No dogs allowed at your digs? No worries! Thanks to British knitwear designers Sally Muir and Joanne Osborne — the clever chicks who created that famous bright red “black sheep” sweater sported by Princess Diana back in the 80s — you can knit your own faithful companion.
The patterns in Muir & Osborne’s spiffy book, Knit Your Own Dog: Easy-to-Follow Patterns for 25 Pedigree Pooches, put a well-behaved pet well within the reach of every fairly capable knitter.
Choose the dog breed that’s closest to your heart, from 25 available patterns.
- Afghan Hound
- Basset Hound
- Border Collie
- Cocker Spaniel
- Corgi
- Dachshund
- Dalmatian
- English Bulldog
- English Bull Terrier
- French Bulldog
- German Shepherd
- Jack Russell
- Labrador
- Miniature Schnauzer
- Old English Sheepdog
- Poodle
- Portuguese Water Dog (isn’t that the official Obama family dog?)
- Pug
- Red Setter
- Rough Collie
- Scottish Terrier
- Siberian Husky
- West Highland Terrier
- Whippet (size it up for a Greyhound, maybe?)
- Wire-haired Fox Terrier
Clear instructions and beautiful photographs, as well as useful tips on selecting yarn and giving a real personality to your knitted dogs, make the book a real pleasure. Be aware though, that although the dogs are toy in size, these do requires a lot of shaping and piecing together of miscellaneous bits, so you probably won’t want to give the finished product to a kid to play with. Think “collector’s item” instead, for admiration and display.
