Recycling

After reading a post about ecological recycling on the Knit Witch's blog, I got to thinking about a sweater recycling project I had recently undertaken. Long story short: I had decided to take some thrift-shop human sweaters and turn them into dog sweaters.

Here's what happens when you get a slightly felted L.L. Bean sweater and cut it out then sew it into a more-or-less canine shape:



And here's what happens after you chase a small terrier around the house and make him try on the sweater:

I'm not really a huge proponent of dressing up dogs. They're dignified creatures, after all. It's hard enough to maintain your dignity when you're compelled to sniff other creatures' butts all the time without being made to wear frou-frou garments. But I tend not to run the heater much in the winter and I have cold-natured dogs, so making them elegantly understated and practical sweaters seemed like a good idea.

What seemed like a bad idea was spending a lot of time knitting sweaters from scratch. The thought of spending weeks on a neat fair isle outfit only to have it end up covered in poop and leaves and mud after a brisk chase session in the yard was too much to bear. So I bought a few woolly sweaters for $3 and under and dragged out my grandmother's sewing machine, which heretofore I had only used once in life, the end result of which was to make myself a pair of shorts with mismatched legs.

But the dog sweater turned out quite nicely, I think, and so cheaply, which is a bonus. I didn't even have to spring for a pattern. I just measured the dog and after I cleaned up all my bite wounds, I was good to go.