The Independent Stitch

Too late for the copy editor

(Wigeon = a type  of duck. The addition of the D with reference to the bird seems to be a fairly common error. Common or not, wigeons aren't widgeons, even though both can fly. Other streets in this neighborhood include Hummingbird, Larkbunting, Goshawk, and Towhee, not Sikorsky.)

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(Targhee =  a breed of sheep, a national forest in Idaho,  or a place where the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat has been held. As far as I've been able to tell, a "Farghee" has no identity other than in this misspelled street name. "No outlet" is right. There's a big clue in this picture about the naming pattern in this neighborhood, known as Brown Farm.)

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(What copy editors do.)

I'm such a grump about editing (it's a terrific book anyway)

Okay, here's the short version: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, is well worth reading.

(There'd be a photo here, except that I still don't have a computer that lets me process photos. I hope to be back in the loop by the end of the week . . . the replacement machine is due on Wednesday, and then I can start putting my software tools back in place.)

And here's the long version: I'm an incredible grump about language usage, and Three Cups of Tea is a splendid book in spite of, rather than because of, the level of care it received in the editorial process.

The basic positives

Greg Mortenson is the subject of the book, which is told in third person (about Greg Mortenson) by writer David Oliver Relin, who did an excellent job of tackling and relating a complex story. Mortenson gave Relin access to vast quantities of information, and the freedom to portray the subject in all its human and political complexity. Relin, whose background in both writing and life experience made him a superb collaborator on this project, constructed a sound narrative structure, got the chapters to flow well into each other, and incorporated background  information efficiently when it was needed. The more challenging step called developmental editing was successfully navigated by the author either working solo or in conjunction with a conceptual adviser (most likely, in today's publishing climate, the former). For that: bravo.

The story is worth reading and the work for which Mortenson is the catalyst is some of the most valuable (and gutsy) being done on the face of the earth. There's a lot here about following instincts and having faith and being flexible and not giving up--all conveyed through examples, not platitudes. Read it to hear about someone else's one-step-at-a-time mission to make the world a better place. Read it for tips on how to keep going with your own one one-step-at-a-time mission to make the world a better place, whatever that mission may be. (Mine, for better or worse, is writing and publishing, mostly about traditional textile crafts.)

The language grump's two-bits' worth

It's too bad the publisher's editorial department didn't take slightly sharper pencils to some of the important minutiae of the manuscript.

If the editors had done a bit more thorough job, the reader would have been spared some imprecise word choices. I didn't mark them while I was reading, but here are a couple of examples, one relocated and one just remembered:

• An airport scene: "But the level of panic in the stale air was palpable, as inaudible voices echoed through the terminal, announcing delay after delay." (Page 98.) While palpable comes from a root that means "able to be touched," the word's meaning has expanded to mean "evident" in ways that are not directly tangible; that word choice is marginal. The word that blows that sentence completely away is inaudible. Something that's inaudible can't be heard. If something that's inaudible does echo, no one will notice. I think, therefore, that the inaudible announcement of delay after delay would not increase panic. I think one possible word that might have worked better where inaudible appears is unintelligible, although even then people would not react . . . if they didn't understand, how could they? And I wonder: was it really panic that the crowd was experiencing? Admittedly, it was Christmas and people wanted to catch flights to see relatives. But were they caught up in "sudden fear . . . causing hysterical or irrational behavior"? Or were they perhaps experiencing a mix of frustration, anxiety, anger, resignation, and, perhaps in a few, despair? I would have taken this sentence back to the drawing board. The version that was printed was what I call a "placeholder": good enough for a working draft, but not for the final description.
  
• A reference to "the tenants of Islam," when I think what was meant was the tenets (opinions, doctrines, or principles) and not the tenants (those who pay rent to occupy a space).

The editorial staff might also have cleaned up overwrought, and occasionally mixed, metaphors. They might have straightened out sentences where modifying phrases had slipped out of position. These peculiarities might have been given an editorial pass as quirks of the writer's style, and it does take longer to edit this way than it does to just hit the surface of the text with a blue pencil. However, I think it would have been worthwhile to pay this much attention to the manuscript. I had to read a number of sentences more than once to untangle them, and I found that the personification of mountains and sky, in particular, distracted me from the story instead of enhancing my understanding.

A solid proofreading would have caught a handful of minor glitches, mostly missing letters that  left in place actual words that were not the ones that needed to be there (like "you" instead of "your").

Imprecise words, awkward metaphors, and typographical errors do, alas, cloud meaning and distract the reader from the important information that's being presented. Inaccurate word selection can, in the worst cases, threaten the plausibility of the story being told. While this is not a "worst case," the narrative in Three Cups of Tea deserved, and still deserves, the absolutely highest standards of diction and clarity.

I'm sorry the editorial process did not provide that.

I don't hold the author accountable for these problems. Telling a story of this magnitude requires an extensive set of skills, which he obviously has. He almost certainly wrote under pressure from a deadline that did not permit a lot of reflection (although he managed that) or revision. He reached (and sometimes overreached) for ways to bring the landscape and the political and human forces to life on the page.

Someone who does that and produces an integrated and successful piece of work deserves the help of an editorial staff that will give the project an equal amount of dedicated attention. I'm sorry that didn't happen.

Great story . . . despite the editorial lapses

The title comes from a statement attributed to Haji Ali, the chief of the Pakistani village of Korphe, where Greg Mortenson built the first of many local projects to bring education and self-sufficiency to people in rural areas of Central Asia. As Haji Ali explained, "Here we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family—and for our family we are prepared to do anything—even die."

