Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Crafty Secret Santa 2015

A couple of weeks ago, a coworker asked on our "Crafts" mailing list if people were interested in a Crafty Secret Santa exchange. I love participating in the different reddit exchanges throughout the year (Secret Santa, Plushies, Bookmarks, Teachers...) that I couldn't pass the opportunity. I knew it would be tough to fit in the projects within its deadline though... My husband thinks I'm crazy, and now that I'm finally done with this project, I think he was/is right :(

When I received the info for my match, I have to admit it took me some time to figure out what to make out of it.

The colors she liked:

  • red
  • pink
  • gold

The things she liked:

  • cats
  • shining things
  • weightlifting
  • ocean
  • backgammon
  • roses/orchids
  • USC football
  • karaoke
  • old timey clocks

I couldn't find one thing that really inspired me. As my craft is crochet and I mostly make amigurumi, "cats" was a good starting point. Making a cat amigurumi would have been a really straightforward project, so I decided to incorporate ALL THE THINGS!

I drew a couple of ideas, which at some point was: a cat, standing on a backgammon board, which itself was on top of a football and a dumbbell, in a raft kind of way (to represent the ocean... right?), with a mic in one end for karaoke, and a bouquet of roses in the other ones, and a clock in its pocket.
As you can guess, it seemed a little bit too much, so I decided to make 2 cats, and split the different elements on each. Such as the 2 cats would represent 2 aspects of my match.

One ended up with what I would call a romantic side: roses for earrings, old timey clock for belly with music notes on the back, scarf with backgammon hints. Its name is Romeow.

The other one ended up with a more sportive side: a football-belly with notes for stitches, lifting weights, with a baseball cap (turtle logo for the ocean, because why not?). Its name is Cathlete.

While the cats are white, I used a sparkly yarn, and I crocheted most of the other elements with pink/red/gold yarn.

I was so late with the project due to both my daughters being pretty sick for 3 weeks, that I had to finish Romeow and Cathlete during my lunch breaks at work, hence the bad quality of the pictures, and the few amount of them :(

The result is a silly duo of cats, that I think the recipient enjoyed :)
Let me introduce you to Romeow and Cathlete!


Oh and also, the awesome made-up box to give them away: