Recently, my fiance and I adopted a rescue dog named Karma. I think she’s really a sweet dog, deep down, but her past experiences have caused her quite a lot of distress and she has deep issues that we now have to deal with (none of which we realized, or were made aware of at the time of her adoption). We’ve been trying to make the best of it and work through her difficulties with her. It has turned into quite the project and has already taken quite a lot of resources, with no real progress unfortunately. But we’ve adopted her and we’re trying to stay positive.
I should say we were trying to stay positive. My fiance is still trying. He’s also asleep right now. I, however, am the one writing a blog at 5 in the morning, heartbroken.
While we were out today, Karma hopped her crate across the floor to our bed and pulled a fourth of our afghan into the 1/2” vents in her crate and proceeded to shred it. The afghan is now a memory.
It’s just an afghan, right? It’s replaceable, right? Not exactly.
I made the
afghan myself. Crocheted it, if you want to get technical. It was my first, and only to-date, grand scale project. The final dimensions were 104”x104” and more than easily covered my queen size bed. It took almost 25 skeins of yarn and nearly 6 months to complete. It cost over $200 in materials alone. It was exactly what I wanted. And maybe most importantly, it kept me grounded when I went through a difficult time personally. Finishing this giant granny square gave me focus and gave me a goal. It was something I was really proud of.
I never realized how attached to it I was until I was sitting on our bedroom floor, sobbing, cutting it away from the vents in the crate with a cardboard knife. An hour or so ago, I woke up, looking for the afghan as the AC kicked on. I rolled over, reached down and then remembered. So much for sleep.
Has anyone else’s handmade labor of love ever met such an unfortunate end? (I certainly hope not!) But if this has happened to you, how did you react?
And of course, how do I repurpose the remaining yarn? I can’t just chuck it in the dumpster! (People will call the management about a hysterical woman standing at the container, sobbing and muttering something about a canine…)