Mortenson traveled to the area as a climber, intent on summitting K2. Due to some of the main problems that can occur in mountaineering, he didn't achieve that goal. He ended up lost on descent, spent a night in the open, and became "found" again in the village of Korphe. He vowed that he would come back to build a school.

He kept that vow, and continues with related work in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, including areas from which even Doctors without Borders has withdrawn its services because of the danger (following the killing of five of its aid workers).

If you haven't read the book, do. You won't regret it.

N.B.: I'm not perfect, either

It's true, I've been editing stuff for decades. It's also true that nothing I have ever shepherded into print has ever been perfect (no, wait, there was one magazine article that was perfect . . . it was in 1998 . . . ). And it's also true that the attention to detail that I consider appropriate has not always been the level of detail that my employers have thought was necessary. (I sidestep this problem now by working for myself.)

However, it's also true that the standard I'm describing is always the one I do my human best to grab hold of and hang onto.

Copyright infringement and other threats to independent designing, writing, and publishing

The post that I was going to publish tonight will be released tomorrow morning, except for this section that I've pulled out. This was going to be just a small portion of one of my usual multi-topic posts, but it's too important.

Item 1 under "minuses" is a matter of vital importance not only to me and to the authors whose fine work I publish but to a lot of other people as well. It is serious enough to threaten the creative survival of the good and visionary and hard-working people who provide energy and ideas to so many other people through their designs and publications.

I stay pretty mellow most of the time. Sometimes someone steps so far over the line that. . . . Well, read Minus #1. The rest is just business as usual. Minus #1 is not.

On the independent publishing (Nomad Press) front:

MINUSES:

1. Shortly after I woke up this morning, I learned that someone has gone to the trouble of scanning every page of one of the books published by Nomad Press (that's me, working in my basement in a room that only has a plug-in space heater) and posted the results on the internet. I'm all for freedom of information, but the author and I also like to pay our bills (maybe, some day, install a heating duct in the office, stuff like that). I don't know anyone who is doing creative work in textiles who is not hanging on by a thread and doing without stuff other people take for granted. The author invested a number of years in envisioning, researching, and writing the book. I invested several years and put my so-called retirement at risk to design, produce, and publish it.

It was a lot of work to scan the book—probably as much work as we put into doing the rough scans for the preliminary layout. It is also illegal (and, worse, immoral) to post the scans.

Clueless? Cruel?

The author and I have taken the appropriate steps with the hosting site to have the scans removed, but wow, I shouldn't have to do this! The material has been up since last August. When I wrote an account of this discovery at the start of the day, I said I could only hope that it's inspired people to buy the book, at the same time that I was working to protect the author's and my ability to earn a bit of income for the years of labor that went into developing this book.

This evening, near the end of a normal fifteen-hour work day, I learned that this person has also scanned and posted on the internet—also in their entirety—many other books and magazines on knitting and crochet.

I can't think of a more effective way to cut off the trickle of lifeblood that returns to the designers and writers and publishers in these crafts. Believe me, it's not a river of support that they dip into, and creative people have to eat, require shelter, even occasionally need to visit a doctor or dentist.

This person's activities in making our work available free on the web are definitely heartless, whether intentional or not.

[ADDED 2/16/08: Thanks to several friends, we have traced the person who is doing this. I suspect she is not aware that her behavior is causing great harm to other knitters who are doing their best to make a partial living by publishing their research and designs. She appears to be an excellent craftworker who appreciates the designs to which she has access because we are publishing them. If she chose to simply say that she likes our work and then suggest that other people purchase the books in question or borrow them from libraries—she obtained our book from a library; the classification label is visible on the cover of her scan—that would be extremely helpful to us. People throughout the world can buy our books through Amazon's various channels. Libraries are often happy to purchase books when patrons request them. And then we would be able to continue creating more books that she, and others, could enjoy. But not scan and post on the web, please.]

2. All of the shipping companies have just raised their rates (due to gas prices). Because cover prices on books have already been set and distribution terms cannot be easily changed, this is extremely hard on publishers, especially the independents who don't have a lot of flexibility to develop compensating income streams.

3. Almost all of the people we sell our books to are prompt and efficient about paying for the cartons we ship out. Some are late, but that's because they forgot or were out of town or the cat ate the invoice. They pay. Right now I'm having to deal again, however, with a re-billing of someone who was a new account, for whom I made a special trip to Kinko's to ship out a carton of books so it would arrive in time for an event, and whose payment is now four months overdue. I've mailed statements, e-mailed reminders, and left voice mail messages.

Blecch.

PLUSSES:

1.The fall title is coming along. It's in one of its nit-picky phases, so things are going slowly, but they'll get done.

2. I heard recently from an author of a much-anticipated future title that she may be completing the manuscript soon.

3. One of the wholesalers ordered four cartons of books yesterday. I packed them up and my daughter helped me drop them off at the package service on the way to a doctor's appointment.

4. Spinning in the Old Way just went back on press for the fourth time. A new print run of Ethnic Knitting Discovery has just been delivered, shortly after a new print run of Knitting in the Old Way.

5. I have plenty of freelance work right now, the stuff that helps support me while I do all the publishing work. I just need three of me to stay on top of all the deadlines and schedules!

And I always do my best to end thinking of the plusses.

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To support that habit, I'm going to go read some more in the issue of PieceWork that will be the primary topic of the next post.

C, D, 65K, and a bit of mechanical breakdown, plus knitting

Last month, E and F arrived on the scene riding on squares of gingerbread, courtesy of my daughter. Here they are again:

C (Cat) and D (Dog, of course) showed up within the past week on similar conveyances.

