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Tag Archives: dogs

A new pet

I’ve been thinking about pets recently.  In that…I want another one.  But I want a low maintenance one.  I have a few of those already, actually.  There’s Seymour and Rosemarie, my pet rocks (they are not officially licensed pet rocks), and my moss ball, whose name is…Mossball.  The thing with low maintenance pets is that they’re…low maintenance.  I don’t count Choco or Yaris as low maintenance pets.  I wouldn’t mind getting another dog, but I think I might be hard pressed to care for it adequately.  But I could handle another low maintenance pet.  Like…a sourdough starter.

Yes, yes, I know you’re spluttering with indignation and shaking your fist at your screen all the while declaring that a sourdough starter is NOT a pet.  But…I say it is.  More so than a pet rock.  I mean, you really don’t have to do anything with a pet rock and they’re perfectly fine.  A sourdough starter involves living creatures.  You have to feed them (flour).  You have to give them a little exercise (stir it a bit).  How is this not like a pet?  It’s kind of like a low maintenance pet hen.  You feed a hen some and let it run around in your yard, and she gives you an egg.  With a sourdough starter, you feed it and stir it and you get some starter to bake with.  See?  Totally like a low maintenance hen.

Actually, I was thinking of maybe getting a pair of starters.  It’s because I really like San Francisco sourdough (sourdoughs made in different parts of the world taste different because of the different types of wild yeasts that live in that different part of the world).  But SF sourdough is pretty sour.  It wouldn’t taste very good as a sweet bread.  So, I would probably get a batch of the Amish friendship bread starter (the way to gift someone inconvenience!) and I could use that to make sweet breads, pancakes, etc.  I wonder what would happen if you mixed them together…hmm…

Or I could just get a pet spider.  I have wanted a Mexican flame-kneed tarantula for awhile now.  And while they’re higher maintenance than a sourdough starter, they’re nowhere near as bad as a dog. PICTURE OF SPIDER AHEAD!

I make! Ugly dog sweater edition

That’s right!  I made something!  Finally!

Well, I actually have made a few things but haven’t found the time to write posts about them.

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Anyhoo!  I recently crocheted a dog sweater for my ancient dog.  Choco is turning 17 tomorrow.  What comes after old fart?  Because that’s what she is.  And because she’s so old, she has a hard time regulating body temperature now.  Mostly, she just gets pretty cold.  I had put her in an old tshirt for awhile, but as she gets even older, a tshirt isn’t sufficient in keeping her warm.  Sometimes I’d see her wake up from a nap and look pathetically around while her ears were quivering from her shivering.  It’s…pretty pathetic.  When I knew she’d be sleeping for awhile, I’d cover her with a blanket.  But that doesn’t work so well when she wants to get up and do stuff, because then she drags the blanket with her and it kind of trips her up.  So I decided that making her something warmer than a tshirt took precedent over any other project I had going.

Did you know I crochet sometimes?  I do.  And my sister is more of a knitter.  We can both do the other, but we prefer to do what it is we do.  Now, my sister knits more than I crochet, because people request her to make stuff for them.  Mostly scarves.  That means she has all this leftover yarn overflowing the yarn drawer.

Generally, people don’t request me to make stuff.  Mostly because I make kind of useless stuff.  Amigurumi or hats with teeth (I believe more hats should have teeth…and eyes) or small stuff like that.  Generally I make small things because I don’t want to count stitches.  I lose count all the time and it’s tiresome to count and recount ALL THE TIME.  So the fact that I made a sweater for a mediumish sized dog was kind of impressive to me.  Stitch markers FTW!

Anyway, I also had a bunch of leftover (ugly) yarn from small projects that I made.  So I made a dog sweater.

Actually, I made my dog this sweater

dog sweater

in the XL size, based on the measurements around Choco’s neck.  (You will have to register with Bernat to see the pattern.  As far as I can tell, they don’t sell your email address to spammers and they haven’t bothered me about anything, so it seems safe.)  Choco is kind of a weird shape.  But because she’s such a weird shape, the collar of the sweater fits ok, but the rest of the sweater is waaaay too big for her.  It fits Yaris, but ends up being a little short.

So, as you can see, I didn’t bother with the stripe pattern.  Well unless you count my one big stripe of ugly, variegated yarn in the middle.  The red yarn is decent quality yarn that was left over from one of my sister’s projects.  The ugly, variegated stuff is not good quality yarn left over from one of my amigurumi projects.  I don’t have to buy good quality yarn because you don’t wear amigurumi.  I only buy good stuff if I’m making a baby toy or something.  I didn’t think Choco would mind the rougher yarn since she already has a fur coat and the yarn won’t rest against her skin.

Um…what else?  Oh, I accidentally half-double crocheted where I was supposed to double crochet, because I often get those two stitches mixed up.  I’m not sure why, but I do.  By the time I noticed, I had already gotten pretty far on the sweater, so I opted to just half-double crochet the whole way through.  I also decided not to add sleeves because I felt they were unnecessary.  Um…and later on I added a cinch for the waist because the sweater was just too big on Choco.

So, there you have it.  An ugly dog sweater.