The Independent Stitch

Surprise books and a bit of snow

At 9:45 this morning, the semi truck pulled up at the curb. Advance warning is not part of the equation here. Most businesses that receive shipments delivered by large trucks are equipped with loading docks and regular hours. They don't need to be notified. Even when the shipping instructions indicate that the delivery is residential and/or the freight hauler is supposed to call ahead, the warning call doesn't get made. Even when we see those instructions printed on the delivery paperwork, it just doesn't happen.

So we don't worry about that any more.

When the truck pulls up—in this case, two days before we expected it, based on the online reports we can access on the printer's web site—we are simply grateful that we are home; that it isn't raining or snowing; and that the books have arrived.

We drop whatever it was we were doing. We get the hand truck and meet the driver at the tailgate of the truck and go to work.

We hadn't prepped a space in the garage for these boxes, because they weren't supposed to be here yet. Fortunately, the area at the front of the garage was easy to clear. Several pieces of scrap lumber lay nearby and could be put into immediate service: we set wood under the boxes to protect the books from moisture that might transfer from the concrete slab to the cardboard and then to the contents, the books. My daughter shuffled things around to open the space and arranged the wood while the driver used a pallet jack to move the pallet close to the back end of the truck. He and I both ripped away the heavy-duty plastic-wrap that secures the boxes to the pallet. Then he offloaded the boxes onto the sidewalk while I managed the hand truck, shuttling between curb and garage.

Within ten minutes, we had a pile of new books in the garage, I'd signed off on the delivery, the driver had set out for his next drop-off, and my expectations for the day had been completely rerouted.

Here's the new stash of books—the third print run of Arctic Lace, by Donna Druchunas, freshly delivered from the printer in Canada. Four of the boxes that were on the pallet are missing from this photo; they needed to be re-shipped immediately to fill back orders. This shipment consisted of 931 pounds of books, or 768 copies (although when you're moving boxes around it's the weight that you think of first and not the unit count). (Another 2599 pounds from this print run went to the Pennsylvania warehouse of our trade distributor, National Book Network (NBN), which also has a pile of back orders to take care of.)

One box that was supposed to be on the pallet is missing because it was just plain missing. The first task I attended to after off-loading the boxes was sending an e-mail to my two contacts at the printer to let them know that the shipment had arrived and the boxes, and therefore books, were in fantastically good shape (not a given) and that according to the packing slip I'd downloaded from their site one box had not made it onto the pallet before the shipment was transferred to the trucking company. There were supposed to be 25 boxes in the load and we received 24. The missing item was a partial carton and probably just didn't get packed on the pallet. They're looking for it.

Then I began to fill back orders. My goal: to get the boxes prepped and labeled and the invoices finished and everything delivered to FedEx, UPS, and the post office before the predicted arctic front arrived and added the complication of snow to the mix. The goal is to keep the boxes of books dry throughout their travels.

I made it.

The dogs helped.

This is what our street looked like not long after I arrived home from my run to the various package-delivery services. Damp. I'm glad all the cartons of books are inside, either here or with FedEx, UPS, and/or the USPS.

It's 6:45 now. It's still snowing. There’s an active snow advisory and estimated coming accumulation of between 3 and 7 inches (7.5 and 18 cm . . . I do these metric conversions automatically because I edit lots of knitting for folks who use various measurement systems . . . ). My daughter has just arrived home from her shift at the bookstore to say that the roads are nasty now. I'm glad I hustled with the boxes.

In a few minutes, I'll open the file I was supposed to be working on all day and at least make some token progress on it. Small progress is still forward motion.

Meanwhile, we have copies of this book in stock again! We've been out of Arctic Lace for about three weeks—since one week after the last print run shipped from the printer. (On a non-rush basis and working with a North American printer, it takes about four weeks to turn around a new print run. On this title, I ordered the third run as the second run was being delivered. I'd ordered the second run as the first run was being delivered.)

It's fun to be managing a book that people are enjoying so much. Putting a book together involves a lot of delayed gratification for everyone who's involved in the process. When the truck pulls up and there are boxes to unload, the event is one of the milestones that makes this publishing business seem real and worthwhile, especially when we need to turn around and immediately ship out a portion of the delivery.

And now it's time to go open that file for the book we expect to be releasing next fall. Even formatting one paragraph represents progress toward the goal: having a truck pull up and boxes to unload and shipping papers to prepare and books to send out into the world.

