Knitting Fun: The Majestic StegasauRu

I knitted a little bit when I was in college, but as I live in a temperate coastal climate I had little use for knitted goods until I acquired a nearly naked lizard-dog. Ru has an extra-long back, and keeping him toasty often means making his clothes myself. Knitting is a great activity to keep my hands busy when I am watching a movie or doing something else passive, like standing in lines.

Photo by Erin Koski

I'm not very good at following patterns, so most of Ru's sweaters are free-knitted. This means I just sort of knit what I think will work and make it up as I go along. It also means I have to undo nearly everything at least once before I get it right.

This is Ru's stegosaurus sweater. I made it for him last Halloween, and it is still one of my favorite projects. Look how spiky he looks!

The trick to knitting a decent dog sweater is to make sure the neck is small enough. If the neck is too big, the sweater will slide down and get stretched out. After that I just knitted it big enough, and long enough. The spikes are doubled and sewn together, and anchored to a strip of buckram inside the body of the sweater. They don't stand up very well, and in the future I might make him a new Stegosaurus sweater with boning or buckram inside the spikes to keep them up.