Knitting this for my friend Christine’s poor shivering little dog. Did I follow the pattern? Only a little bit. But, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and what I did was a heavily modified version of this pattern.

All of my circulars were previously engaged, and I decided to re-embrace wrestling with the tangly octopus… ie, knitting on double points.

CO 80 st on 4 size-4 dpns. Size 4 made the nicest fabric, but made my gauge not work out with the pattern, so I had to cast on 20 extra stitches. Gauge somewhere around 6.5st/inch (for the stockinette section---but I also ribbed the whole bottom half, so it has a lot of give).

Measurements of the dog:

Neck: 22 cm or 8.6”
Chest: 36.5 cm or 14.3”
Abdomen (just in front of back legs): 31 cm or 12.2”
Length (just behind front legs to just in front of back legs): 24 cm or 9.5”

Knit K1P1 ribbing for about an inch and a quarter, then continued the ribbing on two needles (to make the belly of the sweater) and switched to stockinette for the other two needles (to make the back of the sweater). Before I switched to stockinette, I did that Techknitter trick of transitioning the ribbing which always looks so nice.

I knit the body length for 3 inches after the ribbing (so, a total of 4 1/4” for the “Abdomen” length). Then across the two dpns that formed the belly of the sweater--each holding 20 stitches--I did the following:

Rib 5, BO 10, k5 (next needle) K5, BO 10, Rib 5

I then followed the pattern instructions for knitting and purling back the top (back) section until the length equals that of the width of the bound off stitches. Same for the little chest piece on the belly stitches.

Joined back in the round, tossing on those 10 stitches over each leg hole again. Resume belly ribbing and back stockinette for about another inch and a half. During this, I did the decrease stitches on each side of the back stitches as per the pattern. Only I did more than 5. I decreased mine from 80 stitches down to 68 stitches.

Ribbing transition, then ribbed the neck for about 2 inches. Sewn bind off.

Total length: 8 inches.

Embellishments: Duplicate stitch skull and crossbones chart on Knitty.net blog by Pippi Oviatt. Of course, I mucked that up a bit, too. But it was a really helpful chart and came out well, I think.

Now we’ll see if this puppy fits… It fits! But boy is he pissed…

Knit listening to/watching:

Mythbusters
Lie to Me
Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Golem’s Eye by J. Stroud