The Independent Stitch

Where most of the work gets done

I've written about the wonderful places to which I've traveled within the past year to work on the major project that is nearing its deadline (I'm not saying "completion": it will be pulled out of my hands, far from complete, because otherwise it will not be ready for a few decades).

I spent most of a week in a rented cabin shared with other writer friends.

Another set of friends helped me obtain the delight of a full week's residency.

And I retreated for a too-short weekend with co-author Carol Ekarius.

(That's me with Tuf, one of Carol's dogs. Carol took the picture.)

Yet I haven't shown where most of the work is getting done. That's partly because I'm embarrassed. It's organized, but it also looks like, as we used to say, "ten pounds in a five-pound bag."

I've worked in this office for many years—I think it's at least fourteen or fifteen:

For the final four or five years that I edited Spin-Off magazine, most of that work was accomplished in this space. Now this is where I do all the work on the books published by Nomad Press and for my freelance editorial clients. It's compact, but I have a window (the high, basement kind, just out of sight), and the tools I need are close at hand (an understatement). I do go off to a coffeeshop or the library several times a week, taking a single set of tasks with me. It's refreshing.

The photo above was taken during the time when the computers were breaking down, and just before Jessica Derksen, who has been an enormous help in my continuing efforts to accomplish the impossible, showed me how to fit yet another major job (The Project) into my office. It was April 2008. I'd signed the contract for this work four months earlier. Already 14 boxes of fiber were in the dining room (because there was no room for them in the office), and it was obvious that many more boxes would be part of this undertaking before it was done.

There was a storeroom adjacent to the office, separated from it by a wall. When we bought the house, this space was called a bedroom. We learned later that technically it shouldn't have been listed as a bedroom because there's no closet (there was also no closet in the formerly so-called bedroom that is now the office, although we have since built one).

The only access to this room was through the laundry area. This space has a nicer window than the office does. And a heat vent. The office doesn't have a heat vent.

Jessica got the idea of taking down the wall between the two rooms. The primary reason for this was so we could use the small hallway/entry between the laundry area and the storeroom to stash boxes of fiber. It was only about 10 square feet, but that can look like a lot if you are tripping over boxes. If we took down the wall, we could fill that entry space with boxes because we could walk into the storeroom through my office. The change was kindly, quickly, and neatly implemented by Jessica's husband, Jonathan.

I did lose a floor-to-ceiling wall of bookcases, shown here when I'd almost completely dismantled them:

I still haven't found permanent, orderly homes for everything that was displaced. However, these lines on the wall are the start of a big change.

And the wall came down:

Here's the view of the office from the former storeroom:

And the former storeroom as seen from the office:

Most of the work on The Project now takes place in that former storeroom, which, a year and a half later, looks like this:

You can't see all the active boxes in that picture. There are now 54 (if you don't count the ones that contain the extra bits that are not directly part of the book), so in addition to what's here there are more in the laundry room, in that entry/hallway this exercise freed up (which you can see a bit of between the bookcases in the photo above and, from the other side of the opening, below), and in the downstairs bathroom (as seen from the laundry area in the photo below):

I can't get a photo angle that shows the boxes on top of the dryer.

We're not done yet. There will be more boxes, and I'll need to figure out what to do with them. There's still space for about 3 on top of that pile in the bathroom.

It's been nice to pack 12 boxes (the number that will fit) into the car, along with the tools and the computer, and to go elsewhere. It's easier to focus when everything is neatly organized and I'm not having to juggle all the other responsibilities of these spaces and of the house, although I can only withdraw from the other dimensions of my life for a few days at a time.

Yet day in and day out, week, month, and year in and year out, most of the work gets done right here. The trips away have been real boosts to my progress: I'm amazed at what can get done with the support of those protected times and places. Yet plodding along in the middle of everything is also part of the whole package, and without it the job as a whole would be unreachable. 

I'm constantly grateful for Jessica's idea to tear down a wall, for my willingness to say yes, and for Jonathan's help in getting the restructuring job done so I could move forward.

