The Independent Stitch

Ethnic Knitting Discovery: It (and some other stuff) will happen

The pivotal people involved in making a new book come into existence—writer, publisher, production person—often feel like they spend years like Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again.

Fortunately, each time this particular type of rock tumbles it doesn't get quite as far toward the bottom of the hill as the last time. Five steps forward, four steps back. It's a slow means of locomotion, but the progress is in the right direction.

Yesterday I reached the end of the layout file for Ethnic Knitting Discovery for the umpty-hundredth time, but this time it felt like a BOOK.

It's still missing some illustrations; author Donna Druchunas still needs to look it over and see what the heck I've done with the material she sent me (and if I've messed anything up); there's still at least one more technical review (there've been so many already that I've lost count). I have to learn how to get spot colors to work between my computer and the printer's. I need to get print bids. . . .

Okay, I'm going to stop listing the number of things that still have to be done because what I want to do right now is enjoy the fact that it finally feels like this book may actually be DONE some day.

What comes next is writing copy for, and having the designer complete, the spine and back cover. The spine's easy. I'm good at spine copy. I can remember everything that's supposed to go there. The back cover's harder. It's like a bulletin board for the book and I'm way too myopic at this point to be able to see clearly what the big picture is without going through mental contortions (and don't have a natural inclination toward marketing anyway, which is what the back cover is about). I'll get the words written, but I also know I'll have to make myself do the job.

Also today a press release about Arctic Lace was distributed by a service. I don't like writing press releases (again, marketing-brain, which mine is not) and yet they're supposed to be a good way to get the word out about a book. So for the first time I said okay to having someone else do this for us. We've been working on it for about six weeks. I knew exactly when the transmission went out today because my mailbox suddenly began to be flooded with "spam reject" and "mail delivery failed" messages. The service apparently sent the thing with our address on it, which makes some sense, but my immediate reaction was that I would NEVER do this AGAIN. The flood stopped an hour or so after it started. I am very grateful. We'll see what comes of this experiment before I make any hard-and-fast decisions about the future, but yikes.

I did get one response from a real person. Who wanted more information. And this could be a very cool connection. It might make me feel okay about the whole endeavor.

High IQ Kids went to press yesterday at Free Spirit Publishing, so over the past few days we editors-of-the-volume have also been quickly responding to a barrage of last-minute clarifications and adjustments. While meeting the deadlines for our ongoing work.

To stay marginally sane and grounded, I've been taking fifteen-minute reading breaks. Books that work for this have to be interesting enough to distract me, have enough continuity that fifteen-minute segments are satisfying, but can't be so gripping that I can't put them back down and get back to work while still feeling like I've had a short vacation.

Here's what I've been reading:

What do you call a graphic narrative that's nonfiction, not a novel? Whatever the descriptor, it applies to Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which tell her story of growing up as an opinionated and outspoken young Iranian woman. My currently blogless friend Judy, one of the co-editors of the Free Spirit book, tells me they're graphic memoirs. Not easy; worthwhile.

Susan Conant's Gaits of Heaven is the latest in her series of mysteries set in the realms of dogs and dog training. It's hard for a mystery writer to comply with publishers' requirements for a new title every too-often while maintaining quality. I thought this series stumbled a bit a few volumes back, and as a result I fell behind on reading them. But Conant's got her stride back.

Phoebe Damrosch's Service Included won't be released until September or October (the author's website says September; the back of the advance copy says October). No, I didn't pick up this advance reader's copy at BookExpo America in New York in June. I have access to it because my daughter works in a bookstore and brought it home because she wanted to read it. She's still finishing a few other books and I was intrigued so I grabbed it.

Service Included is about working at a new, high-end restaurant in New York City—the kind I will likely never eat in (and that's okay; I tend to like simple, even rustic, vegetarian food), but I'm intrigued to know something about the world that it's part of. The title doesn't quite fit the book for me, but Damrosch is a smart, sharp, perceptive, and honest writer who's a pleasure to read even if I'm only peripherally interested in the topic. On the page, she's got style. She has it in the food world, too, but what I care about is the prose.

