A New Sweater for the Little'un

Last week Chinso's purple sweater got bundled in the with the "dog laundry" went through a hot wash and then -gasp- into the drier. Needless to say it would now fit a teacup chihuahua.

It's still cold enough in NYC to freeze the balls on a brass monkey, so for a day or two we made do with his original acrylic sweater and the acrylic coat & Chinso became the doggy equivalent of a Tesla machine. Zap. Zap. Zap.

So I did two things - sewed a cotton fleece, cotton batting and micro-fleece jacket (water resistant), and knit a new sweater! This time from superwash wool because, OMG I'm not stupid.

 

I used 1.5 balls of Washable Ewe held double on US8 needles, cast on 52 stitches and knit in K2 P2 rib all the way through. This time I was a bit more strategic with the placement of the increases in the breast plate and back, added one extra button loop, and did (if I say so myself) a nifty rounded and neatly finished edge on the tail end. All things that had bugged me about the first one fixed!

 

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the first person to ever figure out how to make that edge but I'm proud of myself nonetheless :) After doing a bunch of mirrored decreases of increasing rapidity (K2tog 2x, k3tog, K4 tog) ,I knit the first 3 stitches in pattern then knit2tog, turned and slipped the first stitch then knit back in pattern. I turned again back to the right side of the knitting and repeated until I reached the last 4 stitches and kitchenered those together. A nicely finished rounded edge was mine.

I didn't have 8 matching buttons so I used four sets of two. It's pretty snug, someone put on 2 pounds since moving in with us according the the vet, but both of those things are perfectly fine in this weather.