Saturwoolday

It's shaping up to be a fine day. One of the things I love about wool is its variety, and what's going into the tub today represents quite a range:

There's Castlemilk Moorit, a very rare breed closely related to Shetlands. The provider of this sample apologized for its second cuts (snippets caused by shearing with two passes) and scurf (I'll skip describing scurf at the moment . . . ), but it's a lovely color, with excellent staple length, and will be just fine when washed and processed:

There's Polwarth from the Falkland Islands . . . not all of the sheep from the Falklands are Polwarths, but a quantity worth noting are . . . fine, with really cool crimp (those wavy contours in, in this case, both individual fibers and locks):

And we finally, finally (thanks to the generosity of friends on a couple of continents) have some Herdwick, giving us an opportunity to consider things like kemp (coarse, dye-resistant fibers) and Mrs. Heelis:

And while the wools are soaking in the tub, with their 20-minute demands for attention and changes of cleansing and rinsing solutions, I have THIS to enjoy:

It's Clara Parkes' new The Knitter's Book of Wool. Just arrived. I've glanced. I love Clara's take on the world, and am so glad she wrote this book.

It's shown on some Suffolk fleece I have here . . . I pulled out a lock at the lower right corner of the book, because it's so nice and long for a Suffolk. In the background is a rug I wove many years ago from Pendleton mill ends. I have a lot of rugs made with those mill ends, picked up at a weaving place in Poulsbo, Washington, long, long ago. They are still trucking. Our older dog "digs" in this one every night, making herself a nest to sleep in.

Snowing out. A good day for enjoying a variety of wools in a variety of ways.

If I get the washing done in time, I might even get to spin or knit some.

Ready to move forward: Priscilla's Cowichan sweaters book, revised edition

This past weekend, I drove out to western Colorado to attend the Artposium, about which I intend to post more as soon as I can.

While there, I stayed and visited with Priscilla GIbson-Roberts. And this is what I brought back with me to my home office:

It's a treasure box. It contains the photos and reference drawings for her book on Cowichan sweaters, originally published in 1989 as Salish Indian Sweaters. The revised edition will include the material in the original edition, additional traditional designs that Priscilla has collected in the past twenty years, and a chapter on Priscilla's own designing process for sweaters that draw on her own family and cultural imagery in the way that the Cowichan sweaters draw on the visual heritage of the Northwest natives who originated this style of sweater.

Here's a peek of what's inside that box:

And here's another:

One of my next tasks is to figure out the best way to convert the negatives to digital positives. It'll be easy once I determine the right resources to use to do the job. I have some places to start asking questions.

The charts for the book were ready a year ago. It will be great to move the project to the next phase!

Organizing fibers for the big project

There will be two versions of this post. I hit the wrong button and published it at the note-taking stage. If you're reading this note, you likely have the full post.

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Keeping the fibers for this project organized and constantly identified is a job in itself. Having edited Spin-Off for so many years, I knew how challenging it can be to try to remember which of several closely related fiber samples the one you set on that table over there was, expecting that of course you could remember what it was . . . oops, that was day before yesterday, something came up that needed to be dealt with immediately, and was that the Dorset from project A, or the Hampshire from project B? Dang.

Anyway, I started off with what I hoped would be a flexible, strong organizing system. It evolved slightly. For example, instead of trying to economize to the penny on labels, as I did at the start, I now print plenty in both sizes and keep coming up with ways in which they're handy to have.

So the first large chunk of work to be done when I receive new fibers involves entering them in the inventory sheets (two separate databases), printing up their labels, and making the bags and cards that will keep everything sorted from receiving through photography, and perhaps beyond.

I print two sizes of labels. The large ones go mostly on the bags, and the small ones go mostly on organizing tools. Extra labels are top center. To their left, a tag for a sample skein (there will probably be at least one more skein label, which is a reason to have extra small labels, but I start with one). The large card next to the tag stays with the wool during washing and other processing. The small card goes at the edges of photos so we don't have to keep massive notes about what fiber was in which photograph. We shoot the tiny card at the edge of the image and it can be cropped out later. Small labels also get used when I pull a sample for OFDA testing (scanning for the physical fiber qualities, including length and micron counts).

There are two large plastic bags, one that will stay with the bulk fiber supply and one, marked "samples," that will go in the file that will be transported to the photo shoot. There are two small plastic bags, one for raw wool locks and one for clean wool locks. All of the labels on the plastic bags have to have clear tape put over them or they won't stay stuck to the bags. (There's one more larger card with a large label that goes in a card file, a physical inventory record, which comes in very handy despite all the computer database information.)

Once the fiber's checked in and the organizing tools are prepared, it's time for washing. This is when fibers will most likely get confused, so I need to pick batches that can be distinguished from each other and that fit my various colander-and-bowl configurations, which have different capacities.

In this morning's first batch, I have three black wools and one white. The three blacks are easy to tell apart, even though two are Soays. My larger cards from the photo above (they're old business cards) stay in the room with the fibers being washed, then travel with them to the drying racks and stick around until the fibers are dry and back in their labeled bags. I've already pulled the grease locks on all of these, of course.