All of these books have succeeded in all the ways listed above. I've actually finished them. I'm sometimes amazed at the number of books I start but don't finish. A book's worth remarking on when I make it all the way through.

And now I'm started on Sy Montgomery's The Good Good Pig. When we got together for a chat last week, Jean Scorgie recommended it with high praise.

This is what else I'm reading. As soon as I get my brain around a piece of software, either the developers change it (I've recently undertaken a long-delayed upgrade of my book-production tools, although I'm still not completely up-to-date) or I decide I want to do something I don't know how to do (make a book with a two-color interior . . . four-color's easier).

It's nice to have The Good Good Pig waiting for me.

176 pp. + 13 new illus. + 3K + support ticket 070712-001810 + fiber

176 pp. + 13 new illus.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery: I am laying out this book, which will be released this October, at 176 pages. Not 160, as planned and announced. Decision made yesterday and updated in databases (BowkerLink = Books in Print; distributor's database; those two will link to myriad other databases; some of the databases out there will never catch the change).

Contacted illustrator to see about getting 13 additional illustrations. Seven were already needed but hadn't been done because they required careful technical evaluation first. Finished that, along with some reference samples and snapshots. Another six will be used to provide augmented coverage of techniques. Augmentation has become possible because of the additional pages—only really six new pages, because ten were already used (the ten I'd been trying to condense out of the layout in order to get to 160). The cool part is that one of the techniques will really shine now.

The illustrator thinks she can do the new images by the end of next week. I'm extremely grateful that she can adapt her schedule to take care of these. As it is, I'll probably be ordering this book's galleys (preliminary review copies) at about the same time that I order its first print run—my own schedule got seriously out of whack over the past few months! Life got in the way. No regrets, but I still have to meet the upcoming deadlines.

A sign that I've made the right decision is when the layout suddenly starts to fall into place and feel natural. That happened half a dozen times yesterday after I'd made the decision. I'm breathing a little more deeply, despite the limited time that I have to complete the work.

+ 3K

Yesterday I also ordered the fifth print run of Arctic Lace. We're not out of copies yet (again), but the printer's schedule is full through July and August and we will be in serious need of books by early September if I don't get a run scheduled now.

It is wonderful how people are discovering this book, and through it the treasure that is Oomingmak and the delight that is qiviut. From the first rumors of this fiber in the 1970s to publishing a book about it more than thirty years later . . . thanks to Donna Druchunas for making her passion into a wonderful and well-illustrated manuscript!

+ support ticket 070712-001810

Last night at about 9 I made the fourth call to tech support in about ten days. Despite the number of calls, I'll give the support team credit. The techs were knowledgeable, they were apologetic about delays (when they put me on hold while they asked their supervisors for additional info), and the problem is finally solved. I have no idea where in the world they were, which is always a weird feeling. I don't think that at home they go by the names Justine, Eddie, or David. I think they have work personas that include alternate names.

I did have to do several interesting pieces of troubleshooting during the first two calls, and then wait while they shipped the replacement part, which has a 3-pin 8-mm-wide connector unlike the original's 4-pin 25-mm-wide one.

And yesterday I needed to just about stand on my head on the concrete floor next to the open computer and try to locate connectors on the motherboard in bad lighting with what I was seeing through my bifocals not quite in focus no matter what I did. (I have a service contract on this particular machine that would have sent someone to the house to fix the problem, but I'd rather mess around inside a computer than make an appointment . . . or wait until a service firm can fit in the minuscule job.)

The tech support folks offered to either help me figure out where else to plug in the replacement fan or send me a fan that would connect like the old one did. They asked my preference. I said, "I want a fan that's quiet and does its job well. I don't care how it gets done." So we proceeded. The new fan is plugged into the motherboard (the old one cabled over to the power supply).

