Dizzy Lily
A Snood for a Hound

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£1.50 GBP

Pezdiva with her snood for Maggie is the first pic I have seen of my pattern for rescue hounds. More pics of knitting on her flickr album here. I won't tell you where Maggie is, it could be anywhere in the world, as I don't want to advertise the whereabouts of dogs for security reasons.

If you would like a free pattern for your own rescue dog, then email me telling about your hound.

If you don't have a rescue hound, tha pattern is for sale at $3/£1.50.

Download via PayPal
£1.50 GBP

Even if you have a rescue dog, donations are most welcome as Julie from Essex greyhound rescue says she is going to make sure that all the dogs in the rescue kennels and the ones fostered at her home will get a special Christmas dinner made from some fresh meat. The remainder of donations is needed for food, collars and leads and the most biggest expense the vets bills as some dogs arrive with broken limbs and all sorts of conditions that need treatment before they can be put up for rehoming.

Doesn't she look cute and snuggly and warm? I will be keeping pics of all the rescue hounds who get one of these, that is if their owners send me a pic. Then I am going to stick up a gallery of them on Flickr.

Dizzy gets a snood too!

He doesn't have a bald neck, there is no excuse for wearing a snood, unless the weather gets very icy and stormy on our trip at Christmas. This is the large version of the snood and it fits very comfortably around the chest, but it still isn't the biggest size, I have now extended this to fit 4 sizes in case someone has a lurcher cross and a monster sized hound.

Look at Dizzy in this pic, this is his slightly manic face when he first goes into the garden, trying to sniff out the cat that attacked him 6 months ago. he is terrified of them now.

Dizzy Lily: A Snood for a Hound

I have designed this shaped snood for Lily who has a bald neck. To make it more interesting and to warrant writing it up formally as a knitting pattern I have shaped it with ribbeed sections decreasing to a central cable section and then increasing again to give gentle flares that fit over the chest at one end and the head and ears at the other.

As with most of my work, it is knitted in the round and to make it a quick knit that uses up odd balls of my stash, I have made it in a worsted/Aran yarn, shown her in Rooster Almerino Aran.

Now Dizzy is snoodless and jealous, so I am part of the way through knitting up a large verison in a warm orange shade of Jaeger Shetland Aran (which also contains a small amount of aplaca). The pattern is in 3 sizes ranging from a small female greyhound (or a large whippet) up to a large male greyhound.

I am giving the pattern free as a pdf to those who have rescued a greyhound (some sort of proof will be needed) or are using it for fundraising for greyhound charities. For those who wish to buy the pattern, I am charging $3 for each pdf, 100% of which I will donate to either The Essex Greyhound Rescue service or Lurcher Link. Email me if you would like to knit one of these for your own hound.

Remembrance Day is Coming Soon

Red Poppy Crochet Pattern

So far I have collected £32.67, to go directly to The Red Poppy Appeal

Here is my design for a Crochet Poppy
This is no longer available as a single pattern
It is to be found in the book Hookorama by Rachael Matthews

Ice Baby Beanie in Hip Knits Silk Aran

This Erssie Knits beanie pattern is now published in baby sizes Newborn, 6mths and 12mths.
It is available free with the purchase of Hip Knits Silk Aran go to their website for more details. This silk is so beautifully soft, it reminds me of the sort of consistency of organic cotton but with a sheen. Hipknits have these silks in Jades, Blues, Mauves, Oranges, Reds, Pinks and are always updating their shades as well as providing custom dyes so you could adapt this beanie to any season, any gender really.

Ice Baby Beanie

Not all Grey Days are Dull.......

I had less than 2 days to come up with a little gift for my pregnant friend when I realised that everything I have in my 'babywear' cupboard was either gender specific or biker knitwear. This hat was perfect, I did actually draw up the chart myself in XL but have realised, it looks very similar to a lot of other snowflake borders on kids hats but perhaps that is because in order to fit onto a little hat, geometrically this is the maximum and most simple shape of this kind that can fit. Never mind, it only took 10 mins to draw a snowflake and a couple of floats in between.

The yarn is hand dyed, Hip Knits 100% Silk in Grey and Silver donated to me by Kerrie, I only used a tiny part of each skein so plenty left for other baby stuff.

Watch out for the free pattern of this on the Hip Knits website as I donated the pattern to them in return for the use of their yarn. This could work just as well in blues or pinks if you wanted to be gender specific. It is quick and easy to do and perfect for a beginner.

An old classic updated

Some of you that know me will probably remember that last year during the winter, I handed out some of my clothes and some of my personal knits to the homeless people I met along the way to my knitting club. One of these people, I gave my very favourite plain ribbed hats in red and turqoise but knew that they were so quick to knit I would be able to do them again.

Well, here I am 18mths later only just getting round to re-knitting and improving this absoloute classic of a plain ribbed hat. I find in general that ribbed hats, although you would expect them to be easy and all the same, vary greatly in their shape and the poorer of these can have very clumsy decreases. So with this I have made sure that the purl areas decrease to nothing and the rib areas narrow to a point at the crown.

And the yarn? That is some yarn hand dyed by Woolly Wormhead. It is Wensleydale and is somewhere between a DK and a light worsted/Aran. I knitted it on 5mm needles to give it more of a lacy and holey look. Can you see as well the way the colours worked into a spiral on the crown? Am I clever? No, it is pure accident, so no emails asking me how to plan spirals like this in a hand dyed space yarn.

I also find that the Wensleydale wools and other British breeds other than merino are very thirsty fibres and suffering from dry skin myself, it can feel like two bits of sandpapers rubbing together despite the surfaces remaining shiny. I lovingly rubbed hair conditioner into this hat and left it in a warm soak. Then rinsed it in cold water, just like I would my own hair. You can see the fuzziness this has caused on one of the photos, that is not me with bad camera focus, it actually looks like that!

Ghostkulls

I have finally knitted up an adult version of one of my most popular baby hats Ghostkulls. I decided to have fun with this as it is going to be my own hat so I have knitted it in pinks and renamed it Girlie Ghostskulls.

Here is a quick pic although it hasn't been washed and blocked yet. I also experimented with the Fair Isle stranding method inspired by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Although strictly speaking the strands should be flat and caught in every few stitches, I find on hats where there is a great contrast and large blocks of background, there is the problem of the strands showing through onto the right side of the work once the hat is worn and stretched.

I vaguely remember somewhere in her book Knitting Without Tears Elizabeth Zimmerman advocates abandoning this and seeing what will happen. the idea is that if the garment is in pure wool, after a few wears the stranding almost felts itself to the back of the work as it gets rubbed and washed. I have found this to be true of most hats I make, after a year or two you couldn't even see where the stranding is so as I will be wearing Girlie Ghostskulls myself I will just be careful not to catch the strands until they have bedded down. It has certainly made a difference with regard to the smoothness of the Fair Isle.