Designing pictures in textured knitting is challenging. Horizontal purl stitch rows pop out against the stockinette background (as they do in welting), but vertical purl stitch columns recede (as they do in ribbing). What looks good on a chart may translate as a different image when knitted.

The design for this dachshund cloth was test-knitted and revised several times. I wanted my dachshund’s body, feet, and tail to be in scale with each other, and I wanted a wagging tail with at least an indication of ears. The dachshund’s face was challenging since one stitch difference on nose or ears can make the design look like a mouse or a bunny! You can see two versions of the face on the gold and brown dachshunds in the photo. The chart is for a face more like the gold dachshund.

The samples are knitted in cotton worsted-weight (standard weight 4) yarn on size 6 needles (4.0 mm) needles. Gauge is not too important but you want your stitches to be dense so that the design shows clearly. For the samples, my gauge was 5.5 st/in and 8.5 rows/in (22 stitches and 34 rows in 4 inches). At that gauge my cloths were about 10 ½” wide and about 5 ¼” tall.

You might want to go up to size 7 needles if your worsted cotton is more like an aran-weight. Or you might want to make a smaller cloth in dk-weight cotton on smaller needles.

I like to minimize stockinette curl in these textured picture cloths, so I’ve added tiny dots across the top and bottom of the cloth based on Meg Swansen’s “purl-when-you-can” technique (described by Janine Bajus, the Feral Knitter, here), usually used for colorwork knitting but effective for textured knitting, too. Just those few dots of purl really help to tame the curl.

Slipping the first stitch of every row gives you a tidy chained selvage, and keeping the tension looser on the border also helps to avoid curled stockinette.

Have fun with your dachshunds!

Note: The pattern was updated on 12/18/19 to include both the left-facing and right-facing doxies. An error on the stitch count for Row 8 was corrected on 12/18/19.

Thanks to a helpful project note by ssub, an error in the stitch count for Row 36 was corrected on 3/20/20.