Here are the pots of water on the stove, heating up to supplement the tap water for getting the wool clean.

And here are some of the washing-related systems: the baggies in the white not-a-wastebasket are the fibers currently in the tub. The box contains a few of the fibers next in the lineup (there is another large box to its left, out of sight . . . I'm pretty well caught up, but got five new samples yesterday). The post-its on the outside of the box have small labels on them. With more than forty file boxes in action, it's good to be able to tell easily what's where. The bright yellow means the sample started as grease fleece. Light yellow means it started as clean fiber. There would be a black checkmark on those labels if they'd been washed already. I'll have more shots of boxes later.

Okay, I'd better get this really posted. The truncated version would be pretty funky.

THIS is what Nomad Press is all about

I've been catching up a bit on what's happening outside my office while I'm meeting deadlines.

I came across this pattern in the summer issue of Knitty. It's a gorgeous shawl by Kieran Foley, who has called his design "Cold Mountain." His description begins this way:

• "This shawl is based on my first attempts at designing after reading Donna Druchunas’ inspirational Arctic Lace a couple of years ago."

This reminds me how much I love happening across notes about how knitters are expanding their reach and solving problems by using Nomad Press books, and what a kick I get out of it when when they start a description with words on the order of "this was the first time I. . . ."

Here's evidence of a few seeds planted by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' revised edition of Knitting in the Old Way (which I helped out with, in addition to publishing . . . Priscilla herself was going to publish it, and I was "just" the editor and design/layout/production person, but there was a shift at the last minute which moved Nomad Press from her house to mine . . . ):

• Jen at Looking Glass Knits gets over nervousness about steeks and makes a gorgeous Fair Isle baby sweater with a non-felting yarn
• Professional designer Dawn Brocco gleans inspiration for a delightful Fana-style sweater
• Ashley at Postcards from Pemberton makes a wonderful gansey ("my first sweater with a stitch pattern")

These bits of news make sitting here in front of a computer screen with yarn and knitting needles close by (for testing) seem worthwhile.

It takes a while before these remarks start appearing. The books have to go out into the world, then people have to read and absorb them and let the ideas percolate, and then they need to begin implementing. Which makes it all the more fun when I come across the comments.

Knitting in the Old Way has been out in the world long enough to have this effect, as have Priscilla's Simple Socks and Donna's Arctic Lace. Donna's Ethnic Knitting Discovery and Ethnic Knitting Exploration are still in their early stages of finding their way into people's hands and imaginations.

Why I have been leaving home to get work done

There's way too much happening in my work space at home. This is far from unusual. The professional organizer that I work with just says I'm doing too much in too little space. Then we work together on making the best of it.

I like the space, although I sometimes express a desire to work above ground. I do have windows set high in the wall and, in summer, a view of rose bushes (or at least their bases). Neighbor cats occasionally prowl along under the shrubs and look in at me, curious. The angle from my desk to the window lets me see the sky.

In that space, I do freelance editorial work—in the past several weeks, I've edited two entire books there, and done a final review on parts of a third, and I'll be working on another starting today. The freelance projects cycle in and out. They take time. Each needs a bit of space.

I also run Nomad Press there, Nomad being a very small, independent publishing company that releases about a book a year, technology and energy and finances permitting. These books are on knitting and spinning. They require some space, too, as do all of the functions that support a publishing company—bookkeeping, shipping, promotion. I'm working on three books for Nomad right now, as well as a special pattern by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts for Sock Summit 2009.

Generally, I don't do my own writing in that office. Several times a week, I head for a coffee shop or library or other neutral territory to do that work. It's easier to shift mental gears if I change locations. The laptop makes it possible for me to use these alternate sites. I'll do things in these outside spaces like plan my classes for Sock Summit and write blog posts, as well as any personal writing I can fit in (it's been a while).

I'm also working on a rather large research and writing project, and I work on it everywhere: in the office, at the coffee shop, in bed. Twice in the past few months, I've had the opportunity to set up a base of operations for a week or so at a time in a different space entirely, and I've devoted that time to this research and writing project (and a few blog posts). It's been heavenly. I've gotten so much done.

