I’ve always loved black cats and Halloween; Heck, I had black cats growing up and never thought of them as unlucky. Recently my mother adopted a skittish black cat that has been following her around the house like a shadow and helped inspire this little plush.

This pattern uses knitting in the round with double pointed needles to create this plush, and is made to have minimal hand-sewing involved. There are 5 pieces (arms, legs and tail) which will be knitted onto the piece without having to sew up seams. The 3 pieces on the face will take some hand sewing as it will be helpful to carve out the features.

This pattern is not dependent on a specific thickness of yarn or gauge, but can be made with almost any yarn, just so long as you use smaller needles than you generally would for the yarn. This will make a tight fabric that will be less prone to stretching and stuffing loss over time. For the plush pictured in the pattern, I used a sock yarn (Black Trillium Fiber co) and size US0 DPNs.

The pattern uses these techniques to complete:
C/O: Cast on, working in the round with Double-Pointed Needles
Knitting stitches
● kfb: Knit Front and back
● ssk: Slip Slip knit
● k2tog: Knit 2 Together
● m1r: Make 1 Right
● m1l: Make 1 left

●TND: Three Needle Decrease
- The way I complete a 3 needle decrease in this pattern is a little different than normal and may be easier to complete with a crochet hook. You will have 3 needles that you will pull 1 stitch from each as you knit through 3 stitches decreasing to 1. In this way, we knit through 3 layers of knitted work decreasing to 1 layer and closing the plush limbs.

Items you will need for this Project:
●Yarn: I used sock yarn for my kitten, but you may use any size yarn you wish. You will also need a bit of scrap yarn for the nose.
●Double Pointed Needles: You may use any size you wish, but the pattern is intended to be knitted at a very tight gauge - you want very little to no gaps and stretching of the final
fabric. You will need additional needles rather than the standard 4 or 5 DPNs, or you can place the stitches on waste yarn, but it may make knitting those stitches later more difficult.
Darning Needles blunt pointed wide eye needles will work just fine.
●Poly-fill: for stuffing, how much you need will depend on the size you make, but I tend to lean towards overstuffing knitted toys as they can deflate over time.
●Safety eyes: size will depend on the size you want on your finished kitten. I used 8mm for a sock yarn kitten.

Optional:
●Poly-pellets inside of hosiery make for some beanie-baby-like weight.
●Multiple colors of yarn for different colors of kittens or multi-color kittens.
●Crochet hook to help pull yarn through layers of stitches.
Pins to help with placement of ears and nose for finishing.

This pattern can be modified by using more than one color. I do not include specific notes for it, but you can change yarn color for socks, nose, limbs, ears - otherwise you might use duplicate stitch to make different color patches. Let your imagination run wild and have fun with this base kitten!