Dog Yarn Sweater Continued......

I will not get into what it has taken me to figure out how to get an imagine inserted into this blog......this time I have written down the detailed instructions. Now to remember where I left off on my knitting! O.K. swatches worked and I had one front knit and it matched the measurements, so on to the other front matching up patterns, so far so good and on to the back making sure the patterns were matching up to the front. Then it was on to the sleeves, she wanted the cuffs long enough to roll down to cover her hands if she wanted. Now this is where I got into trouble with some of the yarn being thicker in some places and thinner than others when I was knitting the raglan portion of the sleeve and the being creative in adding and subtracting rows and stitches, but finally got them the same size and it was at this time my allergy's kicked in......eyes and nose running...throat bothering me....and me starting to feel a little crazy and antihistamines not doing much good.......what am I to do?? I have to finish it. So on to the collar and I thought that should be simple...no pattern....just plain knitting....well.....it was not simple...shaping...shaping...every row was different. Finally had all the pieces knit...and I had to just tuck it away for a while and have a time out.
   Finally I had to bring it back out and get at it, I could not use the yarn I knit with to sew it up as I could not pull the yarn through the knit pieces so went through my stash and found a cone of llama yarn, mill spun, that was close to the color and blended in nicely. But first I had to knit a row of knitting down both fronts to sew the zipper in, if the pattern had been knit in the same yarn as the main body of the sweater I would not have need to do that but the yarn we used for the patterns was softer and would not hold up with the opening and closing of the zipper. So using the dog hair yarn and a crochet hook I pulled stitches through putting them on a knitting needle, I knit one row, then cast off the stitches leaving a strong area to sew the zipper in. Then off to sew all the pieces together...which took a couple of days, stitching the zipper in by hand......what can I say......it is better off if I do not say anything except I got it done. O.K.......sweater is sewn together....now it needs to be lined because the yarn is 100 percent dog hair which as no memory like wool does.....it will really stretch out of shape. I just happened to have some fabric....yes...in my stash ( I have a stash of everything) I had made paper patterns of all the knit pieces before I had sewn the sweater up. I cut  the lining pieces out of a scrap fabric so she could try it on for size, did some alternations to the pattern and made up the lining. Then the job of sewing the lining into the sweater....by hand.

              

And here is the sweater all finished! Dog owner came to get the sweater and I said wear it for a bit

and see if there are any problems and I have not heard from her. Am hoping that is a good sign....

The pictures I could not put on the DOG HAIR SWEATER post.....

You would not believe how much time! Loss of brain cells it has taken to get these two pictures into the blog. But I did find some thing new out......This is supposed to be the new improved Blogger?? But by all the complaints I have come across from people....there are no happy people! And to top that off....they want you to import your pictures from Picasa.......which I also learned....is in the process of shutting down...as they want you to use Google's photo save whatever...which I subscribed to...and now will not let me in...have to go in and find out what people are saying about that!! Anyway I have managed to download two photos, where they are going to be on the page who knows! And how I managed that I really do not know, can I do it again? Do not know!! I tried to download the original picture she gave me of what she wanted but could not get it to download...will try to figure that one out another day. I have the picture of my starting swatch to see if the yarn we were going to put with the handspun dog yarn was going to work and it looked like it would work. Now the job was getting patterns for the sweater charted! She is so small that the patterns I had or could find online did not go that small so finally found a site where I could download blank sweater charts and they had a small size. There were going to be patterns that had to match up on back and fronts and sleeves, remembering that the handspun was thick and thin and thank-goodness after being knit it formed a halo looking like fur so you could not see the rows and stitches clearly because in order to match the patterns there was some creative increases and decreases being made. The yarn shed so much in being knit that I was covered and everything in the house was covered with dog hair. I have so many allergies but so far was doing o.k. and to my amazement what I had charted and knit was coming out to the right size. I was repeating to myself....I am never touching dog hair again unless it is on a live dog!! The next saga in the making of the Dog Yarn Sweater will be continued when I can recharge my brain cells and get more pictures downloaded!

