Love Your Yarn Shop (and Cute Knitted Dogs) Day

Last Saturday saw the very first Love Your Yarn Shop Day - an initiative to encourage knitters to support and patronise their local yarn shops organised by Let's Knit Magazine. As the owner of a small knitting shop I was eager to take part in this national event, and with my latest book Knitted Dogs and Puppies almost ready to hit the shelves (due in June!), I thought I'd combine a sort of Love Your Yarn Shop and Cute Knitted Dogs Day . . .

 

To help us celebrate I designed a pattern for a Scottie Dog brooch which went down very well. As you can see from the pictures, there were quite a few by the end of the day! Tiny Scottie Dog measures approximately 6cm from nose to tail and is knit using double knitting yarn and as the pattern requires so little yarn it's an excellent stash buster. The collar can be made from any yarn - just find yourself out a little scrap of something brightly coloured and attach a tiny tinkly bell if you have one. He's knit in one piece from the tip of the tail to nose - his legs, head and ‘ears’ are just worked using increases and decreases. I used two 4mm black beads for his eyes but you could embroider the eyes instead. I also embroidered a nose using some of the black yarn.

 

Jo made hers into a bag charm which looks fab and added a small button as a bell on his collar. You could have lots of fun making these little Scotties into cute individual little characters and then add a safety pin to make it into a brooch as I did or make a whole pack and sit them amongst your stash!

 

 

 

While I was at the shop I dug out some fab black and brown eyelash yarn and made a cairn terrier to match our real dog Hector. When I had finished knitting him he just looked like a blob so I gave him a serious trim and he soon started to look more like a dog - so cute!

 

 

Tiny Scottie Dog is now up on Ravelry and is a FREE pattern. I'd love to see how your mini doggies turn out so please post pics of your finished pooches in the Group thread.