Here's a view of the desk in my home office before I left for the second of those opportunities, a residency in Salida, Colorado, last month:

The file boxes piled up there went with me: there are more boxes, the ones that didn't take this trip, in the hallway and in the adjacent bathroom, as well as in the part of the office that's around the corner to the left . . . I think the project as a whole is up to around fifty of these boxes, with perhaps another twenty or thirty to go before I'm done. . . . There's a space challenge. Twelve of the boxes have gone with me on each trip out of town. That's the number that fits in the back of my car. So far, I've been able to work on seven or eight boxes' worth in each of those extended trips away.

Here's the space I worked in during the residency:

The space was heavenly! There was even a closet where I could put the items I wasn't working directly  with. When I went into the bedroom, it was amazing—there was just a bed!

Of course, if I'd had other freelance work and the publishing with me, I wouldn't have had any more space than I do at home. But the point is that those other responsibilities weren't in the away space, and so I had this lovely, productive environment—one that lets me continue to hold in my mind the idea of enough space and the possibility of working with a lack of the clutter that simply can't be avoided in my "normal" life.

More materials arrived while I was gone. Here's what my home office looked like when I got back:

The pile of plain cardboard boxes and shipping envelopes behind and under the white file boxes are new materials for this project that arrived while I was gone. Some of the white boxes that came back with me from the residency had to be stacked around the corner in front of the washing machine, which was the only available space. The new stuff needed to be logged in and processed and assigned to its own file boxes. A month later, I've almost completed that task.

The trick with the office under these circumstances is getting to the desk chair. Once I'm there, I'm okay. Sometimes it feels like I'm in the cockpit of an airplane. An underground airplane. Fortunately, all the work I do is interesting: my flights head for intriguing destinations.

But this morning, I'm heading for one of the coffee shops, taking the laptop and just one or two jobs to think about. Simplicity is a form of bliss.

Ethnic Knitting Exploration: author interviews publisher, part 2

Author Donna Druchunas asked me so many good questions that this is part 2 of the interview. Part 1 appeared yesterday.

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Donna: Do the books seem to be meeting the goal and filling the need that you originally envisioned?

Deb: The books you have written have gone beyond my initial vision: they accomplish what I had in mind, and they also have their own spirit and voice.

The Ethnic Knitting series was conceived as an introduction to Knitting in the Old Way (KITOW). While you provide supporting materials for KITOW, you also added material that reflects your own experiences and interests: the Andean material that you present in Ethnic Knitting Discovery (EK1) is different from the Andean material Priscilla included in KITOW, and in Ethnic Knitting Exploration (EK2), of course, you cover Lithuania, which isn't part of KITOW (the sweater tradition in Lithuania having been massively overshadowed by, for example, gloves).

I'm not at all sure whether they are working for readers as we intended, because most of the feedback I get is the sales numbers, which are really important for us to keep doing this work but aren't very informative about how people are using the books!

I love seeing garments people have made, whether on their blogs or through Ravelry or in person. The books are intended to spark ideas, not to dictate their implementation, so every new piece made from them represents a personal view and a bit of magic.

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Donna: As editor and publisher, what's been the most fun part of working on this series for you? The most challenging?

Deb: Taking the manuscript and turning it into a book involves a lot of steps, a number of which are fun.

One of the best is getting the illustrations back from Joyce Turley, who does the drawings that go with the projects and also a number of the technique drawings. I give her detailed references to work from, and she turns them into crisp, attractive pictures. Joyce knits and crochets and understands electronic book production. She's a gem.

For the fingerless gloves, I knitted a prototype for Joyce to draw from. (Unfortunately, because I really like the glove, I haven't had time to knit the second one.)

Speaking of the fingerless gloves, we have a sample pattern from the book available here as a PDF, so people can check out the style in which the projects are presented (including Joyce's great illustration!). There are more sample PDF patterns from Ethnic Knitting Discovery (EK1) available on Ravelry, some for free and some at low cost. We're experimenting with PDF and electronic publication.

Download EthnicExplorationExcerpt-FingerlessGloves (about 800 kb)

And continuing on the topic of fingerless gloves, here's a transcendent version made by LynnH at ColorJoy!

 

Isn't that fantastic? So different in colors, gauge, and personal size from the one I made—although all of the basic elements are the same.

It's so wonderful to see all the variations that people can create on the blank canvases of the projects in Ethnic Knitting Discovery and, now, Ethnic Knitting Exploration! This is the sort of thing that makes all the challenges of independent publishing worthwhile.

So here's another. . . . Kris Paige, who knits like a fiend but doesn't have a blog, made a sample poncho for Joyce, the illustrator, to use as a reference. It now belongs to Kris's baby granddaughter.

