Knit your own Alvar Sweater & Beanie

Drumrolls, please…

We have paired up with Finnish knitwear designer Sari Nordlund to bring to life a pattern for making your own doggie, or as we call it, the Alvar Sweater for dogs. It of course comes with a matching chunky Alvar Beanie for us hoomans to keep warm as well.

The sweater comes in 5 sizes and is beginner-friendly so all levels of knitting are welcome to join. The patterns are available to download for free from our blog until mid-November.

Why knitting? You make dog food, right?

Our mission is to minimise the CO2 pawprint and bring environmentally friendly solutions to dog owners. When planning our end of year campaigns earlier this year we put our heads together and thought about how we could bring sustainable dog living to our pupstomers outside of the food bowl as well. Instead of buying a mass-produced dog sweater of poor quality for your dog to keep warm in the upcoming cold & dark winter months, we encourage you to consider a more sustainable (and in our opinion: a way more better looking than store-bought) approach to keep your pup warm.

Who is Sari and why specifically this designer?

When we started this project, it was obvious that we wanted to bring this idea to life with someone who matches our brand as well as values and approach to sustainability. We immediately thought of Sari Nordlund – a knitwear designer who lives by the sea in Finland and spends most of her time knitting (despite vowing never again to touch needles and yarn after failed attempts at knitting in her childhood) and loves good quality coffee, knitting cables, dogs and cats (not necessarily in that order).

Yikes, I love the idea but I don’t know how to knit 😱

Worry not – when bringing the designs to life we wanted to make the pattern unique yet beginner friendly. The only techniques you need to complete this are:

• Knitting right stitches
• Knitting purl stitches
• Increases
• Decreases

…and technique videos of all these will be posted and saved in our Instagram Stories as a highlight.

The sweater comes in 5 sizes. You can choose whether you challenge yourself with do the charted pattern or knit the body of the sweater with only plain stitches to make it even more easily approachable. Want an even more beginner-friendly option? Then just choose to knit the coziest and chunkiest Alvar Beanie to keep warm on your dog walks!

Still got questions about the pattern? Shoot Sari a message on Instagram and she will sort you out 💚

Partnering with Tukuwool for the yarn

We chose to partner up with Finnish Tukuwool, whose yarns are made from pure 100 % Finnish wool (a blend of Finnsheep and Finnsheep-Texel crossbreed.) Tukuwool was born from the love for wool. Also from the passion to create something new and unique.

“I want to constantly develop Tukuwool and its production to be more sustainable by keeping the production close and avoiding long freights and thus minimising the carbon print of the production” says Tiina, the owner of Tukuwool

The yarn we have chosen for the pattern is the Tukuwool DK – You can order your yarn online (or check with your local yarn shop)!

However, if you have similar weight yarn at home – feel free to use up that or check for leftover yarns at your local recycling centre 🧶♻️

So what are you waiting for? Get knitting!

The pattern is available to download from our blog for free until mid-November. You can join our 4-week long #alvarknitalong and share some tips & tricks and ask questions – or start the knitting whenever suits you.

We would love to see your work in progress (and dog pictures never hurt anybody…) – share your knitting progress on socials with the hashtags #alvarsweater #alvarbeanie #alvarknitalong

Happy knitting, we can’t wait to see your creations!

🤎 The Alvar team & Sari