The Independent Stitch

Certificate of excellence, part 1

A question from Meg Caulmare (whom it looks like I will finally get to meet this year!):

I keep meaning to ask you if you have already earned the COE in handspinning. If not, is your work with rare breeds a base for that (which you would, of course, do in your spare time)?

COE stands for Certificate of Excellence, and she's referring to an extensive self-study program in handspinning skills devised and administered by the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA). 

Meg suggested that I could either answer privately or in the blog. The temptation is to drop her a quick e-mail, but I think it's a legitimate question. It will take three posts to answer in stages.

I have not earned a COE in handspinning, nor a certificate in any other textile craft. While my work with rare breeds might be a base for the focused study required as the final stage of the COE process, I won't be traveling that road in the foreseeable future. As Meg suggests, this choice concerns how I use my so-called spare time. While I do have time and I constantly consider how best to invest it, I can't say that any of my hours (or minutes) qualifies as "spare" {wry grin}. But there are deeper issues here, and a lot of history.

The thought of participating in a certificate-focused program has certainly crossed my mind several times, beginning in the 1970s, shortly after I began to weave for real, when I became aware of the Handweavers Guild of America's Certificate of Excellence program in handweaving, and then again when HGA started to formulate the criteria for the now well-established COE program in handspinning.

Thirty-five-plus years ago, I was spinning and exploring on my own, and with a group of friends. We gathered in my living room almost every Tuesday night and figured out among ourselves how to spin. We did not have access to classes, workshops, or readily available sources for tools or prepared—much less dyed and prepared!—fibers. Our guides were such books as Elsie Davenport's Your Handspinning (a quietly delightful piece of work, now almost completely overlooked) and Marilyn Kluger's The Joy of Spinning, one for techniques and the other for spirit. Our primary suppliers were a handful of mail-order companies. We placed a wholesale-quantity order with Ashford in New Zealand for a dozen spinning wheel kits, which was the easiest way at the time to get a wheel. We made our way forward through a lot of experimentation.

My copy of Marilyn Kluger's book appears to have been lost in the flood that hit this area in 1997. It destroyed most of my textile library, and my Glimakra loom. I'm very pleased that Elsie Davenport's book survived. I've been able to replace a number of the items destroyed by the flood, but The Joy of Spinning is not on my bookshelf right now so I can't take its photo.

In 1977, when an ad for the first (annual) issue of Spin-Off magazine appeared somewhere, probably in Interweave magazine (which I don't think had yet become Handwoven, although I've been digging in enough boxes that I don't think I'll check that fact right now), I immediately ordered it—oh, the wonder when it arrived in the mail! A magazine dedicated to this craft we had rediscovered! I read it cover to cover. I couldn't even have begun to imagine that only a decade later I would assume responsibility for editing the magazine, a role I would fill for forty-nine issues' worth of content.

 

The value of pursuing a certificate seems to me to be devoting one's energy and time to a systematic and careful exploration of an area of interest, of stretching one's capabilities and experiments beyond what one would naturally pursue, and of then putting together materials that represent the studies and having the presentation of words and samples evaluated by other knowledgeable folks.

My work has allowed me to do this in many respects. In other significant ways, my work has channeled my energy into contributing to the spinning community (as well as the general textile and publishing communities) in ways other than those provided by investing my time in earning a certificate.

To be continued in part 2.

Proofing doesn't go on forever (or does it?)

When I started writing this post on February 25, I had recently finished reading the text pages for The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook for the third time. Co-author Carol Ekarius and I have been trading the full-read responsibility baton like relay team members as we have gone through these final pre-press checks. It's kept us both fresher for the task than we otherwise would be.

The second review cycle occurred over the December holidays and I had to travel with the large pile of 11x17-inch pages, so I built them a box, using the cardboard from the UPS mailer in which they were delivered. When it came time to send the pages back to the publisher, I couldn't find a large enough return-shipping box in my stack of shipping supplies. This was surprising, because I have an inconveniently large collection of shipping supplies. (I also had neither one of the supplied containers from the publisher's preferred overnight service, nor time to go get one.) So I taped closed my custom-made box and generated the label for its overnight delivery.

It figures, then, that the third set of pages would arrive when I had to travel again. So I built another box. Fortunately, it takes less time to build a box than it does to go to the office supplies store and discover that they don't have anything that will do the job, so I just skipped that errand and enjoyed the pleasant work of recycling what I had on hand.

