The Independent Stitch

Code Name: Voldemort

So. I think it's becoming safe to name the Task That Must Not Be Named, although I'm not sure how or where to begin talking about it. A friend at knitting group this evening suggested that I start like this:

Required reading for anyone who is considering writing a book

Therefore I will begin by saying that the publishing business is crazy by definition, and one of the things I've learned through years of engagement with all phases of it is not to take anything that happens in the process personally. Another thing I have found out is that every time you think you're done, you aren't. Yet another thing I have unfortunately, or fortunately, discovered is that the really big projects tend to be the most satisfying in the long run—as my daughter would say, "for certain values of satisfying."

The Project

The Project involves the production of a book on . . . well, fibers, but the exact scope has changed at least twice in dramatic ways during meetings at which I wasn't present and which I didn't find out about until the changes were faits accomplis. In each case, I was given the option of saying "no," but each time there were compelling reasons (all conceptual and none practical) to say "okay" instead. Note that the alternative to "no" was not a resounding "yes," because while each suggested shift would result in a better and more useful book . . . one that I was even more interested in writing, and I was already seriously hooked or I'd never have started . . . the change would also involve massive amounts of additional work. Note also that hardly any writers developing a book are on salary or have access to benefits like health insurance, paid holidays, or sick leave. Advances are more like honoraria, and are not sufficient for covering living expenses. If you sign on to write a book, you've got to figure out how to do the work in addition to whatever normally brings in an income.

Anyway.

In late summer and early fall of 2007, co-author Carol Ekarius and I began talking about The Project between ourselves and with the publisher, and we wrote and presented the proposal. In late fall, we received approval to proceed. The contract, as signed in early 2008, calls for a small book on fiber breeds that knitters* or spinners might encounter, in fleece or yarn form, at fiber festivals.

• Estimated number of animals: 120.
• Manuscript length: 45,000 to 50,000 words.

* For "knitters," also read "crocheters, weavers, or other people who use yarn."

Within weeks, The Project expanded rather quickly, in discussions that happened among other people, to a much larger book on all natural fibers. The sample chapters we submitted in March 2008 reflected that intention.

Later, for some reason which I don't remember but for which I was grateful, possibly because it was seeming that the book would be too large to produce in a reasonable amount of time, The Project was redefined again, but still with a larger-than-original scope: sheep breeds that an English-speaking knitter or spinner might reasonably obtain from a wider variety of sources, including at festivals, in shops, at local farms, or online. (The "English-speaking" was a limitation I added in order to keep completion within the realm of possibility. Because fiber folk are who they are, the materials within the English-speaking part of the world frequently cross borders.) What was supposed to be a nine-month project (completed by August 2008) became a two-year one. The new deadline was set for February 1, 2010.

During 2008 and most of 2009, I worked steadily on The Project, devoting between 20 and 60 hours a week to it and balancing the effort with paying-in-real-time freelance work and developmental work for Nomad Press. I was making good progress (hampered by the computer problems that are a whole other story, already told here), but by early August 2009 it became clear that in order to meet the February deadline I would have to dedicate all my time and energy to it. With the blessing of authors waiting for Nomad to publish their books (for which I am eternally grateful), I set aside everything else and began working on The Project during as many hours as I could muster.

No matter what mix of projects I'm involved with, my average work week consists of 72.5 hours. About 8 hours are spent on general maintenance: finances, essential e-mails, and other things that can't be delayed or shifted to accommodate various deadlines. Under normal circumstances, between 5 and 15 of my weekly hours normally include jobs for which I'm paid reasonably soon; the other hours are invested in something I expect will pay off in the long run—mostly working on publishing projects for Nomad Press or on writing projects of my own.

From the beginning of August 2009 on, with the exceptions of Sock Summit, a weekend at the Colorado Art Ranch, Cat Bordhi's retreat, and a couple of trips to visit relatives, I dedicated about 64 hours a week to The Project. (I worked on The Project during all of those trips, but at a significantly reduced rate.)

Voldemort appears

In mid-January 2010, twenty-one days before the deadline, which I'd mentally redefined as the "text deadline" because I knew that I'd have some additional time before photography during which I could finish preparing the samples, the scope changed again. It grew to include "all the fiber animals" ( . . . that an English-speaking fiberist could reasonably be expected to encounter . . . ), with the sheep material still to be due on February 1 and the "additional material" to be turned in by the end of February.

News of the meeting and the change in topic(s) reached me two days later, nineteen days before the original and still active deadline, when I was at a cabin in the mountains working as fast and intensively as possible to complete the information on sheep breeds.