Now the computer is humming mildly instead of whirring like a bunch of locusts, which it has been doing to a greater or lesser degree since I bought it. I may be able to have a phone conversation in the same room (my office). I've been too busy to deal with the noise and until a couple of weeks ago it wasn't so loud that I couldn't ignore it (except during phone calls). . . . But it's so good to move a task from the to-do list to the done list. . . .

+ fiber

After I'd called tech support the first time yesterday, and after I'd made the 176-page decision and e-mailed back and forth with the illustrator and ordered more than a ton of new books (recycled-content paper), I went back to Abby Franquemont's Franquemont Fibers (which I'd browsed my way through briefly on Wednesday as a break from and encouragement for my layout efforts) and ordered a bit of fiber + color. The good news is that between my two visits a bunch of folks had bought stuff, which meant I could make my decisions more easily!

Reading about, editing, and writing on fiber doesn't make sense unless you actually get to spin, weave, knit, and otherwise play with some yourself. It's not like I don't have fiber here to mess with. It's just that I mostly have fiber that is (1) in large chunks that should turn into large projects and (2) in colors that aren't cheerful enough to meet my current need and (3) packed away.

What I have done for the past few days doesn't count as playing with fiber, although technically I have been knitting. I've chugged through making lots of reference materials for the illustrator. Cast on and knit a few stitches. Stop and take a photo. Repeat multiple times. Upload photos to computer. Adjust contrast (color accuracy doesn't matter for these). Add arrows, outlines, and notes to the illustrator. Save in a small enough format that I can e-mail a batch without clogging the data channels. Batch, list, explain, and transmit.

The text on the photo below is not a caption. It points out, for the illustrator's information, what the illustration really needs to show. It's essential that the illustrator knows how to knit!

The goal of illustration references is not to be pretty or fun to knit. Illustration references are made so the illustrator can see EXACTLY what she needs, clearly, so she can draw the piece correctly the first time. Much better for everyone's nerves, as well as the schedule.

I did a whole bunch of steps for another technique, of which this is one:

I ended up doing one set of demo pieces with rope and another set with nylon mason's twine because when I use these crisp, unyielding materials it's really obvious where the "yarn" travels as each stitch gets formed. The mason's twine isn't perfect. The plying twist is a bit too obvious and distracting. But it was what I could get my hands on fast after the rope got unwieldy.

So yesterday, as a reward for all this stiff, stop-and-start, functional but aesthetically unpleasing knitting, I ordered the following: some Falkland wool (two puffs of different quantities and colors); a "luxury sock batt" of superwash, alpaca, silk, and shiny stuff; and some hand-painted Merino/silk laceweight yarn.

I have liked what I've seen of the wool grown by sheep in the Falkland Islands although I haven't spun much of it. I'm not a big superwash fan, but I think I'll like spinning the blend—I'm a sucker for alpaca and silk (especially tussah; see dog above left) and I get a charge out of shiny stuff now and then, even when it's not silk.

[Aside: Falkland is not the name of a breed of sheep. It's a geographic designator of where the wool was grown, although the Falkland Islands are small enough and the sheep industry there is important enough that the simple geographic designator does give us useful information about the quality of the wool—for example, that it's fine, most likely in the 22 to 29-micron range. Wool is a major product of the Falklands. Growers there want to produce bountiful quantities of fine-diameter wool and are breeding to those ends. Historically they have used Corriedale and Polwarth—the National Stud Flock is maintained as pure Polwarth—and are looking at further experimentation to increase yield and fineness. Here's more information (I think it's fascinating) on sheep breeding in the Falkland Islands.]

The handpainted Merino/silk yarn counts as total indulgence (as if the fiber doesn't). I bought both available skeins because I couldn't leave the second one there all by itself. I have no idea what I'll do with the yarn, but. . . .

Completely irrationally and for whatever combination of reasons, I couldn't leave it there on the site for a more deserving soul to find. (This is probably related to the completely irrational combination of reasons that has me publishing knitting and spinning books, against all common sense but in line with some sort of apparent powerful calling.)

Even if I just pat and look at it the fiber, it will be put to good use. . . . Although I'll probably make things with it.

