Occasionally, in my spare time I enjoy a little knitting and might make myself or my husband a scarf or hat. My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was young and then a little later taught me to knit. (Her first attempt at teaching me to knit was a total failure because I just wasn’t catching on!) I am by no means nimble with yarn and patterns are like reading Greek for me. I can count on my hands the number of things I’ve ever knitted or crocheted.
With that said, every time I go to the craft store I see the over sized yarn and think ‘it’s so cool, what could I ever do with that?’ Then I saw a cat bed made from jumbo yarn, I had to make one too!
What You Need
I watched a number of YouTube videos and settled on this video. The woman in the video is thorough and goes at a good pace. Don’t feel bad about watching and re-watching the video, I did too! I used two bundles of this yarn. This is “arm crocheting” so no additional crocheting tools are needed. I also used a binder clip to keep track of my beginning stitch, I found this extremely helpful in minimizing the confusion.
Ultimately, below is the “pattern” (using the term loosely since I can’t read patterns, I certainly don’t know how to write one) I used, consider them my notes, after using the video as a guide. I made the bed larger to accommodate my bigger kitty, ~13lbs and possibly still growing. The first version of the bed was way too small for Gherkin, luckily this is easy to unravel and try again. Last thing anyone wants is a cat bed that no one can fit in!
The Pattern
- Row 1 – 3 straight stitches
- Row 2 – 3 double stitches (total stitches: 6)
- Row 3 – 6 double stitches (total stitches: 12)
- Row 4 – alternating 1 single stitch, 1 double stitch (total stitches: 18)
- Row 5 – alternating 2 single stitches, 1 double stitch (total stitches: 24)
- Row 6 – alternating 3 single stitches, 1 double stitch (total stitches: 30)
- Rows 7+ – single stitch until desired completion
The whole bed took maybe 45 minutes and that includes starting over once to make the bed larger. Once it was done, Gherkin could not wait to hop in and do what kitties do best, take a nap! Tinkerbell and Tidbit also enjoyed the new nap spot!
