Pug Rugalug Crochet Square Progress

Meet Nora. This photo was sent to me from a lady on ravelry. Now of course you are thinking, "since when did the pug become an Australian native animal?"

Now pugs wouldn't normally be on my radar, but I was asked to make a pug pattern, for all the pug lovers out there. I am of the opinion that these dogs were at the end of the queue when God was handing out good looks to the animals. Although this little guy looks kinda cute with the manipulative puppy dog eyes.

So how on earth do I create a pug square like my other rugalugs squares? I thought I would share my progress. I start by looking at a range of photos of the critter and trying to work out what it is that makes it distinct from other critters.

I also do a simple pencil drawing so I can imagine the shape and placement of the features. This is my working notebook that I jot things down in. I often think about a design for weeks and months before I start with the hook.

Yep there are scribbles everywhere and sometimes I don't even know what I mean! I have the habit of doing little pencil sketches as I go along as I try and visualise the shape and transform this to increases and decreases.

So after a few weeks of looking at pugs, and thinking about pugs, I decided that the bits that make a pug a pug, are the downward ears, goggle eyes, and squished in snout. They look like they have hydrocephalus and remind me of those unfortunate little kids who because of their intracranial pressure have poppy eyes.

The first thing I do is to try and get an idea of the shape and facial features. I usually work in a light coloured yarn as it is easier for me to see the stitches and get a correct count.

So the bloke below is pug 1. He doesn't look very pugly at all, and I think I have made far too many koalas in my life as he looks like a hybrid koala and possum on speed. The problems are his eyes are too high. In the original the eyes are on the horizontal mid plane. The ears are too close together, the nose too big and too low, the mouth not large enough and the head is too round.

So here is Pug 2 below. This time I tried to use pug colours made the ears a bit longer and further apart, moved the eyes down, used a different colour for the snout and added some eye brows.

I think it is getting close to Nora in the picture. While I have done the nose and mouth in black, they don't show up real well against the dark brown. The next attempt I will try some different colour combos to see what works best and do a bit of tweaking. At this point I will type the pattern up into Australian /UK terms as this is my native crochet tongue. So attempt 3 I will do as I edit the typed up version for the first time.

So what do you think? What bits need to be tweaked to get the real fugly pugly look?

Thanks to Leslie for sending me the photos of her pug. Nora gave permission for me to use her pictures as long as they’re flattering to her figure!

(c) crochetroo 2008. please do not copy or I will set a pug upon you!