When I mentioned the book Crafting with Cat Hair:  Cute Handicrafts to Make With Your Cat by Japanese author Kaori Tsutaya (and translated to English by Amy Hirschman) to a few people, I got mixed reactions.   But really, what makes cat hair such a “weird” medium?  No one thinks you’re strange if you work with sheep’s wool.  You’re being super posh if you create something  with the fleece of an alpaca.  Angora is rabbit hair, and nobody seems bothered by that.  So…  why not cat hair?

It’s something I certainly have in abundance.  I have two shedding machines:  Merlin and Abracadabra.  I’m especially keen on the idea of crafting with Merlin’s fur; he’s a huge, gray, fluffy Maine Coon with long, wispy hairs.  I’ve been told that his fur would be ideal for spinning into yarn, and it looks much like the wool roving that’s sold for needle felting, so I’m itching to give some of the crafts in this book a try!

I was pleasantly surprised at how cute the projects in the book are, and how diverse.  I’m especially fond of the book cover tutorial, which I’m planning to use with a bunch of composition books I bought for next-to-nothing when it was time for back-to-school sales.

There are also many helpful sections with tips and tricks for things like gathering cat hair  and making sure that both your cat and your crafts stay pest-free.  My favorite tip in the book is using a cat hair patch to cover a hole in a wool sweater.  A genius and free repair!

Most of the projects involve needle felting.  If you’re into needle felting, or have ever been curious about it, using your cat’s excess fur as a craft supply is an inexpensive way to get into a new craft. Any of the projects in the book, or even the book itself, would make an nice Christmas gift for a cat lover!

Disclosure: review copy provided.

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Reader Jessica just started a new blog called mad in crafts (named after a quote in Hamlet – love it!), and to kick it off she wrote up a fabulous tutorial for making a Max (from Where the Wild Things Are) costume, and guess what, she used a ton of dollar store stuff to make it!! She cleverly hacked up a couple of dollar store teddy bears for faux fur (crown & tail), used a white dollar store fleece scarf for raw material (including Max’s famous pointy hood), and bought a pair of oversized thrift store jammies for the main part of the costume (turned inside out, so they’d show white – brilliant!). You have to check out her tutorial and all her cleverness in making this amazing costume! If you made it through this paragraph and all its parenthesis, then you deserve to [click over to Jessica’s blog for the full tutorial].

If you start gathering supplies today, you still have time to make one of these great costumes for your kiddos!

Project Estimate:

• Thrift store pajamas, $1 and up
• Fleece scarf, $1
• Teddy bears (brown & white), $2
• Stiff yellow felt, $.50
• Buttons, on hand or $1
• Sewing stuff, on hand

Total: $5.50 and up

p.s. If you’re loving the Where the Wild Things Are theme this year, check out last week’s post and Wild Thing craft round up

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