Troubles! Troubles1

Well I was speaking too soon when I said I could post pictures now........many brain cells have been lost....something is going on with blogger and I can not pin it down...except it has not been working and as if that wasn't enough....our internet has been getting slower.... and slower... until we could not open anything. They would not talk to me because my name is not on the contract.....it is only RH that they will listen to and he will not get his butt in gear and call them....until he could not download book to his reader from the library plus I was getting threatening....if only I thought of hiding his reader until he called them (have to remember that for next time) Well he finally called them and found out our internet provider had been taken over by another company which we did not realize, the original provider still had our old address and our e-mail address although it has stayed the same...they had not written it down properly. As we had not paid for our service for two months they had not totally shut us down they put us on the back burner so while still connected we could not download anything. So RH said he paid them and it would be working in a few minutes and they had emailed us so we could get our password etc etc sorted out and off he went to do whatever and he would not be home until late. The e-mail came up...but I could not open it because they had not fixed the problem....I finally called them...and they would not talk to me...of course....but I did say plenty...and RH could not call them from his cell phone....he had to call them from the house phone. They said he could call them when he got home as they are open 24 hours.So finally RH came home and called them (I said make sure my name is also on the contract too!!!!) So he is on the phone and I have to operate the computer....with my sanity hanging on by a string.....while the guy that controls our internet...can not get that we can not open up the emails he is sending. Finally it got through and I got the password whatever straightened out, but internet was not better. Finally the next morning it was working...while not great...I could download emails and open some sites. You do not realize how you depend on your computer working because you do all your banking and paying bills online these days.When you live out of town you have no choice of internet companies...you have to take what is there.So that is my rant!! Now to get blogger working or find another site to host my blog!! So away I go and hope to get another blog post written...and be able to post pictures...here goes....

THE DOG YARN SWEATER!!!!!

Here goes my latest...shall we say putting it mildly...adventure.....Daughter M.J. mentioned she was spinning dog hair for a young lady who had saved her dogs hair when she brushed her and her dog had passed away and she wanted the hair spun into yarn and she was looking for someone to knit it into a sweater.....I said do not look at me. A few months later daughter said the dog owner came to get the yarn and said she had picked up a business card from a table at the farmers market......it was my card.....RH has a market table at the local markets selling our llama and alpaca products, I have yarn and a few knit items on the table. Daughter said the lady would be calling me and she hoped I would knit the sweater for her as daughter had asked everyone in the guild and no one would knit the sweater. The lady with the dog hair yarn called me and brought the yarn over....and a picture of the sweater she wanted knit....no pattern...just a picture of a cowichan sweater...it had six different patterns in it.....I said you only have one color of yarn here...she said she wanted the pattern in the sweater to be turquoise...we would have to find some other yarn....It was just before Christmas so I said I can not even think about this until after Christmas, I had other items on order to knit plus getting ready for Christmas.I had spun a bit of dog hair into yarn for my niece at one time and I had carded the dog hair with some merino and alpaca fibre before I spun it, daughter had not carded the dog hair or mixed it with anything she just took clumps of dog hair out of the bag and spun it onto a stand of wool yarn....I think it was wool, it was thick and thin. The dog hair had been put through a rinse with a fabric softener....with a strong perfume smell....I have so many allergies and even having the yarn in the house was bothering me so I had to wash the yarn, phoned daughter and asked how she had washed the yarn as I had to wash the yarn to get rid of the smell of the softener, daughter said she had not washed the yarn after she spun it she just steamed it....O.K....I washed one skein...hoping it would not fall apart...it did not fall apart (thank-goodness) it actually felted it a bit which was a good thing, so washed the rest of the yarn and tucked it away. Now it is January and I have to deal with this sweater knitting. I charted two of the patterns from looking at the picture of the sweater, mentioned to dog yarn owner who is very small that I thought she would only want two patterns on the sweater as there was no room to put that many patterns on the sweater. I knit a swatch to get an idea on how many stitches per inch I would get so we match up some yarn as we needed a color for the pattern and a background color for the pattern and there was no way I could find the color turquoise in any yarn so sent Dog owner to look in a yarn store to see what color she wanted plus gave her the info on stitches per inch we needed, via pictures on iPhones we decided the colors to add to the dog yarn. So the swatching of patterns begin.