Cuddle Party

[ysabetwordsmith]

Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!

In honor of the season, I have brought the Delectable Turkey of Gratitude and mashed carnival squash.  Let the potlatch begin!  

Comments

[jtthomas]

The blue-point siamese cat wanders in, dragging their standard box-on-a-rope bearing a "he/him or they/them" sticker along with assorted other decorations. Today, the box contains two bags of rolls: pao de queijo once again, and there's a pepperoni-containing version in a separate brown bag. The cat momentarily shifts to humanoid form to place those on the table, along with a thermos of warm marinara sauce and a pile of paper cups and bamboo spoons to take individual servings of the sauce. They then place a bag of milk chocolate chips, along with two bags of green and one bag of white candy melts, by the popcorn maker, in case anyone wants to make sweet popcorn.

The humanoid takes a serving of carnival squash and a couple of the pepperoni rolls, puts them in the box, then shifts back to cat form and heads into the living room. They curl up in a blanket nest with the box nearby, and are entirely willing to cuddle.

[(Anonymous)]

Wiggled in, curls up near-like in nest, *waits* *headtilt*

[jtthomas]

Pets are very welcome. Purring may be loud.

[(Anonymous)]

Eeeee!!!! *pet happyflap snuggle pet pet pet pet pet pet pet*

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

*cuddle*

[fyreharper]

:cuddles:
:offers earskritches:

[readera]

A tired woman with frizzy hair walks in slowly. She takes a blanket and sits near the pretty kitty. She sits crosslegged and invites the cat with her hand to come cuddle or get pets.

[jtthomas]

The cat snuggles up against the woman's leg, headbutting gently. Purring commences, loudly.

[readera]

Pets cat and smiles softly.

Yay!

[fuzzyred]

Fuzzy J walks in wearing her red bathrobe over black jeans and a teal t-shirt. She has brought about two dozen Polish muffins, and cinnamon, semi-sweet chocolate, and mini marshmallows for making hot chocolate; both of which she sets on the table with the other food. The bag that contains her knitting project (three pieces finished!) stays on her arm, to be set down when she reaches her destination.

Food put away, she grabs a plate with turkey, a small amount of squash, a pao de queijo, plus one of the pepperoni ones, and a Polish muffin, then sits down near the people/cat pile, stashes her knitting, and begins eating. When she finishes, she reaches out to pet the cat, or anyone else interested, but very quickly ends up as Kitty J. The kitty gives a headtilt, then the cat equivalent of a shrug, and tentatively curls up next to the blue-point Siamese.

Re: Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Mmm, hot chocolate!

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

I like when I get the chance to make it with real chocolate instead of the powder. :)

Re: Yay!

[fyreharper]

Me too :) My favorite ‘standard’ recipe uses bittersweet chocolate chips and sometimes a pinch of cardamom

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

That sounds good :)

Re: Yay!

[(Anonymous)]

Eeeeee fuzzy J friend! Pet pet pet pet pet pet!

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

*Purrrpurrrpurr meow rumblerumblepurr* **Hello flappy friend! Like fur?**

Re: Yay!

[(Anonymous)]

*SNURGLES PUUURRR PURR PURRPURRPURR*

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

*purr purr snuggle purr nuzzle nuzzle*

Re: Yay!

[(Anonymous)]

*mee* *curls in tight next to Kitty J*

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

*purr purr purr mew purrpurrpurrrrr*

[fyreharper]

Quiet human with long purple-and-blond hair wanders in, dons a “hug me, cuddle me, pet me, =yes” sticker, and sets up crockpot of spiced apple cider.

After collecting a slightly-lopsided mug of hot chocolate, pao de queijo with marinara, and a little dab of squash to test the spiciness level, they go join the blanket nest; maybe there will be someone to lean on, and either way there will be kitties :)

[fuzzyred]

Kitty J climbs into the new lap. She's not much good for leaning on this way, but maybe a lap kitty will still be good?

[fyreharper]

:) Lap kitty is lovely, yes! :pets Kitty J:

[fuzzyred]

:nuzzles into the petting: *purr purr PURRRRR*

[fyreharper]

:) :)
:pet pet pet:

It's finals time but.....

[erulisse]

A slightly curvy elf with a long auburn braid comes wandering in, looking slightly dazed. She's wearing pj pants with unicorns on them and a t-shirt that says "majestically awkward" with a picture of a llama-corn on it. She's got a large backpack on and has a Tupperware container full of what look like square cookies. She sets the container on the snack table, takes the lid off and adds a sign that says "springerle - spiced with cardamom instead of anise". She grabs a plate of goodies and then finds herself a large pillow from the pillow nest and drags it over to a corner and proceeds to spread out sundry social work textbooks, notecards, and other study material. She puts on headphones and sets out a sign that says "quiet cuddles welcome".

Re: It's finals time but.....

[ysabetwordsmith]

Cardamom cookies nom nom nom!

*enters with project bag*

[ng_moonmoth]

*stops off at sticker desk, cuts out usual upper chest and hip band from yellow person sticker, sticks it on a green person sticker, writes "Anyx//xe/xyr/xyrs/xyrself" on it, and puts it on*

Nothing exciting from the kitchen recently. Been too involved working on our host's commision. Of which there are now pictures:

with the magnetic fasteners fastened to create the Möbius strip;

with the magnetic fasteners separated to show the fabric shape.

The measuring tape down the middle will provide an idea of the scale. It might show up better if you click through to the full-size image.

