The Independent Stitch

Fresh snow

I'm in the mountains again. When I was here before, about the same time last year, I packed the car full of boxes of fiber, spinning wheel, tools, books, and computer, and worked steadily on the book portion of The Project. I was here when I got the news that the book's scope had suddenly expanded, and I was here when I did core pieces of the work required to accommodate that expansion.

This time is different.

I am once again enormously grateful to have the opportunity to be here. I still have the spinning wheel and tools, but I only have two boxes of fiber, and what I need to do with them is somewhat focused (write a short article) and somewhat exploratory (spin some fibers that I didn't have a chance to work on for the book, to see where they'll lead me).

Mostly I need to do some recovery from the book process (although I still have to read the whole set of pages one more time) and reorient myself and figure out what, of the many possibilities, comes next. I know what I'd like "next" to include. I'm not sure that I can figure out how to put together the practical foundations that will allow that idea to begin progressing.

Anyway, I'm here. And the first thing I need to do is remember that I'm at a higher altitude than usual, and that I have to take that into account.

One reminder comes in the inflation of the packages of rice crackers, which looked perfectly normal at the store when I bought them on my way out of town and looked like this a mere two hours later:

 

By the time I got here, they looked like those air pillows that are used to pack around items that are being shipped. There's enough spare room in the packages now that the crackers can easily leave their protective trays and rattle around inside, turning into cracker pieces. Fortunately, I don't care whether my crackers are whole or fragmented. They taste good with hummus either way.

Yesterday I took Advil, and then toward evening Excedrin—altitude headache. It's funny about altitude reactions: I've had them at 8,000 feet and not had them at 12,000 feet. The trick is just to be aware of what's happening in the moment.

Overnight, we got some fresh snow. Here's the road past the cabin today, looking north:

I took the picture at about 3 in the afternoon. Not exactly heavily traveled.

Here's a picture from the same spot only looking south, at my footprints. That's the driveway to the cabin at the juncture between the light and dark portions of the landscape, and yes there are tire tracks leading out of the driveway and down the road to the south.

One of my compatriots here (we are sharing the quiet space) needed to go to town for three meetings, two today and one tomorrow. We all breathed a sigh of relief when she made it out of the driveway, which is steep. The two of us who stayed were surprised about an hour later to hear footsteps on the deck. Who the heck could it be?

Turns out that our intrepid driver made it about a mile, almost to the top of the road (still over three miles from pavement), before her van got stuck. She couldn't get up the final twenty feet of one-lane road to turn onto the two-lane road that probably had been plowed. (Instructions for traversing this piece of the trip when going to the cabin: "if snowy or icy, it is best to stop at the top of the hill and put it in first gear as you then proceed down the hill.") No cell reception up here, so she walked back, and we phoned around on the land line to find out what her options were.

To make a long story somewhat shorter: she and the van are back here, having scheduled a meeting with a tow truck. Her comment on returning: "They have a lovely winch."

She cancelled all her meetings in town.

She'd had her afternoon walk, so I brought in a few loads of wood for the stove and then took mine. I went up the road, and keeping in mind the altitude and yesterday's headache, I didn't go very far. 

That's my arbitrary turnaround point, up there in the band of sunshine, and my own footsteps going in both directions. The snow isn't deep enough for snowshoes, and it was a pleasant walk.

Then I came back to the cabin and fixed myself a cup of tea (thanks, Meg!) and went back to considering how to re-assemble my life.

Fresh snow, altitude, shifting gears after a major project: all reasons to keep moving, but to do so gently and with awareness.

What I'm reading here (so far):

• Andrew Fleming, St Kilda in the Wider World, a book I've read large chunks of but haven't read sequentially
• Carl Klaus, The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay—Carl Klaus and Robert Scholes taught one of the best seminars I ever took, many years ago, and this is Klaus's new book, which I bought at the Tattered Cover as soon as I knew it existed (not long ago) and have been looking forward to savoring . . . and . . . 
• Jeff Davis, The Journey from the Center to the Page, which I've had on the shelf in two editions and it's time to do more than read one page at a time

I'm also spinning a bit, and I do intend to have an article drafted by the end of the week, and to make digital versions of a bunch of photographs. I've got enough tasks here to keep me busy for months.

