K9knittersUSA was at the Pet Expo….

26 Sep K9knittersUSA was at the Pet Expo….

in Colorado Springs yesterday! After my initial conversation with the Pet Expo promoter, and finding out the cost of a shared booth, I did not think our K9knittersUSA group was going to be able to have a booth at the Expo. The ‘vendor fairy’ was looking out for us though and on Friday evening I got a call that this would come together after all! Wow-great news-except I wasn’t prepared. Friday night was a whirlwind of preparation & organization at my house.

Early Saturday morning my SIL & I headed down to the Phil Long Expo Center to set up the booth, which did not take us very long since we don’t have display racks or such. The Expo promoters provided skirted tables for all the vendors, which was nice, so we arranged the sweaters & snoods nicely on the table by size. A couple of hours later DH came down with Aprilia & Darby (yes pets were allowed and most vendors brought theirs). We also ended up with the good fortune to be back to back with the National Mill Dog Rescue, one of the rescue groups K9knittersUSA supports.

While it was a long day-the Expo ran from 10 am to 6 pm-it was fun and productive. We sold 15 sweaters, 2 snoods and the 1 set of puppy leg warmers! There were lots of requests for information and/or business cards for the K9knittersUSA web site. Unfortunately I underestimated how many cards we would give out & did not make enough. 🙁 Now I know to make way more than I think will be needed. This time we resorted to writing the web address on whatever paper the person had. We also had a lot of interest in custom sweaters-which are offered on K9knittersUSA’s web site. Head up volunteer knitters!

Here’s a few photos my DH took with his cell phone:

The last ph0to is of a dog whose owners asked about doing a custom sweater for all 165 lbs of him. They feel that even at his size, being short-haired he needs winter warmth. He’s a pretty cool dog, very relaxed and well behaved-just huge!

Overall, I think we did fairly well and being at the show was well worth the time for K9knittersUSA. I hope the word is spread about the good work K9knittersUSA is focused on doing, and the wonderful groups our sales support. If you haven’t visited K9knittersUSA’s web site, I invite you to take a look. We still have sweaters to sell and now is the perfect time of year to buy a lovingly hand knit sweater for your dog. (Will be updating the site today to reflect the sweaters sold yesterday & add some that are not listed.)

Thank you to everyone who supported this endeavor, and other K9knittersUSA activities. Your donations of time, materials & skills are really, really appreciated.

Cheers! Jean