Thankful, and a wish list

As we get ready for Thanksgiving here in the U.S., I am thankful for many things in the year since last Thanksgiving, including but not limited to:

• my daughter
• my friends, who don't mind that I'm not perfect
• our three critters, who are mostly wonderful and only occasionally obnoxious
• a decent place to live and good food to eat
• two new books published that I am pleased to have been able to put out in the world: Spinning in the Old Way and Arctic Lace (I can't get any link in this post to "stick" on Arctic Lace back there, and I've tried to connect several different links multiple times, but I could get it to work in these parentheses . . . where there's a will, there's a way . . . the independent writer/publisher/artist's mantra)
• a book proposal of my own that is circulating
• a couple of new essays of mine published
• being past the amazing lack of bookstore-sales income that extended through last fall and then the avalanche of damaged returns that made the spring and summer way too anxiety-provoking
• help that arrived from unexpected places with superb timing
• beginning to work in creativity coaching with Eric Maisel
• being able to attend the ASJA conference, PMA-U for independent publishers, BookExpo America (the major book-industry circus, er, trade show), and the Publishers Association of the West conference . . . and the hostels and other resources that made these trips possible
• winning a top Independent Publisher award for this book
• being able to spin a bit of qiviut, with a bit more available to enjoy as well in the coming year
• results that came back as "no problem of concern" after wearing a heart monitor for a month at the end of last year
• Pam, the acupuncturist who treats me without needles and keeps me balanced enough to keep up with the life I'm choosing to live
• the coaching clients I have worked with, who all have put their hearts into their writing this year and let me share in their growth as artists
• the trip back to Taos with my mother, who lived there with her family during the Depression
• the Mostlies and two plays at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which I have not been able to attend in the previous several years
• the trip to Anchorage for YarnExpo III
• my new bike and places to ride it

Things I would like to be thankful for by the time we reach next Thanksgiving include revisiting as many of the items above as possible, plus:

• a significantly greater amount of peace in the world
• having come up with a good title that tells exactly what next fall's book is about, in an interesting way, within the 29-character span that the electronic databases can accommodate
• having figured out a way to get the charts and photos for the revised and expanded version of a book by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts (the one that was originally published as Salish Indian Sweaters) into electronic formats that will make it possible to publish the new work, most likely titled something like Cowichan Sweaters, by early 2008
• really great illustrations for both those books, plus another that's in the pipeline
• low freight costs for shipping books to where they need to be
• low costs for the recycled paper that I'm committed to using to manufacture the books I'm responsible for
• having sold a book of my own, and having completed the writing of the full manuscript thereof
• having figured out how to attend the Sitka Symposium on Human Values and the Written Word, which is one of my favorite events ever and it's been too long since I've been able to participate
• having two more books ready to put into production (I know which ones they are: the authors need time out from earning a living to write them, and I need to do whatever works best to keep this enterprise healthy so I can publish them)
• continued good health and steady surroundings and friends
• finishing up the cardigan that's been on the needles since . . . a while ago
• addendum: My daughter says she wouldn't mind at all if, in addition to useful, interesting, and rewarding work to do and days that are occasionally frustrating but never boring, we also earned more income next year . . . she's undoubtedly right . . . enough to keep doing the things we do, with less hyperventilation, would be mighty fine. . . .

I wish everyone reading this a fine year with much in it to be thankful for.

From the magnet on our fridge:
"Do the thing you think you cannot do." —Eleanor Roosevelt

New independent bookstore

In a couple of hours, I'm going to attend a private celebration for the opening of a new independent bookstore. I'm going as my daughter's guest, because she's one of the new store's hand-picked new employees, but I might also have earned my own invitation in the past ten days.

The debut of an independent bookstore is a big deal. It takes vision and nerve to open any independent business these days. A bookstore requires extra doses of both. The folks who are putting this establishment together have both vision and nerve, and I've spent the past two weekends helping bust freight, load shelves, and sort and arrange books. Other people have been doing the same—and also hanging slotboard on the walls, painting murals and exposed ductwork, setting up the software, recycling cardboard, vacuuming repeatedly, and more.

Here's Aubrey, staff member and painter-of-murals, doing some last-minute non-mural-related brushwork. That's the young-adult section just below her.

All the photos here were taken yesterday, so things were looking very good, if not finished. A week earlier, on Saturday the eleventh, there were lots of empty shelves, and then there was the invasion of the cardboard boxes, and then there were piles of books all over the floor and sliding stacks of flattened cardboard cartons. Ten days ago the space looked about as much like a bookstore as this next photo looks like a cafe. (A lot of work was scheduled to be done in this cafe space today to turn it into a nice spot for a cup of coffee or tea!)

