We Can Do This the Hard Way, Or We Can Do This the Easy Way, Pardner

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the few crafty things I’m pretty good at is knitting. I haven’t yet mastered cable stitches or fair isle, but hopefully I will one day.

Some of my favorite things to knit are dog sweaters. I like to take my little pooches for walks in the wintertime and sometimes they need a little extra protection against the elements. Knitting dog sweaters for my smaller pooches is pretty cost effective, too, so this fun craft can be a good idea for frugal living. It only takes one skein of yarn to make a sweater that will fit all three of my smaller pooches because they are all pretty close in size. I also have a significant yarn stash, so I don’t even need to buy any yarn at all. A lot of my yarn was free - my sister picked up tons of it very cheaply at yard sales and just gave it to me.

But if I do want to buy something a little different, I can use a 40%-off coupon for Michaels or Hobby Lobby (they always have one in the Sunday paper), or take advantage of a great sale. So I can knit a dog sweater for a cost of $0.00-$2.00 (if I really want to splurge, and not counting my time, of course). These sweaters come out great and are of a much better quality than the cheap-looking $9.95 versions I have seen at Target (ok, I admit I bought this $9.95 sweater. And it is a cheapie, all right).

I truly enjoy knitting, but as a card-carrying Lazy person, I am honor-bound to seek out ways to accomplish tasks with the least amount of effort possible. And I’ve managed to do that in this case as well. My method still takes some effort, but with it I’m able to produce a doggy sweater in a few hours rather than the few days it normally takes me to knit a sweater.

• First, the Hard Way:
• I knit up the Basic Knitted Dog Sweater from the pattern in Dogs in Knits 17 Projects for Our Best Friends by Judith L. Swartz. This is a great book. It has something for just about every skill-level. I’ve made five sweaters with this pattern. The first one didn’t come out so great, but it’s still wearable (and the pooches don’t care what it looks like). After a little practice, I can now whip these sweaters up like nobody’s business in about seven nightly sessions of watching-TV knitting.

• Now for the Easy Way:
• I made a pattern out of brown butcher paper based on the pattern for the Basic Knitted Dog Sweater from Dogs in Knits 17 Projects for Our Best Friends by Judith L. Swartz. Then I used this pattern to cut out pieces from an old sweater I had that I no longer wear. I like this sweater a lot, but I haven’t worn it in a long time, so I didn’t mind using it to make a sweater for my pooches.

I wasn’t sure if it would work - I didn’t know if the pieces would unravel the moment I cut them out. This sweater happened to be tightly knit, so I decided to go ahead. I pinned the pattern to the sweater, cut out the pieces, then I blanket- stitched all the way around each piece with some coordinating orange yarn (as a little extra no-unravel insurance). I used a big plastic weaving needle to do this. Next, I sewed the pieces together (with the same orange yarn and big weaving needle), “matching length of under panel to straight edge of back,” leaving openings for armholes at the top (and of course a neckhole and the bottom part open). The skinny “triangular” piece is the under panel.

Then I used double pointed needles to pick up 64 stitches around the neck hole, working about an inch in k1p1 rib. Next I picked up 28 sts with my dpn for each leg hole, working 5 rounds in a k1p1 rib. Lastly I picked up 110 sts around the bottom edge and worked 5 rounds in a k1p1 rib.

Since I only used the back and one arm to make this sweater, I still have enough remnants to make another sweater - the other arm and the front. That makes good use of an old sweater that was pretty dated, and also wasn’t doing anybody any good just taking up space in my drawers.

If your dog has a fairly deep chest, then you’ll need to make the under-panel wider (in the knitted version it’s made with a “stretchy” k1p1 rib). Farley has a skinny chest, so I decided to go medium with this pattern all the way.

I made this sweater this past winter, and it got used quite a bit. I’ve washed it many times and so far it has not come unraveled. I simply wash it in cold with all the other colors, and line dry. I don’t think this idea would work very well with loosely knit sweaters, but I’m surprised that it worked at all.

• Here is Farley in his “Barely Knitted” Knit Sweater:
• He looks like a roll of Life-Savers, doesn’t he? Come to think of it, I looked like three rolls of Life-Savers when I wore this sweater (my two arms and my torso). If Farley escapes again, and he happens to be wearing this sweater, drivers will be able to spot him a mile away.
• If you want to try this, it can probably be adapted to your favorite knit doggy sweater pattern. You can buy Dogs in Knits 17 Projects for Our Best Friends by Judith L. Swartz from amazon.com (I’m not getting paid for this plug, just trying to make it easy on you) or check it out from the library if you need the measurements for different sizes (I’ve seen it at my library).

Come to think of it, you might even be able to use this idea for almost any item knit from a pattern - convert the knitting pattern into a paper pattern, and use on an old item of knitted clothing. Another big advantage of this method (besides the time-saving factor) is that you don’t have to check your gauge, which all Lazy knitters hate to do. Plus, you can make use of an old item of clothing you might otherwise throw out.

I’m not planning on abandoning knitting for this new way of doing things; in fact I’m working on a black sweater for Farley right now (he’s going through a Johnny Cash phase). But if I ever do this with anything other than doggy sweaters, I’ll let you know. It is kind of cheating, but I won’t tell if you won’t!