I also love doing the layout and typography, thinking of ways to make the material you've given me as user-friendly as possible in its new format as a book.

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. . . the most challenging . . . ?

Well, the books have been much more work than either of us envisioned! That's true of many things we take on. I think it was Peter Drucker who said that every good idea ultimately degenerates into work: so true. Fortunately, when we get the finished, printed books and can send them out into the world, I mostly forget that, so I can start the next project. . . .

Certainly the hardest part of EK2 involved the massive computer problems, partially chronicled in this blog, that were never completely resolved and that made me think for a while not only that we would never get this book released—after several years of work on it—but also that Nomad Press would fold entirely.

We haven't recovered completely from those challenges, but (1) the BOOK IS OUT and (2) I now have completely new hardware and software, and am able to proceed with the next set of good ideas, which are, of course, running behind schedule. . . . 

My relief at getting EK2 to press, even late, was huge.

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Donna: On April 6th, I talked with Amy O'Neill Houck at The Hook and I about some reasons that I am attracted to historical and traditional knitting.

What attracts you to this topic?

Deb: That was a terrific post Amy and you did, Donna. I have a lot of reasons for being interested in historical and traditional knitting, which I'll only be able to touch on briefly here.

My own creativity was in many ways discouraged by the school system, and I've had to fight against the lack of encouragement relating to artistic and creative work that I got while I was being "educated," especially in high school.

I first broke loose of that sense of restriction with textiles: my first hand-knitted sweater (my second completed project) was a five-color Norwegian ski sweater. I had excellent yarn, a pattern written in Norwegian (which I don't read), and charted motifs . . . as well as a college roommate and a shopkeeper who acted as if this was a perfectly normal way to begin.

Then, on my own and in other places, I had to learn to recreate the delight of that first experience. The skills that traditional and ethnic knitters learned from other knitters were what I needed, and as I acquired them, mostly through stubbornness plus trial and error, they liberated me. This was before books like Priscilla's Knitting in the Old Way and Jackie Fee's The Sweater Workshop (raglans) had been published; it was about the time that Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting without Tears and Knitter's Almanac were released, although I didn't discover them immediately.

Learning to spin my own yarn knocked me square into the "need to work without detailed instructions" realm, because initially my yarns didn't match any known gauge (they were amazingly inconsistent).

As I've gone on with knitting, I keep discovering that the traditional and ethnic skills apply to all sorts of knitting. They allow me to knit from patterns without being thrown by errors in the printed instructions; to modify designs to better fit the intended wearer; to substitute color and texture patterns that I prefer. Or to take ideas from several patterns and make my own interpretation by combining them.

I think every knitter should start with the skills that traditional and ethnic knitters employed on a daily basis. That's what puts us in charge of, rather than at the mercy of, our knitting.

Besides, I've realized recently that the sweaters I have worn for years (even decades) and on a near-daily basis are the ones I've made in traditional shapes, with patterns of my choosing, in yarns that I love. Ultimately . . . this kind of knitting WORKS.

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Donna: What's your favorite part of Ethnic Knitting Exploration and why?

Deb: That's a hard question to answer, so I'll go with my first gut reaction: the explanation of how to read, and knit from, cable charts. Pre-publication, I found myself printing out copies of pages118-119 and 123-127 to hand people to help them solve problems with beginning cable knitting. Including my daughter, who was learning to knit cables at a time when I was out of town.

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Donna: I know many readers are interested in different formats for books and we're working on some PDF releases, Kindle editions, and an audio book.

What do you see in the future for Nomad Press?

Deb: We're exploring ways to get information to people in formats they find handy and useful. We're kind of working in the dark here, though—again, the feedback comes six months to a year after we do the work, and often in ways that are hard to directly trace to our actions.

So we're experimenting with the PDF patterns, some free, on Ravelry and through your website and the Nomad Press site. The books should be available any time both for Kindle (including the iPhone/iPod Touch apps) and for Sony eReaders. There will be an audiobook for Arctic Lace. We're looking at smaller projects that would be delivered only through the internet (even though I am resolutely loyal to print publication).

We have enough books and other ideas in the pipeline to keep us joyfully working on new releases for between three and five years. Sometimes I get antsy to get them finished faster so people can enjoy them, but I won't take shortcuts on quality to make that happen.

And, of course, we'll continue to produce the books in ways that minimize their environmental impact without compromising the quality. All of your books, for example, are printed on papers that meet Green Press Initiative standards, using vegetable-oil-based inks (soy and canola), rather than petroleum-based inks.