But right now, I'm taking it one step at a time.

Next step: Resist my tendency to want to wring even more out of the day, and put myself to bed. Tomorrow there may be more fresh snow, or not. Either way, there is likely to be a fresh day.

Recording a DVD set for Interweave

Not all that long ago, I had lunch with Linda Ligon, founder of Interweave Press and my employer from late 1986 to halfway through 2000. It was October 13, to be precise. We get together a few times a year. Last spring, we collaborated on a road trip (the first road trip we've done since I left Interweave) to visit Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and record some material for the first issue of SpinKnit e-magazine.

The photo of the three folks in red aprons is truly historic. It's probably 25 years old, and I grabbed it off the Spin-Off newsletter site. It shows me, Linda Ligon, and Dale Pettigrew, at one SOAR (Spin-Off Autumn Retreat) or another, figuring out SOMETHING that would make the experience better for the participants. I'm guessing the picture was taken at the first Spin-Off Rendezvous, in Potosi, Missouri, the year we increased the participant numbers from about 125 to 300 and added the marketplace. It's amazing how long-standing the connections from back then have been. Linda was the catalyst for the DVD that's the topic of this post. And I saw Dale most recently a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes when we get together either Linda or I (or both of us!) will be working on a project we can't talk about, which can be kind of amusing: "I'm involved in something really fun, and I can't tell you about it yet." Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, the book written by Nilda Callañaupa that Linda produced, was one of those secret endeavors, up to the point when it was nearly done and I read it and offered some lightweight feedback. The Project I've been engaged in recently was like that for its first couple of years, because I'm working with Storey on it rather than Interweave. Linda knew it was happening, but not initially what it was. Then there comes the time when we can reveal what's been under wraps. Linda's known about The Project for at least the past year, both from me and from people she knows at Storey, and has been a great supporter of this work.

The idea

So in October, after Linda and I had both been off on some adventures, we met up to catch up. Shortly after we parted ways after lunch, Linda called to ask if I'd be interested in working with Interweave to make an instructional DVD about rare-breed wools. We both knew that we'd need to clear the idea with Storey. When we asked folks there, they offered whole-hearted encouragement.

Linda asked if I thought I could be ready to be in the studio by December 3. I figured that could work (more time to prepare is not necessarily a good thing), and I asked a bit about the process and began planning.

Preparation

Linda wanted the focus to be rare breeds of wool. She envisioned the audience as spinners. Those two foundation concepts guided everything that followed.

I met Linda at the studio shortly after our initial conversation, so I could see the environment. We talked a bit about structure.

At Interweave, the DVD-creation process is outlined, but unscripted. You basically make an outline of what you want to talk about, make sure you have all the tools and materials ready (as well as what are called set-ups, which means you've done any work required to expedite the demos), and then you wing it.

Many people I know have survived this experience, and I'd watched a number of their DVDs (and I began to watch more, looking at how they were put together). I took heart from the number of people who had actually done this thing and appeared to have had a good time and produced something well worthwhile.

I went home and worked on what I'd cover, in what units and in which order, and I assembled raw materials to work with (washed them, of course), and put together file boxes to take with me. Yes, I have lots of samples, but I didn't have quantities of clean fleece for the rare breeds that I would use for demo spinning.

Each medium and set of time constraints for any teaching experience requires re-evaluating the material and its presentation. While I've been on TV and radio, doing video for a DVD would be a whole new experience. Not long after Linda floated the idea and I agreed, I had the delightful opportunity to visit with Margaret Stove, whom I hadn't seen in a decade or more, just after she'd been in the studio at Interweave making her own DVD. We talked about a gazillion things, including what it had been like to do the video.

The biggest challenges for me throughout the process came from my decision to at least show/mention/give tips for spinning and using fiber from every wool-growing sheep on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's and Rare Breeds Survival Trust's rare-sheep lists (I skipped the four hair sheep on the ALBC list).