Now I need to go back to cash flow, bits, bytes, chips, picas, points, pallets, bills of lading, cash flow, databases, . . . .

But some time next week I am very likely to receive a packet containing small but spirit-saving amounts of silk, wool, alpaca. . . .

__
If any part of this post doesn't make sense, that's because I wrote it in scraps of time over two days and now need to get back to work. Post was written 7/12, actually posted 7/13 and I revised because I thought it would have a 7/13 date, so the yesterday/today stuff got squirrelly. Oh, well.

Layout progress? And Annie's little flipbooks

Layout

I spent the weekend working away on the layout, and late this week will probably admit that Ethnic Knitting Discovery (EK1) is a 176-page book. While there are things I can do about that (cut material; decrease the type size; decrease the size of the charts; decrease the sizes of the photos and other illustrations; change the margins throughout), there's nothing I'm willing to do. Each of the modifications feels like a betrayal of what the book wants to be.

Why 176? My original specifications call for a 160-page book, which is five 32-page signatures . . . nice and efficient to run on an offset press. That's how this book will be printed. If I add another half-signature (16 pages), I end up with 176. Sixteens aren't as efficient as 32-pagers, but they're an acceptable compromise. I don't need an additional full 32 pages to make the book work. And it does really seem to want to be 176 pages.

Well, I haven't bowed to reality yet, but I see the strong possibility peeking around the corner. The irony is that I have two completely blank pages in the back half of the book, but they're in the wrong places to be helpful. And there are only two; I still need ten. In order to make the layout look like the book's all of a piece (without odd blanks, gaps, disjunctures, or places where text and related images are not adjacent to each other), I'll need to invent some bonus artistic or technical material that will fit in those locations. Creative problem-solving, one opportunity after another. . . . The good part is that whatever I do to resolve these questions will most likely make the book an even better thing for knitters. . . .

**

What I did today instead of layout

Today I did nothing on the layout. Instead, I moved about 2000 pounds of books, exactly 1044 pounds of which will be shipped tomorrow to the distributor's warehouse in Pennsylvania.

**

Annie Modesitt's flipbooks

In my spare time, I have been admiring Annie Modesitt's nifty new playful use of an old-fashioned book-based technology.

Remember flipbooks? Apparently they've been around since 1868, and they're being rediscovered and used in new ways. You can get them made to order or you can play with making your own.

Annie Modesitt, one of the most creative souls on the planet (who happens to be a knitter), has put together a series of little flip books that demonstrate knitting techniques. Each book contains a logical pair of techniques. You can view one by holding the book with its front cover facing you and flipping front to back and the other by turning the book so its back cover is up and flipping in the other direction.

The pairs I'm looking at here are:

• Knit stitch, combination (or Eastern) style (flip from front) and Western style (flip from back)
• Purl stitch, same
• Right- and left-slanting decreases, set up so the books show you both combination/Eastern and Western styles of working paired decreases
• "Grandma" knit and purl increases

In general, knitters' options for learning new techniques involve in-person tutorials (not always available), sequences of critical-moments snapshots (whether photographed or drawn), or videos that require electricity (on computer or television). Annie's own site has alternative tools for teaching some of the same techniques she presents in her flipbooks.

These little flipbooks fit in a knitting bag or pocket. They can be always handy. They do show the techniques amazingly well. I'd rather watch a flipbook produce stitches-in-motion than most other imagery this low-tech animation device has been used for.

Like Annie's other work, the flipbooks celebrate the fact that knitting is as individual as the knitter holding the yarn and needles. They can help knitters develop familiarity and comfort with stitch-mount variations, which I always think is an excellent idea. Annie's made creative use of the format and she's selected good types of techniques to demo and has paired them effectively.

The biggest appeal for me, I think, is that they're friendly. I'm simply amused by playing with them (the brain-numb layout drone can handle—nay, craves—simple amusement). Stitch mount is a constant theme in these flipbooks—and a lot of Annie's work, for that matter. Stitch mount can be intimidating and confusing—until you "get" it, at which point, like riding a bike, it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

To demonstrate stitch-mount variations of knitting techniques by using a retro technology that appeals to the kid in everyone seems like a really bright idea.