E, F, C, and D all arrived with their hats on fire, but they seemed to enjoy the conflagration. As far as one can tell with creatures made of wax. They're all still smiling.

The AlphaSmart, new at that time, saw me through the November madness of NaNoWriMo, which I concluded with an official word count of 65,915. It's possible that what I wrote will be worth editing, although it's way too early for me to take a look and evaluate.

My next step in that realm is to figure out how to carry the NaNoWriMo momentum forward on my next personal writing projects. Although my current task is deciding which of the several possible projects I want to take on next. All of this personal writing happens in addition to full-time work, of course, so the decision involves lots of questions about balancing energy.

As I completed NaNoWriMo, I discovered a fantastic book on editing (a topic I care about more than most people) at our local independent bookstore, now celebrating its first anniversary. The book is The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself, by Susan Bell. You're looking at an interlibrary loan copy, although I'll be buying the one at the bookstore.

Here are some tidbits:

• "While we write into a void, we edit into a universe, however ravaged it may be." (p. 147)
• "Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing." (p. 183)
• "It is bad enough for an editor to prune provocative phrases or ideas from a writer's work out of fear they will offend; when writers do this to themselves, one might wonder why they write at all." (p. 193)

And a great quote from Paul Valery, located on page 8: " . . . if he knows well what he meant to do, this knowledge always disturbs his perception of what he has done."

Also in the photograph above: less-than-exciting but baseline-satisfying knitting. One is the pair of socks that I carry around with me. It's proceeding apace; I'm about halfway up the ribbing for the legs (these are toe-up). Another is a V-neck cardigan I'm making from Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille for my acupuncturist, who helps me stay grounded and doesn't tolerate many of the fibers that I prefer to use for sweaters (like those grown by animals). The swatch for this sweater, in a different color that was a second-choice option for the garment, turned into a scarf for the same person.  I forgot to photograph it before I gave it to her. On the sweater, I've finished the sleeves and last night started working on the body.

This is a time when I've used my swatch to tell me what I didn't want to do. I'd thought this would make a good machine-washable sweater, and it would. I prepared my swatch (1 below) and machine washed and dried it. The machine washing/drying made the fabric pleasantly denser, but it also increased the stitch and row counts significantly and produced a ridged, almost corduroy-like, quality in the fabric.

The ridging and density were acceptable. The increased stitch and row counts were not, because I have a limited quantity of the yarn.

So I'm working the sweater itself at the hand-washed gauge (2 above). The fabric's a bit more supple and I'm likely to be able to finish the project with the nine skeins that I have.

Mechanical breakdowns, or tendencies in that direction

1. Car, tow #2 in about a month: First was the starter. This was . . . well, I have a hard time believing that the clutch pedal is attached to the actual gear-shifting mechanism with a plastic clip. I know that plastics can be made to be extremely durable. However, this clip snapped in two, so one second the clutch controlled the transmission and the next second it didn't. Fortunately, I had just pulled into the driveway at home when my foot pressed on the clutch to put the car into neutral and the pedal slammed into the floor with no resistance at all, nor any tendency to spring back up or do any of the other tricks that clutches are supposed to do. All is good again now.
2. Microwave: dead. Fortunately, the next day a local store was having a double-discount sale on a top-rated microwave. It works beautifully.
3. Washing machine: not gone yet. It's been vibrating its way across the floor lately, though. I think the stabilizers that function to keep the drum under control when it's rotating might have begun to wear out. It's only about 25 years old, so I think this is premature. I don't want a new washer. I want this one to work. There's also a bit of water on the floor after each wash cycle—perhaps sloshing out from the wild gyrations. Not good, I think.

Much good fortune in this, however, in terms of when, where, and how mechanical devices have been breaking down, or only almost breaking down.

Minor updates on previously introduced topics, plus some unintroduced miscellany

Ethnic Knitting Discovery knit-along

Donna Druchunas is starting up a knit-along to go with Ethnic Knitting Discovery. (When I checked, there was a typo in the Yahoo group link on that page: to reach the Yahoo group, try this instead [fixed now at Donna's site, too]; the group is a general discussion of ethnic knitting, but preliminary organizing of the knit-along has happened there. The knit-along may have several points of contact when it's operating at full flow, perhaps including both off and on Ravelry, for those who are not, as well as those who are, already involved in that community.)

Donna announced the knit-along on her blog on November 1. Just over four weeks later, she tells me there are now 250 275 (25 more since this morning) people involved! I can't wait to see all the variations that show up, because this is a design-along as well as a knit-along. Folks who signed up early voted on the project focus, which turned out to be Norwegian colorwork. The actual knitting will start after the first of the year with a small project that will serve as a gauge swatch, in addition to being useful in its own right.

Library Journal review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery

I still haven't located a copy of this review that I've heard exists. The librarians' copy of the issue is being routed and can't be located. The online EBSCO database doesn't have the December 2007 issue online yet, nor does the Library Journal website.

I'm late, I'm late. . . .

I'm behind on a design project for a 12/31 deadline, but I just got the yarn. I've swatched the stitch pattern in other yarn, but that's not the same as working it out in the right fiber and color.

Memory problems (computer)

The manufacturer found a few sticks of compatible memory for my computer a week or two after I had to solve the problem. I had to remove all the original memory to install anything other than their proprietary build. I now have 2 GB of RAM (I did have 1 GB, in two 512 sticks) from another source (which, by the way, has terrific tech support). It works fine as long as the original sticks aren't installed as well. I hate having a gig of RAM that I can't use, but that's what it took to fix the problem.

