Blue Dog

When I was born, my much older cousin gave me a bright blue stuffed dog.  Blue Dog.

Blue Dog

Blue Dog is not so blue anymore, but he is still loved and cherished.  These days, Blue Dog can be found comfortably resting in a cedar chest and hiding from moths and the family pets.  But back in the day, Blue Dog lived.  Blue Dog slept with me every night, he went to nursery school with me, he went on many, many sleep overs and he even went to Girl Scout camp with me. When I was 19 and broke my back, I woke up after surgery to find that Blue Dog had even come to hang out with me in the hospital.  (I would give anything to have seen my mom convincing the recovery room staff that I needed this grungy looking stuffed animal (Sorry, no offense intended, Blue Dog.) in the bed with me.  I laugh every time I think of it.)

Every year, up until the year my mom passed away & could no longer help Blue Dog write the gift tag, Blue Dog gave me Christmas and birthday gifts.  The gifts from Blue Dog were always cherished.  In my younger days, the gifts were normally in the form of a book that we could read together before bed.  And I loved having Mom tell me the story of how Blue Dog saved his allowance so that he could take the bus to go present shopping for me.  As I said, Blue Dog lived.

Blue Dog

Blue Dog was well loved.  So well loved that I don't even remember him having but one eye and I remember him loosing that eye in the wash after a particularly nasty case of the stomach flu when I was eight or nine.  I remember he used to be a lot fatter and he used to have a lot more hair.

As you can see, Blue Dog was very special to me.  And since Blue Dog's retirement to the cedar chest, I get pretty excited over products that have 'blue dog' in their name.

Blue Dog Wine

My favorite wine is Blue Dog from Chateau Morrisette located off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia.

And imagine my excitement when I stumbled across Blue Dog Workshop on Etsy.  They have their own website too.  But I was on Etsy the other day, goofing off and procrastinating working on my shop.  Etsy's home page recommends items they think you might like & I was skimming through their suggestions.  All of a sudden, there, in the middle of my screen, was knitting stitch markers.  A set of knitting stitch markers with a lighthouse.  A lighthouse!  I love lighthouses.  I glanced at the shop's name... Blue Dog Workshop.  Oh. My. God!!  Blue Dog and lighthouses AND it's all knitting related.  I didn't care what it was, how much it cost, or what kind of reviews the shop had.  I just ordered.  Now that I think about it, I didn't even look to see if the shop had other knitting stitch marker sets that I liked better.  I just hit the "Add to my cart" button & started typing in my Paypal password.

Today, my stitch markers arrived.

Stitch Markers from Blue Dog Workshop

And I promptly traded out the boring marker I'd been using for the lighthouse on a new hat project I'm knitting.

Lighthouse stitch marker

I'm so excited to own this set.  Each of the six 'plain' stitch markers  have a single red bead on them, as does the lighthouse.  I was a little worried that the lighthouse would be heavy & uncomfortable hanging off my needles, but it's not heavy at all.  I don't even realize it's there until I knit around to it.  I love having fancy stitch markers and this set is just perfect for me.  Just perfect!