WIP: Cheshire Cat Scoodie

I'm on a bit of a crafty binge, aren't I? Like I found my lost mojo, all of a sudden. I'm not complaining, mind!

My sister called me last week with a request for a Halloween costume item: a scoodie, inspired by the Cheshire Cat from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I had never heard of such a thing. A scoodie, that is. The Cheshire cat may be one of my favourite cats in literature. A scoodie, in case you're wondering, is a scarf with a hood attached. My sister found an image of such a thing and wondered if I would be able to recreate, or in any case create, such a thing. I'm always up for a crafty challenge, so we scoured the internet for some more images and patterns.

(Top left: image from Alice in Wonderland. Bottom left: kirimoth.tumblr.com. Right: mooglyblog.com)

The bottom left image, as it turned out, was the same image my sister had found. She's going to do the face paint, and create a costume, and I was going to make her the scoodie. I chose to go with a crochet version as it's far quicker than knitting, make it slightly wider than this version, and attach a hood and ears much like the image on the right. I hope that by using a big hook and thick yarn, I can make the hood slightly baggy like the inspiration picture. We're leaving the pockets and the paws off, though.

The scarf was a breeze thanks to the extremely thick yarn I've chosen. It's Katia Alaska, 100% acrylic and fuzzy as hell, so I was covered in little fuzzies from top to bottom before I was even halfway. It's super soft though, very pleasant to the touch. I ran into some issues ordering it, as I had ordered it online at a shop I have used before but somewhere between my order getting through and the order arriving at their queue, the computer had bugged out apparently and my order got lost in limbo. I called them on Friday after not getting response on my email, and they figured out that it had indeed not gone through, grabbed my yarn and sent it out as fast as they could, boosting me up to the more expensive shipping option to compensate for the delay. It arrived on Saturday morning! Project saved, as well as my regards of that shop. (crafty Dutchies: because I love to enable. They've got a ton of the cheaper brands like Phildar and Katia, as well as Scheepjes and Rico. They've got acrylics as well as nice, soft merino yarns (the yarn for my Maroo mitts also came from this shop. And they're (usually) very quick to ship!)

I hope to get the hood finished this weekend too, so I can get going with the ears and my sis can get to work on the other bits of her costume! And get her to send me pictures when she's all dressed up, of course. Mrow!