FO Friday Cody Cardi A Dog Hair Sweater

Over the years I have knit a lot of different items. I believe there is something to learn from each project you work on, by choice of pattern, techniques and materials. Until now, the most unusual item I knit was probably a felted kidney for my uncle. Today, I’m sharing a recent finished object, a dog hair sweater. No, not a sweater for a dog, a sweater knit with yarn spun from dog hair! This project has been a long work in progress; I first posted about it last January (2014).

Here’s Cody, isn’t he gorgeous? Cody belongs to the mom of one of my best friends, and lives way up in Canada. I was asked to knit a sweater and I said yes, with a bit of hesitation. I’ve never worked with dog hair yarn before. After a bit of back and forth over what sort of garment we could make, and how much yarn would be required, we settled on the Cables and Garter Cardi as a base pattern.

I have this to say about dog hair yarn, it’s tough on the hands. The dog hair was spun together with wool to make the yarn, and it had very little give. I modified the pattern to conserve yardage and only placed the cables on the front of the cardi. This yarn is almost unbelievably warm, not surprisingly. So as the year went on I knit on it less frequently (too hard on my hands, too hot to sit under!).

I picked up the sweater again with a fierce determination to finish it. My friend’s mom has been incredibly patient with me on this project. I encountered a bump in the road when I realized I would run short on the yarn. That completely sits on my shoulders (and on my knitting needles) – I either misread my gauge (and yes, I swatched!) and underestimated what would work. I am so grateful to Dayna, the owner of Madison Wool, who helped me locate a wool yarn and an angora yarn to match the color and fuzziness of the Cody yarn. If I had to do it all over again, I would have worked in the wool & angora from the beginning, alternating with Cody. I did consider it, but I believed I had enough yardage and wanted to keep the sweater 100% Cody. Lesson learned.

Ta-da! If you look closely you can see where it changes from 100% Cody to the wool & angora held together, but it’s a very nice match in my opinion. It fits, it’s really warm, yes it sheds, no it doesn’t smell (not even when I washed the swatch – smelled like a normal swatch). I’ll be handing this off to my friend this weekend and she’ll get it to her mom.

The buttons are a polished stone, also from Madison Wool.  So there you have it. You can knit a sweater with dog hair yarn. I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but it’s not a project for a beginner knitter.

Perfectly happy.  Happy weekend folks!