Thus I carried the pages with me safely and was able to spend my "free" time at a wonderful conference in a beautiful location finishing up the proofing of the text. This time the pages had few enough changes that I could send feedback in an e-mail, so I didn't have to return the set of pages and I still have the copy here (along with my new box). It's kind of nice to have a physical representation of the work we've done, although if the past gives clues to the future then bound books are likely to be even better than the cumbersome proof pages.

I got to enjoy the conference (that's what I was there for), but I didn't get to take any walks in the beautiful forest until I'd met my deadline. I normally walk at least twice a day. At the end of a production cycle, though, every minute counts. (Yes, I still did my yoga. That's necessary for basic functioning, mental and physical.)

"Are we there yet?"

Nope.

___

Next we needed to review the acknowledgments. Carol did the heavy lifting on this one using the files we had both maintained throughout the years of writing, and then I reviewed and tweaked before we turned it in.

"Are we there yet?"

Nope.

___

While this was going on, we were responding to a flurry of e-mails, which felt at times like a four- or more-sided ping-pong game, about photos, permissions, rights, and credits. For some photos we'd planned to use, the photographer was not responding to permissions inquiries. For others, the cost of the rights turned out to be too high. The photo budget for this book is generous but not unbounded.

On one representative morning, here's a sampling of the types of e-mails that rushed back and forth between the authors, the photo editor, and the managing editor (without our responses, which your imagination can fill in):

• The stock agency for our {breed} sheep photo is not getting back to us for contracting. How about this one?
• Great, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I think we have all of the high res now, so there shouldn't be any more nasty surprises.
• Do you have 2 {non-sheep animal} favorites from {stock photo source} that could replace the 2 photos currently in the pages?
• Thanks for tracking those down, Deb and Carol! Here are the two that I think will work best in the layout: {A and B}
• {another animal} Hopefully the last request....! Please let us know your favorites.

And on the same day from another editor. . . .

• Hello – this is just a heads-up that hopefully sometime tomorrow we’ll send you a pdf of the maps, as they look now. They are coming along but there are a couple of things on which we need your input.

And then:

• Subject: I thought we were done. . . .
  We are having trouble getting in touch with the guy who provided {breed} sheep photos. Will this one work?

"Are we there yet?"

Nope.

___

Ah. The maps. They've been back and forth several times.

Here was an earlier version:

 
We've moved forward by steps. Here's part of a map at another stage. Some of the stars and the type still need to move to slightly different locations:

"Are we there yet?"

Nope. But we're getting closer.

____

Next, in an extraordinary move, the publisher sent me what's called loose color to review.

Whereas the pages we were reviewing earlier were printed in color, they were not generated on equipment that can accurately represent the colors that will come off the press. We went over those pages looking at all the component pieces while ignoring the color reproduction, which was generally too dark, too yellow, or both.

Loose color is provided by the printer who will produce the finished books, and, while it may not be printed on exactly the same equipment and paper that will do the print run, it is carefully calibrated to represent what will show up when the cartons of bound books are unpacked. Loose color consists only of the pages that include critical color (for this book, that is most of the pages). At this point, the person reviewing the proofs—generally NOT the author, who is presumed not to have any knowledge of color printing—ignores all matters of text and pays attention only to the quality of the images. Are the colors clear? accurate? as intended?

For a number of the photos, the in-house staff was not sure whether or not the images of fibers had, perhaps, turned too yellow, or green, or otherwise shifted from what they need to show. They also knew I've spent decades evaluating color proofs. (I've actually done this job through several generations of technology.)

So they sent me, overnight, the box of loose color. This particular batch wasn't especially loose: the photos had been printed on 30x40-inch sheets, with tissue paper interleaved to protect the printed surfaces from damage.

These are not small sheets. That dog weighs about 40 pounds. (She's wishing I'd pick up the blue toy by her nose and play with her.) I had to work on the floor, because I don't have a table big enough.

Because this sort of review is always at the last minute, the goal was for me to peruse, comment, and return the box the same day I got it. So I did, lifting the huge sheets one at a time from the "start" stack to the "end" stack, working to keep the corners of both the printed sheets and the tissue-paper protectors aligned, so I could roll the bunch neatly again when I was done and get it back into the return-shipping box.

 
It's good to have a box of fine-point Sharpies handy for marking necessary changes in the margins of the proofs, in places that don't obscure the photos but are easy to find for the person at the other end who needs to make sense of what's being communicated.

The yellowish cast on some of the images was not a problem: grease locks are yellowish, and in one case the yellow-orange color indicates weather-related damage to the wool, a situation that is discussed in the text.

