Pup in Knits

We are still happily fostering our little rescue pup Chinso, who is currently doing something very similar to this:

... while occasionally letting out little grunts and sighs of contentment.

Fostering is a very rewarding activity, but obviously comes with much potential for heartache. I'm not going to go into the hows and whys of how I cope with this and please don't ask, because for this particular pup it's going to be very difficult when he is adopted. We are currently trying to arrange a meet and greet with potential adopters and it pulls my heart in two.

Chinso is most likely an Italian greyhound chihuahua mix, with heavy emphasis on the greyhound. He has legs that stretch on for days, the classic narrow but long body, and a big chest that rapidly nips in to a tiny waist. And he's fast!

I'm not really a person who takes pleasure in anthropomorphizing animals, but this little dog needed a sweater to cope with the cold. He was underweight when he came from the shelter and his undercarriage is all but bald! I bought a sweater for him that fit in terms of length but didn't fit anywhere else and was chaffing because of his shape. I cut, sewed and added snaps to adjust it but I still wasn't happy.

So this week I knit him his own custom fit sweater!

He was extremely patient and tolerated multiple fit session during the knitting process, and at least two attempts at figuring out where the button loops should go. This was a fast knit holding two strands of worsted together and knitting 2x2 rib on US10.5mm needles. I did increases and decreases as I saw fit to hug his curves, added a button hole for attaching the leash to the harness, then added slip stitch crocheted button loops for fastening. I blocked it a little bit too much so it's a touch loose now over the harness, but it should snug up on a second wash.

Chinso happily pushes his head through and lifts his front paw whenever the sweater is presented and seems to like this sweater much more than the store bought one! For one thing it isn't acrylic so he no longer gets wickedly static charged during walks and it doesn't chafe anywhere. It's warm too.

It snugs up nice and tight on his belly, but importantly is out of the line of fire of pee. I ran out of yarn or I would have made this a little longer and rounder at the bottom end, but hey, it covers a lot as it is.

Gratuitous chihuahua-face.

Gratuitous cute :)

Lucky Find

While out walking my foster dog this afternoon, I spotted a very familiar color partially buried in the snow in a garbage pile a block from my house. I thought it was probably too good to be true and carried on with our walk. Once we got back home curiosity got the better on me and I walked us back.

O. M. G.

That, my friends, is a 9 quart cast iron LE CREUSET pot. Filled with snow, moldy peanuts (?) and burnt on crud. A quick wipe with paper towels told me that most of this grossness was surface, and very easily scrubbed off.

I have some Le Creuset enamel cleaning fluid for my other two pots, which incidentally are exactly the same color, which made short work of the few last burnt on bits and the oily patina.

Even more miraculously? The first hit on eBay was for the lid in exactly the same color for $26 including shipping. This is a $360 pot. Holy crap. Today is a good day!

Broodcomb Cowl

I recently purchased some yarn from a Ravelry destash, and as a perk the seller offered me a choice of several odd skein of yarn for free. I selected two skeins of a yellow, rustic looking worsted weight called Naturally Tussock which was just begging to be knit into cables. Honeycomb cables.

After a quick look through my stitch dictionary and after a little bit of swatching, I settled on a design and set to. May I present the Broodcomb Cowl!

From Wikipedia:

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen... Broodcomb becomes dark over time, because of the cocoons embedded in the cells and the tracking of many feet, called travel stain by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not allowed to be used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a queen excluder) stays light-coloured.

While I don't have a properly formatted pattern per se (gauge? who knows!), I do have a simple recipe if anyone would like to make their own.

MATERIALS

1+ skein worsted weight yarn (I used just over one ball of Naturally Tussock at 175yd/ball)

US8 16" circular needles

US8 DPNs (2)

PATTERN

Cast on 120 stitches and join in the round with no twisting. Knit 8 rows of K1 P2 ribbing.

   - Although I didn't do it, twisting the knit stitch might look better...