And, of course, we're making books that we trust will be reliable resources for knitters for many years. They're not ephemera. We're all about feeding knitters' brains and creativity, empowering them with transferable skills, and making things that last.

Blog tour! Ethnic Knitting Exploration - author interviews publisher, part 1

Welcome to a blog tour stop for Ethnic Knitting Exploration, by Donna Druchunas.

I'm the book's publisher, so we decided to turn the interview process around and have Donna ask me questions. I knew she would come up with interesting and perceptive angles. She did. The post got really long, so I've broken it into two sections; part 2 will appear tomorrow, including a free PDF download of one of the book's patterns.

If you can't wait for the PDF, it's here: Download EthnicExplorationExcerpt-FingerlessGloves (about 800 kb)—but if you come back tomorrow, there will be photos of actual gloves, too!

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Donna: In several interviews on this tour so far, I've mentioned that the idea for these books on Ethnic Knitting came from you.

Can you remember how we first got started working on this project?

Deb: Absolutely. We were in that little coffee shop on Cleveland in Loveland, Colorado—that very funky place that unfortunately isn't there any more.

I was concerned that some people were missing out on the fantastic information in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way because they needed help getting through the intermediate steps: from yarn-plus-gauge-swatch to a complete plan for making a sweater.

Many knitters could make that leap without help. Many more were missing out on the delights of traditional-style knitting because they couldn't quite untether from step-by-step instructions. That's a sensation I was familiar with, because I remember my own tentative first efforts. I envisioned a way to get information to knitters who might be stuck in the same place I was many years ago. It took me a long time to get past that.

You sat across the cafe table from me and volunteered to help knitters bridge that gap.

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Donna: That brings up the next question: Many knitters want to know how Ethnic Knitting Discovery and Ethnic Knitting Exploration are different from Knitting In The Old Way, and which approach would be right for them.

What advice can you give us, since you publish all of these books?

Deb: Great question. They're all about ethnic knitting, and about empowering knitters to discover and then master new skills as well as their own creativity.

Knitting in the Old Way (KITOW) represents Priscilla's life-long fascination with the way sweater design has evolved through history and across geography. It's a book to dip in and out of, to experiment with, to come up with ideas. It gives the essential information on ethnic knitting in a very concentrated form: it covers a huge amount of territory, and requires the knitter to have a supply of confidence or bravery (either will do). The second edition, which I published, contains a lot more information (and more detailed information) than was in the original 1985 edition; both are classics.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery (which we call EK1 when we're at home) and Ethnic Knitting Exploration (EK2) began with the idea I mentioned above, of giving knitters a step-up to Priscilla's wonderful book. Since you are who you are, Donna, these books also became distinct works in their own right. More on that in a moment.

Here's my advice:

(1) Knitters who open KITOW and feel like they're in over their heads or doubtful of their abilities will want to start with EK1 and EK2. After they've got their bearings, they can come back to KITOW.

Yes, ANY KNITTER CAN make sweaters from scratch without a pattern! It's EASY! It's just the conceptual leap that takes courage and fortitude. EK1 and EK2 are the knitter's partner and safety net for that leap.

I recommend that knitters who are tentative about cutting loose work through one sweater from beginning to end, using the detailed EK worksheets, to see how the steps go together. For a drop-shoulder or modified drop-shoulder sweater (as described in KITOW), EK1 is the right resource. For a raglan, circular-yoke, or saddle-shoulder sweater (as described in KITOW), EK2 is the place to go. EK2 also has information on how to turn a pullover pattern (of any type) into a cardigan.

(2) Knitters who open KITOW and feel like they're in knitting heaven . . . might want to check out EK1 and EK2 as well. Those books contain information that's not in KITOW that they might enjoy discovering—like the Andean knitting techniques in EK1, and the Lithuanian material in EK2.

(3) EK1 and EK2 are also the ideal partners for people who want to teach classes on traditional and ethnic knitting techniques. KITOW is fantastic for an advanced knitters' seminar. Any of the books could provide the foundation for an extended guild study project.

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Come back tomorrow for more!

Blog tour for Ethnic Knitting Exploration, plus general progress

Re-entry from the week in the woods has been a little rocky. Here, it feels like I run as hard as I can to stay in place. That's not true: but I do need to make a conscious effort to see the progress.

Here's my attempt to take a picture last night, as the rain began to turn into snow (this morning, it's still snowing):

The stars I saw last week in the mountains were that plentiful and bright.