A few of the fiber photos, though, had an inappropriate greenish cast to them, which can be adjusted in Photoshop by the prepress expert. Sometimes I could describe the necessary shift in printing terms. For one off-color photo, though, I resorted to pulling a tiny lock of the real fiber out of the reference boxes and taping it to the proof.

I wonder if this is a "first" for prepress? Probably yarns to match have been supplied before, but I'm guessing not fiber. The writing on that page is from the folks at the publisher, asking me whether the color here was okay. Obviously, it wasn't.

"Are we there yet?"

Nope. But we're getting really, really close.

____

Finally, on Thursday a week ago, this message:

• Subject: FB has left the building! 
  The pages are in the UPS truck, on their way to the printer!
  Three cheers all around!

"Are we there yet?"

YES!

____

We haven't reached perfection, but we've gotten as close as is humanly possible. There will be things we'll see in the final product that we'd have changed if we'd had infinite time. If we took infinite time, though, there would never be a book.

Once the book entered its final phases, and especially after the message saying it had gone to press, I found myself very, very tired, which is the reason this post has not previously made it onto my blog. Carol and I worked up the proposal for the book in early to mid 2007. Sustained for nearly four years by the research, acquisition, washing, spinning, and writing, I feel, now that it's gone to the printer, both relieved and like I've run into a brick wall at a hundred miles per hour.

This is normal for a major project. Still, acknowledging that it's normal doesn't soften the effects. My job now is to jump-start the rest of my life while treating myself gently, so recovery happens as quickly as possible. That's the lesson to share with anyone else who gets involved with something as big as The Project: one of the necessary phases is R&R.

____

And now to answer the question in the title of this post. On any single project, proofing only seems to go on forever. Once the book goes to press, you've done what you could do. Time to sign off and move forward.

In life, however, I don't think the need for proofreading ever does end.

Proofreading, continued

Yes, it's necessary for me to fully read the pages of the book yet again in their most recent (nearly final) incarnation, although I am finding relatively few spots that need marks for changes (a dramatic contrast from the last set of printouts).

What amazes me, though, is that no matter how many times I've worked with this material (and I lost track long, long ago), as it evolves I continue to find delight in it. Much of my joy now comes from the exquisite layout, and the images of the animals, which are still being collected, tweaked, and revised (although they are about 99.3% complete), and thus are often new to me, in juxtaposition to the elegantly layered compositions featuring the fiber samples.

So I turned a page just now and came across the start of the coverage of Llanwenog sheep. I am utterly charmed by the photo of the animals, and the picture of the fibers and yarns brings back a rush of pleasurable memory from when I prepared and spun the wool . . . in October 2009. Many fibers in The Project both preceded and followed that experience. It's remarkable to me how clearly the tactile and kinesthetic experience stays vivid in my mind and body.

The locks of wool, raw and clean, are also shown on this page in the book, but I didn't catch them in this snapshot.

A friend offered to obtain some Llanwenog wool for me from this spring's shearing. I had to say no; I won't have time to enjoy it for the foreseeable future. Right now, my focus is on obtaining and preparing fibers for the participants in the workshops I'll be teaching. Fortunately, I enjoy sharing the joy—helping people discover the varied fibers for themselves—and the sheep will grow more fleeces in upcoming years. Maybe I'll be able to have one all to myself, with the time to savor its processing, in days to come.

And now, back to the proofing. I'm almost halfway through on this pass.

Reviewing, writing, and proofing

What's been happening around here is this.

1. Review of selected bast-fiber yarns (in this case, linen and hemp, including some blends) for an upcoming issue of Interweave Knits.

Deadline met.

2. Writing an article on Soay sheep for an upcoming issue of Spin-Off. The initial agreement was for 1,200 words. A few days before deadline, I asked editor Amy Clarke Moore if she'd like a bit more, because I had more to say about Soays that applies not only to that breed but to the stories of other breeds, plus great photos, plus. . . .

She said to keep going until I'd said what I wanted to. I did. It's somewhat longer than 1,200 words. . . . It's intended for the Summer 2011 issue.

Soay ewes in the morning at Saltmarsh Ranch.

Deadline met.

3. The final, final, final set of pages for The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook arrived for their final, final, final read-through.* At the same time, we are still dealing with photo permissions. While I was writing this post, we learned that permission is proving more difficult to obtain than expected for one of the images, and were asked to say whether the proposed substitute would suffice. (It will.)

* Except that I was just asked if I can review the color proofs in a couple of weeks, to make sure that the fiber samples have not changed to inaccurate colors during pre-press adjustments. Yes.

