Weekend at the Sheep Dog Trials

Well this is what the booth looked like at the Sheep Dog Trials. Thanks to Carolyn for the picture.

So nice to see so many of you there and to hear all the great feedback about the new newsletter format and the blogs. Your comments and ideas are always appreciated. Also, it's always so good to get out in the real world and see what other people find to be passionate about. It's easy to get caught up in our own little circle and forget that there are people out there who love sewing, pottery, photography, their animals and their music as much as the people that I see every day love their knitting.

Friday being a slower day, I was able to catch up with so many of the vendors (many of whom also happen to be customers) and just relax and listen to the excellent running commentary from the trials themselves. For instance, who knew that it was more difficult to run 4 or 5 sheep than it is to move 20? Or that some of the handlers were so taken by the quality of the protein rich dog food that Amanda Milliken was feeding her dogs, that they took to sprinkling it on their cereal in the moring?

Rhonda Kellett, our traditional rug hooking teacher, joined me on Saturday and Sunday and got quite an audience for her demonstrations of this great craft. We are proud to be bringing in a good selection of burlap, hooks and hoops as well as the wool yarn that will make life easier for the area "hookers". We distributed so many pamphlets for our fall schedule of classes that I had to print off some more on Saturday afternoon. It promises to be an exciting season coming up.

By the way, for those who were wondering what the sideways sweater looks like that I was working on all weekend, this is a picture of it.

I'm knitting it in Tosca which is a 50-50 blend of wool and acrylic and is a wonderful yarn to work with. The pattern is quite fun too. For those of you who have ever been to the regular classes at the store, you will know that I'm a great fan of laying out a grid of rows that need to be repeated in a pattern and just checking them off as you go along. This pattern lends itself very well to that method and I was able to knit for hours without having to do anything more mentally strenuous than making a check mark every so often.

This week it's back to the real world. I need to sort out the new yarns that are arriving at the store and organize my "stuff" for the accountant to deal with the year end issues. I can't tell you how often people say to me that it must be such a wonderful life, to have a business where I can knit all day. As any of you who are in business will understand, only a very tiny part of my job involves knitting and that's one of the reasons that I like to get out and have some time at venues like the Sheep Dog Trials, because I can have hours of knitting time without having to worry about dealing with ordering, scheduling, reconciling, counting, and bookkeeping. It's a real treat, and I'm glad that I still enjoy it so much. But there's no question that if I didn't enjoy the business building side of things too it would be a very frustrating life. I'm here to provide you, the crafting customers, with what you need to enjoy your knitting experience. The fact that I get fun out of it too is a bonus.