Yet there was no way I could tell an adequate story about rare-breed wools while excluding any of those wool sheep. The contract called for a finished product of between 60 and 90 minutes. I knew I'd have to be exceptionally well organized and concise. I also determined to focus on the ideas and skills that are the most useful to know about when working with rare-breed wools, rather than on general spinning information that's available from other sources. 

The day before

We spent a chunk of December 2 (the day before studio day) moving tools and materials into the basement working space, and pulling samples out of boxes and arranging them so they would be in the right sequence when we needed them.

Here are some of the boxes of samples I took with me:

We used box lids and bakers' trays to organize the samples, so we could move them efficiently into and out of the set.

Here's another set-up area. Lying on top of some of the piled-up groups are maps I got printed out at Kinko's so I could give an overview of each group of breeds. The maps may show up in the finished version as these printouts or as images taken directly from my electronic originals.

We also arranged the set. Linda had gotten enlargements made of a couple of sheep photos to put on the back walls.

In the production area there's a back room (just through the white door on the left in the photo above) that contains chairs, tables, rugs, and other things that might be useful when creating a DVD or doing still photos. We dug in there and chose what rug to use. We found the tiered set of baskets, through which we rotated the fleeces that I was working with (it wasn't just a static display). We talked about the chair I would sit in (the one we actually used came from Linda's house the next day), got a tray table to hold the demo samples, added the Scandinavian booster chair my daughter used when she was a toddler (which I now enlist at home to support my peasant combs), and found the right location for the Lendrum wheel I've been using for most of The Project. My toolbox is that dark shape under the tray table. We sticky-tacked the sheep posters to the walls.

Overall, we considered the colors, textures, and harmony of the elements that would be surrounding me, along with the practicality of their positioning—both for my work and for the cameras, which would be able to catch the action from two different angles plus through close-ups that would be shot with the help of the big mirror hanging from the ceiling, which you can see in the photo above.

The set-up is very simple, but it worked exceptionally well. It involved a combination of useful objects, many of which were familiar and therefore helped me feel comfortable in the environment.

Here's a still shot taken from the video of how our set ended up looking "for real":

The brown sheep in the poster on the left are Soays. The white sheep on the right is a Cotswold. Even in the low-resolution photo shown here, I can tell you that the fiber on the straw mat on the tray table is Rough Fell. There's a smaller photo of Navajo Churro sheep on the other wall. That Navajo Churro was supposed to be reproduced at the same size as the other sheep, but the image file ended up not having enough resolution to be a big picture.

Recording day

I got to the studio at 8:30 on Friday morning, December 3, and we finished tweaking the set-up. The sheep posters got moved to slightly different positions. We decided to use the straw mats to hold most of the demo samples.

Fortunately, there was some flexibility in the finished length. I was very concerned about my ability to say anything meaningful about 38 breeds in the initially planned one-disk presentation. Garrett (DVD production director) and Linda (creative instigator) said, "Just do what you need to do, and we'll make it work." Whew. I had arranged the overall plan to group breeds by their similarities, but they all at least make cameo appearances.

We started recording somewhere between 9:30 and 10. We finished the camera work by about 3:30 p.m. Because there were set-up shifts to cover 38 breeds, at least half the time was off-camera, changing samples and piling up the used components, to be re-filed in my boxes later. We did take a lunch break. It was good to get outside, to walk across the street to the cafe, to lower the intensity level for a bit.

No script. No visible notes, except the intro. I hope I did not misspeak more than the one instance I know about. (I referred to one fleece from 40 years ago as red Karakul, when I remembered later it was gray. As I was speaking, I was thinking about how pretty red Karakul is, and the word "red" just came out of my mouth instead of "gray.")

The ending was kind of a surprise to all of us. They asked if I wanted to do a retake, and I said, "No, I don't think so." Which means, except for a couple of times when I halted a segment a few seconds in so I could start again and launch it more smoothly, everything in this project was a first take: me, wools, tools, extemporaneous.

The finished version is two disks and 120 minutes. 

It's honest and from the heart. Whatever the cameras caught, as long as those are the baselines, I can live with.