Words, writing, and publishing

Possible next personal writing projects

1. Narrative nonfiction book on knitting (and other textile crafts) as survival techniques. Written: approximately 50,000 words. Interested: agent responded with great enthusiasm to the proposal, sent it around, and one editor/publisher responded positively, but needs a full manuscript to make a decision. Personal challenge: overall structure (i.e., to resolve this, I need bigger chunks of time than I currently have access to). The proposal included a structure, but the editor who's interested wouldn't require me to maintain strict focus on knitting, which was how the work had been conceived to be shopped around, so I could expand the range, which is appealing. But requires more groundwork.
2. Narrative nonfiction book on general creative process. Written: approximately 60,000 words. Interested: me. Challenge: overall structure again, although this feels like a longer-term project than #1.
3. Essay collection. Written: Plenty. Interested: me. Challenge: not much market for such things.
4. Novel that I got an idea for during NaNoWriMo. Written: a few index cards' worth. Status: want to do a bunch of research; have started lists of resources. Challenge: structuring time use to get this to progress steadily. This is probably the leading contender right now.
5. Novel that I almost wrote during NaNoWriMo. Written: 65,915 words. It's currently a metafiction about the process of writing a novel, although there might also be a real novel (whatever "real" is) hiding in the verbiage. it may also stand as metafiction. I'm way too close to it right now to tell.
6. Any other project that I've currently forgotten about, like the narrative nonfiction about the educational system.
7. All of the above: This is my usual technique for any projects. If I don't have enough time or concentration for A, I work on B. If I am waiting for resources for X (interlibrary loan books, money for supplies, whatever), I work on Y. I try to keep some income-producing projects and at least one personal creative project going at all times.
8. Something I haven't thought of yet. Always a possibility.

Nomad Press projects

1. Ethnic Knitting Exploration by Donna Druchunas (planned for October 2008 release): Have reworked all the charts and am doing preliminary editing and layout (I'm on text for chapter 5, projects for chapter 4).
2. Cowichan Sweaters by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts: Have completed first full pass of charts and sent to Priscilla for review.
3. Other books: Working on projects, tentative chart layouts, and general development.

Freelance projects

I don't talk much about my freelance work for several reasons. The biggest reasons are that I don't take on much outside work (my time's very limited) and that the freelance jobs involve other people's work for which I play a supporting role (not that I don't do that for Nomad Press books as well, but those are different).

However, several cool things happened for coaching/editing clients in the past week.

One project, for which we just completed the proposal, has piqued the interest of an agent who could be a good match for the book. We queried last week, got an immediate positive response (rare indeed), and sent the full proposal; receipt has been acknowledged. Now we wait.

I heard that a second project that's been in the works for several years will be published next fall. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print!

And a third project is in the throes of being shaped, and it's coming together. Slowly, but then it's a huge, complicated book, and at this point my major contribution is providing encouraging words while the writer wrestles with the material.

But all three have passed significant milestones that warrant major celebrations.

Almost ready to apply to grad school

My daughter is almost ready to ship off her applications to graduate school. This is a Big Deal. The first deadline is next week.

It's been snowing all day—heavy, wet, almost slushy snow

And now I'd better get back to work. On A, B, X, or Y.

C, D, E, and F are taking care of themselves.

NaNoWriMo progress report

I've crossed the 50,000-word finish line. I also "won" in 2005 and 2006. Note that quality of the verbal production has nothing to do with this achievement.

However, I'm not done with what passes for my story this year, so I'll continue to type until 11/30, when I'll slap an ending on the thing, ready or not, and put it in a drawer, metaphorical or actual. Some day I may come back and look and see if I got anything worth saving and editing. At this stage, there's no telling, and it doesn't matter. It does matter that I take my imagination off a leash for at least a couple of hours a day for one month every year, and it also matters that I put a conclusion on the file before I close it out at the end of the month.

Here are three possible conclusions:

1.     Exeunt, pursued by a bear. (Borrowed from a great writer.)
2.     And a bear came in and ate them all up.
3.     And they all lived happily ever after.

See NaNoWriMo central for details of this novel-writing exercise, and No Plot? No Problem! by founder Chris Baty for a comprehensive guide to the insanity.

(I see that the ordering site to which I linked for the book says: "Note: All copies come from the book's second or third printing, with greatly improved boxed text legibility." Mine must be from the first printing, because trying to read the type in the boxes has always been one of the book's major puzzles, possibly even more challenging than writing a novel . . . and provides a lesson in screening densities for book designers.)

Now and then, I need to do something that makes no rational sense at all, especially when the rest of life appears determined to require me to make sense and be rational.

I think this makes the sixth novel I've written, three of them in the past three years. If you can call them novels. In three cases I think you can; in two cases, it's doubtful, although they are not nonfiction; and in this most recent case the file's not ready for even summary evaluation, but what I wrote sure isn't "true." It involves people who never lived and things that never happened.

It's interesting that Wikipedia's definition of the novel doesn't include a fictional aspect: "A novel (from Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for 'new,' 'news,' or 'short story of something new') is today a long prose narrative set out in writing." Long prose narrative. NOT "long prose narrative that has been made up" or "imaginative" or "pretend" or any of those other things that imply "not true" or "fiction."

One of the things I'm looking forward to after this month is over is pulling Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel off the shelf again and seeing what I think of a chapter or two after this latest foray into the land of noveling.

I'm also looking forward to reading a couple of novels, at least one familiar and one not. I haven't decided on the familiar one yet, although I have several pulled off the shelf. The unfamiliar one will need to find me.