P.S. My mid-20s daughter likes the flipbooks, too. She's more in line with the demographic of likely users of these tools. She wanted (and got from me) clarification of the way the decreases book has been set up to show stitch-mount changes for the different knitting styles. The type on the back covers explains which stitch maneuver is demonstrated by flipping the book in each direction. Because back-cover copy is normally limited to marketing, we haven't been "trained" to look there for instructions!

**

Reading

Also, in the non-sleeping parts of the middle of the night, I finished reading a fine novel called Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer. I'm very picky about novels. I find it easier to locate quick, relaxing fiction than novels that contain characters and a world that I regret leaving at the last page. Pocketful of Names is one of those rare ones. I read a library copy, but I'll be buying my own, too. It says something when you don't mind a bit of insomnia because you think, "Oh! I have that wonderful book to read!"

Here are three passages I flagged as I read, along with the characters to whom the thoughts are attributed:

• “She'd read somewhere that there were three things worth doing in life: making something new, caring for something old, and finding something lost.” (Hannah Bryant, mid-30s solitary artist; page 150) (Someone at the Denver Public Library likes this book, too.)
• “Hope, faith, optimism: the only things left to us once knowledge and research and discovery have reached their limit on any particular day.” (Everett Eaton, an elderly lobsterman; page 342)
• “If you're confident you can make some art, maybe it's not art. If it's going to be art, it should begin in uncertainty, shouldn't it?” (Tom Eaton, Everett's mid-30s son; page 404)

The novel takes place in Maine, very near the place my friend Deborah Pulliam made her home.

The book was published by Graywolf Press, which Scott Walker started up during the years when I (and a bunch of good folks) lived in Port Townsend, Washington. A lot of fine independent publishing has grown from roots planted then. Graywolf Press is now in Minneapolis and Scott Walker is in Massachusetts at The Orion Society. Tom Jay, also a participant at that time and place, was one of the resource people at the Sitka Symposium a couple of weeks ago.

**

Time for bed. I've got a bunch of books to move, and more pages to lay out, tomorrow morning.

Doodle knitting

Some people doodle with pen and ink. When I pick up those tools, I actively sketch some nearby object or person or scene—not doodling, which I think of as having busy fingers and an almost disengaged brain.

I doodle with yarn. Often my doodles end up serving useful purposes, but the time when I’m actually doing the stitching has the mental flavor of putting one line after another without much investment in the process.

While I’m working on the incredibly thought-absorbing and detailed work of final layout for Ethnic Knitting Discovery, my knitting needs to be at the doodle level. All of my brain cells are occupied elsewhere.

That’s the reason why, although I’ve been tagged by my friend Susan for an “Eight Random Things” meme and would like to play, I won’t be thinking about eight random things or other people to tag until I’ve got the layout done. Anyone who has not been tagged for this one and wants to be (or has been and wants to have another go), let me know. It’ll be next week before I get around to this. Assuming I actually get it done, it will also be my first meme participation.

It’s amazing I’m writing a post at all. Except where points and picas are concerned (those are the measurement systems for layout), today I can't think as far as the number eight (much less twice: for items and for tagging). I think I need a break from the layout but I still have no undrained brain cells.

(I did finish the proofreading for High IQ Kids yesterday and sent off the marked pages today. That was an extra 362-page project to fit into the week. The book looks good. I'm especially pleased with the open design Free Spirit managed for the layout despite the magnitude of the project. There were 508 manuscript pages and 125,000 words. The finished product is nicely readable. However, the references needed a lot of additional attention. The goal was "excellence, not perfection," so the job's complete and I retain a slim grip on sanity.)