Once we were done with the recording, I still had to pack everything up so I could transport it home again. Linda helped, and we were done by a little before 7 p.m. There were a lot of samples and tools.

Everyone who saw parts of the process said it was really interesting (Linda, Garrett, Amy, Caroline, possibly some other folks briefly passing through . . . I was very focused on Doing My Job).

I have no perspective on it at all. And I don't get to see what we did until it's all done and published. That's probably just as well.

___

Last week's Spin-Off Newsletter gives the official story of Handspinning Rare Wools. Rumor has it the finished version will be out in a few weeks (February 2011).

Teaching workshops about wool at The Spinning Loft

Okay. The maps for the book are due by overnight delivery in 2.5 hours. I need be ready to check the maps. Deadlines are coming closer together. The book is scheduled to go to press on February 19 and to ship (not from the printer, but into people's hands) on May 4.

There's a story about the maps, of course. It's also a little convoluted, of course.

I was asked to prepare the material for the maps a number of months ago. I spent a week putting together reference information and shipped it off. Then the rest of the book's material filled up the inside pages, including extra signatures. During photography, multiple phone calls and e-mails went back and forth between the staff in the studio and the editorial and budget folks back in the office, and the book got bigger. A couple of times.

Yet in the end, even with the additional pages, there was no room for the maps.

"Oh, well," I said, and put together decent-looking versions of a few of them to use when we filmed the DVD. I haven't seen the DVD so I don't know whether they'll show up as the printouts I was holding when I talked about them or whether they've been inserted as separate images. I gave the production team the Illustrator files, so it could be either.

I also used some of my prettied-up versions when I taught at The Spinning Loft in Michigan in November.

Last week, however, the folks at Storey apparently spent 36 hours contemplating and discussing what to do with the maps, because they didn't want to give up on them.

Solution: They'll be printed on the endpapers. It's a great idea and the perfect location. Aesthetically pleasing, easy to locate when readers want to refer to them, and hey, I'm all for making good use of every page that can be printed.

Thus I need to check the artwork (which will be much more lovely than mine).

QUICK! I need to finish this blog post! I started it shortly after I finished teaching the workshops. That was in November.

____

The shop: The Spinning Loft

In November, I flew into Detroit to teach for an evening and two full days at The Spinning Loft, which is a wonderful, unusual shop owned by Beth Smith with the indispensable help of her adult daughter Chelsea (who's discovered fiber dyeing and is really good at it).

Beth's the one with the Wall of Wool. In addition to stocking masses of prepared fibers (natural colors and custom dyed), she collects fleeces and lets spinners buy sampling (or larger) quantities of many varieties of grease wool. The website only hints at the possibilities; if you want something, ask. She also makes up sample packs, so people can get to know a variety of fibers without a huge investment in both time and money to locate and acquire the supplies.

Beth also often has gorgeous textiles made by the Peruvian spinners, weavers, and knitters of CTTC, the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. Wow.

(Fancy new CTTC website; read in Spanish or click at the bottom right for English. Older, more pedestrian, but also informative website.)

Beth sponsors amazing workshops. They are informal and lively, and the instructors are treated very well. Her youngest daughter, Maggie, a spinner herself who had recently traveled to Peru with Beth to help with international textile dialogue, came to one of the sessions. Her youngest child, Ryan, is a generous livewire who politely and quietly made sure that I had a candy on my pillow every evening when I went to bed. Chelsea kept the rest of the business rolling so Beth could focus on making the workshop participants and instructors comfortable. It all went beautifully.

The space and the participants

The Spinning Loft recently moved from its original space into a new, two-room shop. The back room can be (and was) filled up with a workshop while its normal life goes on up front. The Wall of Wool is at the front of this back room, so we had ready access to its inspiration and walk-in customers could also get to it without disturbing us. 

We had a terrific and diverse group of participants, at a variety of skill levels. The classes I teach require basic spinning proficiencies (ability to spin and ply on wheel or spindle or both), but nothing special. We experiment a lot. And, as it turns out, I talk a lot. I keep trying to be quiet and let people experience the fibers, but then I think of things I want to share about what I'm seeing in the material we're working with.

