Saturday, December 31, 2005

Gone to the dogs


The holiday frenzy is over and the January frenzy has not yet begun, so I am knitting sweaters for Cody and Goldie , the welcoming committee at my favorite LYS. My Sister's Knits is a new shop owned and operated by Carol Oprondek. Her Golden Retrievers were adopted from a _rescue shelter. Goldie is especially devoted to her, never letting her out of her sight, probably because her previous owner of many years passed away. Cody is anybody's baby. A few weeks ago, Carol's friend Diane and I decided that dogs who live in a yarn store should have sweaters, and Carol was too busy to ever do that. You know the expression: the shoemaker's children go barefoot. So I undertook the task of designing for these children.

Cody has a 38-inch chest. That's pretty large for a Golden. After researching many many dog sweater patterns, most notably _Knitting for Dogs_ by Kristi Porter, I settled on adapting some patterns for these special pups.

For Goldie, I will use the machine and an original fairisle pattern I call "Herring Bones Hounds Tooth." The yarn is Jaggerspun Maine Line 2/8 wool in colors celadon and buttercream. I've worked out the math for 8 sts and 10 rows per inch and am planning to cast on today.

Cody's sweater has to be in a much larger scale, and more butch. I needed to get out of the studio yesterday and went to MSK to visit and knit, and cast on in the shop. His sweater will be mostly Cascade 220 in solid green and Quatro greens (4 plies of 4 different shades), with lemon yellow cables down each side. I'm using intarsia. Glutton for punishment, I guess. So far no disasters. I rigged a few yarn ball holders out of cottage cheese tubs and have managed to keep the tangling under control. I'll post a few photos as things progress. Now I'd better gert back to work.

Carol