*sets up a pillow nest, settles in*

*pulls out project, refastens the fasteners, and starts working again.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ysabetwordsmith]

Cool! That's shaping up nicely. :D I like the slightly lacy stitch.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ng_moonmoth]

Glad you like it. Will post another update once the first piece is finished.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ysabetwordsmith]

It will be fun to see developments as it goes along.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

Kitty J carefully exracts herself from the very nice lap, giving gentle headbutts and purrs in thanks, before dragging the knitting bag over to Anyx. It's only after she gets there that she remembers she can shift shapes, and that hands are better for carrying. A few secomds later, Fuzzy J is back, bathrobe and all.

"Hi Anyx! That's a really neat prpject, it looks like it's coming along nicely."

Fuzzy J pulls out her in progress bit of blanket, the short bottom strip, while leaving the short top strip and two sides strips in the bag.

"Do you mind if I work on my project here? I'll take care not to crowd you or tangle the yarns."

EDIT: I finished the fourth piece! Now the frame is all finished and I just need to make the middle, though I do still need to tuck in the ends on the bottom piece.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ng_moonmoth]

Please join me! If you'd like some contact (I would enjoy it), we can connect side-to-side or back-to-back without interfering with one another.

That's a fun-looking frame for your blanket. Self-striping yarn? It shows up lighter and darker gray; are those the colors?

Putting the project back together after taking the pictures so I could work on it again was more of a challenge than I expected. Had a bunch of stitches fall off one needle or another as I worked on twisting it back up into the connected configuration, which meant I wound up undoing the fasteners, picking up and repairing any dropped stitches (there were always some), and trying again. Finally, with recourse to a sufficiently large flat surface and the photos, I was able to reassemble it. Don't think I'll take it apart for more photos between here and finishing the first piece.

Anyway, going forward again. I'll see where it gets to by the next cuddle party.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

Contact would be nice. Maybe side-to-side?

I think it's variegated as opposed to self-striping, or else they weren't very consistent in the self-striping method, since I think one ball was from a different dye lot and is much less stripey (the bit on the left). It does indeed go from lighter to darker grey. The middle piece will be an even lighter grey, but still variegated/self-striping.

That does sound like an awful lot of work. I'm glad you were able to repair it, and the pictures do look good. I agree with waiting until the first piece is done to take it apart for pictures though.

I hope you are able to make good progress. If my schedule co-operates, I'm hoping to have it all knitted and sewn together, and possibly with a crocheted edge on it by the next cuddle party.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ng_moonmoth]

*shifts around to bring respective sides into contact*

Most of what's happening right now is on my right side, so I'm bringing my left side over to you. As long as your body alignment doesn't get any closer to my front than about 10 o'clock (where 12 is straight in front of me), we'll be fine.

OK, let's go with "variegated" for what you're working with. It'll be interesting to see how the various yarns work with each other. So far, so good.

The repair part mostly wasn't hard, although there were a couple of cases of a dropped stitch going down five or six rows (but only a couple of those). Just tedious, and far too frequent.

The nice thing is that now that the first piece has been started the way it needs to be, the rest of the finicky work can use it as a place to connect to so I don't have to worry about things flopping around and not coming out right because of that. That will speed things up quite a bit.

Looking forward to exchanging pics next cuddle party.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

I can do that. *angles body appropriately*

Ya, I'm curious to see how the wool behave with a pattern, as opposed to just straight knit. Hopefully it looks alright, but the frame has turned out well so I'm happy.

Ah. I'm glad it wasn't too tricky. I'm not sure I would have been able to do repairs like that; I'm still learning how to fix mistakes.

Having connection places does sound convenient. Things that speed up the process are always nice.

I'm looking forward to being able to exchange pics too. Having a finished piece to show will be nice, and I'm interested to see how your work turns out.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[redsixwing]

Oh that is extremely pretty.

*settles down nearby to watch and possibly nap*

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

Hi Six! I hope you're doing well. I made progress on my blanket! (Picture in above comment) Would you like a piece to cuddle while you watch and maybe nap? It's not quite useful as a blanket yet, because it's in parts, but it's fuzzy, and still warm.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[redsixwing]

Oh look how lovely! It's really coming along. Just the middle to go!

I'd like to hold on to a piece, if you don't mind. And of course, hugs are on offer, but never obligatory.

*cuddles into a beanbag to watch the crafters go*

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

I know! I'm really hope to have it all knitted by the end of November, if not sewn together. I will be starting the center piece tomorrow.

Yes, you may hold a piece :) Long or short?

*hug* I like hugs.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[redsixwing]

Oh wow! Soon you will have your handmade fuzzy blanket. :D Are you enjoying the process so far?

Mm, long? That way I can wind my hands into the fuzz. I will be very careful not to stretch it out.

*hug*

Re: *enters with project bag*

[fuzzyred]

I am enjoying. The next part will be fun and annoying I think; something that is not just knit stitch, so it's more interesting to make, buuut that means I need to count my rows and stitches, instead of just knitting mindlessly. There always seems to be a trade off.

I'm really looking forward to sewing it all together; I haven't done that before and I'm eager to figure it out. I'm also excited to see everything all together. I'm curious for my grandma to teach me how to crochet. Putting the edge on this will be my first timing learning/doing that.

Long it is. *J picks up the long one that is just slightly shorter, so it matters less if it gets stretched a little* Happy cuddles :)

Re: *enters with project bag*

[ng_moonmoth]

Thanks for the compliment. Now that I'm through the parts where everything looks messy and unclear, I may be able to post more frequent updates.

Re: *enters with project bag*

[redsixwing]

It's a pleasure to see you here, whether or not you bring updates. :)