Leopard exists because Tyger exists, and Tyger exists because of this magnificent creature.
This is Marie. She’s my cat, and I mean that very literally. She’s not our household pet, she’s not anyone else’s. She’s all mine. I’m the one she curls up next to in the evenings, when she’s feeling cuddly; I’m the one whose chest she sits on late at night when I can’t sleep; I’m the one whose hand she gives a warning nip to if Kid is playing too rough. She knows that me snapping my fingers three times quickly means CUT THAT OUT; she knows that twice slowly means come find me; she knows that me closing my eyes slowly means I’m good, are you good?, and she does it back to me to confirm.
They say that our pets take after us; really, I think that anyone we love – human, feline, whatever – affects us, and us them, and we converge. It’s definitely true of Marie & me: she brings out my playful side; I bring out her snuggly side; we both love a nap in a sunbeam, buttery mashed potato, and squishing soft knitwear. And, superficially, we both have fluffy fur / hair; in my case, unruly curls; in hers, a straight up mane.
That’s why, sometimes, we jokingly call her a lion. One day, that comment was made just as I was fiddling with colourwork in some charting software, playing about with repeating patterns, trying to tease forth an idea. And something clicked, and I thought, oh. Tiger stripes, obviously.
The rest of it is quite mundane, really; I did some tiger stripe research (no, I don’t mean watching Tiger King), fiddled with the charting software until the design looked right and tiled in both directions, and that was that. A cowl was the obvious choice; the large-scale pattern meant anything that required increments smaller than about 10″ wasn’t going to work, so an accessory that was going to fit most people without adjustment was the order of the day. But of course there’s no such thing as one size fits all, which is why I added instructions to knit it with any weight yarn, so if the size I made doesn’t work for you, you can make one that will.
Leopard came about simply because Tyger used just under 50g of each colour, which meant I had enough left to go again. I didn’t need two identical cowls, and leopard rosettes were the obvious choice for a sister pattern.
I love these patterns specially Leopard! Would be nice to have them both on each side of the same cowl 🙂 I came over here from yarnpond but only yesterday I saw this kind of design concept in ready to wear and thought hmm, I could knit that, and today I find this! I have too much on the needles right now but will come back to it.
Wouldn’t that be fantastic! You could totally do it – skip the ribbing, use a provisional cast on, knit one, then switch and knit the other. Graft them together with your cast-on and boom, reversible multi-cat cowl! I’d recommend using the custom sizing instructions for that though – it’s a snug fit as written, and with two layers might be too snug to be comfortable.