After I learned of the shift via e-mail, I took a long, high-altitude walk to regain a modicum of constructive calm. When I got in touch by phone with one of the other folks involved (there are always lots of folks involved in a publishing process, which is probably why I hadn't been notified earlier about the meeting . . . everyone thought someone else had told me . . . ), the person said that since I'd already done so many sheep breeds, the additional "twenty-five or so" animals would be no big deal, right? I mentioned that it had taken two years to do what we'd done so far, and we were being given less than three weeks to produce the add-on. Also that most of the additional animals produce luxury fibers and the samples for them would need to be spun much more finely than most of the wools.

Have I mentioned that throughout The Project I've been obtaining raw fibers, washing them, preparing them (combing or carding), and spinning samples to be photographed?

• A rough count of breeds I'd already researched and written up: 125.
• A rough count of samples I'd already processed and spun: 300.

Some breeds got one sample; others, with more qualities to hint at in the demos, required five or more.

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While taking another cool-down walk in the mountains, I came up with a metaphor for what the shift in scope felt like: as if I had been at mile 97 of a 100-mile endurance run and received a message that as soon as I crossed the finish line I would run a quick marathon as well, since, after all, I was all warmed up and it wasn't that far compared to what I'd already done.

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Some difficult situations can be handled better if they're named. With others, the trick is to avoid acknowledging the whole and just focus on one piece at a time: what is the single next thing I need to do? The Project was already in the latter realm. The "expansion pack," as I began to think of the additional material, shoved the whole effort into a surreal realm. Before long I gave the extra work the code name Voldemort, borrowing the identity of Harry Potter's nemesis, the one who gained power when his name was uttered. In order to accomplish this task, I could not talk about it. I just had to do it.

I also had to revamp my working process. I'd been spinning samples while I was writing up the fibers: the integration of tasks works best for me that way.

However, what was needed by the end of February was just the text. The samples wouldn't be required until it was time to do photography. If I had a prayer of reaching the new finish line, I needed to research and write the new material in the first pass, to hope I was getting things "right enough" without handling the fibers as I went, and then to do some adjusting and filling-in when we got the copyedited manuscript, by which time I envisioned that I would have most of the samples done. Fortunately, friends offered me another week at the cabin in the mountains. I hauled my wheel and fibers up there, but only used them the final day, because I refused to have packed them for nothing. The rest of the time was devoted to research and writing (I had also packed a good-sized library of resources).

Nearly vanquished
(but the question is, what has nearly vanquished whom?)

We turned in the sheep portions of the manuscript on February 1, with one gap that was filled two days later.

We turned in the "other critters" portion of the manuscript on March 11, which is pretty darn good considering what it consisted of, with three gaps that we filled not long after.

I finished spinning the "extra" samples about two weeks ago, although I have roughly thirty more samples to complete before photography (all wools that arrived after the last fibers deadline back in January but that we decided to include anyway, because they're too cool not to, and because we and the providers had worked too hard to get them).

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Expansion pack:

• A rough count of additional animals (sometimes breeds of a type of animal): 30.
• A rough count of additional samples processed and spun (includes variants within a type of animal): 125.

Again, some fibers warranted a single sample while others needed eight or perhaps more. I'm not really counting. I just do some hash marks from my notes now and then to make sure that I'm not deluding myself when I think that The Project is really big.

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An average text-only nonfiction book manuscript runs between 65,000 and 75,000 words; a long text-only nonfiction book runs 90,000 to 100,000 words. Because of the significant contribution of the images, the initial manuscript associated with The Project was envisioned in the contract as 45,000 to 50,000 words. As completed by co-author Carol Ekarius and me, the manuscript weighs in at about 118,000 words, not including the bibliography. Plus, of course, photos, illustrations, and captions.

The manuscript has been copyedited, and we have reviewed the editing (and prepared extensive additional reference materials for all sorts of illustrations).

Are we there yet?

Tasks still to be done on the author side of the publishing equation:

• Spin remaining samples (approximately 30).
• Provide materials and guidance for photography (not scheduled yet; approximately five to seven days).
• Write a few hundred captions, after the photography has been completed.
• Finish acquiring photos of the animals, but that's not on my personal list of tasks (whew).
• At some point, proof pages.

Other than that, it's done.

Right.

