I have gathered materials, worked through my stitch patterns, figured out how to increase and decrease stitches, and have even deciphered the language of patterns, I think I am ready for a project! The possibilities are endless, and as long as it isn’t a scarf or a blanket! My daughter took a flip through my books and was taken with a pattern to make a sweater for a small dog. Both of our dogs are over 90 lbs, and the pattern didn’t offer any different sizes, so how am I supposed to pull this off?
Enter Mazzy! Mazzy is the most recent addition to our furry family. She and her 4 kittens came home with me unexpectedly last summer after I did a big animal transport for the Victoria Humane Society from Mission, BC. No one was lined up to foster them, so I figured I could just sneak them into the house along with the 125lbs Great Pyrenees X dog we were going to foster. “Mama Cat” as she was known was found with her kittens at the Williams Lake dump. She was emaciated and sick, and after all her kittens found homes, and multiple nights searching for her in our neighbours’ yards when she snuck out a cracked window, I decided (while on my belly in the dirt under a neighbours front steps) that I have saved this cat too many times to ever let her go. I just needed to convince the rest of the house to feel the same way, which eventually worked!
Both of our cats are incredibly social, tolerant, and adventurous, but we decided that Mazzy would be the perfect feline model for this project! She measured a little bit smaller than the small dog in the pattern, but I figured it would all work out somehow in the end. I let one of my daughters pick the colours out of yarn that I already had, once the watermelon palette was chosen, it was time to get to work!
As I have mentioned in previous posts, reading knitting patterns is quite the art form! When something didn’t make sense and I would ask my mom, she would say, “Well, what does the pattern say?”, to which my response was usually, “I have absolutely no idea!”. With YouTube always at the ready, I started to figure things out. One thing that I really appreciate about knitting is the visual cueing that something isn’t quite right. I am able to tell when things have gone sideways (and they most certainly did), go back and attempt to fix it. I am not going to lie, I ripped out this project at least 3 times and started all over again, but eventually I got into the groove and made it to the end!
Is it perfect? Absolutely not! There are places where things aren’t quite how they are supposed to be, and it is a bit more like a horse blanket than a sweater, but I am so proud of myself! As a prof in a previous course told us, it is ok to struggle, that is where the learning happens. There was a lot of struggle, but as a result there was a lot of learning, and I think secretly Mazzy really likes her new sweater! I am super excited to take on my next project. I think I might attempt a sweater for a human this time!
