A while ago, an acquaintance at church and I were talking crafts/sewing and I was telling her about The Cat in the Hat fabric and how cute it was because her son loves Cat in the Hat. Then she mentioned that her son had to give up his stuffed animal because of allergies. We got on the topic of things that might work instead and she asked if I could knit a stuffed animal for her son. I said sure and then I rudely put it on the back burner for five months. Not on purpose, but life just got in my way. Then we got invited to his birthday party and all the sudden I was motivated. :)
In true Piercy-poo fashion, I waited until a week before his birthday to even look for a pattern. I fell in love with Fuzzy Mitten's patterns on Ravelry. It has been a while since I've knitted anything. After finishing Revie's twirly skirt, I happily put away the knitting needles. (It took me a YEAR to finish that dang skirt!) I bought the Pug pattern (oh, who am I kidding, I had to buy all of Fuzzy Mitten's patterns because they were just so dang cute) and decided on a blue anorak. I settled on Lion Brand Nature's Choice organic cotton in macadamia (good) and walnut (eh). The walnut is a little more grey and at one point in the middle of the night I freaked out because it looked almost olive. It's definitely not the perfect puggy brown. I started working on my pug a good six days before the party. :)
And boy, did I have my work cut out for me. The pattern is great; it wasn't that. Well, it might be that I'm not technically an "intermediate" level knitter. But you move up to intermediate at some point, right?? Partly, it was the idea of focusing on my knitting project with the girls practically lying on top of me "helping." Then we all came down with colds. It was easiest for me to work on this after the kids had gone to bed, so of course that meant I stayed up w--aaa----aaaayyyyy too late. So, there I was, Thursday night (with the party the next morning) when I realized that the face of the pug involved intarsia knitting. Holy crap.
I've never done intarsia knitting. In my head, I'd gotten intarsia mixed up with...oh dang, I forget, but it was something that I had spelled out in my handy knitting book...Fair Isle knitting (which I've never done either, but the book had such nice pictures). Gasp.
But, thanks to the internet, and more specifically this video, I figured it out. It might not have technically been right, but I got 'er done. For example, I was in the middle of watching the video and the woman said, "when in doubt, twist the yarn," and I actually turned off the video and just twisted my yarn every time. The idea of trying to wrap my pea-sized intellect around which way my dang pattern was slanting was just too much for me. It was flat. Eventually, the dang thing would be stuffed and fluffed and round. Slant? No idea. So, I happily (and rather clumsily) twisted my heart away.
I got past that. I got past the ears without any hiccups...kind of. Since I've only ever done ONE skirt and three pairs of longies, I was unsure about leaving a little "tag" of yarn on the back side of the ears after I weaved my yarn ends in. I was unsure because I thought you would see those in the finished project (whereas you don't in a skirt). So, back to the internet where I found Fuzzy Mitten's Flickr photostream. I emailed her and she kindly (can't say thank you enough!) wrote me back and answered my questions. She even sent me a link to different pointers and tutorials on her blog, Knitting Cuteness. YEA!
Well, we were too sick on Friday morning to go to the party, so I didn't have to put my tail between my legs and shuffle my feet while mumbling something about accidentally on purpose leaving the gift at home. It's amazing how every night, I thought, "Tonight's the night, I'm just going to whip through this and be done and it will be amazing and perfect." Then it would be midnight and I'd have one foot done.
By tonight, I've got all the main dog pieces finished and I'm attaching them to the body. It was going fairly well until I got to attaching the legs. Holy crap. I'm about to take a wrench to this puppy. I'm going insane. I cannot possibly get my dang needle through that fat little pug's body. I've tried skewering it with my knitting needles. Hell, I've stabbed it several times in fact. I've tried finesse. I've tried power. There are scratches on my coffee table where I tried to put my weight on the tapestry needle in an attempt to break on through to the other side. This pooch has a poodle or something in there. It's crazy. I even took a break to take my vitamins. I might have to just hot glue a wooden leg and call him a pirate. What in the world am I doing wrong? I went back to the fabric store to try and get a longer, sharper, bigger-headed needle and it promptly got bent on puggy's fatness. WTH. Damn you, pug.
I feel guilty for thinking so meanly to such a cute face. But whatchu hiding in there?? Did you eat my cookies? I could go on and on, mostly because I'm typing instead of continuing to stab my needle into you. Grr.
I got it done, except for the sweater. I'll zip through that before midnight, right?? (I've never done a sweater before either.)