The goal on this layout pass of EK1 (shorthand for Ethnic Knitting Discovery) is to get the book within the planned and announced 160 pages. The rough layout was 170 when I started this go-through. As I reached page 33, the layout was two pages longer. Sigh. By the time I hit 60-something, it was four pages shorter. Yay! Now I’m on page 102 and the total is still 170 and I still have 10 pages to condense out of it. Sigh. As I get into the back half of the book, I have fewer pages to work with, which makes my goal of reaching 160 increasingly less likely. Layout is weird, though. I might make it happen.

Most publishers, as I’ve noted in previous posts, would cut material. That's undoubtedly wise. I’d rather not. I like what’s planned to be in this book and don’t want to cut a project, which is basically the only way to get 10 pages out . . . other than layout magic.

If I add pages to accommodate my desire not to cut content, the printer will make more money and the author and publisher will make less. I can’t just raise the price by 10 percent to cover the extra printing and paper costs. The price has already been set. Because of the way book distribution works these days, both price and page count had to be announced a good seven months ago and advance orders are being placed on the basis of that information. The buyers don’t mind if you add pages (I've done it before). They may object if you cut pages. Like most of us, they don't mind getting more for their money.

Even now there’s no way to tell exactly what will happen with the layout in the last half of the book, in large part because we don't have about eight of the final illustrations—and illustrations make a huge difference to layout. So I’m forging on, solving problems as I get to them and hoping for a not-so-small (exactly 10-page) page-count miracle.

My modus operandi: What is the ONE thing that I can work on at THIS MOMENT that will make the most difference to all my projects in the long run?

The current, immediate problem that I’ve been punting since last fall (because it hadn't reached the top of the list of answers to that question until today) is that I don’t understand the reference drawings for one of the techniques in EK1. Thus we don’t have final drawings.

This connects to my current doodle knitting, which consists of:

1. My blue socks from Colorjoy! LynnH’s hand-dyed TipToe sock yarn. These are coming into the home stretch. They are simple socks with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ nifty short-row heels and toes, knitted in a yarn that continues to delight me with every stitch.
2. Larger swatches for two of the pages of Ethnic Knitting Discovery. I want the scans of actual fabric to match the charts and there aren't quite enough repeats in the swatches that I have. I’ll need to block these tidbits, but they’re completed.
3. Another pair of socks in Opal 4-ply, a ball of which I picked up at Knitting With Class in Sitka, Alaska. (That link comes from Rosemary Brock's amazing Textile Links pages. Long-lived and astonishingly useful. I miss Rosemary from my Spin-Off days!) I started more socks because my first pair of LynnH socks is at the k2/p2 stage and I figured I could get some toes done in bits of time that would accommodate the amount of counting attention required for short-row maneuvers (I do have another ball of LynnH's yarn, but I'm saving it . . . ). These socks will be at the totally brainless level by the time my LynnH socks are finished, so I'll still have an autopilot project handy. I’ve never knitted with Opal before. I’ve never knitted with most sock-specific yarns, because I started knitting socks before there were many yarns available that were intended for making socks. Lots of the new sock yarns seem to be Merino-based, which seems odd to me because I can’t imagine them lasting very long on my feet. Merino = nice sweater. Socks = wool from breeds with sturdier fiber. Kristi tells me the Opal socks should last nicely. She also tells me that the Interweave special issue on felt will not be on the newsstand until July 17, which has saved me from looking for it sooner.
4. A sample of two-color knitting so I can ask my daughter to take photos of my hands as references for two drawings for Ethnic Knitting Discovery that are still missing. The page in the middle of the photo is the page whose layout I can't complete until I resolve this. I will skip over it and work on later pages, although they can't be truly worked up until I get this segment set. Building a book is like building a brick house. Each layer rests on the previous one. I will say it's a whole lot easier to design a straight text book with no critical illustrations or technical information!
5. The weird blue thing (unnumbered) is a yarn bra, a gift from inexplicably blogless Kris. I'm wondering if I can use one to simplify the yarn management for my sock-knitting technique (one sock from the inside of the ball, one from the outside, knit until they meet in the middle). Dunno yet.

