A customer asked me to make a replica out of her cat’s fur when it died. She took the knitted cat to bed and slept well for the first time since her loss
I was born in the former Soviet Union, where my mother taught me to knit when I was very young. It was a skill every Russian woman had when I was growing up, because clothes were in short supply. After moving to Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1990s, I quickly fell out of the habit: why knit a cardigan you could easily pick up for $20 in a store?
It was adopting a cat that led to me taking it up again. I had always thought of myself as a dog person, but when I was offered a beautiful ragdoll cat called Mittens, I couldn’t resist him. Ragdolls have soft, silky coats, and Mittens loved to be brushed. His hair was so beautiful that rather than throw away the loose strands that came away in the brush, I started collecting them. Eventually, I had enough to fill a shoebox. That’s when I wondered if it might be any good as yarn.
