My grandma taught me to knit when I was a little kid (as opposed to being a slightly bigger kid now), and then I didn't knit a thing for years. On Saturday, as it was cold and miserable, being winter down here, I decided to test my skills, and see if I could knit fair isle with multiple colours of wool, and then turn it into a 3d animal - with great success!
I knitted a little mouse (with a fair isle pattern around the middle), added some ears and a tail, stuffed it with little pom poms made of scraps of wool, added some catnip and a little bell, sewed it all up and gave it to my cat.
She LOVES it. At first she didn't really know what to do with it, but after a minute or two she was doing her best to kill it, whilst purring like a tractor. I gave it to her last night, and she still hasn't destroyed it, so it seems that my knitting has held up! Expecting to get home from work to find wool and catnip all over the carpet though....
For anyone who's interested, the pattern is here (
http://yellowpinkandsparkly.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fair-isle-mice-pattern.html) , and it's super easy. I'd never done a complex fair isle knit or knitted something to become 3D, and it worked perfectly. Happy knitting!