The cable pattern (Wasp Nest 3, P67 of "400 Knitting Stitches" by Murdoch Books) is worked over 6 stitches and 8 rows. Knit 6+ repeats depending on how tall you want the cowl and how much yarn you have.

  

Row 1 & 2: Knit

Row 3:  Put 1 stitch on cable needle and hold to font, K2 from left needle then K1 from cable needle. Put 2 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 from left hand needle then K2 stitches from cable needle.

   - This should align the first K stitch of rib with a cable cross

Row 4-6: Knit

Row 7: Put 2 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 from left hand needle then K2 stitches from cable needle. Put 1 stitch on cable needle and hold to font, K2 from left needle then K1 from cable needle.

Row 8: Knit

Cast off using a 3-stitch applied i-cord. Of course, you call always mirror the rib on the top if you like, I just wanted a smooth edge.

The only Christmas Crafting I did this year!

And in all honesty, it was actually a birthday gift for my nephew (Dec 16th). But hey, seasonal!

I dug deep into my stash to find my only machine washable yarn - Knit Picks Cotlin from forever ago, originally bought to make this skirt but OMG seven stitch nups in cotton? What was I thinking? Also I distinctly remember this yarn being super sheddy, so the yarn had languished for a long time. I wasn't wrong about the shedding, it was terrible! I'm hoping that with a few washes most of it will work its way out.

I wanted to make my nephew a sweater and originally I planned a completely different knit with an intarsia bunny, but the nightmare of ripping and re-knitting that project became lead me to chose a completely different pattern. This is the McDreamy Jumper by Drops (ravelry) in the 2year old size. I had a horrible time with the neck directions probably because I never checked my gauge, so I omitted the final section of moss stitch and ended with an applied i-cord.

The buttons were from a small shop in either Galway or Dublin, bought on a family trip in 2007 and I think they work really well with the dark yarn. I haven't seen any evidence that the sweater fits yet (HINT HINT) but hopefully he'll get some wear out of this winter and during the British summer.

I Tawt I Taw a Tweety Bird

Ever since I made the crazy dog lady quilt back in March, I've been on the lookout for interesting fabrics to make another stack and whack quilt. Last guild meeting, Karen brought a huge bag of vintage baby fabrics for the scrap table. This rather fetching Tweety Bird fabric from 1988 caught my eye...

Bright! Cartoony! 1980s colors! While this could have served as a perfectly suitable backing for a quilt, I decided that with the three repeats it would be great for a 60 degree stack and whack!

First I cut and stacked the panels, pinning through the three layers to align the repeats as exactly as possible. Then (given that the panel was ~17" wide but not cut straight) I cut three strips 5.5" wide. I double checked the alignment then cut triangles using my Creative Grids 60 degree ruler. Lots of triangles!

I used two sets of three repeats per hexagon, alternating the blades but maintaining as many internal hexagons as I could.

I made 18 hexagons all together, and had a few half triangles from the beginning and ends of rows to play with. All I had to do then was pick a backing fabric which was actually fairly difficult! I mean, I do own a fair collection of yardage but not so much in solid colours or in these somewhat pastel 1980s colors.

I auditioned three fabrics:

... a Kona solid blue (used for the binding on the Ikko Tanaka Quilt) and a Dear Stella navy blue with little yellow birds (from the E-I-E-I-O line) that I bought for a song (ha!) at Save-A-Thon in Harlem. Both looked pretty good but I wasn't feeling it and kept going back and forth, then pulled another yard of Timeless Treasures "Farm" fabric from my stash, and well, how could I resist?

So I pressed, cut strips into triangles and then cut a bunch of half triangles to use with the leftovers from the Tweety panels to fill in a few of the blank spots. My foster dog Chinso decided again that a laid out quilt in pieces was too irresistable and that he needed to help me out a little.

 "Help"

I mis-cut some half triangles which meant that I didn't have quite enough fabric to frame out the top, but I did have enough to add a little width to the sides, and voila! A quilt top!