Fun for kitties!

When we got our new kitten a month or so ago, the woman who had fostered him told me about Kickeroos. Basically they are little kitty pillows with furry tails that are fun for them to grab and hold in all four feet. And of course, sometimes to sleep on. They look like, well, this: 

Back in November or so, I started to knit a blanket from random yarns I had leftover in my stash with the intention of having a crazy blanket whipped up and donated to the animal shelter. Every shelter I've gone to has driven home the fact that sometimes animals just need a favorite fuzzy thing to curl up in to make anywhere seem like home. I used the Mirbeau Slip Stitch Baby Blanket pattern, free on Ravelry, randomly picked a width, and alternated colors as I worked. 

Well, the new year rolled around and I decided to destash and donate most of my unused yarn from the past few years instead of finishing up the blanket. I just wasn't feeling great about the combination of colors to come, even though I'm sure the animals wouldn't mind how the finished product looked. When it came time to frog the progress I had made, I was struck by how perfectly this would turn out as a Kickeroo if I folded what I had in half and put a tail on it. 

I grafted the sides together, then turned it right side out and stuffed it with fiberfil until it was relatively firm but still somewhat squishy (I compared it to my purchased version for Newton). The end was just whipstitched closed. I picked up stitches and knit a tail 12 stitches wide using black eyelash yarn on size 10 needles. 

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. I'm glad that despite my lack of enthusiasm for a scrap blanket, that I still have something I can donate to the animal shelter along with the towels we've packed up to go. Hooray for the improv kickeroo!