I'm smiling right now, thinking of the terrific people who gathered in that room, with different backgrounds and personalities and approaches to spinning, and how much I enjoyed spending time with them. I'd like to get together over tea with each person and talk more.

In addition to Beth, I knew one person from my previous work life (Jillian Moreno is a former co-worker whom I hadn't seen since Interweave days) and had met Ellen Bloomfield (@ellenspn) through the internet but not in person, and had e-mailed extensively with Sasha Torres, who interviewed me for her SpinDoctor podcast on the afternoon before we got the workshops rolling. I'm basically an introvert, and all of the folks in the room helped me feel at home and comfortable. Then there was all that wool, of course. . . .

And the lovely spinning wheels. Several folks had really cool cup holders on their spinning wheels. Most amazing—and practical, especially in a crowded room . . . and what spinning room, even with one person in it, isn't a bit crowded with fibers and tools?

The weekend program

Beth set up the weekend so people could register for the parts separately or as a sequence. Almost everyone signed up for the whole weekend. Because of commitments in other parts of her life, my friend Lynn (ColorJoy . . . I had met her in person at Sock Summit) was only able to come on Friday evening for the introductory talk, and Jillian had a conflict and couldn't come then but arrived Saturday morning ready to meet new fibers. Otherwise, everyone set up their wheels and stayed throughout. This was super, because they could compare the categories, instead of just experiencing one or another of them. But I liked that they had the choice.

Beth set up the categories she wanted me to cover and arranged the framework so it would work with the shop's resources and people. That means space, experience levels of likely participants, and travel requirements. A number of people came quite a distance to be part of this experience, and that needed to be taken into account in the schedule.

Once she set up the parameters, I got to play with her concepts, which was fun.

Friday evening: Talk about wool in general

Beth scheduled Friday evening for a three-hour session. I figured (and I told people!) I'd have about an hour's worth of words and then we'd just chat about ideas I'd brought up. Ha. I managed to talk for most of the three hours, although I invited questions and interruptions throughout so we had some of the back-and-forth that I love.

There's a lot to be said about wool in general: setting up the basic ideas about how amazing it is and what things are common to all wools. Once you get into looking at the variety of wools (and we had a diverse array ahead of us), it's easy to lose track of the commonalities.

Saturday morning: Primitive wools

The first question to be considered here is what the heck is a primitive wool? There's no easy answer to that question, and some time after I've thought about it for a few more years I may write about that, but I proposed a working definition and we began to experience some wools that could be, and often are, called primitive—they are very different from Merino, the quintessential non-primitive wool.

Beyond my introductory comments and handouts, we had about 45 minutes for each  sample breed in each session. That's enough to play around, but not enough to do more than open the questions. Folks' sample packets gave them enough clean fiber to use in class and to take home and experiment some more.

In this session, we got these wools to play with: Karakul, Shetland, Scottish Blackface, and Navajo Churro. (I'm linking to Valerie's lovely blog entries about her after-workshop spinning at Fiberewetopia . . . a great name. . . .)

 ** The maps just arrived, an hour and a half early. That's good, but it also means I need to abbreviate a little or this post will go unposted even longer. **

Saturday afternoon: Down wools

LOTS of wools are described as "Down wools" or as "Down-like." So many that if you start reading books on fiber you begin to wonder where the category begins and where it ends. When I was researching the book, I decided to set a baseline and figure out how to make this category less wobbly. I managed, by focusing on the six core, indisputable, historically based Down breeds (from a particular geographic region of southern England). They are Dorset Down, Hampshire Down, Oxford Down, Shropshire, Southdown, and Suffolk.

Categorizing breeds is a matter for endless debate, during which a lot of qualities of wool, as well as some history, can be taken into account. The point is not to categorize definitively but to understand more about the universe of wools. So that's what we did.

There are reasons to call other wools "Down-like," and we made yarn from very different types of wools as we considered their similarities and differences.

We experienced a core Down breed and some possible "Down-like" breeds during this afternoon: Suffolk (the baseline), Dorset Horn, Black Welsh Mountain, American Tunis, and Border Cheviot. The Black Welsh Mountain that Beth obtained for this class was quite Down-like. Not all wool from that breed is. (Dorset Horn, Black Welsh Mountain, and American Tunis are listed as rare by ALBC or RBST.)

