Saturday, November 15, 2008

Making Parrot sweaters!

My aunt sent me a link from bestfriends.org website about knitting/sewing/crocheting for parrots! Evidently they are in need of "flashy" sweaters to help protect and distract the parrots that would usually pluck out their feathers (usually b/c of stress).

So I've made a post on my knittinghelp.com site and I'm hoping a few others will pitch in and make a parrot sweater! I have 5.5 pairs of clogs left to do so I'm not sure it'll be there before christmas, but I'm sure they'd be happy with parrot sweaters any day of the week!

A pattern has been given for knitting and now how to make one out of an existing sock! I hope others will make up a few sweaters for these beautiful birds! The patterns are located at the bottom of the page within the comments portion.

http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&mode=entry&entry=637EA3C1-19B9-B9D5-9D969085FEBFB91B&utm_source=delivra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Ripple+effect

~danielle~

4 comments:

faith120604 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
faith120604 said...

(Sorry, I decided to repost my comment with contact info.)

Hi Danielle! I'm also working on (eventually) knitting a parrot sweater for bestfriends. I found this project through my Ravelry knitting account and have been searhing everywhere for a pattern I can make sense of. The penguin one was kind of tricky with the wording.

If you design something or find a good pattern, would you please let me know? I'll pass on any info/design I get or make as well. I'm hoping to get my charity knitting group into the project too! Good luck and thanks!
~Michel @ altruKNITstic.blogspot.com

faith120604 said...

Hi again! The folks at bestfriends got back to me really quickly via email so here's the info I got. :)

"For starters you can send all finished projects to Bestfriends and have it attn: parrot department. You can use wood or plastic buttons to attach to the sweaters (nothing coated or metal please). There is really no size requirement for them (the birds know they are toys and not food). You can also use long pieces of fabric attached randomly or even bells (as long as they are not jingle bells....the small slits can get caught on there beaks and toes). We will unfortunately will always need new ones!! Most of our sweater wearers are only in there 20's and can live up to 80yrs. Some of our guys are mutilators and others are pluckers and the sweaters provide protection for some and a sense of security for others. It is hard to say if they will ever be able to just be comfortable in there own feathers (so to speak)....so our need for now is ongoing!"

Hope that helps! Good luck with your sweaters! :)

Danielle said...

Thank you for the information! They have posted a link for pictures and a pattern on their website today!

I'm hoping to try one in a few weeks!