Kayla Kat - Missing, presumed deliberately killed

Kayla Kat is my little furry girl. My raison d'etre. She'd have been 11 years old in November.

The guy down the road, a self-professed cat-killer, told me he killed cats that came onto his property. He told me back in the autumn of 2010 that if I had a cat, never to let it go on his property because he would "dispatch it". Since then my family have called him "Deadly Dave".

Kayla gets locked in at night, but she got out at 7:30pm when I let the dogs out the back briefly. She didn't come back in. She was wearing a collar that wouldn't slip over her head, and ID tag with my number on it. It never occured to me she'd go as far as Deadly Dave's.

I waited up for her all night, knowing something awful had happened because she hadn't come home. I walked and searched for my girl all the next day, and found a big clump of her fur, pulled out by the roots, on Deadly Dave's verge and her belly fur on his fence and a few centimetres away on shrubs in his garden.

He claimed that when he came home from work at 8:00pm that night when Kayla went missing, that he let out his (elderly) dog who had a fight with a cat, and the cat must have run away.

But the evidence doesn’t tally with a dog/cat fight and three neighbours say they heard nothing, and would have, had there been a fracas.

There were no signs of any scrabbling or disturbance in the wet soil. No blood. Just a big clump of her fur, ripped out by the roots, on the ground, as if she was stomped on.

So Deadly Dave may have fulfilled his promise. And his neighbours all seem to think that he’s dispatched yet another cat.

And I’m saying it out loud, because I believe he may have done wrong, and I can’t prove it sufficiently for a prosecution. And I want to be very wrong and hope she's just been severely scared off.

Kayla has a routine, she's locked in at night, and she sleeps in the crook of my arm every night, purring away.

So what's happened to her? She's very approachable, very friendly. But no-one's phoned so far. So where is her body?

Kayla was a major reason for me being here, given I battle to keep the Black Dog at bay. Kayla’s incredibly affectionate nature and my drive to protect her has kept me going each day.

IF Deadly Dave’s has done the dastardly deed, then he's done more than just killed my Kayla, he's killed my joy. I don’t do grieving very well, very badly in fact, so writing about it here might be a different strategy to see if I can get through this next day, and maybe the day after, because I have a hope of justice, that Deadly Dave’s “dispatching” of cats, if he's true to his word, will one day be widely known and he’ll be punished - socially, legally, whatever.

Oh, sadness!

Update: after installing four bollard socks on the main foreshore car park areas and paths in Rockingham this morning, I've gone back a few hours later, just 'cause I had a funny feeling ...

... and yes, sure enough, each one has gone. That was a short life span :(

Logical analysis:

1. if members of the public have removed them opportunistically, GREAT!! So pleased that they've caught their eye. I hope these pieces of yarn graffiti turn up elsewhere sometime.

2. if local authorities have removed them, then how interesting! And fast work too!

My next bollard sock installation project might have to take a different tack. I may need to dust off my surveillance op's training to see who is following so quickly behind me to remove this offensive public knitting!

OR ... if Rockingham doesn't like escaped knitting, other places might.

International Yarn Bombing Day - 11 June 2011

Yarn bombing, aka yarn graffiti, has been around for a few years now. It seems to be better known in Europe and the USA than here in Australia, but I notice a few more fibre graffiti persons are leaving their knit tags around the place. And today has been adopted by yarnbombers as International Yarn Bombing Day.

 

I wanted to do my little bit to contribute to the event, so today I've nonchalantly wandered around my local area hanging crocheted spirals and fluffy pompoms in trees and popping on a knitted bollard sock here and there. I mean, why not?

What I love is when there's an engagement with a member of the public who bravely comes and asks "what are you doing, what's it for" and chuckles gleefully at the irony of knit graffiti.

I think it's these little bits of happiness that make it so much fun.
 

            

Spirals!

Developing this idea has been on my list of things to do for well over a year, and after a bit of experimenting, I've now got these colourful things hanging on my verandah. Will make many more 'cause I think these are going to be exactly what I want for International Yarnbombing Day on 11th June, 2011.

 I'm imagining public spaces festooned with bright coloured spirals.

The pattern for creating these corkscrew spirals can be found here. You're welcome to use them for fundraising purposes (they've sold quite well at fundraising stalls because they're so bright, and very different!).

Escaped Knitting

Well, goodness me but the knitting escaped - again! Today's yarnstrike was on one of dozens of nice green bollards on the north side of the Rockingham Civic Centre. I don't give it much of a chance of survival in that location, but what the heck, I know it prompted a smile in one or two passers by - so I achieved my goal.

The best part of my day was spent while in the waiting room of the adjacent medical centre, creating crochet spirals for the next yarnstrike, and engaging with some younger folk (okay, so these days everyone's younger than me) on the topic of yarn graffiti. I just love seeing their imaginations take off and potentially spark a creative bug which will awaken if not now, then at some later point in their lives.

Update 5 Apr, 2011: It was still there on Saturday, but it's gone now, hopefully to a better place :)

Brick Pattern Baby Blanket

The pattern for this blanket comes from the Barbara Walker Treasury. It's also found as a very popular dishcloth pattern in the USA, known as the "ballband" dishcloth. A search of Ravelry will show an awesome range of colour combinations and examples which are inspirational.

I've made a couple of dishcloths and use them in my kitchen as oven mitt/pot holder type things. And I've made a couple of blankets before. But this blanket was special and I took months to decide on the size (small to fit a baby capsule), the yarn (Bendigo Woollen Mills 8ply cotton) and the colours.

I've got a million ideas for colours and can't wait to make more.

Yarnstrike!

A Google search will demonstrate that the terms "yarnbomb" and "yarnstorm" are well in use now. They have their definitions, references and examples of use.

I like the word "yarnbomb", but some have noted the sensitivities of a subsection of the word and the correlation with terrorism, probably more so in countries other than Australia. The word "yarnstorm" is being touted as a replacement here and there, but I don't think it's appropriate to describe the actual graffiti piece.

So, after tickling my two and a half brain cells, I think I've found an alternative which will describe both an act of yarn graffiti (so, it's a verb), and, at a push, the thing that is the piece of graffiti (a noun): 

Yarnstrike ! ^©



And it'll fit nicely on any tags I put on my yarnbombs. Would be good as the title of a yarnbombing book too! (Adds concept to list of projects to do later this year)

Here's the next bit of colour for a Yarnstrike on an unsuspecting bollard for this week. It would be fun to see if it gets moved around from suburb to suburb and where it ends up. Might have to set up a Yarnstrike Facething page so its peripatetic wanderings can be documented by enabling travellers. Now, that'd be something new!
 

Edit, 29 March: 2011
1. Installed it in the middle of the day yesterday, cnr Rockingham Beach Road/Patterson Road.

2. I stuffed up when I was trying to create the facething fan page - have given up for the moment - will re-address the concept when my energy returns.

3. Went to remove the dangly tag (which gave a suggestion of a Facebook page) on the yarnbomb at 9:00pm last night, but it was gone  - the whole yarnbomb, not just the dangly tag.  :(