I have built the pages a custom case by recycling parts of the UPS box they were delivered in yesterday morning. As on the previous proofing pass, I need to take the pages on an airplane with me and to work while traveling. The case protects them with minimal bulk (the as-was UPS box was too big). It also serves as a makeshift "table," because I tend to find myself in situations where I don't have access to a desk. Actually, I don't even have an open table at home. Everything's covered in boxes of wool. That's why I often retreat to the library or a coffee shop.

Deadline to be met.

4. Tuesday was the day when I ended up responding to an e-mail about something critical (which required thought and, sometimes, research) at what felt like on average every 7 minutes (I have not calculated). It was like a ping-pong game with me at one end of the table and multiple folks at the other end. (It's possible that each of my correspondents also felt the same way.) The messages related to a number of topics. The only break occurred when I left the house in the afternoon for a couple of hours to keep an appointment.

Here are some sample e-mail time-stamp sequences from the day:

am 8:56 / 8:58 / 9:00 / 9:01 / 9:06 / 9:15 / 9:41 / 9:52 / 9:53 / 9:54 / 9:59 / 10:00 / 10:01 / 10:08 . . . .

pm 12:02 / 12:03 / 12:08 / 12:40 / 1:11 / 1:22 / 1:23 / 1:24 / 1:28 / 1:29 / 1:30 / 1:35 / 1:36. . . .

Deadlines met.

5. I wrote workshop and retreat descriptions for SOAR 2011 in New Hampshire (October). (NOTE THAT scholarship applications for SOAR are due next Tuesday, February 8, 2011!)

• Three-day workshop (Monday through Wednesday) 
  Four-wheel Drive Spinning: An In-depth Look at Rare Wools
  You don’t need a lot of experience to enjoy this class in unusual wools—just a willingness to have adventures. Rare-breed wools come in a huge variety of colors, textures, lengths, and descriptions. They can also be hard to obtain, and spinners often don’t know how to begin working with them. Come get your hands on a selection, and learn how to feel comfortable in the spinnerly wilds! Beginning with the shearing season and a group of special contacts, we’re collecting, for this workshop’s pleasure, fleeces from as many as 15 rare breeds of sheep listed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. You should have plenty to experiment with in class, and perhaps a bit extra to take home and play with.

• One-day class (Thursday)
  Let’s Get Out of the Middle of the Road! An Introduction to Rare Wools
  Here’s an all-day excursion that will introduce you to some of the types of wool grown by rare breeds of sheep. We’re putting together a diverse collection of fleece varieties—aiming for 8, so we’ll have a very busy day—to whet your appetite and increase your confidence in dealing with unusual fibers.

• Retreat (four half-day sessions)
  Straying from the Path: A Sampler of Rare Wools
  Come join a quick jaunt through the possibilities of rare-breed wools. You’ll get an overview of what breeds are rare, and why, and you’ll get your hands on samples of at least 6 breeds. Because of the time constraints, this will be a quick hike through the territory, but you’ll come away with a good idea of what the fuss is all about.

• Notes for all sessions
  Skill level:  Advanced beginner—need to know how to do basic spinning and plying.
  Students should bring: Wheel or spindle; fiber-prep tools of choice (combs, carders, flicker, or any other OR dog-grooming combs or slickers); the ability to wind a small centerpull ball and ply from it (or skill at Andean plying); pencil/paper; optional tape and/or hole-punch, for keeping track of fiber samples and yarns (record cards will be provided); (for three-day workshop only) sampling tools as you wish, like knitting needles, crochet hook, or Weave-It or similar extra-simple loom.

Deadline met early. I don't have time to think about this later! Gotta help gather fiber!

. . . because I've also been working with Beth Smith, at The Spinning Loft, and Jennifer Heverly, of Spirit Trail Fiberworks, to track down the materials for these classes. The wools are rare. We need fairly substantial quantities, and we need to make sure that the breeds whose wool we obtain represent a good chunk of the spectrum of fiber possibilities (they can't all be longwools, although that would be fun . . . and I think there may be a SOAR class that does focus on them . . . ). We need to start collecting and washing now.

(Oh, and I need to proof pages.)

6. Revisiting the description for the workshop I'll be teaching for the Conference of California Handweavers in California in May (also gathering fibers for that as we speak). It's a two-day workshop on rare-breed wools, intermediate in scope between the SOAR one-day and three-day sessions.

