The last few weeks, I was working on a surprise birthday gift for Eric, a good friend of mine who just turned 50 this week.  He’s always been into Star Trek and he’s recently adopted a beautiful dog named Tucker.

Clueless Gift-Giver

Whenever I try thinking of a thoughtful gift for someone, it takes me days of pondering to come up with an idea…if I come up with something at all.

Fortunately Lisa, another good friend of Eric’s suggested I make Tucker a Star Trek dog sweater.

Lisa is incredibly imaginative and the idea was brilliant…I had two weeks to make a dog sweater for a dog I had never met…but as unimaginative as I am, I can execute someone else’s great idea brilliantly.

I enjoy Star Trek, but I’m definitely not into it, so I did some googling and came up with one of the original Starfleet uniform colors (black and mustard yellow) and also came up with the Starfleet emblem (I didn’t realize until this project that the original Starfleet emblems weren’t the communicators…I guess that happened later?).  And almost all of the Starfleet emblems I googled were embroidered.

So…within two weeks, I had to knit a dog sweater, guessing the size from photos and create an embroidered emblem.

It turned out to be a great success, and a very fun project.  Tucker is young and energetic, so the photo of Eric and Tucker was difficult to get (Tucker wanted to be wearing a wool sweater in July about as much as I do).

In case anyone is interested, I modified a free Ravelry pattern called Candy Corn Dog Sweater by Jodi Lewanda.  I used the 27″ chest size, but made the length from the leg hole to the neck longer than it looked in the photo.  I used Patons worsted wool, so unfortunately, the garment will have to be hand washed.

I also used the following graphic to create the embroidered logo.

Current Knitting

With the completion of the Finish The Dance Cowl, you’d think I’d go back to the Teddy Bear Baby blanket.  But no…I decided I needed to cast on for a new pair of slipper socks and also to cast on for another Knitted Cross Stitch Scarf.

I’ve completed the first slipper sock of the second pair and I love how the colors work…I love it so much, I’m looking forward to making the second slipper sock, and that’s not usual for me!

The Knitted Cross Stitch Scarf is almost finished already (I love how fast I can knit these up).

I’m using two yarns…a Zauberball sock yarn with blacks, browns and silvers and a Madeline Tosh single-ply yarn in emeralds.  I’m hopeful that after blocking, the camera will pick up how rich and saturated this scarf is with fantastic color.