Making that Lemonade – Amigurumi Lemon

I wanted to be a writer. Really, I wanted to be an author. If I’m quite honest with my deepest self, I wanted to be the next J.K. Rowling. I wanted to create a world where a person like me could escape to.

Because that’s all I wanted growing up, escape.

I often felt like unwanted baggage, shuttled every few days between my divorced parents current dwellings. I had trouble keeping track of where I was meant to be, of all the little things (the books, the keys, the toiletries) that needed to come along with me, of who was mad at whom and why. I was often frustrated, angry, scared.

And books are a most excellent escape.

As an adult all I wanted was to run away to make a better place for myself. A stable place where everything was safe, everything in its right place.

I made rules for my adult life. I do not yell. I apologize and make amends, even when I think I’m right. I acknowledge the feelings of others, even when I do not understand. I show gratitude. I am intentional in my expressions of love. I am gentle.

But life cares not for rules. It’ll throw those lemons anyway. A crippling anxiety disorder diagnosis at 24. The loss of the complete body of my written work during the transfer of files to a new computer at 26. A long series of unsatisfying jobs. Filing my first sexual harassment complaint. Getting fired a few months later. Trying to retreat back to my art only to be told by those who purported to love me that this was unhealthy. Returning to the unsatisfying workforce. Suffering another extreme bout of my anxiety disorder.

But if there’s one thing I can do, it’s make that lemonade.

When my mental health issues sap my energy and my medication dulls my creativity I can retreat back into the old things, the crochet projects. When someone suggests putting these creations into a children’s book, I can drop the idea of being the next phenomenon and instead create my truth, tell the world what I needed to be told, that I’m important, that my presence in this world is meaningful and wanted, that, despite all my imperfections, I am loved.

It took me a solid year, but it’s here, my first book, All the Ways You’re Important to Me. Imperfect and self-published and a truly honest expression of who I currently am as a writer and artist. I have never been more nervous about one of my pursuits. I have also never felt so accomplished and proud.

Make that damn lemonade. Life’s gonna keep throwing those lemons anyway.

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Interested in checking out more on my book? Read more here on my blog. Or head on over to Amazon if you’d like to purchase a copy.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas

I’m grateful for however you’d like to show your support.

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On the Need for Art – Amigurumi Moon

And who told you you weren’t an artist? Who took that from you?

Shame on them.

Did they forget our legacy? That our bodies are made of each other, of the earth, of that great, limitless, black-diamond sky? Did they somehow miss that our very personhood, the very thing we think of as “I,” is made by the body, electric?

Maybe they forgot how good it feels, how necessary it is, to explore the internal, emotional, carnal world. Or perhaps they have learned to fear it, to cower at what is discovered of our humanity (our mortality?) in relation to the inanimate. The violent, sensual slap of hands against clay. The uninhibited joy of fingers in acrylic paint or garden soil or animal flesh. The good sorrow of the caught scent of our lost youth. The earned relief of sweat and tears and laughter. The raw, vivid, wildness of undulating hips, of our collective voices as we sing into that sparkling night.

You knew this when you came in. Clean and sure of your right to creation.

Take it back.

Don’t bow to their fear.

I don’t care if you don’t think it’s art. Of course it is. If it was born of the desire to create, made with the body, of course it is art.

Don’t ever doubt your legacy. Love the body, every body. Are we not all the inheritors of 13.8 billion years of creation?

Live like it. Sing into that unfathomable, sparkling expanse.

Take back your art.

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This amigurumi moon was made with my own, personal pattern using a US F/3.75mm crochet hook and Lily Sugar ‘n Cream cotton yarn.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

On Loving – Amigurumi Octopus

Don’t take it for granted, your capacity to give and receive love.

Do you know what a learned skill it is? To be vulnerable before another? To accept (wholly) the tangled heap of another’s humanity? Do you know how difficult it is to be gentle in the face of our faults?

Love may be as essential to our nature as thirst, but the giving and receiving of it? This is as learned a skill as the building of fire.

What I’m saying is you can get better at it.

I’m also saying it’s a precious thing, easily broken and ravaged and passed down the generations.

And if this is your legacy (as it was mine), I’m saying you can repair it.

It will take more time than you want to give it (years, years, years). It will be your most difficult feat. You will need to ask for help. You will need to be humble in the face of your ignorance. And the worst of it, you will need to accept that the better at this you become, the more alien and threatening you will be to the ones who still live with the broken and ravaged thing.

You may need to let them go.

It’s OK.

It’s OK.

I promise, it’s OK.

Because now you have this skill, this loving. And it pulls all the loving things toward it. Eventually, (again, it will take years, years, years) your life will be filled with it, brimming.