Yes, life and work have continued while I've been indulging myself in this weirdness. Of course.

Holly Lisle requests three favorites each, novels and nonfiction

Holly Lisle has a great site for her own work that also includes generous resources for other writers. She's just started a newsletter that people interested in writing will likely find worth signing up for.

The newsletter that dropped into my e-mail box not long ago contained a request: "Today or tomorrow, send me a list of your three favorite novels (any genre, any time period), and three nonfiction books you've found  indispensable in your own writing." She's going to compile what will undoubtedly be an idiosyncratic list from the suggestions of her newsletter's readers (I suspect we're a varied crew) and will send it out on Friday.

My first response: **ONLY THREE OF EACH???**

And then I realized the only way I could manage to respond was by not thinking about it for more than ten seconds.

Here's the quick list I came up with, top of the head, no sustained thought:

FICTION

1. Clementine, by Sara Pennypacker: I read this short book this weekend. My daughter handed it to me. It's utterly wonderful. Clementine (third grade) has difficulty not paying attention to things, and this keeps her running at cross purposes to what other people think she should be doing.
2. The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather: A long-time favorite that I need to re-read before too long . . . along with all three volumes of Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset (I have a different translation than I read the first time; Priscilla Gibson-Roberts recommended this more recent English setting of the epic and it's on the shelf but I haven't had an opportunity yet to fall into its world; originally published 1920 to 1922).
3. Pocketful of Names, by Joe Coomer: One of those novels that started well and continued to grow on me as I progressed through it. I think I've already posted about it here.
4. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver: My favorite Kingsolver novel. The political and ecological strands seem to be handled more gently than in some of her other works: it seems to me to be more of a personal narrative ("personal" meaning "to the characters," not necessarily to the novelist . . . I judge novels on their own terms, not as reflections of their writers). I'm also very fond of her book of essays, High Tide in Tucson. I'm looking forward to reading Small Wonder, and her new title, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I'm always behind on my reading, even when I limit my survey to the most appealing books.

When I went to the bookshelves in the garage to pull out Cather and Undset (both sets), I see that another book followed me in and insisted on being in the photo: The Silver Cloud Cafe, by Alfredo Vea, Jr.

NONFICTION

1. The Man Who Walked through Time, by Colin Fletcher: Fletcher walked through the Grand Canyon, observing and thinking as he went.
2. Streets for People: A Primer for Americans, by Bernard Rudofsky: My large-format paperback copy . . . not mass market . . . cost $4.95 NEW. Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects is another favorite, but it's in the garage and Streets for People happened to be on a shelf in the house.
3. Japanese Pilgrimage, by Oliver Statler: I detect a walking theme in the selections so far. This is about the Shikoku Pilgrimage in Japan. Statler's book came off the shelf from its position next to Ian Reader's Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku.
4. Sheep and Man, by M. L. Ryder: Admittedly, I haven't read this whole book yet because it's more than 800 pages and I've been limited to interlibrary loan access until very recently, when it was finally brought back into print . . . not cheap, but it was completely unaffordable when it was out of print and I've been following the work around for several decades so I am delighted to finally have my own copy. Sample sentence-and-a-half: "My own view is that, though Colchis was known for gold and linen and not for wool, the two theories are not mutually exclusive. A fine-woolled fleece would be more efficient at collecting gold particles than a coarse one. . . . " (p. 147).
5. The Ashley Book of Knots, by Clifford Ashley. . . .
6. Looking for America: A Writer's Odyssey, by Richard Rhodes: This one jumped off the shelf while I was looking for Fletcher. . . .

Okay, so I overshot. But considering the narrowness of the target, not by much! There are so many more. And there's no way to put them in order, these or the others who would be clamoring for inclusion if I'd let myself think about this question for an instant longer.

I only wish I had enough bookshelves. I have quite a few, but nowhere near enough to keep my books in the order that I'd like to have them in.

Here's a few of the knitting and spinning books. These are handy because I use them a lot in the publishing work. My textile library took a beating in the 1997 flood we had here, in which I lost a thousand books . . . all topics, but the textile sections were especially hard hit. Having lost so many makes me even more grateful when I pull an old friend like Rudofsky or the old Cather shown above from a shelf.

I wish everything else in my library was set up like this: organized by topic and then alphabetically by author! And I wish all my books were in the house, where I could use them easily, in warmth, light, and convenience. I know it's possible to have my books that way, because in most of my past homes I've figured out how to arrange them. Not yet in this house, though.

It's good to have dreams. It's even better to have some time for reading.

The things museums forget to mention (plus NaNoWriMo)

Today my daughter and I went on a field trip that included the "Artisans and Kings" traveling exhibit of objects from the Louvre that will be at the Denver Art Museum until January 6, 2008.

In general, I prefer folk art to more opulent works, but I figured (and I was right) that there would be things in the exhibit that I'd love. There were two statues from the Roman Empire (1st and 2nd centuries CE), a bunch of drawings large and small, a wonderful Titian painting ("Woman with Mirror," 1515), and an exquisite Rembrandt: "Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels" (c. 1654).

(It's not this painting, although there is some interesting historical/biographical information at this site. This is the work, although Rembrandt's paintings are impossible to capture in any medium other than the original.)

The Rembrandt was worth the trip.

The longer I looked at the portrait, the more I expected the woman to blink her eyes. It's not that she was so realistically painted, but that she was so humanely depicted.

I noticed one oddity about the exhibit that most people probably wouldn't think to remark upon. My eyes have been trained to notice this. Even though many textiles were present throughout the many rooms of the show, for the most part they were ignored in the documentation.

