Instead of buying seasonal outfits for your doggy, why not make something for them?
The cooler months are a perfect time to knit for your dogs, and the dogs LOVE it! Dogs wearing knits on Instagram consistently get the highest number of likes, so it’s clear that everybody loves it!
I knit a LOT for Willie; he loves getting something new. We always get compliments on his knitted cowls. Even when they’ve been worn and worn and worn, people love to see the knitting on him.
For Valentine’s Day, I incorporated a simple heart chart into the cowl pattern. I added the hearts by using stranded knitting, but duplicate stitch is also appropriate. Because I knit these cowls in-the-round, it requires stranded knitting as opposed to intarsia.
Stranded knitting and intarsia are what we call colorwork techniques. It’ a way to get other colors into a ground of a main color. As long as you carefully manage floats and tension, stranded colorwork with two colors is a great way to try your hand at the colorwork technique.
Stranded knitting means knitting with 2 (or more) strands of yarn at the same time, & carrying the unused strands along with you as you go.
Plus, stranded colorwork knits are SUPER warm! They have an added layer of wool behind the stockinette fabric in the form of floats. It’s not a huge surprise then to learn that we see colorwork techiques originating from Northern Europe and Iceland. The best known stranded colorwork styles are Fair Isle (from the Shetland Island chain off the coast of Scotland), Icelandic (from Iceland which uses Lopi Yarn), Scandinavian or Nordic, and finally Bohus (which comes out of a small town in Sweden).
I used the butterfly bobbin method for the second color, which in this case is the heart.
Here’s that chart I used. There are a ton of great charts for colorwork. If you haven’t worked with charts yet, then don’t freak. I actually prefer a chart to all the words written out. So even though I stick to predominantly simple knitting patterns, I do like a chart in certain instances.
Sometimes written knitting instructions are really difficult for me to follow.
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For anything that incorporates cables, I want to see a chart. My eyes glaze over and my brain goes numb reading line after line of written instructions. If you’re not ready to try something like this, then no worries! It comes in time. I’m simply showing you something you can do once you master a few basics.
The Pattern:
I used Lion Brand yarn I had in stash and started in K2P2 rib. I did that for 7 rows. I did one all knit row in red (they call it Cranberry). Then I began the colorwork chart provided above. You’ll need to do a little math to get it to work out for your doggy. In Willie’s case, I did two repeats. Then a knit row in red followed by 6 rows of K2P2 and a standard CO. The brownish yarn is from Loops and Threads which is a Michael’s store brand yarn. The colorway is Barley. This is super bulky weight yarn and I used my size 13US 16″ circulars to create this knit.
Here’s an inside peek at the stranding. I have a couple other stranded projects I’ve done that were easier, and I love to wear them. This one is a challenge because the floats get so long. I will have to find something with smaller hearts so the floats are shorter and easier to manage.
Overall, I thought this was super cute, and Willie certainly loves to wear it. If you want to experiment with colorwork, then I would suggest starting with something that’s just two colors. The bobbins can become challenging to manage very quickly, so start with something simple to learn the technique.
Patty McGuire is a knitter who designs beginner knitting patterns. Video tutorials and online classes are currently in the works. She resides in the resort city of Virginia Beach where she has a small container garden and knits for her much loved Golden Retriever, Willie. She photographs and writes all the content on this blog (including this byline which seems weird because I’m writing about myself in 3rd person, but people like this sort of thing so I’m including it.)