A few months ago my friend Mariane contacted me with a request to knit a pair of mittens and a hat for her, and she sent me about 300 gr of yarn. This yarn wasn’t just any yarn—it came from my friend’s Samoyed dog. She had the fur spun into yarn by someone else. I wish it was me, but that amount of fiber would take me a long time to spin on a spindle, and the other person has a spinning wheel.
We chose the Tinsel mitts pattern by Andrea Mowry. I started knitting the cuffs with 3 mm needles and then switched to 4 mm needles for the rest of the mitt. The yarn was so soft and fluffy, and I was excited to see how it would turn out.
As with many knitting projects, I ran into a small problem. When I finished the second mitten, I noticed it was wider than the other, as I apparently had knitted it with 3.5 mm needle, instead of 3 mm. I needed to fix it, so I found a tutorial online that helped me do some “surgery” on the knitting. With a bit of patience, I got both cuffs to match, and it’s not at all visible that I had to redo the cuff.
After finishing the mitts, I had to make the hat. Andrea Mowry doesn’t have a hat pattern for the Tinsel mitts, but I recalculated the one from the mitts to a hat shape. It turned out just as soft and cozy as the mitts, and the whole set felt really special.
A few days ago I sent the set to my friend, and she loved it. 🙂 It was the first time I knitted with dog yarn, and probably the last, but I enjoyed the experience!
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