Look, I made a... wait, I yarnbombed my dog

Bucephalus developed a bump and a rashy-looking patch around his collar, which of course has the seams and the nastier part of the nylon stitching on the *inside,* so it will look nice.  You can plug in one of my oft-told rants against fashion here, unless you're more in the mood for my original soundtrack to "Why is everything made like no one cares?  Because you'd have to pay people to care."  (Yes, I think people who make things should be paid.)  So Bu's been running around naked in the park, and we get him there and back (and around the block for his other 3 walks each day) with the excellent Easy-Walk harness by Premier (its finishing stitching and seams are on the outside - nice).

And this has been fine, but if we ever did need a handle to pull Bu out of some form of canine stupidity, a collar would be a great choice.  So I knit him up an irritant-free collar.

Thanks for the photo, Catherine.  And dude, don't worry - no one wants the ball.

This actually seemed like a terrific idea right up until the part where I completed it on the dog, in the park, on a cold, windy day, in the presence of other dogs who thought it was part of a great new wrestling game.  For that lovely seamless look, I grafted start and finish together using Kitchener Stitch, a technique in which I am not well versed, and which requires that I mutter the steps of each stitch under my breath, like some incompetent sorcerer's apprentice.

During that part it was clearly the single dumbest thing I'd thought up in a long time.

Now (he's asleep), it's looking like a pretty OK idea again.  He has a very permanent collar, once I weave the ends in - which I'll do, as soon as he stops being anxious about the inordinate interest I've been expressing in his neck.  We'll cut it off him when it gets too grungy.  That will take a while - it takes a lot to gross out a dog.  And he sure will look fetching for the annual Holiday Coffee and Keep the Dogs from eating the Donuts event tomorrow.