The exception was the tapestries. There were several grand Gobelins flat tapestries, and one mighty wonderful piece woven in very fine pile. It's hard to dismiss the textile content of a tapestry.

However, for the times represented in this show, all of the fabrics would have been constructed (by hand) from handspun yarn, dyed with natural dyes.

The case for a set of beverage utensils (for making chocolate, tea, and the like) was lined with very fine velvet (it appeared to be silk). No mention, of course. It was a plain velvet.

Then again, the material from which an exquisite chair was constructed was listed as "gilded walnut." This specification overlooked the handspun, hand-dyed, extremely fine and intricately patterned cut velvet with which the chair was upholstered. The upholstery contributed a lot more to the mass of the chair than the delicately carved and decorated wood. I can't find a link for that chair but this one was also there, with a similar notation: "gilt beech."

Well, yes, in part. . . .

___

My posts during November will be less frequent and shorter than usual (thus balancing out October).

I'll be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the third year in a row.

This is not a sane thing to do. I'm sane too much of the time, so once again I am indulging in this one-month fictional blitz of goals-without-expectations. For thirty days, the inner editor goes out the window (along with the outer editor) for an hour or so every day (I type really fast and the writing doesn't have to be good, for a change).

I'll be here. Just not as much as I am elsewhere.

Interlude: Knitting and reading

In between writing blog posts about the visual components of Ethnic Knitting Discovery: The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and the Andes; flying to and back from Seattle; shipping out packages and cartons of books; making up invoices; and wrestling the finances into order before and after a trip, I've been reading, thinking about reading, knitting, and thinking about knitting.

The Professor's House

While in Seattle, I read Willa Cather's The Professor's House (1925) and went along with my mother to her book group meeting. I've never been part of a book group at home; not enough time.

(Asides: The novel is available online from Project Gutenberg, although I have difficulty enjoying narratives like this in frames rather than on pages. I am very curious about who did the painting on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln page that I linked to from Cather's name. The only credit I have found is to the Sheldon Art Gallery, but so far I am not managing to see the information on the Cather site or to locate it on the gallery's site. Henri? Willa Cather, 1873-1947; Robert Henri, 1865-1929; both had Nebraska connections, although cursory research suggests not concurrently. I'd welcome insight. . . .)

The Professor's House is structurally unusual, although the book itself is nowhere near as odd as Wikipedia's discussion of it, which I'm linking to as a curiosity and not a recommendation.

It's written in three parts: roughly 175 pages, 75 pages, 30 pages. The first and third parts are told in third person and concern the professor of the title, who is torn between his desire to do his own thinking-and-writing and his commitment to relationships with his family, colleagues, and students. This is in part echoed in the family's move to a newer, nicer house and the professor's stubborn refusal to vacate the old house, especially his uncomfortable and in some ways physically unsafe study. The center section, told in first person, recounts the history of one of the professor's most able students, almost a family member, who died young (no, the student didn't come back from the dead to speak; this section is introduced with a "this is what he told us, and how he said it" bridge from the first section).

One could write many papers on this novel; lots of folks already have. Today I suspect the manuscript would have a hard time getting published by a major house, even if its author had won a Pulitzer for another novel three years earlier (Cather won for One of Ours in 1922). It's superficially disjointed and many statements and situations are left unresolved. That's all on the surface, though.

At one of the possible reading levels, the general movement of the story explores how we make small decisions in our lives—the constant interplay of values in daily choices—and how those ultimately add up to the whole of an individual existence.

It's a quiet book that hits in the gut if read with attention and an open mind.

Other books

Because I took time for The Professor's House, I didn't read any of the other four books I'd taken with me . . . books I've been meaning to read for a while. Three of them were novels that have been on the "intend to read" list for a couple of months because they're too long or intricate for the twenty-minutes-before-bed routine.

The fourth is a nonfiction title, Why We Read What We Read: A Delightfully Opinionated Journey through Bestselling Books, by Lisa Adams and John Heath. It was released a couple of weeks ago by independent publisher Sourcebooks.

I'm reading a galley (advance uncorrected proof). The publisher changed the subtitle at the last minute. In a way, the old subtitle gave a better clue to the content. I haven't unpacked yet, but the old subtitle included thoughts about what bestseller lists reveal about "us," "us" in this case being the culture of the present-day United States. However, the first subtitle was, as is obvious, not easy to remember (I can't remember it) and the book is, indeed, delightfully opinionated. It does examine bestseller lists—and the authors read a massive number of the books on the lists they studied—and draws conclusions about the people who would read these works that have been bought in large quantities.

I'll have more to say when I finish it. It's actually a book to savor, rather than charge through, although an uninterrupted reader could happily take it at one go.

Armed with a 50%-off-one-purchase coupon from the local independent bookstore, I placed some special orders.

Thanks, Lola, for the tip about the book on the right: Fonts and Encodings by Yannis Haralambous. I won't read it all, but the parts I will read will resolve major questions for me. I've been taking Linux for Non-Geeks by Rickford Grant out of the library (and repeatedly renewing it until they won't let me renew any more) for over a year. It's a few years old but deals with the version of Linux I run on one of my computers and about which I want to become more knowledgeable. Yogini: The Power of Women in Yoga, by Janice Gates, is for fun.

The knitting

On the left is the start of a new pair of socks. Yarn acquired in Seattle because I needed some brain-free, rewarding knitting. I will know what yarn it is as soon as I unpack and find the label.