So I'll be teaching on the East Coast and the West Coast this year. The only PROBLEM with teaching at SOAR and CNCH is that I want to be a participant in several of the other class offerings! I may also have one class happening in a western plains state, although that hasn't been firmed up, and I'm not sure what it will involve. That's probably it for 2011.

_____

Those are the biggest items that are happening around here this week.

I hope to take a break later this week and post some photos of tracks and scat that I took last week in the mountains (was it only last week??), in the interest of identifying some of our neighbors, mostly the four-footed ones.

And now I'm going to pull those pages out of their case and take another close look at them.

 

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!"

___

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.

___

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.

About the Cheviots: Can I get back to you on that?

* { head —> wall } Repeat from * to end.

Just a bit of insight into how this book has gone. We thought we were almost done. We thought we were just writing captions.

Now I'm going to discuss one of the instances I mentioned in the last post, where the visual and textual components need to be reconciled in the design.

Warning: this is a long post. One of the reasons I'm writing it is to give myself a sense that I'm making progress. Even though I'm not entirely certain how much progress I am making.

Within the body of the book, here's the basic idea of an individual animal's listing and its fiber:

• A bit of history of the sheep
• Some general information on the fiber and its history and characteristics—whatever is too juicy to fit in the summary lists
• A photo of the animal (if at all possible, and it almost always is)
• List of facts about the fiber (shearing weight, staple lengths, fiber diameters, and the like, of most interest to spinners and the generally curious)
• List of ideas for using the fiber (what it is really good or particularly lousy for, of interest to any fiber person—Rough Fell baby clothes would not be kind; a Merino throw rug would show signs of wear in days)
• Photo with samples of raw and clean fibers, to show how they shift (or don't) when they are washed (in color, length, and apparent crimp)
• Photo also includes tiny skein(s) of handspun yarn, as a suggestion of how the fiber might look when ready to be knitted, crocheted, woven, or whatever (there are infinite options for yarn constructions as well as for applications, so these are only hints)
• Possibly a sidebar with curious thoughts or information, room and availability of interesting asides permitting (if anybody has an interesting story relating to Coopworths, we have some space on one of that breed's pages)

So. All is good.

Except.

In four instances, we grouped some of the "facts about the fiber" and/or "using the fiber" information.

1. In one of those cases, we have a full-page chart that covers a lot of minor breeds that folks might be curious about (which translates, for me, to the following: "if I had this book, I'd want to be able to look up those critters and find at least a little information on them").
2. In two more clusters, there are different "facts about" for each breed, but we grouped the "using the fiber" summaries. These closely related sheep have slightly different fiber profiles—one breed grows slightly longer or shorter wool, or produces lighter or heavier fleeces, or may have natural colors other than white. But when it's time to put them to work, they have the same strengths and weaknesses. So we gave them all one "using the fiber" list.
3. In the final, fourth, cluster, the "facts about" and "using the fiber" are the same for all the breeds. We grouped them, and listed the subtle variations, where applicable, as part of the overall description.

Item 3 is the focus of what I'm talking (and thinking) about at the moment.

Here's the challenge:

In design and editorial decision-making at the publisher, it was determined that each breed's presentation would stand alone, and every breed would have individual "facts about" and "using the fiber" lists.

The idea (and it is valid) is that the reader will want to use the work as a reference and should be able to find all the pertinent information for a given breed in a predictable place and sequence. The reader should not have to turn to a chart a few pages away to find a summary for any group.

We (the authors) didn't know this decision had been made until we began to review the "first pages," which is what we're in the process of doing now.

I love the idea, and I hate repetition. I appreciate differentiating between similar things, picking out the subtleties in ways that are meaningful. It bothered me to see identical data on several breeds, all in a row.

The item 1 breeds get to keep their chart. Whew. I did have to trim some of the text to fit, but didn't lose much in the way of solid info.

We have something of a solution for the breeds in item 2, which already had different "facts" sections. That solution will be managed by the editorial staff at the publisher, with some input I've already provided.

Leaving us with item 3.

So what remains is a cluster of breeds where both facts and usage notes are the same.

It should be possible to provide differentiated information between these breeds, even though their history is snarled and complicated enough that simply defining which breed is where, and how it developed, could probably earn someone a Ph.D.

We don't need a Ph.D. We do need some categories and definitions, enough to write useful information for textile folk about the types of wool. In separate lists, not a group.

