This year we had the pleasure to continue our partnership with knitwear designer Sari Norlund. Sari has designed two new patterns for the Alvar knitwear line: the Alvar Stripe dog sweater and the Alvar Balaclava hood. 💚🧶 

Introducing Alvar Stripe dog sweater and Alvar Balaclava hood

The dog sweater and balaclava are designed to protect you and your dog from the cold of fall and winter. Want to match with your dog? The sweater and balaclava can be knitted from the same colored thread so you two can be a stylish pair during your forest walks and city strolls. Pst! The knit combo is a perfect ecological Christmas gift for a loved one (🎄🎅🏽).

The dog sweater comes in five sizes and is beginner-friendly, so knitters from all skill levels are welcome to join the knitalong. The patterns are available to download for free from our blog until the end of November.

Why knitting? You make dog food, right?

Our mission is to minimise the CO2 pawprint and bring environmentally friendly solutions to dog owners.

Daily dog walks are an important activity for all dogs and their owners and during the coldest time of the year, extra warming layers are a welcomed addition to the usual attire. 💨🍃

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 better looking than store-bought) approach to keep your pup warm.

Some dogs don’t necessarily need clothes for wintertime, but if your dog has a thin coat or is prone to get cold a sweater could be a nice addition for them.

Who’s the designer behind the knits?

We had the pleasure of working with Sari last year when we launched the first pair of Alvar knits. Sari is the ideal collaborator since we want to work with someone who shares our green values. This of course still applies so we are very excited to continue the collaboration this year.

A little bit about Sari: she is 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

P.S. You can find tutorials for the techniques from our Instagram account.

The sweater comes in 5 sizes. You can choose whether you challenge yourself with the Striped pattern or knit the body of the sweater with only plain stitches to make it even more easily approachable. Want to match with your dog and stay warm during your dog walks? If yes you can knit yourself the Alvar Balaclava hood. From a technical perspective, the hood is around medium level, so it’s not too hard for a beginner but patience is required.

Still, have questions about the pattern? Shoot Sari a message on Instagram and she will help you out 💚

Alvar’s eco tips for knitting

In knitting what yarn you use has a lot of effect on the knits’ environmental impact. This year we chose to work with Sandnes Garn who produce their yarn in Norway in their own factory. If you happen to have a yarn at home that is the right thickness, that should work well for this project as well.

Alvar Stripe dog sweater is also designed in a way that you can easily utilise your leftover yarn for the stripes. So if you happen to have leftovers from different projects why not use them to make the stripes and you’ll end up with a unique stripe pattern.

We recommend also checking out your local recycling centers and thrift stores – you might find some goodies from those as well. 🧶♻️

Don’t forget the snacks!

In addition to cool knitting collaborations, our startup Alvar Pet creates meal plans tailored to each dog’s unique needs. We’re here to combine what’s healthy for your dog, with what’s healthy for our planet!

May we suggest some delicious treats to go with your #alvarknitalong project?

Get your needles and yarn ready, set, knit!

You can download the patterns for free from our blog until the end of November, after which they will be available in Sari’s Ravelry -shop

We would love to see your process and creations (and the dog models of course!) – share your knitting progress on socials with the hashtags #alvarsweater #alvarbalaclava #alvarknitalong

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

🤎 The Alvar team & Sari

Recipe: Helle’s Pupsicles

Warm weathers ahoy! 🌤 As the sun is shining bright and hot, it’s important to take care of our furry friends’ energy levels and cooling down. During the hottest hours of the day it’s good to avoid longer walks, make sure your dog always has fresh water available – and never leave your dog alone in a hot car.

Our favourite way of cooling down is, hands down, eating ice cream. You can also make delicious & healthy gelato for your dog.

In collacoration with @vanelja Virpi and her Golden Retrieve Helle we proudly present: Helle’s Pupsicles! Fetch the recipe below and order the products to your doorstep. We wish you lip-lickingly tasty summer days. 🐶🍦

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsweetened lactose-free yogurt
• 1 tsp – 1 tbsp Alvar Wild fish oil or Hemp oil (adjust the amount of oil according to your dog’s size)
• handful of Alvar kibbles
• ½ cup strawberries
• 2 tbsp peanut butter (unsweetened)
• Alvar Reindeer Chew

Instructions:

1. Chop the berries and stir together in a bowl with yogurt, kibbles and oil.
2. Drop 1 tsp of peanut butter in each ice cream mold. Fill with the yogurt mixture.
3. Stick in the chew stick.
4. Freeze overnight.

Serve and let your dog enjoy! …Preferably somewhere where it’s ok to get messy. 😘

TIP: If your dog isn’t used to eating the ice cream ingredients, we recommend not binging all the gelatos at once – i.e. if you make multiple at once, save the rest in the feezer!

Drop everything you’re doing – in this blog post, Alvar’s co-founder Hanna tunes into the mariah careys and michael bublés, dives deep into a festive spirit and ensures all these topical conundrums are answered. Here are our top 10 Christmas gifts for dogs. 

The most important thing 

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you the best thing about Christmas is being together. Ask dogs, they’re no exception. Being with your loved ones with zero stress and no hurry is a luxury that also the furriest of friends appreciate. 💚

Giving and receiving gifts is fundamentally just an extension of that – an instrument for spending quality time together, and creating memories that last a long time.

This list has been put together with that idea in mind: here are gift ideas to facilitate the making of memories with your dog and don’t burden the environment.

Equipped for adventures

If your dog has their gear all set, we don’t want to tout overconsumption – but if you’ve been on the hunt for a new coat, harness, anything to enable the most epic outdoors adventures in 2023, here are our best picks.

Woolly Wolf is an amazing small business who make dog gear out of recycled plastic bottles. We’re huge fans of Maria and Yoda!

Hurtta are an iconic dog wear brand – the functionality and durability of the garments is amazing. I’m impressed to with their zero-waste process: all fabric scraps are turned into pouches and small accessories. Some Alvar customers will get these as surprises in their December deliveries.

GOTO design dog wear made of plastic pollution collected from the ocean. A small selection of Goto products can be also found in our webshop!

Also, second-hand places such as Tori often treasure hidden gems and are a great way to extend the lifecycle of already existing supplies.

“Train together, stay together” 

I’ve been doing agility with Pyry for two years now and feel it’s definitely strengthened our bond. On the track, we make such a good team and celebrate our successes (and, more often, laugh at our failures 🤪) together. I strongly recommend trying out a new hobby or picking up some training sessions!

OneMind Dogs have been our faithful friend from puppy courses to sparring with founder Noora about how to solve certain, cough, behavioural issues.

If you want to maximise the social aspect of training, look up your local dog training clubs and attend a course – be it agility, rally obedience, nose work, I guarantee it’ll be so much fun.

To figure out what the best one would be, Google and recommendations at your neighbourhood dog parks are your best friend. And if you’re not ready to take on a new hobby, there’s also many ways to dog-proof your home – we do love our hygge.

Treat your pawed ones 💚 

Surely no one actually thought I’d skip this opportunity to plug our own selection? Our team’s worked really hard to put together a Christmas gift collection from which everyone – dog mums, dog dads, people who don’t have dogs themselves but want to treat their family or friends’ dog – would find a suitable present. And I must admit I’m most proud of the outcome!

Here are our top picks for treats, toys and bundles from our selection. 😍🎄

That’s all for today. I wish all of you – you, your dog, your family, friends – the most relaxing holidays. This year’s been rough (see me resisting the RUFF pun?), hopefully the next one is kind and filled with positive surprises!

-Hanna with the Norfolk Terrier mom-son duo Peppi and Pyry

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