On the really, really good side: I have been blessed with another week of concentrated writing time, and it will be soon! I learned yesterday that I have an official residency through the Colorado Art Ranch, a nomadic arts organization that holds events throughout the state (it's a fantastic model, and puts together fascinating programs). Susan Tweit and Richard Cabe set the wheels in motion and made sure I committed to do this before I thought of all the reasons I can't leave the office.

Donna's blog tour for Ethnic Knitting Exploration

The blog tour for Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Exploration started on April 1. I'll be participating on April 10.

As the book's publisher, I'm also still sending out review copies, and I spent yesterday filling out forms to put that book (and all the other Nomad Press titles) into the program that makes them available on the Sony eReader. The books have been making their way into the Amazon Kindle program for the past couple of months (I submitted all the necessary files in January), which means they will also be available on iPhone and iPod Touch with the Kindle for iPhone app that was released about a month ago. They're not showing up on the Kindle lists yet, but not because all the information isn't in the right places. . . . If anybody sees them there before I do, please let me know! I keep checking. . . .

It will be pretty cool, I think, to have ready access while standing in the yarn shop (or in the boarding area at an airport terminal) to books like Donna's Ethnic Knitting series and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way.

Here's an abbreviated schedule for Donna's blog tour, with a few editorial comments from me (more details at Donna's blog):

April 1 - Theresa Walunas
The Keyboard Biologist
Among other things, Theresa and Donna talk about connecting to our roots through knitting (they're both Lithuanian).
The interview is here.

April 2 - Lorraine Ehrlinger
Lorrieknitsandsews
A blog about Lorraine's knitting, sewing, and other parts of her life.

April 3 - Jean Clement
Desert Rose Designs
Thoughts while designing projects, about personal projects and the special "awards" Jean knits for RMTA (Rocky Mountain Trials Association).

April 4 - Lynn DT Hershberger (LynnH)
ColorJoy by LynnH
Lynn is all about color, texture, textiles, music, dance, and movement.

April 5 - Katherine Vaughan
Knit with KT
Katherine talks about her design process for her pattern line, and offers reviews of books and patterns, as well as knitting commentary.

April 6 - Amy O'Neill Houck
The Hook and I
Knitting and crochet musings, techniques, and patterns from a writer and vegetarian mother of two living in Alaska.

April 7 - Wannietta Prescod
What’s Wannietta Knitting Today?
The three-time and current winner of Canada's Search for the Fastest Knitter and 3rd fastest in the world at the '08 Knit Out.

April 8 - Andrea Lyn Van Benschoten
The Fiber Forum
Andrea's fiber-related journey through crochet, spinning, knitting, felting, and more.

April 9 - Peggy Gaffney
Kanine Knits
Portraits of dogs in knitting is what Peggy Gaffney creates with her unique line of sweaters and accessories, as well as charts of more than a hundred breeds (you could sure use these designs with the Ethnic Knitting structures!). Her sense of the individual breeds is extraordinary. Check it out.

April 10 - Deb Robson
The Independent Stitch - Part 1 and Part 2
This is me. I had other ideas, but we're going to have Donna interview me. She'll ask interesting questions. I told her to surprise me.

April 11 - Joanne Conklin
Rhythm Of The Needles
A blog about knitting, designing, travel, music, hockey, and more knitting.

April 12 Faina Goberstein
Faina's Knitting Mode
Read and see videos about techniques, design, new books, new patterns.

This past week Faina and I took the same online class with Jill Wolcott. The two of us missed the final memo and signed into the wrong "room" for the session and spent about twenty minutes chatting and getting to know each other and wondering where everyone else was. We finally found them, but I really enjoyed the talk with Faina and am glad we got lost.

April 13 - Shannon Okey
Knitgrrl.com
Knitgrrl.com is author/designer Shannon Okey's website. Shannon's also the editor of Yarn Forward magazine (U.K.) and is doing a fantastic job.

April 14 - Leanne Dyck of Olavia's hand knitting patterns and of oknitting.com book publishing
Designer's Note
Leanne is a knitwear designer and author; she shares news, views, tips, and stories.

April 15 - Kat Coyle
coiled
An eclectically creative blog, with knit design, other art forms (including painting), and doing crafts with her young son.

April 16 - Daniel Yuhas
Tatting My Doilies
Lots of knitting and designing, with forays into math, family, gardening, and really long bike rides.

April 17 - Kristi Geraci
Knitters Anonymous
The knitting adventures of Cookie and Kristi, friends who knit (and design) a lot of socks, and some other things, too!

