Monday, November 02, 2015

Putting Breaks On

So, the month of walking with a different dog sweater every day was over.  Some sweaters that were never before seen on the internet, and two new ones that I knit in October.  One is in the photograph here, using left over balls of Noro Hitsuji.  Madeline is freshly groomed in the photo, and looks fantastic, I think.
A few things were learned this month:
1.  As much knitting as I do, the kind that makes my heart sing is knitting for my dog.  I never get tired of it.
2.  I still prefer the pieces I design to everything else I've seen for dogs.
3.  As a platform, Periscope turned out to be unreliable.  Often we were not able to make a connection to record a broadcast.  All 31 sweaters are documented on Instagram, @luckypennyknits, if you want to take a look.
4.  Walking in this neighborhood can be treacherous.  This past week Mad had a tick pulled off of her face, and a few days later I had to pry a bone out of her mouth that she picked up on the sidewalk.  It was about the width of a trachea.  Fortunately I got it out before she choked.  I continue to horrified by the tick.
5.  Continued shopping in my stash has revealed that I have an incredible, high quality stash, and as much as I want to, I don't have the time to knit all the sweaters that I want all at once.  I'm giving myself permission to take my time.  Sustainable resource and all that.  I've rediscovered sweater quantities of yarn that I tried to sell a few years ago, and giving them another look.  Now I'm excited about that yarn again.
Over the past few weeks, there's been interest in the German translation of Doggie Knits.  It's Amazon ranking in Germany for knitting books has been consistently in the top 100, as high as 5th out of the top 100 knitting books.  I don't know what that means in terms of sales, but I think it's pretty good for something that was published over 5 years ago.   I had time over the past few weeks to add some expanded sizes to one of the designs in the book, and I think the time is approaching for a re-working of some of the more successful sweaters to possibly being released as single patterns with expanded sizing.

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