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Nonetheless, I have been able to shift my energies slightly, still needing to be ready to drop everything when it's time for photography and still needing to remember that I have those additional samples to prepare. As of two weeks ago I have begun to work again on some of the other projects that have been awaiting my attention, and I was able to say "yes" to a small freelance job that ends today. I have indulged in a small amount of spring cleaning and I look forward to the opportunity to do some more. Here's a miracle: I read a book last week just for the heck of it! (I could only read in small scraps of time just before sleep, but Dana Stabenow's mysteries hold together fine with that sort of intermittent attention.)

Last I heard, the book will be out in time for the start of the fiber festival season in 2011.

I think (I sincerely hope, of course) that other people will think The Project has been worth doing. I am truly fascinated by and passionate about the subject(s), in all their incarnations, although I have favorite aspects of the work and would also have been content with a smaller, but still substantial, project.

Yet I'm glad we've hung in here. Carol's great to work with, as is the publisher we are involved with. We've just had to roll with the changes and occasionally accomplish a ridiculously impossible set of tasks, all intended to make the finished work even better.

At this point, I can name what we're up to, including the final Voldemort aspect of the work, because we have achieved even the expanded goals, despite the arguments of sense and the constraints of space and time. I could certainly use a few weeks off just to sleep and read silly stuff and clean up around here, but will do my best to grab a few hours or a day here and there, while relocating all the parts of my life that I stuffed into the backs of the cupboards, under the bed, and on the top shelves of the closets while I was obsessing with The Project.

I learned a whole lot. I got a bunch of what I learned written into the text, and I anticipate being able to convey even more through the photos and captions.

Satisfying: for many values of the word, yes.

But wow.

Photos:

* Merino, being washed in the bathtub
* Fiber drying, although I didn't label the photo—it's wool, washed in January 2010 (sometimes I wish I'd kept records of when I received, washed, and prepared specific fibers, but that's not essential record-keeping, and there was more than enough of the essential type to keep track of)
* Suri alpaca, on Louet 2-row mini-combs
* German angora rabbit spun sample

Knitting on Vivian sweater is moving forward again

Yesterday was largely consumed by necessary and routine juggling of finances to keep the boat afloat. I also noodled at the problem I mentioned with the size I'm knitting of the Vivian sweater and attempted to come to a quick decision on an alternative project to knit for R&R.

In the afternoon, I turned my attention again to spinning for The Project and found myself in a totally self-indulgent frame of mind. Instead of spinning the size of skeinlet we need for photography (like the one on the top in the next photo), I kept going and spun every scrap of this particular fiber that was left in the baggie after I'd removed the wee bit to be used as the unspun fiber in the photograph. I ended up with the skein on the bottom.

Delightful. Not all that much fiber in the bag; it was spinning up at a nice speedy weight; and even without fiber prep (just as clipped) it flowed quite smoothly. I was so pleased. It was great fun. It was an accomplishment: something finished.

This lack of discipline won't do at all. If I let myself go this way, I'll never meet this part of The Project's schedule. (What exactly that schedule is still waffles around the as-yet-unscheduled photography, but I can't gamble on having infinite time to complete the prep work. When the shoot does get scheduled, I will almost certainly not have time to cram in the rest of the prep between notification and show-up-and-do-it.)

I must get my balance back, which means resolving Vivian, if at all possible. Or deciding on a different knitting endeavor. I don't have what it takes to decide on a different knitting endeavor: I have lots of ideas, lots of yarn, and no impulse at all to connect the dots right now.

So I took graph paper, instructions, and pencils to the knitting group and spent about 45 minutes noodling with ways to resolve the problem with the pattern. I would have been willing to engage in some of the possible fudging actions if the work were at a finer gauge (so a quick adjustment of stitch counts would not have been so obvious) or if the maneuvers would have resulted in slightly looser armholes, instead of tighter ones.

I was getting that tense, knotted feeling in my stomach that means "I do NOT want to be doing this." Resentful. Not relaxed. Increasing stress, which was not the point. There are lots of things I don't want to do that I have to do anyway. This was not one of them.

And then I decided I'd had it. There was a very simple fix available to me that would get me back to what I almost desperately needed: aesthetically pleasing, not-boring, stress-reducing knitting.

So the Vivian sweater is moving forward again.

I didn't rip out the already-knitted body; I started with a new ball of yarn. When I'm making a radical decision like this, I don't like to make the change irrevocable until I know it's the right one. I did remove the needle, because I didn't have an extra one with me that was long enough.

