The Button-up Dog Sweater – Pattern Review

 Hello again my peoples,

I have a quick review on a cute doggy sweater. Why make your dogs sweaters?! Well, if you have any that are under 20 lbs, or even 30, they get cold in the winter. And if you’ve ever gone to Petsmart to find one, you know how expensive they are – so quit judging!

This pattern is called the “Button-Up Dog Sweater” by Anna Tillman and I used Hobby Lobby’s “I Love this Yarn!” in Antique White, because it’s soft, acrylic and machine washable! (You’re probably wondering what I was thinking knitting a white dog sweater, I liked the picture and it’s pretty, ok?!). Anyway, I started up this dog sweater in Nov. 2011 and stopped putzing with it not long after. Why? Because this was written for an animal book, not a knitting tome. This pattern is part of the book, “Doggy Knits,” by Anna Tillman and it was actually written for TFH Publications, which is actually an animal focused publication house, not one crafting or knitting. That being said, there are definitely some areas in the patterns where the technical editor didn’t quite get how the wording is poor in some of the patterns – this one is no exception.

The pattern works at the beginning just fine, but when you get to the armholes, the spacing in between is too far about and above them is just a little too long. If you look at the picture for the pattern, you can see that the sweater poofs out more than it should for the size of the dog, this is a common complaint on revelry.com about the directions. I would cut out 2-3 stitches in between the arm holes and end the piece about 1/2 inch earlier than it suggests. My guess would be to allow the dog room to move, but the sweater is constructed in such a way that the sweater moves to the “pit” of the dog leg making movement more easy. The bagginess just bunches up into the dog’s neck serving no purpose.

Picking up around the neck was another adventure – one that took three other expert knitters to decipher the instructions to understand the direction to pick up stitches. This is how it works:

Pick up from the left “lip” up the left side, around the collar and down the right side (including the right “lip”).

I also found that picking up every stitch works a lot better than trying to follow her “pick up” instructions because they don’t work. You end up either needing too many or have too few. Also, If you make the button holes to her specifications, you need ginormous buttons. I made a few that way and decided to only yo once instead of twice and I still used large buttons (1″ diameter) and I felt better about them closing then the ones made with two yo’s.

 Other than those few glitches, it’s smooth sailing. It’s not a bad pattern/book, but it’s just not very clear and there are some technical “issues.” There are really cute dog sweaters to choose from and reading this book aided in me designing my own pooch sweater. In the end though, my model looked GOOD putting on a show!

Working on tiny needles and showing a sweater who’s boss,

-Stacy C.