Celebrating Memorial Day

Celebrating Memorial Day with my friends means marching in our local parade with my obedience club. Over the years we have developed a drill team that shows off the joys of basic obedience training as a showy march routine. The crowds love it and so do we but there are times when marching the mile and a half that all you can think about is shade and a cool drink.

This year, almost all the dogs were new to the routines since we'd had a two year hiatus because of the fact that many of our experienced dogs were getting too old. So the young pups took over and had to learn the routines and then perform them with drums booming up close, children cheering and coming out into the line to pet the dogs, helicopters over head. They had to adjust to our spraying them with water every time there was a pause in the march so that they wouldn't get overheated.

By the end of the parade we are all hot and tired, but as we rest in the shade, so many people come up to visit the dogs and tell us how wonderful they were, that we forget our sore muscles that are more use to walking than marching and just enjoy the fact that our pride in these wonderfully talented dogs has been shown to at least our small part of the world.

This is a great opportunity to show people the value of a trained dog, especially with this variety of breeds.


However my Samoyed Brigid would tell you, she was more than ready just to do the classic Memorial Day celebration by lying around with a cool drink in the shade with all her canine friends at the end of the march and soaking up all the attention looking forward to new adventures.

Wait a second - that's me!!!

I was sitting down to knit on the sleeve of a sweater for one of my clients and as I am now in the habit of doing, I reached over to the computer, clicked on itunes and looked to see which of the podcasts to which I subscribe had a new episode. I find that this is the best way to keep myself sane while I knit. Since I can’t do it while I writing or editing my knitting books, this is a treat.

So I choose the latest episode of Craftcast with Alison Lee. Now I love this show because she talks to people in all the crafts from jewelry making to knitting to decorating with glitter. It’s fun and I always get ideas. So I settled down to work and suddenly I hear her talking about Peggy Gaffney the author of a collection of knitting books for people who love dogs. “Wait a second.” I cried jumping out of the chair and rushing to the computer, “That’s me!”

She was talking about the first two books in my knitting series. These books take one breed each, in this case the Labrador Retriever and the Samoyed and describe all that the dogs do for fun and then I create designs that are portraits in knitting of the dogs doing these activites. She really liked the books and said so. What a trip.

I had spent hours editing the new book I’m bringing out about the Golden Retriever and it was so much fun to hear such nice things about my first two books.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out this podcast which is weekly and runs about 30 min. do so. It’s fun, you’ll meet a lot of really fascinating people, and occassionally you’ll be really surprised as I was. So go sign up for Craftcast at http://www.craftcast.com/.

Thanks Alison!

Craftcast host Alison Lee