After I cast on four more stitches than were called for in the instructions, working the set-up row was a cinch, because I didn't have to read the pattern. I just read and worked from the previously knitted body, with one change: I made the seed-stitch area at the sides 5 stitches wide, instead of 3 stitches wide. When I reach the underarm, these stitches will be the ones that go on hold, leaving the cables intact on either side of them, free to do what they were meant to do in the original concept.

And I am now free to use this knitting for its intended purpose. As soon as I began knitting again—after the cast-on and the requisite counting, even in the first row because I didn't have to micromanage the set-up—I began to relax.

Which means I can probably regain my discipline on spinning the skeinlets.

Work balance appears to have been restored.

Sometimes what looks like the slow road is the fastest way to move forward.

Vivian sweater knitting, stalled

Well, I got my cable-crossings fixed on the Vivian sweater and reached the point where the body and sleeves are joined for the working of the upper body and shoulder area . . . when I ran into one of the problems so common to offering knitting patterns in multiple sizes. The Vivian design comes in ten sizes, so this is hardly surprising.

Consequently, here's the state that this project will be in for a while:

One of the aspects that drew me to this sweater was the designer's fluid handling of the cables, including details like the one shown at the asterisk in this photo, where a cable from the body runs unbroken up the sleeve-joining line:

Well, on the size I am knitting, the points where the body/sleeve joins occur fall three-quarters of the way through those adjacent cables (the joins also take place on a cable-crossing row, although a solution to the first problem—keeping those cables intact—will automatically solve the second). A review of blog posts on Ravelry indicates that this mid-cable join problem also affects at least one other size of this design.

The designer was smart in hiring a tech editor to do the grading. Yet while the tech editor probably got the math right throughout the size grading, she (or less likely he) didn't check what happened with the cable panels on each size to be sure they stayed true to the fundamental design concept. It's a complicated matter to accomplish this; getting the math right is a major task on its own; tech editing is not one of the best-paying jobs on the planet; and designers don't earn enough from selling patterns to pay tech editors, in turn, for the levels of skill required for their contributions to the finished pattern. Nonetheless. My work on this project is stalled for a while.

There are a whole bunch of ways to solve this problem and I fortunately have the skills to figure out what they are—I've been a tech editor myself in the past and have solved similar problems on many patterns. If I'd been designing this sweater from scratch, I almost certainly would have set up the body patterns a little differently way back there at the cast-on in order to accommodate this transition. As it is, I need to either use one of the on-the-fly options that are still available . . . or re-knit the body after deciding how to revise the set-up. The latter is a drastic solution I prefer to avoid. So my next step is to carefully examine what happens in the remaining instructions for the sweater and see if any of my Plan B, C, or D alternatives feels acceptable.

That's not what I wanted to be doing this knitting for: it's supposed to be a sufficiently interesting project to provide relaxation and a sense of accomplishment while I'm doing other work that is intellectually challenging—some of which also seems endless, with few "sense of accomplishment" points.

So here it is, stalled. Until I have time to use well-developed traditional knitting and/or tech editing skills to think my way around the problem.

This is the primary reason that I don't publish my own designs very often (at least for sweaters). I like to design intricacies that are hard to translate from one size to others without drafting the additional sizes separately. From the designer's perspective, I understand completely why and how this sort of thing happens. I also hate to think that designers have to limit their ideas to those that can be smoothly implemented in a wide range of sizes: this constraint truly does put strict boundaries around what one can envision doing with the craft.

Once it's completed, I suspect that I'll love the sweater. Even if I decide to revise the patterning on the body, and completely re-knit it.

This situation is also reminding me why most often I spend the time (which I didn't have when I started this sweater) to create my own designs.

Knitting group is tonight. It's my weekly break from The Project's work, except when I take part of The Project to work on. And now I don't have a knitting project that I can just pick up and work on there. I'll need to figure something out by late afternoon. I don't feel like starting another pair of socks. I may take graph paper and see if I can noodle at the charting to start figuring out how to fix this, although I'd rather just KNIT right now.

Knitting is a crucial component of my personal stress-reduction ecology. It balances out the stresses of the other intense work that I do. At any given time, the work on my needles can't require the same sorts of problem-solving skills that my other work projects are drawing on: it needs to help refill the reservoir. Yet it can't be boring, or it won't accomplish that goal. Mindless work of almost any sort is not helpful.

The temptation, of course, is to design something from the ground up. While creatively satisfying, I don't have time right now.

Maybe I'll find some leftover yarn and start another of Woolly's hat designs. That'll fill my stress-reduction requirements for at least a few days.