I’m saying it’s worth it. I’m saying be fearless. I’m saying you should give it your everything.

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Want to make your own amigurumi octopus? This guy was made with Kate E. Hancock of Patchwork Moose’s Claude the Octopus pattern, which can be found here.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

On Appreciating the Body – All the Craftcation Crafts

Can we talk for a minute about the pleasure of using our hands? Of plunging hungry fingers into damp soil, across bolts of fresh, clean cotton, over the cool and dangerous weight of a hammer’s forged metal helve?

Can we talk about how good it feels to move the body in practiced rhythm? Can we celebrate the dance of our arms as we count our rows, the rock of our hips as we lean our weight into humming machines?

And how about breath? How it slows even as sweat builds and beads down our tired flesh?

And what about the songs we sing, sometimes softly, sometimes crazily, off-key and at the top of our lungs, as we claim the sacred space of our work?

Can we talk about how good it feels to feel out our place in this world? To find the truth that we make (and are made of) each other?

Because at the end of our effort, it is not just a thing, a product, we have made, but also a better understanding of what it is to inhabit this body, to live this moment in time. This making is not just an act of commerce, it is how we (bodily) bring forth the knowledge of our grandmothers, it is how we use our hands to tell, again and again, the story of what it is to be human, woman, alive.

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I had the recent opportunity to attend Craftcation 2018 in Ventura, California. Along with the practical and useful knowledge gleaned in business classes and craft workshops, I found the most useful experience was just to be surrounded by people like me, people who make things.

During the conference, I designed an amigurumi cactus. I am offering the pattern for her here: Sassy Soledad the Saguaro.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

On Grief – Amigurumi Bee

My husband’s grandfather passed away recently and I found myself surprised at the depth of my own sadness.

It didn’t feel unfair, after all, he was granted 99 years. What a gift! It didn’t feel sudden, we had all watched him fold into himself these last few years, a withering blossom. I wasn’t even particularly close to him. Just visits on holidays. Shared meals. I tried to smile a lot. He never could hear my soft, high voice above the din of old age.

But Jack Willett never forgot my birthday. He sent cards, sweet, pretty things often from the Audubon society. He accepted me wholly into his brood, simply because his beautiful grandson, Carlos, loved me and wanted me there. He seemed to delight in our union, in my presence. And that was a big deal to me, a person whose birth and struggles and accomplishments have not been celebrated or acknowledged by her own family in years.

It was Jack’s desire to go without ceremony, and so there was no funeral. Instead I found myself often in the park, usually with a book, always with a cup of iced tea, sitting in the grass weeded through with blooming clovers, letting the sun do its slow healing work.

Mary Oliver has a poem about Franz Marc’s painting, Blue Horses. There is one line that has stuck with me all these years, burned itself down into my bones. In it she says, “Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”

Jack was not perfect, none of us are. He was not particularly religious, and neither am I. But he was a kindness in my life, he gifted me beauty and acceptance, and in doing so, I like to think that we shared some of the holy magic of what it is to be human.

And now he is gone. There is a rawness around that hole in my heart. And I, still in the bloom of my life, can only wait with my sadness until it is light enough to carry, hope for the day it becomes small, like a bee, its buzzing joining the sad and beautiful song of my life that follows me always.

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Want to make your own amigurumi bee? This little guy was made with Holly of Storyland Ami’s Burt the Baby Honeybee pattern, which can be found for free on her blog here.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

Love and Fear in Equal Measure – Amigurumi Wolf

Life, lately, has been a little bit unkind. An old friend’s father suffered a stroke last week. The news has me thinking of my own father’s cancer, diagnosed early last year. I suppose this is the problem with your 30’s. All around you, the giants of your life begin to tumble.

My father’s cancer is not life threatening, at least not to my knowledge, but my experience of his struggle is complicated by our broken relationship, my lack of willingness to engage with a man that I love and fear in equal measure. He is my wolf in sheep’s clothing. I never know whether to expect the sharp tooth of his anger or the warm comfort of his intelligence and love.

My favorite memories are silly ones, when the teeth were concealed and the danger felt far away. My father rose early, always. Six a.m. brought the sound of the coffee grinder and tinny classic rock from an old clock radio that sat on the shelf just above his pillow. On weekends he made pancakes, as round and wide as the cast iron skillet. Sometimes bacon, chewy from the microwave, but still delicious, especially coated in syrup and washed down with milk.

My brother was not the early riser we were and my father delighted in teasing him for the zombie state in which he left his bed every morning, light brown hair tufted, gray-blue eyes still crusted with sleep.