On the right is a lace swatch, done in worsted weight although the result I have in mind will be fingering weight. This isn't a gauge swatch, obviously! It's a getting-acquainted-with-the-pattern swatch. The first couple of rows are in yellow because they're set-up rows. Then I worked three repeats. The yarn is the Cascade 220 that was specified for the homework part of the Rovaniemi class I took in Seattle last weekend with Susanna Hansson.

Until tomorrow

I was not planning to work very much today. I think I'd better quit before the clock tells me it's 10 p.m.

Tomorrow: another post on the Ethnic Knitting Discovery illustrations.

In a few days I will go back to my previous posting frequency, no doubt. . . .

Real books! Freight! Yoga! Knitting!

oKAY! Ethnic Knitting Discovery is a real book! The truck, due to arrive by 10 a.m. last Thursday because I had an appointment at 11, pulled up in front of the house at about 9:58. Just one pallet came here; two pallets went to the distributor's warehouse in Pennsylvania, which is a good thing because I don't have room for more boxes here. Well, I'd find more room, as I've done for the past two shipments, but the logistics wouldn't be pretty.

The book is.

I love slitting open the tape on a box (I pick the box that got the most dented in shipping), folding back the corrugated flaps, pulling off the layer of protective cardboard or paper, and lifting out the first copy that I've seen of the finished book.

Then I flip through the pages for the first time. They've been compressed, almost compacted, in binding and shipping. They give a slight shuffling sound as they pull apart, breathing in air and preparing to become the near-living creation that a book is, at its best.

Thursday was also the first time I'd seen the interior in the two-color printing that I designed: I specified printing in black plus a custom-mixed green (and to get more visual variety I used the inks in various percentages and also printed them over each other).

Hey, it worked!

Until 4 that afternoon, I scrambled to fill the envelopes I'd prepared (addressed and postage-applied) and to label cartons that I needed to get out to the wholesalers. The pub date is today, and my goal was to have copies in every place they needed to be by this morning, if that was humanly possible. (I also have a goal of getting this post uploaded before the end of the day. We'll see how well I do. I started it at 8 a.m. but I've needed to do a lot of other things, too.)

The book's blog tour also starts today. When we learned the printer would be finishing the job later than we expected, so we wouldn't have books until pub date, we supplied rough printouts and electronic copies to the early tour hosts. Nonetheless, I wanted to get real copies into all the tour hosts' hands as soon as possible.

Shortly after 4, I set out for UPS (the farthest shipping center from the house) on my way to Estes Park, Colorado. My daughter loaded her car with the larger shipments destined for the USPS and FedEx.

After delivering the 90 pounds of books in my car to the shipper, I turned toward the mountains.

____

But first a short conceptual detour: In the midst of all that, I received a copy of a literary magazine called Pilgrimage. It's volume 32, issue 2.

It contains an essay I wrote called "Above timberline."  (The editor of Pilgrimage, Peter Anderson, also chose to publish my "Almost still-life with pages" in volume 28, number 2. In case anyone reading this is curious about what I write like . . . since mostly I publish other people's work . . . last week I put one of my essays, called "On moving into the hollow square," on a page that's part of this blog. I haven't figured out how to link directly to the page, so I've put it in a sidebar item called "Additional writing.")

Anyway, another essay is now in print. I even got paid for it! Writing essays is not a get-rich-quick activity. Neither is publishing. Both are characterized by long-delayed gratification.

It's always interesting to see who the other writers are in periodicals that have chosen to print my work. Work by my friend Susan Tweit has appeared in other issues of Pilgrimage, as has Bill Sherwonit's, and that of other good folks too numerous to mention while I'm short of time.

The new issue has contributions by folks like Aaron Abeyta, Karen Chamberlain, David Ray, and Mary Sojourner. Very good company—only one of whom I've met in person. I'd like to spend a weekend visiting with these folks.

What I did get was a weekend in the mountains doing yoga. Similar energy : different form.

____

I forgot to take my camera, although I wouldn't have taken many photos anyway. I might have gotten a few of the light dusting of snow on Sunday morning. It rained Saturday. It was really hot Friday. Colorado.

At the last minute, though I didn't think I'd have time to need it, I did throw one of my knitting bags into the car, mostly because I hardly ever go anywhere without some knitting. It contained the cotton chenille gauge swatch that had decided to turn into a scarf.

I don't drive the canyon road fast; I aim for optimum speed, but I don't rush. It's a lovely two-lane highway, but too dangerous for speeding . . . a fact that doesn't register with everyone who travels it. It's narrow. It winds. Rocks fall. Oncoming traffic may be over the center line. The shoulders are narrow and the route's popular with bikes. And all that's before we mention flooding, which is rare but a big deal when it happens and doesn't always give a warning. (Thanks to a fellow I don't know called Yansa for the photos that show exactly what the road looks like, although they don't give much perspective on the height of the canyon walls.)

Mostly driving the canyon is a delight. It's just not something to do thoughtlessly.

Nonetheless, I was running late. My intention was to get to the Yoga Journal 2007 Colorado Conference in time to (1) check in for the final few days that I'd registered for, (2) find my five-roommate lodging (read "economical"), (3) get some dinner, and (4) attend the keynote, a talk I was looking forward to. Timothy McCall was speaking on yoga as medicine (actually, his topic is what yoga has to offer to medical intelligence, and vice versa).

When I arrived at registration, I discovered that it was fortunate I'd thrown a knitting bag in the car. Yoga instructor Cyndi Lee from New York was graciously convening a knitting circle in the library that evening starting at 7 (just before, and then concurrent with, the mid-week keynote). A similar gathering was scheduled for Saturday night.

I faced a difficult choice: keynote, or knitting?

