Vintage Knits Update

When you don’t see any posts, we probably have our hands full with our four legged friends. As many of you know, we breed and show our dogs, hoping for the next Westminster champion. Sasha, our tricolor cavalier king charles spaniel had her first litter. It was a nice size litter of five puppies. All healthy and beautiful, but not one looked like her. I’m going to keep a girl out of this litter. I’ve named her Katrina for a reason, but since it’s not politically correct, I’ll skip putting it in print. Here are a few pictures of the puppies (click the images for a larger view):

Vintage Cavalier Girls

Vintage Cavalier Boys

The girls were about five weeks old, and the boys were about eight weeks old when their pictures were taken. It’s hard to believe that they started out so small, between 5 and 7 ounces each. Other than the necessities, such as shipping out our orders, everything pretty much stops when we have a litter. The puppies are so small and fragile, all of our attention goes to making sure they are kept warm, and are gaining weight. For more information about our dogs, check out the Vintage Cavalier website.

Okay, this is not a knitting post. We’ve been very busy at Vintage Knits, and have welcomed some new fur friends to our store. On September 6th, these beautiful puppies were born:

Nadia's Litter
(click for larger view)

There are three boys and two girls. We have been so busy with the puppies that we did little more than getting our packages out. Of course, updates to products and additions to the online-store took the back seat. We hope to get everything back to normal by next week.

Awhile back we mentioned that there was something new at Vintage Knits. Well, time has passed, and I just remembered that I never updated you on our new arrivals. Our little Cavalier King Charles Spaniel girl, Nadia, had her first litter. The puppies ranged from 4 to 6.5 ounces at birth. Here are pictures of the puppies.

Pictured from left to right are all four puppies at one week old; one puppy at 4 weeks old; and how they look at 12 weeks old. Click the picture for a larger view.

The puppies got most of our attention for the past couple of months. That is quite clear from our lack of posting, and the fact that our pattern piles keep getting larger, but not on our on-line shop. It took a little time getting use to the puppies, but now everything is back on track.

Now, back to knitting related things … Check out our book department for over a dozen new titles. One of the most notable titles is the Best of Interweave Knits. This book has some of the editor’s favorite designs from the first 10 years. Other great new books include Natural Knits for Babies and Moms and The Twisted Sisters Knit Sweaters. Natural Knits for Babies and Moms has some wonderful patterns for your little ones. All of the patterns use natural fibers, and are written very clearly. Our customers seem to love this book, and make several projects from it. The next featured book, The Twisted Sisters Knit Sweaters, is not an ordinary pattern book. Yes, it has several nice patterns in it. But, more important, this book teaches you how to design a pattern that will fit your body. It is an invaluable reference.

More pictures are on our website of the patterns in the Best of Interweave Knits. Here is a sneak peak of our featured books:

We have also added some patterns to the on-line shop. A lovely lace poncho from Knitting Pure and Simple, felt and lace projects form Fiber Trends, and trendy sweaters from Karabella Yarns.

Take a look at a few of our new patterns:

All of our new books and patterns can be purchased at our on-line catalogue. For large purchases we offer either a 5 or 10% discount in addition to our already discounted prices. The coupon codes are on the front page of our on-line catalogue, and on our main website, under the specials section.

One final thought — my customers seem to always choose parcel post shipping. Remember that this is the slowest mail delivery. Although the post office lists transit times, these are only “estimates” and are not actual transit times. If you are ordering for Christmas gifts, you should probably pay a few cents extra and choose priority mail. We just had a package take over two weeks to get to a customer. It was sent parcel post as the customer requested. That made us a little nervous, as we knew that we mailed the package, but had no idea what the post office had done with it. Everything turned out alright. But, I would hate to have a Christmas present (or any package) get delayed like that.