Background 1: The printer gets paid before the house gets repainted. It’s a matter of priorities, although very soon the house-painting needs to be bumped up the priority list somehow. The need has been at "critical" for two years already.

Background 2: When I have to choose between cutting material and giving future readers of a book the best experience possible, I go with the readers.

Quote of the day:

    "Tension is a prerequisite for creative living." Agnes Meyer

Tension is also required for knitting, doodle-type or more elaborate. And, as I keep learning, it is also an unavoidable component of independent publishing.

(The quote comes from a page-per-day calendar called Wild Words for Wild Women. My niece started us on this calendar several years ago by giving us one for Christmas. It's become a regular part of our lives: the daily page gets ripped from the pad and tucked into the edge of the bathroom mirror every morning. About one out of ten is a true keeper, and the rest are at least amusing or odd. The calendar doesn't give much background on quotees. It was fun to do a quick look-up on Agnes Meyer and discover who she was.)

• Reading for brains that are preoccupied with layout but need a break: Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich.
• Movie for same type of brains that also need respite from 95-degree heat (F; = 35 degrees C): Ratatouille, matinee.

Okay, enough escape. Back to the pages.

Weekend work

Weekdays tend to be broken up with interruptions. On weekends, there's always the illusion—and sometimes the actuality—that I will get a solid chunk of work done.

I returned from Sitka so late Tuesday night it was almost Wednesday morning. I spent Wednesday mostly going through and responding to e-mail, postal mail, and voice mail. On Thursday and Friday, among other things, I completed the final few drawings that I'm doing for Ethnic Knitting Discovery (this is turning out to be a three-illustrator book, because of complexities and timing issues).

Here's my drawing table. It may look odd, but it works better than (and takes less space and is easier to move and disassemble) than the dedicated drawing table I used to have.

While I was gone, my daughter scanned and adjusted the drawings I'd already done, and as soon as I got the last bits inked she worked them up (scanned and cleaned) and transferred the electronic files to me.

Then it's weekend time, with one minor task (filling a new order for a carton of Arctic Lace . . . reminder to self: order new print run) and two major ones on my desk. The big jobs: proofing the laid-out pages of High IQ Kids, which arrived from the publisher by second-day air on Friday (deadline 7/11, which is quite pleasantly leisurely; the book will be out in September) and completing the page layout for Ethnic Knitting Discovery at least to the level where I can get galleys printed (deadline 3/31/07, and running to catch up).

That's High IQ Kids at the top of the photo and the first full printed-out-and-trimmed set of pages for Ethnic Knitting Discovery across the lower part.

(Aside: The funny-looking object in the middle is a nifty find. Another thing I did this weekend was spend a bunch of time on the phone with tech support for the computer I use for layout. I have two computers at my desk. One handles e-mail and web (the old one) and I use the other for the heavy lifting: layout and image processing and finances. The newer computer began to be so noisy I couldn't make a phone call from my desk, so I finally called. First step was to open the case and clean the fans. Turns out there are three. Turns out compressed air is no longer simple: the office supply stores offered a gas-in-a-can that either had a "bitterant" added so it would not be abused as an inhalant or was lemon-scented. If the stuff could be used as an inhalant, I didn't much want it in my office. I also didn't want the place to reek of lemon, even though I like citrus. One of the folks who works at one of the office supply places pointed out the gizmo above, which cost the same amount as the compressed not-air. It consists of a mini-CO2 cartridge and a case that punctures the top of the cartridge and directs the blast of CO2 where you want it. Does the job. End result of tech support call: they'll send me a replacement for one of the fans. Diagnostic maneuvers were fun for those of us who can sometimes be easily amused. Although they took a while.)

Publishing goes through a lot of paper no matter what choices anyone makes. I work a lot on-screen in order to save paper. There's no way to work and communicate in the contemporary world without environmental impact—the internet might offer the prospect of using less paper, but requires a massive technological infrastructure that consumes energy, too. There are lots of ways to think about energy use; I think the important thing is that we do consider it. And that we do the best work we can, so the results are worth the investment of time and resources.

