The Snuggles Project

I've wanted to do some charity knitting for a while, and with the recent hurricane and influx of news stories about homeless animals I thought it would be a great time to participate in The Snuggles Project. I discovered this organization via Ravelry-- it encourages people to knit or crochet (very quick, easy) blankets and donate them to a local shelter to comfort homeless dogs and cats. Most shelters hardly have enough money for the basics, so animals usually have to live in bare cages without any sort of bed or blanket. The point of a Snuggle is to offer a little comfort to a shelter animal while it's waiting to be adopted. A dog/cat security blanket, if you will! From the website:

The Snuggles Project is well-known as a multi-beneficial project. The first, and most important, benefit is to the animals. After being given a Snuggle, a frightened and/or difficult to handle animal is able become calm. This calming effect gives the animal and the caregiver time to learn how to handle the situation.We believe that this calming effect has saved the lives of many newly sheltered animals.

Making a donation is easy, just go to this list and find a participating shelter in your city. If you're in the Wilmington/New Hanover County area and want to help with my donation, the New Hanover Humane Society accepts Snuggles and I'm hoping to have enough to donate by October (I'm not sure how many, but I'd like to have more than ten). You can email me (pansylanelove@gmail) if interested and we'll donate them together.

Caron Simply Soft, size 10 needles

I'll be knitting these throughout September and posting about it periodically, so if you'd like to participate in a knit-a-long just email me photos as you progress! I'm always getting comments from people who don't knit/crochet but would love to learn, and this is honestly the perfect starting project for you guys. The patterns are really simple and shelter animals won't care if you make mistakes!*

Resources/Guidelines

• Knit/Crochet pattern library. You can go as simple or complex as you want. I'm doing a very easy P2, K2 pattern with a 10st border, just to keep from getting bored. For beginners I would recommend casting on about 60st and knitting every stitch. It's excellent practice and by the end you'll have it down!

• Washable acrylic or cotton worsted weight yarn held double. I'm using Caron Simply Soft because I had a few skeins of it leftover from when I first learned to knit. Beginners can use Caron or Red Heart-- it's super cheap and available everywhere.

• 14" x 14" for cats and small animals

• 24" x 24" for cats and small to medium dogs

• 36" x 36" for medium to large dogs

* If you're a beginner and interested in learning for this project, email me if you have questions or get stuck and I'll do my best to help. Also, make sure to check thrift shops if you're just starting out-- all of my straight aluminum needles were thrifted in a bundle for $1!

For more information about the Snuggles Project,
visit www.snugglesproject.org or
contact Hugs for Homeless Animals (www.h4ha.org)