Is it the Year of the Emotional Support Dog?

It feels like for several years now the knitting community has been in the throws of its emotional support chicken era. As of this writing the original pattern for the emotional support chicken is the subject of nearly 14,000 projects on Ravelry, which is not even to mention all the people (myself included!) who knit it without sharing on Ravelry about it.

The pattern came out in 2023 and still gets hundreds of visits a day on Ravelry. It’s now available in five languages, so people all over the world can knit their own chickens.

And why not? We need all the emotional support we can get in these trying times (and that’s describing the times incredibly lightly).

But maybe it’s time to retire the emotional support chicken, or at least expand our repertoire of knit comfort animals.

If you’re in the market for a different kind of emotional support knitting project, Lion Brand would like to suggest a dog.

A Dachshund, to be precise.

The Comforting Dachshund knitting patterns uses two colors of DK weight yarn to make a doggie that’s about 13 inches/33 cm long and 5 inches/12.7 cm tall. You could of course use the same pattern for worsted weight yarn and make a bigger dog if that’s a thing you might like.

Because as Dachshund is pretty sausagey in shape, this is a relatively easy knitting pattern with a skill level rating of easy. The face has some shaping but most of the body is just a straight tube, with the ears, tail and legs knit separately.

In fact, all of the pieces are knit separately, including the head and the body, so there are nine pieces in all. They are all worked flat, seamed, stuffed and sewn together. Safety eyes were used in the sample project but you could also embroider eyes if you wanted to make this for a baby.

The Dachshund pattern is available for free from Lion Brand, or you can buy the materials (excluding the eyes) direct from them.

[Photo: Lion Brand]

This is a project that kind of stopped me in my tracks when I saw it while scrolling Ravelry. It’s such a fun contrast of a semisolid color worked in stockinette stitch and a more tonal yarn worked in a feather and fan variation.

(See more about feather and fan in this post on my blog; I also have a feather and fan scarf if you want to practice.)

The Nitty Wrap from Renate Dziedataja is worked in fingering weight yarn from a Finnish mill, and the name is the Finnish word for meadow. You of course can use whatever yarn you have handy.

It’s even more interesting because the project is worked from one short end across to make a long rectangle, and the two different sections are joined using intarsia. Generally we think of intarsia as being used for colorwork, so this is a fun different use of it. The lace section is charted in the pattern but it’s pretty easy to follow.

And of course it’s totally optional but to add a little more interest and tie the two colors of yarn together the designer also added some embroidery along the short edges on the stockinette side. A drawing of what she did is included but you can also add different designs if you’d rather.

The shawl has I-cord edgings to give it a nice finished look that doesn’t take away from the organic simplicity of the design.

As shown, the shawl measures about 22.5 inches/57 cm wide and 59 inches/150 cm long. You can of course adjust this according to your preference, the amount of yarn you have and the gauge you are getting. Try a thicker yarn to make a wider shawl if you like.

This pattern is available in English and Latvian for free on Ravelry.

Photo: Renate Dziedataja

Have you read?