Leonine Ponderances

As I mentioned sometime ago in a post (as in more than a year ago), I’d gotten back into crocheting because of the dogs. Weston with his nakedness really needs sweaters plus Captain likes them too (and so did Almond - miss you girl). I officially started in summer 2004 while in PA when I was bored and needed something to do. I had only Bastian at the time and he was much less than impressed that I’d found a cool basic dog sweater pattern that was basically multiple rounds of hdc.

But it gets boring to make the same thing over and over again even with the different colors so I started doing variations. First putting fringe on for weird “why did you do that to the poor dog!” dress-like sweaters. Mind you aside from Almond, the rest were BOY dogs. After I moved to Hollywood, I took it a step further and did collars and even a Santa coat variation!

After that, it was simple hop to extend the collar into a full hood for hoodies.

And then… I was inspired to do a LION sweater by making a mane out of the hood!

I used some of the cheap Lion Brand Suede that I got at the 99c store. This yarn is $7/skein at Michaels! I don’t recall anymore how much it took to make the body, but I did that in a camel color and the hood in a brick color.

Then came the tedious part of adding the fringe to build the mane. I combined the brick suede with copper eyelash yarn but ran out of the latter about halfway through the mane.

Made for an interesting effect. Instead of a Lion costume, I wound up with a Raggedy Ann outfit!

Or even Little Red Riding Hood!

When I finally got around to finishing the mane, the results were…. oh boy.

It makes for a fun picture but it’s not at all wearable! It either falls into his face or becomes the ultimate pimp shag coat from the 70s.

16 photos altogether are on Flickr for your viewing pleasure.

I haven’t decided whether to A) keep it as a costume for photos only, B) rip out the top part of the mane so he can wear it as the Raggedy Ann style which is not too cumbersome for him to wear. The bulk would make it easier for him to snuggle into a toasty ball for napping in the winter. Or C) get rid of it.

Doesn’t seem like any of it is reusable so no D) adapt into something else.

I think of it as a successful failure because I did actually design something on my own. It does make for great photos. But the goal of a wearable sweater for Weston ran away screaming. Last seen, it was in therapy on Dr. Phil.