Best selling novelist Debbie Macomber, a lifelong knitter, says "Peggy Gaffney has introduced a new idea into the knitting realm. Your're in for a real treat." Debbie Macomber, who often includes Goldens in her novels, is talking about the new idea of creating a whole book that deals with designing portraits in knitting of a single breed of dog. As she explains in her Forward to The Crafty Golden Retriever Knits, "Really, what could be better? Yarn, a pair of knitting needles, a good pattern, and a faithful companion by your side." The concept starts with stories. These stories about the Golden give the reader a broad understanding of all the activities the dogs enjoy. They are written by Peggy Gaffney with the help of those who know and care about the breed most. These stories in turn inspire portraits. These are portraits of Goldens hunting, doing agility, rescuing a child, diving from a dock, and performing a myriad of activities that make these dogs distinctive. Only these portraits are created using knitting stitches. The knitted portraits appear as more than 20 charted graphs that knitters may work into any of the 24 sweater and accessory patterns included. The Crafty Golden Retriever Knits is beautifully illustrated with over 75 photographs of Goldens involved in every possible activity as well as just being dogs. The photographers who illustrate the book are Betty Schmidt, who specializes in photos of dogs competing in field trials or hunting with their owners, and Mary and Joseph MacQueen, who photograph dogs from their own Nitro Golden kennel. Mary shares the experience of her work in search and rescue and drug detection in which she and her dog Ch. Robin are vitally active and the story is an inspiration. The Crafty Golden Retriever Knits is the third volume in the unique Crafty Dog Knits series from publisher Kanine Knits. The concept is to take a single breed of dog, tell about all the things they do that are distinctive to that specific breed, and then turn this information into designs. Author-Designer Peggy Gaffney, also a lifelong knitter has spent the last 40 years breeding and showing purbred Samoyeds. She has insight inot the world of purebred dogs and the passion and loyalty each owner feels for his specific breed. The two previous books in this series are The Crafty Samoyed Knits and The Crafty Labrador Retriever Knits.
Peggy Gaffney was the author of eight knitting books of intarsia designs celebrating the worlds of dogs and cats when a group of llama and alpaca breeders approached her to create a book for them, she was only too happy to take on the challenge. As they pointed out, "We've got yarn!" So that is how The Crafty Llama and Alpaca Knits came into being as the ninth knitting book from publisher Kanine Knits.
Peggy has owned Samoyed show dogs since 1968 as well as a variety of cat breeds through the years. A life-long knitter, she has been designing professionally since 1995 concentrating on creating portraits of show dogs as intarsia knitting designs. Toward this end, she has created over 100 patterns in her Portraits of Dogs in Knitting collection which she markets to knitters around the world.
In 2005, Peggy decided to take her design skill in a new direction and create a series of knitting books that would be unique by focusing on the world of dogs. So far, she has created for dog lovers, seven books in The Crafty Dog Knits series. Last year, she was approached by members of the cat fancy and asked to give them equal time by creating a knitting book for cat lover. The Crafty Cat Knits was the result.
Her dog knitting books each focus on taking a single breed per book and creating designs of that breed in action. She realized that this wouldn't work with cats. Though they might enjoy agility, cats don't do 'obedience.' So after discussing the approach with a number of fanciers, she decided to take a dozen breeds and focus on what makes each of them unique. Each breed gets its own design accompanied by an object that figures in the cat's history. The story that explains how each breed came to be is included along with more than 50 photos of cats taken by the author as well as submitted by fancier around the country.
With The Crafty Llama and Alpaca Knits, she dealt with the two well known camelids and discussed the history, what they do and of course talked about the fleece which is of so much importance not only with the breeders but with knitters craving luxury fibers. The book is filled with photos of these wonderful creatures in action.
The Crafty Llama and Alpaca Knits is published by Kanine Knits which is also the publisher of The Crafty Cat Knits and the Crafty Dog Knits series which includes book about: Samoyeds, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mt Dogs, Newfoundlands, Welsh Corgis and Poodles.
Peggy Gaffney is now hard at work on a delightful new book that will involve many breeds of dogs and cats both purebred and pets.
