Pandemic hobby to business: Sask. couple knits naughty stuffies together

Ryan Slater learned how to knit from his great-grandmother when he was very young. He was thrilled when his girlfriend, Trisha Steele, wanted to learn too.

“It’s just something I’ve always done,” Slater said.

But the projects he and Steele are working on would probably make his great-grandmother blush.

The couple from Dubuc decided to start a business on Etsy selling cute knit plushes of a certain male organ after Steele knit her friend one for Christmas.

“She’s probably one of the least-innocent people that I know, so I figured an angry peen would be good,” Steele said with a laugh.

Steele said she started with a “small guy” just to see if she could do it, then proceeded to make a bigger one that she posted to Facebook Marketplace. Overnight, she received upwards of 80 messages.

“Some people were just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great,’ and just thought they were funny,” Steele said. “So I just started making more of them.

“(It) gave me something to do with my hands, you know?”

The name for their company was sparked by Steele’s first creation. When adding eyes, she said the plush looked adorably angry, leading to a theme.

“It was a total accident. I was just putting eyes on and he ended up looking super angry and I liked it,” Steele explained.

The couple only just departed from that style, replacing the eyes with hearts in honour of Valentine’s Day.

Their knit creations were a big hit for gag gifts over Christmas, with the couple receiving many positive messages about their product.

It’s a hobby Slater said they can do together.

“Being the pandemic, you can’t really go out and do too much so you find things to do at home and entertain yourself,” Slater explained.

“We’ll go out to like, dollar stores and whatnot and find things to add … different ideas.”

The couple’s own love story began years ago, when Steele was dating Slater’s brother.

“It’s a bit of a weird one,” Steele said, and Slater agreed as they both laughed.

The long and the short of the story is, a few years after a lovely evening of making dinner and playing video games together, Steele sent Slater a message. The rest is history.

The two have been together now for two years and just moved in together a year ago. After gaining a couple of dogs together, the two decided sharing a mailing address was the next logical step.

“I just lived down the street, it was super close and our dogs hung out all the time,” Steele said.

Steele and Slater’s products go for between $40 and $50 on their Etsy shop, and come in a variety of fabrics, colours and themes.

Steele maintains that she likes the angry ones best. Slater said he gets a kick out of their “blue ball” character.