My daughter's an actual staff member for the new store. I'm not. When fourteen pallets of books arrived on the eleventh, the owners recruited friends and family to help the newly formed crew of employees. I joined the ranks of volunteers. I needed a finite task that did not require me to stay in my office and deal with computers and related electronic devices, many of which have been seriously misbehaving. I needed a change of scene, new folks to talk with, and a shot of hard physical labor as a change of pace from too much desk time (and electronics-wrangling). I also thought it would be great to work for a few days with books without being responsible for anything other than alphabetizing them and arranging them neatly!

As an independent publisher, I know how to handle pallets, boxes of books, packing lists, and all the numbers and procedures of the contemporary less-than-ideal distribution system. I enjoyed getting a fresh view of the bookseller's side of the distribution system.

So I spent about twenty hours helping prep for tomorrow's official opening.

The weekend of November 11 and 12

Yes, I made sure to grab the crafts section's boxes to unpack. I was glad to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was well represented, and the rest of the knitting titles had been thoughtfully selected. (No, our books aren't there yet.)

I also spent a bunch of time with romance novels and historical fiction. I worked those sections with a young woman named Christy and, when she wasn't working her other part-time job, my daughter. As we unpacked the boxes, we checked everything against the packing lists—sometimes six hundred or so books listed on just one category's many-paged packing list—and inspected for damage.

We worked out an efficient way to do the check-ins. Part of the awkwardness of book distribution is that the wholesalers' databases list the books by title and then the books most often need to be shelved by author.

To do the check-in, therefore, we first sorted the books in piles on the floor by the first letter in the title. Then one of us would read off each book's name in order, going down each pile, while the other would find the titles on the packing list and check them off. Having the titles in order was essential because there might be, for example, three pages of titles that began with S. For some books where multiple copies had been ordered, we made sure the correct number had been included. Tricky thing: numbers are often not spelled out on book packing lists. A book called One Long Night would not be under O but at the end of the list under "1" (I don't  know if there was a book by this title, but if there were it would have belonged in the romance section). As soon as we checked off the packing list, the third person re-sorted the same books by the first letter in the author's name and then began to shelve them.

Considering what lousy shape the cartons were in on the pallets—crushed, gouged, and otherwise pretty trashed—I was amazed that there wasn't more damage to the books. The interior packaging protected them pretty decently. Each bunch of books had been arranged on a heavy piece of cardboard and the board-plus-books was then wrapped in heat-sealed heavy plastic before the package was put into a carton. Although the back room of the new store now contains piles of damaged books to be returned, I'd estimate that in the sections I unpacked fewer than one percent of the books were damaged. (My other experience with damaged books comes from returns to our distributor from some accounts. Books can be returned just because they haven't sold in a given period of time, and not because they are damaged. Yet those returns, which are supposed to be in like-new condition, can be so badly packed for shipping that by the time they reach their destination they can only be sent to the landfill. At the distributor's warehouse, I've seen massive cartons containing hundreds of books like this. Packing matters.)

Lots of titles were out of stock, although all of those were listed at the bottoms of the section packing lists. Picking errors—where the wrong book was pulled—occurred just often enough to keep us on our toes.

The weekend of November 18 and 19

Throughout the week, the staff made enormous progress on the store and I worked at home on my own independent business. By the morning of Saturday the 18th, however, there was still a lot to do.

Over Saturday and Sunday, I spent about eight hours in the age-9-to-12 section.

What I did during that time was help pull out the picture books that had been shipped with the wrong section, and work on how to fit way too many books into what was really quite a lot of shelves, while thinking about how people would browse for, and expect to find, books that would interest them—people in this case being boys and girls between the approximate ages of nine and twelve. We ended up pulling out, and filing in other sections, nonfiction that would most likely be consulted for homework, biographies of famous people, and  big books that were movie-related.

Just about the time we had the section arranged nicely, so the books were packed tightly but still fit on the assigned shelves, we discovered that another whole shipment had arrived and we needed to incorporate several hundred more books. That was when we decided to find other homes for some of the series books.

I think I moved every book in the section at least five times during the day to accommodate the changes that occurred. The books looked good by the time we finished, and I think we had made categories and groupings that made sense and would be useful to browsers.

The photo below shows me stealing more shelves (on freestanding rollaround units) to use for the 9-to-12 reference-style nonfiction. That's about a third of the regular 9-to-12 section behind me.

I'd better wrap this up, because I need to go see the store for real in a few minutes. I hope the tiki hut (the special-order desk) is ready for customers. I've been making a list since I heard the store would be opening. This is what the special-order desk looked like at mid-day yesterday. By the time I left, the slotboard behind it had turned into a bright display of face-out books, and I suspect it will be fully operational when I arrive in a little over half an hour fifteen minutes.