Sunday morning: Longwools

Ah, the longwools. Beth is especially fond of longwools (and so am I). There are the classic British longwools, and then there are other longwools. Shiny, with extended staple lengths, and smooth profiles. We talked a lot about wool strengths and their appropriate applications, and what does (and doesn't) make for itchy wool fabrics.

For spinning, we had lovely samples of Romney, Border Leicester, Lincoln, and Coopworth. (Lincoln is rare.)

Sunday afternoon: Fine wools

Fine wools are good to have last, since they require some warming-up to spin comfortably. It's also good to have your fingers sensitized to different fiber qualities, so you can appreciate more subtle distinctions.

Beth did a fantastic job of arranging for us to have an array of both textures and colors to experience among the fine wools: Merino, Cormo, Corriedale, and CVM. (CVM is rare.)

It was just grand. Thanks to Beth for instigating and hosting, to Chelsea for managing the front end of the shop, and to the delightful folks who joined our wool party.

___

And now I need to return to my next irregularly scheduled interruption.

 

___

More teaching

May 2011: If all goes according to plan, I'll be teaching a 1.5-day workshop on rare-breed wools at the Conference of California Handweavers.

October 2011: Planning is in process for a 3-day workshop, a 1-day class, and four half-day retreat sessions, all on rare-breed wools, at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat in Manchester, New Hampshire. SOAR scholarship application information has been posted and the deadline is February 8, 2011.

Summer 2012: Discussions are underway about some workshops and classes in Canada. What we'll cover hasn't been determined yet. Thanks to Sue Meissner and Linda Cunningham for strong nudging in this direction.

Thanks to Beth for kicking this all off. And for, with Jennifer Heverly of Spirit Trail Fiberworks, providing the fiber-gathering, preparing, and packaging support without which these events couldn't happen. More notes about Jennifer coming in future posts.

 

Still proofing, and have still been working on the Cheviots

I have two blog posts partly written that I've been trying to find time to finish—I've enjoyed getting them started, and hope you will enjoy reading them when I can finally post them! Yet it's been a whirlwind around here, and blogging is my "treat" that I haven't had time to indulge in.

Mostly I've been proofreading pages. We had first pages. Those went back to the publisher. Now we have second pages, which arrived just before Christmas, and have to be shipped back Thursday evening for overnight delivery. On every job related to this book, I notice how large it is. Each time, when I reach the end of the section on sheep, it feels like I have completed whatever task it is for a huge project (and I've done a lot of huge projects, so I know how that feels) . . . and then I realize there is the next section, on all the other animals, yet to be done.

On this proofing pass, I'm almost to the end of the sheep. It's going to be a long couple of days. I'm blogging right now before I'm really awake. Maybe I won't notice that I should be proofing already.

However, things are progressing. Yesterday we got the schedule for the rest of the production cycle. At this point in publishing, the schedule begins to be more and more intense and unable to be fudged by a day or two. We will have ONE more review of the pages (that's three sets of page reviews—one more than usual—and three are absolutely necessary on this book).

Although I love pictures, I'm not sure I can come up with one for this post. Yes, I can. These are first pages, but believe me, second pages look exactly the same from this distance.

In other book-related news:

The BIG news is that it's available for pre-order. Check with your independent supplier or your favorite source. Preorders are available from IndieBound, Powell's, Amazon (I can pull it up on Amazon in Canada and the UK and Germany and Japan, but not the U.S.), as well as Barnes and Noble, and Border's. (In my role as publisher of other titles, Border's has been providing some complications to be dealt with lately.)

(I note as I'm pulling links that I'm not listed as an author of the book on most sites, except Amazon Germany and Amazon Japan, and that I can't find the book by any means, including ISBN, on Amazon US. These are metadata problems, and can be fixed . . . I need to go tell someone at Storey . . . but the fix will never be fast or complete. Again, that's the way it just is.)

