British Women Knit for Animals

A couple of really sweet knitting stories have come out of the UK in recent days.

First there was Nicola Congden and her mum Ann, from Cornwall, who estimate they’ve knit 150 sweaters for chickens oven the past six months. The project was prompted by Nicola seeing a story about battery hens, who often lose or pluck out their feathers in the cramped and stressed living conditions they are under. When they’re rescued they can’t acclimate to the cold.

Nicola says she also uses the jumpers on her own chickens, and they love them, but she doesn’t leave them in them long if she’s not around. She says their behavior is the same when they have the sweaters on.

She says she’s had requests for jumpers from locals and as far away as Canada. They’re happy to share, and ask for people who want jumpers to donate to Project Primrose, a charity that gives money and support to an orphanage in Africa for kids affected by AIDS.

And Jan Brown of Sunderland says she’s spent about 4,000 hours making sweaters for abandoned dogs. She’s come up with about 300 different designs for different kinds of dogs, and she donates the sweaters — as well as hats, snoods, scarves and antler hats — to shelters around the country.

She also sells knit items for dogs and uses the proceeds to buy supplies to make more items to give away.

I just love these stories! It’s so great when people find a way to use their creativity to help others, even when those others aren’t human!

[Photo via Yahoo News UK.]

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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