It helps me keep the faith in my own independent business to see other folks making their own passions manifest in the world. And sometimes it can be nice to go work on somebody else's dream for a while, to give it a boost. The change lets me go back to my own set of projects with a fresh perspective.

And now, whether the store's ready or not, it's time to go celebrate a new beginning.

Reader's Cove and Half Moon Coffee Company is located at 1001 E. Harmony Road—on the south side of Harmony between Lemay and College, near Ace Hardware.

Wonderful posts about starting to spin with a spindle

Knitterguy has been posting terrific information on beginning to work with handspindles. If you have even an inkling of interest in spindle spinning, whether you are coming from a no-spinning perspective or from wheel-spinning experience, check out his approachable introduction.

He's got two parts, one here and one here. In the second one, Knitterguy says: "I get odd looks for saying this, but really, really try not to think of your spindle as a 'Drop Spindle'. Think of it as a 'Suspended Spindle', a term I first read in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ 'High Whorling', recently re-issued as 'Spinning in the Old Way'. It makes a lot of sense. How you think of your tool has a huge influence on your attitude and relationship with it: what you expect it to do, how you will use it. (The same applies to people, I’ve found.)"

Ah, yes. No odd looks from me about changing from drop spindle to supported spindle or high-whorl spindle or top-whorl spindle or bottom-whorl spindle, depending on the specific tool under discussion.

However, I can't ever think of a hand-powered spindle without hearing Priscilla's voice admonishing people to call the tool a HAND-spindle, with her great extended Texas A making the first syllable at least three times the length of the second and third combined.

Handspindle, of course, can refer to either a suspended spindle (the kind referred to as a "drop spindle") or a supported spindle (already resting and rotating on a surface, therefore not as prone to "dropping"). So suspended spindle is the more specific term to use in this context.

Regardless, the name drop spindle needs to be banished. Except when used in jest.

And thanks to Knitterguy for his observations on the importance of thoughts and associated language on relationships and experiences of all kinds.

Strong bias warning, plus context information: I spent most of last year getting Spinning in the Old Way into print. The book is a completely new presentation of the material in Priscilla's earlier book on working with a high-whorl spindle, High Whorling. People who have High Whorling and have mastered the content don't need Spinning in the Old Way. The new edition has been completely re-done—text rewritten, illustrations re-drawn, layout started over from the ground up, everything. Plus it's a paperback. I happen to think it was a beneficial way to spend a large chunk of a year: I love the results. I feel good when I pick it up and look at it. Even after having seen it so much. Kind of like an 8 stitch/inch sweater you spend a year on and when you get done, it fits and looks good.

Return of my computer + Yarnival!

My primary mail-and-web computer's hard-drive lost its coherence last week (the second drive failure on that computer in four months . . . not good) and that machine has been in the shop. I just got it back, although I haven't rewired the entire office (again, yet). The good news is that I think I have found a better shop to take it to. I used to do my own repairs, but have no patience for it any more, especially when the diagnostics are complicated, as they were this time. I'd rather use my time writing and knitting and making knitting books happen.

Because of the computer problem, however, I have photos and thoughts and other things that should have already been posted here but are as missing-in-action as the technology was. Fortunately, I have a second computer so can maintain the baseline even when one is fritzed. But neither computer alone has everything I need for full functionality. That's intentional. I am never completely stalled. Sometimes, however, I am half-equipped.

GOOD NEWS JUST IN: Moments ago, just after I carried the fixed computer into the office and set it back down securely in its rollaround stand and checked the mail, I learned that the blog tour post where author Donna Druchunas interviews editor/publisher me about the making of Donna's book, Arctic Lace, has been selected for inclusion in a blog carnival called Yarnival!

A blog carnival is organized by a dedicated soul, in this case Cara of January One. The person in charge selects individual blog entries on a specific topic and collects them in something like a web-based anthology. The Yarnival! topic is knitting, as you might imagine but it's dangerous to assume, and here's the new Yarnival! collection on the January One blog. (If this mention simply introduces you to January One, that's good. . . . show up for the changing and gorgeous banners, stay for the words and contemplations . . . and occasional rants.)

Because of computer fallibility, I am behind on everything: editing/design of Donna's next book, reading other blogs, posts of my own, and so on . . . and now the Yarnival!

However, it is quiet here today and I have my computer back and if I allocate my minutes wisely and keep breathing calmly, I should be able to make progress on each of these possibilities. Today.