There are some sample pages available online. The excerpt shows what's called a blad, which stands for Book Layout And Design. The contents of blads are selected for use as a preview tool within the bookselling trade and if you, as a potential reader, want a hint of the content . . . well, it only shows one aspect of the book (yes, a dominant aspect, but still). There's lots more depth to what's actually between those covers.

The table of contents really covers four pages, not two. (I love that photo at top right, which is from Solitude Wool . . . we knew what we wanted, and bless them, they had exactly the right image! It's a Clun Forest sheep, and their Clun Forest/alpaca yarn in some fingerless mitts. The bottom photo is a Devon and Cornwall ewe and lamb, and is another of my favorites. I should be able to remember what the middle yarn is, but right now I don't and I don't have time to check. Oh, yeah: Lincoln Longwool.)

The next spread shows the start of a family treatment, for the Blackfaced Mountain family. We have an unusual arrangement for the breeds and animals, because I wanted (still do, and yes, the book does it!) to be able to compare related types of wools. It took Carol Ekarius and me quite a while to work out what groups to use, what would be in them, and what to do with the breeds that didn't fit in groups. 

Next we have three breeds' individual treatments: Suffolk, Derbyshire Gritstone, and Hebridean. What's confusing about a blad is that it need not have ANY relationship to the sequence of the book's content. It's supposed to look pretty and make booksellers go, "Yeah, looks good, I'll order a carton and see how it does," not to make sense. Only one of these is a Blackfaced Mountain breed (Derbyshire Gritstone). Suffolk is a Down breed, and Hebridean is a Northern European Short-tailed one. However, you can see the type of treatment (unproofread!) that the breeds are getting (some breeds have more pages).

What you can't see is all the background information, which is extensive. Or, of course, any critters other than a small handful of sheep.

We have pricing and an ISBN. The ISBN is 9781603427111. The US price for this 448-page, full-color, massive book is $35. HARDCOVER. I'm both pleased and stunned. A reasonable price has been part of Storey's concept all along. I figure I'll make $X on royalties anyway (books are always huge gambles for the authors). I can either make $X because we sell a small number of high-priced copies, or I can make $X by selling a large number of reasonably priced copies. Book pricing and selling isn't that simple, but hey, I'm really pleased that I could actually afford to buy this book {grin}.

(Canadians, the CDN pricing is not under Storey's control—I've checked! and Storey has registered their concerns with the price-setting entities for a couple of years, to no avail—yet some online sellers can offer discounts that bring the pricing into appropriate parity with US sources. . . . This is unfair to independents, we know, but it's not something mere humans at our level can do anything about.)

There are rumblings about a special edition, too, with some extras, but I have no information yet about the realities of that.

Release date is planned for May 4, 2011.

And now I need to get back to proofing. As with all blog posts, I thought this would be a quick job and . . . well, now I have to let Storey know about the metadata before I can turn over the next page and see what crazy typos it contains. The Cheviot information we cleared up for first pages isn't in this version (a reason for "third pages"). Although my blog post on the Cheviot confusions just got found by someone who e-mailed us new, useful details on the topic!

1. Metadata makes me crazy.

2. I love the people I connect with through this blog.

More soon. I trust.

Where does the time go? I was supposed to be through ten pages by now.

Gad. I just found a HUGE typo. The errors in display type are easiest to miss. Somehow the Devon and Cornwall Longwool's PRIMARY header has turned the breed into the Cornwall and Devon Longwool. And I'd already proofed that page on this pass.

I just checked, and the header was correct on first pages. Someone "corrected" it between then and now to an incorrect name. This is when you, as the proofreading author, feel like you've dropped through the rabbit hole and the Red Queen is yelling "off with her head!"

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Other quick news:

The DVD is at rough cut stage and is due out in February.

Assuming registrations come in, I should be teaching at CNCH in May.

I am hoping to be at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival (just being at Maryland, not teaching).

I've been asked to teach at SOAR in October. No contract yet, but we're working on the very complicated logistics of getting fiber.

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While we're all waiting for the book, go listen to Sasha's SpinDoctor podcast about it, if you haven't already. She's running a cool contest.