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On the other hand, I finished a really interesting editorial review about 11:15 last night. My completed notes arrived moments later on a computer in Europe—at 7:15 a.m., nicely in time to start the work week, as requested.

On previous days, I'd been able to edit for 60 to 90 minutes, then spin samples for The Project for 20 to 30 minutes. It was a nice way to balance the physical demands of both types of work. Yesterday, though, I needed to stay at the computer and just crank through the editorial tasks without the effective alternation. Part of the time I worked with a warm rice bag draped across my shoulders to help with the physical tension: a good solution, but spinning is preferable and works better. I just don't know how to edit and spin at the same time.

The author has a full draft of a book of about 108,000 words (about 430 standard typed pages); has already cut 20,000 words (80 pages); (1) needs to cut another 20,000 and (2) focus more tightly on the topic while (3) making the information accessible to people who are not experts on the subject; and needs to meet a to-copyediting deadline in a couple of weeks.

My job was to skim through the whole thing and provide big-picture ideas on how to accomplish (1), (2), and (3). Challenging, but a great intellectual puzzle. This author will meet all those goals, and I'm glad to be able to facilitate the process.

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I came across a pertinent quote from Cokie Roberts in yesterday's USA Weekend (page 2). She is writing a book about women during the mid-19th century: "'Everyone just thinks they were sitting around knitting,' Roberts tells us. 'But they were doing lots of interesting stuff, too.'"

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Today I turn again to spinning samples for The Project. . . .

Sweater progress (Vivian) and book obsession

As I was writing yesterday's post, I realized that I've made significant progress on the sweater I'm knitting, Ysolda Teague's Vivian. That's despite the fact that on the body I keep needing to drop back vertical cable sections and re-do the crossings because I'm not paying enough attention. There's no real excuse except distraction. Fortunately, I'm pretty quick at dropping and reknitting sections, and I don't mind much having to do so, although I do take the need as a measure of where my brain is (or isn't) functioning.

Last night I discovered that I have to drop down and re-do for a second time a small section that I've already done once. It's not like I don't have the whole thing charted or that I'm not looking at the charts. It's just that my primary focus is definitely elsewhere. I'm knitting to be knitting, so having to reknit bits doesn't matter much. And I'm only knitting during nearly forced breaks from working on the book, when my mental capacities have all been drained and I'm in serious need of reserve-filling R&R. Oh, well! I'm enjoying the knitting and I'll get a wearable sweater out of the effort. Some day.

Here are the sleeves, which have been done for a while, so they're not big news at this point:

And here's the body, which is the part that's significantly bigger than it was the last time it showed up here:

That's the whole body, worked back-and-forth in one piece (it's just smooshed together to fit on my standard cardboard background). I'm almost at the underarms. I think it might be long enough through the torso for me, which is potentially excellent and unusual news. I'll check, though, before beginning the next phase of shaping, and will adjust if necessary. I'm in the middle of a row—an indicator of the bits and pieces of time within which I'm knitting. I don't usually stop in the middle. That blue cable needle shows the next bit of sweater where I'll be dropping down a 16-stitch panel and putting the cable crossings where they need to be. They're perfectly regular as they are. They just don't do some of the necessary extra maneuvers.

The reason for the absentmindedness about the cables and the mid-row stopping is, of course, The Project, which is, at the moment, manifesting as the series of book deadlines. I am still not quite ready to talk about the whole effort at any length: I need to not think about it but just do it.

Yet I can offer some milestones:

• We've reviewed the copyedited manuscript and turned it back over to the at-least-three editors who are currently actively working on this project at the publishing house (there are at least five editors involved overall . . . plus a bunch of other people). "We" is Carol Ekarius and me, the two authors.
• I've assembled more reference materials for illustrations.
• I've been corresponding with two editors and one art director about photography and illustrations.
• And I'm still spinning samples (for the photography, which has—in this case fortunately—not been scheduled yet).

I am glad to get back to spinning, after the detour for the copyediting and illustration/photography concerns.

Day before yesterday I got past one stumbling-block fiber: there are some fibers any given individual with some experience at the craft spins intuitively, and some that she or he does not. This was definitely in my personal "does not" category. With more time, I could probably get pretty decent at that particular fiber. Time is in too-short supply for that. I had to punt.

And so it goes. One step—or twist, either knitted or spun—at a time.

On knitting hats, and Twisted Woolly Toppers

I like hats; I just don't knit many of them. Sometimes a hat or cap pattern needs to be tested for a magazine or book I'm editing, and I'll knit it to check the instructions . . . or knit the sections that are trickiest, then reclaim the yarn for the next time, or for another project. Not many hats get completed around here.

