Inspired by the excellent bulldogs, Lola and Messier. This is my first experiment in heavy duty color knitting. Here are pictures of the finished product, along with both dogs and their corresponding pillows.
I started by drawing a color sketch of both dogs' faces, then scanned that and outlined it using GIMP. I printed the outlined version on knitting graph paper, which I colored in to make a rough pattern for knitting.
The backs are attached using blanket stitch. I used an acrylic yarn (Paton's Canadiana), chosen for their wide range of colors and the fact that theoretically, the pillow covers are machine washable, just in case the real dogs get too close and have some kind of slobber incident.
I've posted the original sketch and one of the outlines here too, just so you can see the whole process from beginning to end (minus the messy part of weaving in all those ends). The project took maybe 6 months of irregular working to complete.
I made this hat based on the "Swell" hat pattern from Knitty.com for my friend Vichu. Since the pattern calls for Cascade yarn but I wanted something softer, I ended up using double strands of a bamboo/alpaca blend and larger needles than the pattern called for. The wave chart as printed comes out a little pointy, so I tweaked that slightly to make the waves appear more rounded. Success!