I haven't had a chance to mention that I am also participating in National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo only lasts a month, and as I write this only 15 days, 12 hours, 36 minutes, and 16 seconds remain in that month. I participated last year, too. I write before the sun gets up, so it doesn't count toward my quota of hours in the day, right?

It's nice to do something that does not take years to complete . . . and where the goal is not excellence (as it normally is for me) but simply crossing the finish line. In NaNoWriMo, form is nothing, performance is everything. In most of my activities, both require equal attention.

Back to work. . . .

A favorite book: Charlie Needs a Cloak

Today is my birthday, and I have just opened my daughter's present. It's a copy of one of my all-time favorite books: Charlie Needs a Cloak, written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.

It contains no words at all. very few words. I tend not to notice the words in this book, because the story is conveyed in the pictures. My daughter has corrected my original statement by pointing out that the words really do exist. There are less than 150 words for a full year of activity.

I think it is very funny—it makes me feel like a kid again every time I read it, and since the copyright date says 1973, that's probably more than thirty years.

Yes, I already owned a copy. I have bought a number to give away, too. But the copy I received this morning is special.

Last week, I learned that Tomie dePaola would be at a local bookstore promoting his newest book. On the crucial day, I needed to be in Denver at a meeting and could not by any stretch of the imagination be back home in time, but my daughter also likes children's books (maybe even better than I do) and I mentioned it to her.

So she went for both of us and managed to keep what she did there as a surprise until just this morning. My new copy of Charlie Needs a Cloak has been signed by its author/illustrator!

I'm not big on signed books. I care more about the books themselves than the signatures. For me, the author (and/or illustrator) is fully present in the unsigned book, and a signature doesn't change that.

This is an exception. This is a triply special copy of a  book that I dearly love: special for what it is, for the signature, and (last and greatest) because of the person who gave it to me.

Progress on caps; publishing conference

I just got back from the annual conference put on by the Publishers Association of the West, also known as PubWest. It was in Denver this year, so I drove down—this was the first time I'd attended this particular gathering. Lots of traffic on I-25 and just far enough from home that I stayed over.

The highlight of the festive Saturday luncheon was presentation of the Jack D. Rittenhouse Award to Linda Ligon, founder of Interweave Press and my boss from 1986 to 2000. The award was established in 1990 "as a way to say 'thank you' and to honor those who have made a real contribution to the western community of the book." She certainly has.

If you haven't encountered the collection of Linda's essays called This Is How I Go When I Go Like This, treat yourself some time. The book was edited and taken all the way through production and up to pub date without Linda's knowledge. There had been talk for years about what a good idea it would be to assemble a bunch of the pieces that Linda had written for the Interweave magazines over the years and publish them as a book. A group of people at the press finally just did it. They told Linda after it was a fait accompli.

I met lots of great people at the conference. During the final party and dance, two of us ended up sitting on the floor by the buffet table pointing to heels and toes. Yes, shoes off. Someone came up later to inquire what we'd been doing. . . . Discussing sock construction, of course.

Meetings provide lots of knitting time, as long as the knitting is simple enough to complement the information-sharing process. So I have more caps finished for Caps to the Capitol.

I count twenty-five completed head-warmers so far. One is still missing—the first one, which I put somewhere safe before I'd come up with a regular stashing spot. I'm not counting it until it shows up. None of the caps is a normal "baby" color!

 

Thanks to my daughter for the photo, which she took while I was running to the store before it closed. I needed more yarn. I owned just enough appropriate worsted-weight yarn to make it through the conference, and I don't think I'm done with cap-knitting yet. I could shift to sportweight, but I'm on a roll here.

While I was knitting before meetings or as the group waited for lunch, people often asked what I was doing.

The answer they expected was certainly not "reducing infant mortality in developing countries." Discussion of simple (and fun) ways to make the world a better place ensued.

I only wished that I owned 5mm double-points in a quieter material than aluminum. I work most of each hat on 4mm (ribbing) and 5mm (body) short circulars, but have to change to double-points for the last five rounds. While knitting along, I can keep the steel circulars quiet and the double-points almost quiet. Perfect silence is the goal for meetings. I may need to invest in plastic, wood, or bamboo double-points before I'm done with this project (whenever that is).

But tonight I'll be knitting while watching a video with friends and there's enough general noise that needle clicks will not be an issue. I have three new colors of yarn to play with, too.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading my posts and/or leaving comments. How nice to come home to!

More soon. . . . Maybe even about the Norsk Strikkedesign-inspired sweater, which I have got to get back to. It's so close to being done. . . .