One weekend morning my father rose with the usual cacophony of dark roast and Zeppelin. He served up my brother’s pancake, again as usual, on a dinner plate with the Aunt Jemima and a tub of margarine, a paper towel set off to the side to reign in the sticky mess. But instead of the small salad fork I was proffered, he handed my brother our largest serving fork, the one I only saw at Thanksgiving, three-pronged and wide as my brother’s young palm.

I paused in my eating and looked up to my father. He pulled his right index finger silently over his lips: shhh. My brother, so groggy his sleep shirt was still set askance picked up the fork and frowned, “How come I have to use such a big fork?” Without missing a beat, my father, all matter-of-fact seriousness, “The fork isn’t big, you’re just holding it too close to your face.” My brother frowned again, shifted the fork to arm’s length, nodded, seemed to decide this was, as my father had indicated, normal and correct, and began struggling to eat a pancake with a fork he almost could not fit in his mouth, confused as to why my father and I couldn’t stop laughing.

I think about that morning on the rare moons I decide to make myself pancakes, at dinner parties when a friend pulls out a serving fork. I wish all my memories of my father could be like this. I wish I could trust that this was his true self, toothless and silly.

But, at least for now, this is what I have. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. A broken relationship and memories. A strong love that I hope absolves me of the decisions I have made in my fear.

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Want to crochet your own amigurumi wolf? I have opted to provide this pattern for free here on my blog.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @handcraftingalife or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas

On Quiet Spaces – Crocheted Poncho and Bear

Downstairs my neighbors are once again making Panlasang Pinoy garlic fried rice and the scent alone is enough to send me straight to heaven. I like to listen to them in the evenings, laughing and shouting at each other in Tagalog, or on the weekends, waking up early to blast 70’s rock and tend to the lush container garden and fairy lights that have overtaken their patio.

It’s so different from my quiet life lived just a few feet away: dinners of chicken thighs and broccolini, evenings spent reading on the couch, my cold feet tucked up under my husband’s thigh, weekend mornings spent crocheting and quietly making tea while my night owl husband sleeps almost until lunch.

I’ve given myself a hard time for my quiet, simple life. Shouldn’t I be more like my Filipino neighbors? Great big, boisterous parties that end in hilarious attempts at karaoke? First-name relationships with the rest of our small community’s neighbors? Shouldn’t I also be gregarious and outgoing and fun?

It’s taken me a long time to realize the people that have proclaimed my quiet a deficit are wrong. Because the trouble with quiet is that it leaves space for narrative, and it seems most people are quick to pour in their own insecurities.

But my quiet is not your fear or loneliness, it is not evidence of crippling shyness. It is just my quiet. It is the space I create to discover the world on my terms. To listen to the sizzle of the Panlasang Pinoy and breathe the garlic. To learn the botanical loves of my neighbors so that, come Christmas, I can walk downstairs with a plate of cookies and a sweet potted thing to add to their jungled collection.

Sometimes it is the space I create to let my friends gush about their excitement for their upcoming little ones. I feel I learn more this way. Most recently, a friend’s plans for an animal-themed nursery. But the husband wants a few touches of pink because, you know, why can’t a little girl have a little pink?

I use what I learn in my quiet to add to their joy, to amplify the dreams they have for the little girl we’re all eager to meet. In this case, I crochet a sweet, cotton poncho with a little bear hood. Perfect for little ones that fight sleeves despite the cold. And a little pink bear to match. Because every little one should have something soft to cuddle.

I love my quiet space. It’s not what everyone needs, not all the time. But when they do, I’m here. Ready to listen and absorb, and once everything has been processed, to add. Because I want the world to be a kinder, more beautiful place. And this is the way I know how to do it.

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Want to make your own? This poncho is a slightly modified version of Marie of Muki Craft’s Teddy Bear Poncho pattern. The bear is a slightly modified version of J.A. Poolvos of Little Bear Crochets’s Bear Amigurumi pattern.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @acassafrass or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

Amigurumi Pansy – On Doing Things Differently

In the winter of 2008 I lived a boxed life. The apartment I shared in West LA with my husband (then boyfriend) was a white cube just under five hundred square feet. I left that cube every morning just after 7 to hop the red brick 704 bus into Century City. I then exchanged that red brick for a glass and concrete slab off Century Park East that, 5 floors up, housed my little cubicle where I helped people fill out boxes on forms that might, one day, help them become American citizens. Then at 6pm every evening, I packed myself up and took my series of boxes home.

