For as long as I can remember, my mom and grandma raised Keeshond dogs and groomed them regularly. My mom always saved the hair that accumulated in the brush, and talked about some day having a sweater made from it (which us kids thought was the weirdest grossest thing ever). Last Christmas, I was helping Mom clean the garage and she came across these bags of dog hair and threw them in the truck to haul to the dump. I couldn’t believe she was actually doing it. She said she just had to let go of it. There was no way I was gonna watch my mom throw her dream away, so the wheels in my head started turning and I rode to the dump with her and set aside the bags of fur without her seeing. When we got home again, I told Grandma the plan, and she drove back to the dump and rescued the fur. Over the next week, I found a lady nearby who spins yarn. 7 months and $400 later, I got back 20 skeins of yarn. During that 7 months, I’d learned how to knit a hat. I found this drops pattern online and began knitting. I went to Australia to visit my sister and took it with me and she knitted 3 stitches. My two brothers also contributed. One knitted a whole row in the collar, and the other knitted the 2 pockets. My dad carved the buttons out of a russian olive tree branch, and we finally got everything put together by about 10 pm Christmas Eve. We were all bawling (including my sister on skype) as she opened her gift the next day. 2 1/2 months later, I’m still bawling as I type this! Over the next week, Grandma embroidered the flowers, cause there just wasn’t time to get them done before Christmas. I had to take these pics before going back to school, and Grandma hadn’t quite got the last couple of green stems done.

I had a couple of problems with this pattern because of the translation into english. The shawl collar part was tricky and I had to take it apart a couple of times before figuring out what they meant.