April 18 - Karin Maag-Tanchak
knitting &
Karen knits, cooks, writes, and takes pictures. All for one low price.

April 19 - Carol Sulcoski
Go Knit In Your Hat
At Catalyst Coffee, my neighborhood hangout (*which is alive still/again*), they serve excellent food and beverages with "a side of sass." I think of Carol's work in similar fashion: she provides "No-Bull" book reviews, and is the author herself of the excellent Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarns.

April 20 - Cindy Moore
fitterknitter
I had the pleasure of "meeting" Cindy Moore through one of Donna's previous tours. She's a knitter, spinner, and weaver with a passion for cycling and exercise. She has been rewriting and charting designs from The Art of Knitting 1897. She shares the results first on her blog.

April 21 - Margit Sage
Fiber Fiend
Dyeing, spinning, knitting, and design (with LOTS of photos). She also talks about being in a fiber business, her dogs, some liberal politics (only linking to action you can take, not rants), and doing all this despite her particular health challenges (fibromyalgia and intractable migraines). She keeps on truckin'.

April 22 - Audrey Knight
AudKnits
Knitting inspiration, patterns, and tips & techniques.

And back to the regularly scheduled activities

So today I'll be getting a few more review copies out, doing my best to figure out how the new software manages fonts (I need to install new fonts, and assemble and activate/deactivate sets: basic tasks, but apparently so basic that they're covered in one of the final chapters of the manual, as far as I can tell—or so basic they don't need to be discussed in the manual?), and move forward with the editing and layout of several individual patterns, new business cards, and the next two books. . . .

But before I leave, here's what happened when I got home from my writing retreat in the woods:

That's Tussah. She just oozes to where she wants to be. Which is close enough for maximum patting. I was looking a little tired because I'd just driven down from the mountains. I also hadn't found time to get a haircut—overdue by more than a month. Shaggy! (I got one on Thursday night.)

Ethnic Knitting Exploration arrives! (FINALLY!)

Yesterday we got the call: Donna Druchunas' Ethnic Knitting Exploration had arrived at the freight dispatch center. Delivery was scheduled for between 10 a.m. and noon today. The good news: timing was such that my daughter would be around to help.

At 12:02, the truck pulled up in front of the house.

We'd already cleared the driveway and spent an hour making space for 35 more cartons of books in the garage and basement. This truck had a lift gate, so we didn't need to make a bunch of trips from the curb with the hand truck, moving a few cartons at a time. Using a pallet jack, the driver slid the whole pallet onto the gate, lowered the gate, and then took the pallet off at just the right angle. He and my daughter pushed the pallet up the incline to a spot next to the garage door.

Then my daughter unwrapped the pallet.

Books that arrive on a pallet end up in much better shape than cartons that arrive separately. The wrap and the pallet really protect the copies. Of course, we need to be getting at least a few hundred pounds of books to warrant a pallet. We ship books to distributors as well as to ourselves, so we're often close on qualifying for pallet transport.

Still, these boxes are heavy and have come a long way, being managed en route by heavy equipment.

Interestingly, once I got into the boxes (and I always check any cartons that show visible damage), only one book had actually been messed up.

This book has been so complicated to get to press, because of massive electronic problems, that I've been apprehensive about what it would look like. I also worked with two inks (a blue and the usual black), sometimes in combination, and there's no way to tell for sure what the results of any color work will look like until they're printed for real.

So I asked my daughter to open a box and check out a copy and let me know what she thought.

She told me it was safe to look.

The blue's a little brighter than we expected, but we think it's a success!

Now, of course, this product of several years' work starts moving out into knitters' hands to see what they think. It should be showing up in yarn shops and bookstores in the next couple of weeks. We shipped cartons off to the wholesalers before the last UPS, FedEx, and USPS pickups for the day.

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Ethnic Knitting Exploration features raglan, circular yoke, and saddle-shoulder sweaters with designs and techniques from Lithuania, Iceland, and Ireland. There are three small projects on which to practice skills and colors: fingerless gloves, a capelet, and a poncho. All are presented with worksheets that let readers design unique sweaters.

Added in the evening: better photos of the book itself.

Cover:

 

Title page (that's the one dinged up copy I'm using as a model; you can see its crumpled corner):

 

And contents, which will be posted more legibly on our new website as soon as we figure out how to clarify international shipping costs through PayPal (makes our heads hurt to try to figure out something fair and universally applicable):

I've got to say that there's really nice introductory coverage of cables in this book that clarifies some basics it's normally hard to get a handle on. Among other great info.