Every day for two years, I lived my little boxed life. It’s hard to overstate how incredibly important this was to me. I actively worked to be average. I wanted, more than anything, a safe, stable existence. I thought this was the only way to be good, the only right way to…be. I had no other model for how to live a respectable life.

But none of it was ever going to work out, because I could never quite cram myself into that perfect, little box.

There were hints. As February rolled around my boyfriend and I made reservations for a nice Italian place up off Westwood Boulevard. Because isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for Valentine’s Day? Dinner and drinks at an upscale restaurant?

Night of we hopped in the car, dress in rumpled, work-worn faces and our best clothes, and began the ascent up Wilshire.

After an hour of exhaust fumes and honking we’d made it three blocks (I don’t ever miss you LA), and I…a little bit…lost it.

I knew I was supposed to want the fancy dinner with the white table cloth and the single red rose, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. This was not a box that was making me happy. What I really wanted was jeans and flip flops and what I could see just out the window: Fatburger.

So I cried, raged a little at the traffic (I know, SO DRAMATIC), and then stepped out of my carefully crafted box to tell my boyfriend what I really wanted. Today, it seems so sad to remember how hard that moment was, how difficult it was to realize that, in that moment, I was no longer going to be able to hold down or hide my difference. My catastrophic brain thought that if I let it out, my boyfriend might no longer want me, that I might prove myself to be what I had always feared: weird and unworthy of love.

But all that happened was that we turned around and parked the car. We walked the three blocks back to Fatburger, holding hands on a cracked sidewalk lined with pots of pansies so I could prop my feet up on a plastic chair and cover my hands in grease. And you better believe that burger was goddamned heaven.

The little box of our apartment lasted just five more months. The job? Just one more year. And in the ten years since, I’ve had to over and over again learn the lesson that just because something comes in an average, safe, pretty little box, that doesn’t make it the right choice for me.

Because not all of us are roses and white table cloths. Some of us are cracked sidewalks and potted pansies. And all of it is, truly, fine.

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Want to make your own mustachioed pansy? Find my free Proper Percy the Pansy pattern here.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @acassafrass or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

Amigurumi Octopus – On Surviving Illness

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about illness. Perhaps because of the flu raging around. Perhaps because of the novel I’m currently reading on the 1918 epidemic. But mostly because I saw my psychiatrist last week, and we decided together to have me try weaning off the medication I’ve used for the last year to help treat my Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

I’ve done this before. Gone off, I mean. I was stable for six years before the monster returned. For a time I was naive enough to believe I had beaten it. But after this most recent episode I can see that, no matter the foolhardy promises of so many on the internet, this thing will always be with me.

And that’s OK.

Because though it is not ideal, generalized anxiety disorder is manageable. And each time it takes me down I learn more about it, become more adept at recognizing its approach.

I used to live in fear of my illness. I saw it as the drowning man, so desperate in its fight for survival that it became a monstrous, tentacled thing. And it was always my best self it took down with it.

Our culture loves to prop up the idea of the tortured genius. As though the cost for great art or literature or scientific enterprise is sanity. Maybe that’s an encouraging thought: better to be average, sane, but perhaps forgettable than to be extraordinary and unwell.

But as someone with no great genius, who is just as average and (perhaps) forgettable as you, and is, and always will be, companion to this illness, this myth is a great frustration. My illness doesn’t imbue my life with creativity. When it flares, I am reduced to the body. My mind so hot and twisted into itself that it is more than I can manage to go out in public, to eat, to sleep, to stop and just…be.

My best art comes only when I am well. She will not approach when I am wrapped in the tentacled thing.

And so now, as I reduce the medication that has kept my monster at bay, I wait. Has he been here all along, preparing to wrap his suckered arms around me? To pull us back down into the inky expanse of my illness? Or has he perhaps been placated? Have the drowning man’s feet been placed on the sand? Can he see we’ve been in the shallows all along?

I hope for the latter. Because when my illness is well managed I can see how beautiful it is here. This life I have cobbled together despite everything.

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Want to make your own amigurumi octopus? This guy was made with Kate E. Hancock’s Claude the Octopus pattern. Find all her fantastic work on Ravelry under her design handle, Patchwork Moose.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @acassafrass or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

Amigurumi Llama – On Unnecessary Burdens

There is so much of our lives that is out of our control. That’s a cheerful first thought of 2018, Cass! Way to go!

But in all seriousness, I think much of my struggle in life has resulted from my misguided attempts to control the uncontrollable. I do not control whether or not someone else will enjoy my particular brand of highly sensitive, introverted, overly philosophical nerdiness. And more than that, it’s not my job to try to be what they want. I do not control the news cycle. It’s a force that exists entirely without my input. I can only decide whether or not I want to engage. I also do not control the weather or traffic or the speed of checkout cashiers.

