Three days and three broken needles later…

I found a pattern on Ravelry to humiliate the dog and roughly measured neck circumference and length of my dogs. I started with the recommended size US 4 needle and broke one on row 3. Then I switched to size US 5 until row 14, when I broke one of those too. I decided to use both sizes to finish the job. As much as I tried to keep the knitting loose, it just seemed to get tighter. I broke another US 5 needle on row 29. I should’ve stopped there, but still had the other end to do.

I started to bind off halfway through row 35. I was going to do 40 rows, but it came out too long for my short-necked dogs. This is a learning process and now I have a better way to judge the size of my doggies necks. I would like to think the needles, only costing 25 cents each, were cheap and that’s why they broke. Or perhaps it’s their small size versus the super bulky yarn. Next time I will try a hat with ear holes just to add to the difficulty level and to see if the dogs like it better. Soon they will be ready for that northern snow!

Sparky wearing the work-in-process

Piggy wearing the hat (minus ears) rolled back

And I will update this post when I attach the ears – learn to crochet!