A while ago I came across a picture of cat dressed in a Lopapeysa, and immediately, I thought, I should make one for my cat too! Our winter has been rather cold, so helping my cat stay warm would provide an extra to the cuteness, right?
Well, that would be the case if my cat was any less wild. When I finished the mini sweater, I tried to put it on him. I succeeded only the first time. As soon as he understood what was up, he started jumping backwards, in an attempt to take it off. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of a video of that sequence, it was rather funny. After that, he wouldn’t even come close to the sweater. He would draw his nails out and start running, upon seeing me trying to get closer to him with the sweater on hand.
Sometimes I wonder: are all cats that wild? what about those cats that agree to petting, grooming, putting sweaters on? (washing our cat for example, needs two people: one is holding him still from the neck, and the other is washing him – it’s the only way!)
Not counting my disappointment with this progress, shortly after the sweater was completed, a neighbor knocked our door and left us a stray puppy he had just found on the street. We took the puppy in, to take care of it, until we found it a new home. In the midst of this, and while trying to construct a good promo picture for Facebook, I thought of using the mini sweater on the puppy. At the time, it was just it’s size (a week later the puppy had outgrown it!) and evidently, it made the best photo prop!
The sweater had found an unexpected recipient!
Here’s Schnewi, stalking the new puppy (strategically watching from the hall and towards where the puppy was playing)
For it’s construction, I mainly improvised, knitting it top-down and doing guess-work on the length. The motif is based on the Létt-Lopi Vest by Védís Jónsdóttir, but there are differences because of the different knitting direction (the charts are for bottom-up knitting).
The yarn is leftover stash and the color placement is not the best, but I was limited by yardage, so I acted mainly on that. The final appearance of the colors is rather weird looking (at least to me) and definitely not something I would plan to use otherwise. That’s why I found it interesting and didn’t frog it and re-do it with a different palette.
It was a fun project and in future attempts, I might even try a full body sweater (instead of just a mini one), but this time strictly only for our dogs!