So why put any effort into fighting against these things? It’s an untenable burden. And I often find myself exhausted.

I want to learn to let these things go. I’d rather learn to recognize the burdens that are fit to carry. Did I get any exercise today? Did I give myself breaks when I noticed I was starting to feel overworked? How is my posture? Am I breathing well?

Simple things.

I want to remember that life doesn’t have to be SO SERIOUS. It’s OK to back away from things that don’t feed your well being. Even from people, no matter how closely related. Here is your permission slip. For God’s sake woman, take it.

In short, I want 2018 to be my llama year. Hear me out! I’m going somewhere with this!

The llama is equal parts regal and goofy. She is a pack animal, strong and hardy, but too irritable to bother with trying to carry more than she can shoulder. She is social and loving, but push her past her limit? She’ll spit at you and walk away. And she’s got 3 stomach compartments from which to choose the potency of that…uh…expectoration. My hero! Everything a girl could ever wish to be.

So here we go, 2018. I hope it’s a llama year for you as well.

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Want to make your own amigurumi llama? I’ve opted to provide this pattern (Lovely Lola the Llama) for free to celebrate the new year. I’d be honored if you’d check it out!

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @acassafrass or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas

Amigurumi Sunflower Doll – On Light

Normally I lament the winter’s early dying sun, but this year I find myself embracing it.

I like the way the old amber streetlights come on, all at once, a shimmering chorus, after the sun dips into the ocean. I like, too, the multi-colored Christmas bulbs that come on more slowly, as each neighbor makes his or her way home. But mostly I like the evergreens as they peek out, bedazzled and glittering in their holiday finest, from behind half-drawn curtains and through the open slats of Venetian blinds.

I’m reminded of that old Edith Wharton quote, “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” And this time of year I often find myself wondering, which am I?

I suspect that I’m meant to want to be the candle, the bulb, the shimmering chorus. But if I’m honest, I’m not one to burn. I wouldn’t make much of a David. I seek no Goliath. And I would, most assuredly, as Dylan Thomas warned against, “go gentle into that good night.”

But in the dark hours of this season, I do not lack for light.

There is a stack of gifts by the bookcase that sparkle with string lights. Birch branches on the mantel that glow. Candles that flicker in the fireplace.

Just enough to read by, to crochet by, to create the little dolls and toys and delights of the season. Little gifts and reminders of our reflected goodness. And this season that is enough for me.

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Want to make your own sweet little sunflower doll? This amigurumi was made with Bas den Braver’s adorable Sunflower Sam pattern. Find all of his work on his website: zabbez.com.

Want to see more of my work? Find me on Instagram: @acassafrass. Or on Etsy: etsy.com/shop/lascosaschiquitas.

Amigurumi Doxie – On the Cost of Beauty

From the top of my green flecked hill the setting sun is as yellow and fat as a fried egg yolk. The sky that surrounds it creamy as orange sherbet veined with a swirling raspberry ribbon of clouds. 

Terrible things can appear beautiful, given enough distance.

People the world over marvel at the loveliness of a Southern California sunset, but only locals know the price: the smog, the windblown dust, the smoke and ash and ember that rise from the wailing hillsides to scatter the dying sun’s light to this enchanting creamsicle rainbow.

And with enough distance it does seem beautiful. But a body, born and raised in these hillsides, can feel fire in the air before it strikes. Our noses finely tuned to the differences between the woodsmoke of a cozy fireplace, a backyard barbeque, flaming brush.

And what can be done? It is in the nature of these hills to burn. While we all danced in relief at last year’s rain, we knew this would be the cost.

And what can be done? But to watch the horizon and mourn? To pray the howling winds ease and spare our northern neighbors? To wait for news of damage and what is needed of those of us whose only saving grace is that we happen to live just a couple hours further south?

What can be done?

From the top of my green flecked hill the air smells old and ravaged, but her face is made up in the finest rouge. She is beautiful. A glowing sherbet rainbow. And horrible. Made of ember and dust.

And I can only behold her. And wait.

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In distressing times, craft can be a welcome relief from anxiety. Need a productive distraction from the worries in your life? Find this pattern (Dachshund Sam) from Stip & Haak at their website: http://stipenhaak.nl

Looking to help the victims of the Thomas Fire in Ventura County? Consider checking out the Thomas Fire Fund, a joint effort from the United Way of Ventura County, American Red Cross of Ventura County, and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services. If you’re an animal lover like me, you might also consider checking out the Humane Society of Ventura County, which has taken in hundreds of animals since Monday as a result of the fires.