My Mini Pack

The Portie Pack has shrunk but there's another pack in the house that keeps growing. I think of it as my mini pack.

A few years ago this book was published and my best friend gave me a copy for Christmas.

I looked thru it and though I liked the little dogs inside, the patterns looked too fiddly to bother with, so I put it on a shelf in the library. A couple years later the second book came out.

I bought it, but stuck it on the shelf with the other one. One day I took them down and glanced thru. One dog, the Bernese Mountain Dog resembled Sebastian enough that I thought I could change it and make a mini Sebastian. It took a couple of days and lots of cursing, but here's the result.

These little dogs knit up quickly but the assembly is torture. The finishing instructions are pretty poor and the pieces don't exactly fit together nicely and there are lots of loose strings. The next one I started was a Doberman. I knit it in one day, then stuck it in my project bag for about three months till one day I worked up the courage to sew it together. It took as long to assemble it as it did to knit it, but here it is.

Then I got on a roll and did a few more. First an Airedale, which came out so nicely that it encouraged me to immediately start another.

  Next was a Husky.

Then a Basset.

This little group hung out together for about a year.

 Then I started a Shar Pei. It knit up nicely but the finishing instructions were so bad that I stuffed it back in the bag for almost six months. I finally felt guilty about doing new projects while the poor little dog was still in pieces, so I pulled him out and finished him. He's not great, but he'll do.

The Shar Pei discouraged me enough that I put the books back on the shelf, but last week I felt the urge to make an Irish Setter.

I really liked how he looked so I immediately started a Staffordshire Terrier. THis boy only took a day and a half to do start to finish.

 Next, yesterday, was a Scottie. He took less than a day. I must be getting better at this.

 My secret is this: the minute the knitting is finished, take a deep breath and immediately start the assembly. Don't stop till it's done. If I hesitate, the dog won't be done for months. These little dogs are daunting but the end product is cute and worth the struggle. Go for it! And you don't have to feed them or walk them.