Suzy Q Homemaker

I actually finished this a week or so ago, but am just now getting around to posting it.  Thing is, I was trying to stage a photo shoot with Scraps so I could prove the snuggliness of the pet snuggle I made for Dewey's KAL.  Being a kitten, she had other ideas like Drinking Out of the Aquarium and Knocking Down the Entire Basket of Unopened Mail.

This purple squishy thing is the Bamboo Knit Snuggle.  I chose this pattern for my KAL because bamboo reminds me of Dewey.  She couldn't knit with animal fibers and was always singing the praises of her natural plant yarns.  The snuggle itself is only named after the stitch, though.  I knit this bad boy with some purple acrylic from my stash.

Here's to you, Dew.

There's a special place in my heart for this challenge.  Words just can't describe how deeply important it is for me to do this.  Dewey's Knit-A-Long is Mini-Challenge #2 in Dewey's Books Challenge.  Haha, that's a lot of linking in one sentence.  Don't mean to be irreverent (which is nearly impossible when Dewey's involved--she was not the type to get all offended, oh queen of dark and sarcastic humor that she was).

I already had plans to do some knitting for charity in her honor, and this just gives me greater cause to do so.  One of the charity I have in mind is the Snuggles Project.

The Snuggles Project was founded by our president and founder, Rae French, in 1996 because of her heartfelt need to do something for the innocent victims who find themselves in animal shelters without a bit of comfort to call their own. Picturing them in their hard cold cells made her heart ache to do something to help. So she got the idea of security blankets for shelter animals. The security blankets are called "Snuggles." Each animal would get a Snuggle to cuddle up with to feel warmth and comfort. Most shelter animals are kept in areas with stainless steel braces and hard plastic flooring or even bare concrete floors. The Snuggles would allow them to have a little reprieve from the coldness of the pen they are kept in.

One thing that Dewey and I both loved to share were our cat stories.  She was always worried that she talked about her cats too much, but I was always telling her that I loved to hear about Minette and her newest girl Minerva.  I sometimes showed her pictures that I took of my cats and she came up with some pretty funny captions for them on ICHC.  In honor of Dewey, her friends were encouraged to "rent a cat or something."  Since I can't realistically do that with three cats in the house already, I'll knit for cats instead.

Dewey was not only a close friend of mine, but a very influential person in the book blog community.  To honor her memory, the Dewey's Books Reading Challenge was created.  The goal of the challenge is to either read six books, one from each of the years in her archives, or to read five books that she reviewed.

I didn't start book challenges until I started reading Dewey's blog and others in her blogging world.  Through her blog, I met some really cool people and expanded my reading lists tremendously.  She had an enormous impact on my ever-changing taste in books.  I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime based on her review, and it still sits on my shelf (I can't bring myself to get rid of it now--call me sentimental).  I also recently won her copy of Mary Poppins because I knew that her favorite song from the movie had to be "Feed the Birds."  She spoke often about the birds she fed every day at her house and even sent me a picture on my phone of a raven that had been staring her down.

Well, I haven't finished my challenge list yet, but I know two books I am definitely reading.  One of those is Grapes of Wrath.  She actually got onto me for not ever reading me and most likely threatened me if I didn't.  Maybe I'm exaggerating...or AM I?