’m sorry to say that that doesn’t always go without saying. The book costs £9.99 and has patterns for twenty different kat outfits and two different kat sizes. The possibilities are endless though huh? I’m a convert, you can never have too many Meerkats! 

It's proving to be a particularly mad time here, with SO much going on. I hope things will settle a bit soon. I also have loads of City and Guilds work to share in my next post. I do hope you are all doing fine and finding time in your hectic schedules for a bit of make and do? xxx