It'd been a long day, after a long week:

Sorry about the muddy type below those photos. I'm not going to fix it . . . too late. The day's wrung out. The left photo is beginning of weekend, the right is end of weekend. The measurements are in P.P.S., below.

P.S. Yoga folks are great. My roommates were terrific. The knitters were fantastic: lots of different types of projects and skill levels. I left the Saturday gathering of knitters reluctantly, because I had a ticket to a concert by David Wilcox that was raising money for YouthAIDS. I had a sense that the concert was where I needed to be, although it was an extremely hard choice to make. About fifteen minutes after the performance began, I was convinced I was right. Fine songs, a set list that evolved spontaneously, and there was something extraordinary about that guitar. . . . He got it into some amazing tunings—for one number at the end of the concert he dropped the bass string lower than I'd ever heard on a regular guitar and it went there with incredible resonance and not a hint of a buzz. I mean LOW. The music: laughter and tears, sometimes simultaneously. Good.

P.P.S. Scarf notes: The scarf is 7 inches (18 cm) wide and 55 inches (140 cm) long. (It began the weekend 30 inches (76 cm) long.) It has the structure of a seaman's scarf, a form also used as one of the skill-building projects in Ethnic Knitting Discovery. The scarf's divided roughly into thirds: stockinette, ribbing, stockinette. There's a 3-stitch edging of seed stitch along each long edge and four rows of seed stitch at each end. That isn't enough to keep the ends as square as I'd like—this did start as a gauge swatch, so I didn't plan its end finishes. The long edges are fine. I'll probably stabilize the ends with single crochet. Because cotton isn't very elastic, and cotton chenille just might be even less elastic than other cottons, the ribbing doesn't pull in as it would on a wool scarf. However, the drape of the ribbed area is different from that of the stockinette sections and should nestle neatly around a neck. What this fabric will really look and behave like, of course, will be revealed after it is washed.

2.5 days' singing: The red book and a woven riddle

This past weekend the 18th Annual Rocky Mountain Sacred Harp Convention took place at the Wild Sage Common House (Wild Sage Cohousing) in Boulder, Colorado.

Sacred harp singing, also known as shape note or fasola, is a 200-year-old form of a cappella four-part harmony. If you saw the movie Cold Mountain, you heard two shape-note tunes in the soundtrack: "Idumea" and "I'm Going Home." The PBS special Amazing Grace, one of Bill Moyers' documentaries, includes a shape-note version of that old song. I've just learned that there's a new documentary on the tradition called Awake My Soul.

I won't describe the music itself further in this post, because I've already done that in an essay I wrote called "On moving into the hollow square." [10/1/07: I thought I'd linked to the essay, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I think it will now be available from the "Additional writing" part of the sidebar. Knock on wood.] The piece was originally published in a literary magazine called Many Mountains Moving in its Literature of Spirituality Special Edition, edited by Cathy Capozzoli.

Local singings are held in many communities throughout the year. A convention is a big singing that happens annually. There are lots of conventions. People travel long distances (and short) to attend conventions, which end up linking shape note singers from different regions together. Lots of people travel to as many conventions as they can, although I haven't been to any other than the Rocky Mountain convention, and then only when it's been in Colorado (alternate years are in New Mexico) and I haven't had a conflicting work commitment during its scheduled weekend (often SOAR, when I worked at Interweave Press). This year's convention was either the first or second full convention I've participated in, although I first sang shape note thirty years ago (seven shape) and singing regularly for the past twenty years (four shape). It gathered eighty participants from nine states (CO, NM, UT, IL, WA, GA, AL, TX, CA) plus England.

Someone passes a hat (or paper bag) for donations to cover costs. Local singers provide a bountiful potluck mid-day meal for everyone.

On the way to Boulder on Friday, I stopped at Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins to get two more hanks of Crystal Palace cotton chenille so I can turn a big gauge swatch into a scarf. The actual project for which this swatch is preparation is a sweater for a friend who's allergic to animal fibers.

Friday evening, there was a singing school with Terry Wootten from Alabama, who, along with his wife, Sheila Wootten, joined us for the weekend. Singing schools introduce new singers to the tradition (although simply jumping in is also a normal way to begin) and give more experienced singers new perspectives on the music's history and variations.

On Saturday and Sunday, the convention ran from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a break for lunch and socializing each day from noon to 1. On Saturday, we sang 85 different songs. On Sunday, we sang another 80. That was the official part.

Saturday evening, a smaller group gathered to sing a few more. The convention was a "red book" or "Denson book" singing. The evening, unofficial session also sang from the "blue book" (Cooper book) and the "black book" (Norumbega Harmony).

Because my voice gave out, a few songs before everyone else quit for the night I retired to the guest room that I'd been offered the use of, in the lower level of the common house. I ended the day reading Meghan Nuttall Sayres' novel Anahita's Woven Riddle, which I'd discovered and picked up at Shuttles, with the delightful sound of the day's last music coming through the ceiling above me.

When I edited Spin-Off magazine, Meghan wrote several articles that I published. Her novel, which concerns a nomadic Iranian spinner/dyer/weaver, is an excellent read that incorporates, without being encumbered by, a lot of knowledge of Iranian culture and of the textile arts. The narrative structure itself resembles a tapestry. I enjoyed the book as both reader and writer. Although categorized as a young adult novel, it is, like all good books, not age-limited in its appeal.

I got the small rug in the photo above by way of Rubia, which mostly provides an outlet for sales of embroidery by women from Afghanistan. When Rubia's Jennie Wood came to the 2004 Denver Convergence, the biennial handweavers' convention, she brought some lovely rugs with her. . . .