Nomad Press participates in Green Press Initiative (GPI) and since 2005 has printed all new books on GPI-qualifying paper. This means that the paper contains certain minimum levels and types of recycled content or has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The decision to do this means that we can't use all printers (only those that can supply this type of paper) and that our printing costs are slightly higher than they would be otherwise (in most cases, qualifying paper is more expensive than the current standard paper). It's also one of the reasons (although there are several) that we don't print books with a lot of color illustrations: it's mostly not possible to print four-color books affordably in North America and the overseas printers who do print full-color economically are not yet in the loop for qualifying papers.

So far, we've used qualifying recycled-content papers, from 100% to 30% postconsumer recycled (post-consumer waste, or PCW), depending on what a given printer has available and our budget; most is 100% to 50% PCW. The qualifying papers are also "processed chlorine free" (PCF). The only place I know of that you can currently find out which books are printed on GPI-qualifying paper is Powell's Books. Today there are four books in the Crafts section: three are Nomad Press titles. This fall, we'll have four.

Although PCW/PCF paper is a given, I am hoping to be able to print Ethnic Knitting Discovery with two colors of ink: the final decision will depend on print bids which I won't have for . . . eek . . . six weeks . . . that's very soon . . . but I'm doing the layout as if two-color printing will be affordable. The second color would help clarify the content and it would be pretty!

Anyway, Ethnic Knitting Discovery is far enough along now that I can't work entirely on-screen and need to start making printouts. And in some cases, like now, taking the paper trimmer to the pages so I can start getting a better idea of how they'll look when they're printed for real.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery has been planned as a 160-page book. I set that page count after doing the preliminary layout, so I know it's a reasonable number to fit the material. (Many publishers set a page count and then make the material fit; working the other way around is one of the ways in which I'm swimming against the current publishing flow.) Right now, the layout file contains 170 pages, which means that by the time we really go to press I need to condense by 10 pages. I have at least 10 blanks scattered throughout the book, but they're not in convenient places because even more important than page count (for me) is the logical arrangement of information for the reader's convenience.

I don't have to hit the magic 160 mark for the galleys. Galleys are printed digitally and don't have to respect offset printing's signature counts (160 pages consists of five 32-page signatures). Digital books can have any page count they want (divisible by 2). However, the closer I can get to 160 now, the more the galleys will resemble the finished book and the less work I'll have to do between galleys and real books (a gap that narrows daily).

Although I have some inconveniently located blanks, I also have pages like the one in the middle above, which currently contains twice as much information as it can accommodate. The yellow-circled bits say things like "check color of arrows" (in case I do get to print it in two colors) and "watch for oversets." The latter means that I've changed the type specifications for some elements. "Overset" means that the type no longer fits in the layout box, which needs to be resized or the entire text won't show up on the page. Fiddly but absolutely essential stuff.

So I begin again from page 1, working to make the flow of information graceful and economical . . . and complete and correct. I've lost track of the number of times I've begun again from page 1 on this book; that's typical for the process.

During the weekend I made good progress. When I turned off the computer last night, I was on page 23. I hadn't "lost" any of the extra pages yet, but the results are feeling good.

Making a book requires visioning and re-visioning the material repeatedly, while keeping track of more details than a brain can wrap itself around all at once. It's good to get to the point where I print pages because I don't have to carry the whole book in my head. I can spread it out and look at it.

If I end this pass through the book without being able to reach the magic 160 count, my fallback position is to add another signature. I'll resist that because it uses more paper, increases per-copy printing and shipping costs, and cuts into the already narrow margins of publishing (most of a book's cover price does not come back to the author and/or publisher; there are a whole lot of middle people between source and reader). But if adding a signature or half-signature is what it takes to make the book right, that's what I'll do. I've done it before.

In another 137 pages I'll have a pretty good idea whether I'll be using Plan A (scheduled count) or Plan B (increase page count). I'm hoping for Plan A. . . . It would be neater in many ways. . . . And it might provide just enough edge to let me afford that two-color printing. . . .