About Best in Show
Welcome to the Best in the Show: Knit Your Own Dog website!
Find out everything you need to know about the book, the authors, and of course the dogs!
Upload a picture of your knitted dog here, and it will be entered into our monthly dog show. All entrants will be sent a free rosette knitting pattern, ensuring that your dog really is best in show!
Our judges Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne are expert knitters, dog-lovers and, most importantly, the authors of Best in Show. Once a month they will choose a winner who will receive the coveted Best in Show trophy!
Authors’ Introduction:
We have both had dogs all our lives – between us we have owned eight Poodles, two Afghan Hounds, two mongrels, two Lurchers, one Dalmatian, one Whippet, one Spaniel and one Greyhound. We have also designed and made knitted things for almost as long, so it seemed like a good idea to combine the two and design knitted dogs.
The dogs aren’t intended as toys, we have tried to make them as realistic as possible by including details specific to each breed. Once you have learned the basics of knitting you can make pretty much anything, so why not knit your own dog? You don’t need to be an expert knitter, with just knit, purl and loopy stitches you can make all twenty-five dogs in this book. They are also fairly quick to knit, you don’t need to be an expert and we have made them a manageable size so that they can be knitted in a few evenings.
The knitted dog is, of course, the ideal easy-care companion; it lives forever, there is no feeding, no barking, no moulting, no vets’ bills – the perfect pet. With the help of our book you can now knit your precious pet, replace your long-lost friend, reproduce your favourite breed, or knit the dog your child has always desperately wanted.
We would also like you to feel that you can play around with the patterns. For instance, if you’d like a Golden Labrador or a black Pug you can change the yarn colour; if your dog is fatter than ours, add more stuffing. As you well know, each dog has its own personality and that can be influenced by where you place the ears, nose and eyes.
You could also mix and match, knit your own mongrel made from a random selection of pedigree dog parts. Take the legs and tail of the Poodle and put them on the Labrador and at a fraction of the price you have knitted your own Labradoodle.
Stitch your bitch.
Joanna and Sally
Visit the authors’ website, Muir and Osborne.
Photography for Best in Show by Holly Jolliffe.
