We love to hear from our customers. Last week Mrs Eleanor Vole sent us a letter, a photograph and a very small stain. We are pleased to share her story, with her permission, and with one correction regarding the stain.
The project
Mrs Vole bought our Scarf, 3 Metres, Rolled Up, in the autumn. She planned to knit a long, warm scarf for winter. She used cream wool, size eight needles, and a pattern called Simple Garter, which she describes as ‘very forgiving’. She began on a Monday.
The progress
By Wednesday she had knitted forty centimetres. By Friday, one metre. By the next Tuesday, she had reached two metres and was beginning to feel proud. Her cat, a calm ginger named Marmalade, supervised the entire process from the arm of the sofa. There was no sign of trouble.
The incident
On the evening of the eighth day, Mrs Vole finished the final row. She cast off. She held up the scarf and admired it. It was three metres long. It was soft. It was perfect. She placed it on the table and went to make a cup of tea.
When she returned, Marmalade was sitting in the middle of the room. The scarf was no longer a scarf. It had become a thin line of wool leading from the kitchen to the hallway, up the stairs and into the airing cupboard.
What Mrs Vole did next
- She sat down, calmly
- She drank her tea, in silence
- She followed the line of wool to the cupboard
- She found the scarf, wound into a perfect spiral, with Marmalade inside it, asleep
The outcome
Mrs Vole describes herself as ‘not angry, only thoughtful’. She has decided to keep the scarf as it is, a spiral, and to call it a cat bed. She has since knitted a second scarf, which Marmalade has also inspected.
A word from the shop
Madame Purlina Tangle commented, ‘This is the most successful use of our product that we have ever seen.’ She asked us to point out that the scarf was returned to the owner unharmed, in the sense that it was still there.
If you have a story about wool and cats, write to us. We read every letter. We cannot reply to them all, because some have been chewed.