Monthly Archives: October 2013

Things have been moving along behind the scenes while we work on getting the Spring/Summer 2014 ready for release. Last time I updated you I had just about figured out all my sample knitters. Well, at this point, I’m getting sample garments back at a terrific pace! And weeks earlier than the final deadline. Besides just having some really fantastic, quick knitters this round, they were also offered a bonus if they could get their sample to me before October 1st. Why then?

Well, every 6 months in October and April our distributor has a sales meeting. All the sales reps from around the country come and get to see the new upcoming yarns and receive sales materials so that the sales reps can each go to their territory and talk to yarn shop owners, showing them the many options of yarn available and helping them to select what will work for their shop. Susie is actually at the sales meeting right now, explaining the vision of the collections our terrific designers have put together as well as the properties of each awesome yarn to the sales reps.

Having good sales materials is really important. Susie and I have pretty good imaginations and can see the awesome potential of a design from just a small sketch and maybe talking with a designer. The sales reps and yarn shop owners don’t have the luxury of talking with the designer or even necessarily seeing their previous work, so the sales materials are really important.

What’s in the sales materials? Each collection has a paragraph telling about the yarn, a paragraph about the collection, and brief bio of the designer. Then each design has a page like this:

You can see the final sweater here

Some sales materials has final photography, but it means that you need to really work ahead and you need the co-operation of the mills you’re working with. We have not been able to get that far ahead, but are working hard at getting us to the point at which this is feasible. This season, I was aiming to photograph as many samples as I could for the sales meeting. A handful of samples arrived for the bonus deadline, and I went out to the park just as the sun was going down to take some pictures.

There’s a gorgeous park near where I lived called The Sheep Fold. I thought it was really fitting that I take some pictures there, so I went. It has trails and a grassy picnic area, and also a leash-free dog park. This photo doesn’t show how magnificent the sky was. It was AMAZING.

I set up my mannequin a number of places, looking for green grass that might suggest spring or summer and a green background.

I did not consider, however, how freaked out dogs might be at this headless person-like thing. I had numerous dogs barking at me. Usually they left me alone after their (sometimes-curious) owner called me off. I’m sure that many person wanted to come over, gawk, and ask what I was doing. Only one person did and when I explained that I taking photographs of some knitwear, they nodded absently and quickly moved on.

However, Piglet (I know his name because his owner yelled it continuously) would.not.leave.me.alone. He never got within arm’s reach, always carefully circling the mannequin and me and letting off the most outrageous howls.

Almost the entire time I was there, he howled at me. Fortunately he wasn’t aggressive, so I just continued to take my photographs of garments. Stuff like this heavily cropped photo:

When I arrived home, two more garments had arrived to be photographed. I photographed them the next morning. In the wooded area right by the front of my house. I wasn’t ready to face the dog park again so soon!