Exception: I've knitted two of Jared Flood (Brooklyn Tweed)'s Koolhaas hats, one red and one blue, that my daughter and I wear throughout the cool seasons. They even fit under our bike helmets. I knitted them one holiday season while I was visiting Seattle, location of the library that inspired the hat's design.

Exception: When I test knitted a particular hat for Spin-Off years ago, I made one and kept it, and later I made a similar one for my mother.

So while I wear and value hats, I'm both picky about their design and far more likely to cast on for a pair of socks when I need a carry-around project.

Thus it's all the more remarkable that recently, when I needed a small project to work on during a conference, I dug into my box of leftovers and cast on for a hat . . . and that I enjoyed the process so much that I cast on for another immediately after . . . and will probably make another hat before I make my next pair of socks. (The sweater I've been working on has gotten too large, and is a little too complex, for conference knitting, although it's fine for around town.)

A knitting designer with the unlikely nom de plume of Woolly Wormhead designs intriguing, wearable hats. She has a new collection, from which I knitted my two conference projects. Technically, I'm part of a blog tour for the book, and she provided me with a preview PDF so I could take a thorough look and talk about the book intelligently. As a bonus, I've ended up with two new hats and become one of this designer's admirers.

Called Twisted Woolly Toppers: 10 Original Hat Designs Featuring Cable, Bias & Twist Techniques, this publication consists of 45 aesthetically pleasing pages, clear instructions, and excellent photographs. From the design perspective of the book itself, I especially liked the way photographic depth of field highlights the hat designs, which are shown with unusual clarity, while providing a sense of appealing contextual background. Patterns include both written-out instructions and (yay!) charts.

See that nice photography? There's more inside that lets you see that hat (and the others) even better. You can check out the basic contents on this page. 

What's not evident from the charming and varied models is that although sizing for the hats varies, if you have a medium-sized adult head, you can knit any of the designs for yourself, including the ones shown on the little person. Yarn weights run from sport to bulky. Although exquisite yarns are specified, for me these designs are prime candidates for using sweater leftovers.

The first design I picked out was Aeonium, which has a swirling pattern that picks up from the ribbing and covers the whole crown. It's in the spirit of, but quite different from, the Koolhaas hat. Because I didn't have enough leftovers of a single color, my ribbing contrasts. This is Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb.

Here's what it looks like on one model:

And here it is on another:

To get it to look more like the hat in the book, I'd need to make it a size or two smaller than I did. Here's the original model:

Yet it works out as a fine and wearable hat either way, and the larger size I got would be great for tucking in an abundance of hair (mine's both fine and short). I like the extra warmth around the ears.

So I liked that hat, and would knit it again, aiming for something closer to the designer's intention as displayed in the photo, but I can already tell that the next hat I knitted from this collection will become a favorite, complementing my existing single hat: this one won't work under a bike helmet, but it also is more relaxed feeling. I chose the design because I had yarn I thought would work for it—a single hand-dyed ball of worsted-weight wool with coloring that wouldn't be so busy it would fight with the stitch patterning on the hat.

It's called Medici, and here's the original:

 

And here's mine:

Again, I could probably go down a size, but I like the effect I got . . . which doesn't mean I won't go for another version that's a bit snugger. The Medici top's quite a bit simpler than the Aeonium design or its own lower portions, but still thoughtful: 

So my overall impression of this collection is that it's interesting and carefully wrought in all regards. I can imagine knitting each of the patterns in it, just for fun.

And that's quite a statement for someone who doesn't consider herself a hat-knitter.

Whether or not you consider yourself one, check out this book. It's available in both print and PDF versions. I think you'll be intrigued, as I am. A browse around the author's website reveals two more pattern collections of hats, and a large variety of single designs as well. Several tempt me (a couple of them seriously), but I think I'll explore more of this collection first.

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Twisted Woolly Toppers blog tour

Here's the tour for the book, so you can check out the weekly contributions. Next week is Janel Laidman, of The Beebonnet Report. Janel is another fine designer and independent publisher of knitting resources.

March 18—Just Call Me Ruby

March 25—Baby Long Legs

April 1—Binge Knitter

April 8—Stolen Stitches

April 15—Knit With KT

April 22—Faina’s Knitting Mode

April 29—Tot Toppers

May 6—The Independent Stitch—that's me, here, now

May 13—The BeeBonnet Report

May 20—Knit Circus