Yes, we tried to get out of this task. I'm not at all sure how significant these pieces of information will be to readers. The variations between the breeds are minor from a fiber perspective. We had already provided adequate information to help people who want to know useful things about the wool, whether they are spinners, knitters, crocheters, weavers, or puzzled bystanders. We had incorporated into our group description the minor differences between the breeds (for example, only one of them, as far as we've been able to determine, grows wool in colors other than white . . . although that may be two, because there may be another breed involved after all . . . ).

Yet the book's design requires that we differentiate between them. We've appealed to the high publishing courts, and the problem is back on our desks. With a deadline, of course.

What I'm doing instead of preparing for the classes I'll be teaching next week. . . .

Let me introduce you to the Cheviots and the challenge of fixing this problem, just one in a long series of gnarly issues that we have faced while building this book. Even though we need new shovels and pickaxes and mattocks at this point, because the ones we have been depending on for more than three years are dented and chipped from hitting rocks and continuing to excavate, we will, yet again, increase the value of this book by unearthing more information and packing it into the pages.

Co-author Carol Ekarius is the livestock person in this collaboration, but in order to deal with the fiber information I often need to get my head wrapped around the ins and outs of breed identity and history.

Cheviots.

Sheep called Cheviots have been around, in one form or another, for at least three centuries, likely a great deal longer, and originated in the Cheviot Hills, on the border between Scotland and England, which is, of course, how they got their name. A few things are relatively easy to say with certainty.

They developed. . . . Well, it depends on who you ask. Some sources say they were a recognized breed as early as 1372. Others say they became identifiably distinct during the 18th century. Sheep historian Michael Ryder says that by 1746 there was a unique Cheviot breed "that was being improved by crossing with Lincoln and Leicester rams. At the end of the century, the Cheviot still had a dun face, and the rams were horned. It was, however, named the Whiteface or long sheep to distinguish it from the Blackface or short sheep." (Sheep and Man, London: Gerald Duckworth and Company, 2007, p. 514.)

Regardless, sheep known as Cheviots have been around for a long time. Lots can happen with sheep in a few hundred years; their generations are pretty short, compared to humans'. Cheviots have stayed put, moved around (within the British Isles and across oceans), and had other bloodlines crossed into the main stock. Sorting through and determining how many distinct Cheviot breeds now exist is a challenge, and some of the information out there is correct and some isn't. Deciding which sources to believe is a difficulty, especially when asking these thorny questions on the fly.

In order to break down the "facts" section by breed, however, this sorting needs to be done.

I've been drawing diagrams to find my way through the maze.

[And seeking a bit of dark chocolate to sustain me for the journey. . . .]

Continuing. . . .

The sheep called South Country Cheviots come from the north of England (or southern Scotland; the Cheviot Hills, and the sheep, don't pay attention to lines imposed on the landscape by humans). These sheep have also been called Border Cheviots (the name I've been most familiar with), although recently the breed societies in both the UK and the US have simplified to Cheviot.

(The front page of the UK breed society clearly says "South Country Cheviot" and if you download the US breed society's PDF of its 2004 breed standards, the header says "Border Cheviot." What that last naming shift in both cases means, though, is that if we find a resource or have a sample of wool that simply says "Cheviot," we won't know if it's this breed or if the source, or supplier, just didn't take time to note which type it was.)

The ones called North Country Cheviots are from even farther north (definitely in Scotland), and can be traced to a particular person (Sir John Sinclair) and a specific date (1791; he moved some sheep north, bred in other bloodlines, and got a new breed for his efforts). Early in their history they were called Caithness Cheviots. (People later moved flocks back south toward where the original, South Country breed came from but that's beside the point right now.)

Cheviots "from Scotland" were taken to southern Wales in the 1800s. Several sources say these were South Country, also known as Border, Cheviots. There they were crossed with local sheep to produce Brecknock Hill Cheviots.

Cheviots were introduced into the United States in 1838, according to Michael Ryder (Sheep and Man, p. 600). During the nineteenth century, anyway. Presumably these were South Country Cheviots (Border Cheviots), an unsupported connecting leap made by me right now because (1) the American Cheviot Sheep Society still has "Border Cheviot" on the PDF of its newly established (2004) breed standards and (2) time's running out to come to some conclusions here. (Not a good way to do research or develop firm ideas. For brainstorming ideas, it's fine.)

However, there are definitely also North Country Cheviots in North America. [ADDED: I've found a date of 1944 for introduction of North Country Cheviots to this continent. If verifiable, that means the 1838 importation likely was South Country Cheviots. Although sometimes more than one importation of a breed took place, because sometimes the first batch didn't survive or vanished or was otherwise lost track of.]

(In 1845, shortly after some of them emigrated to North America, South Country (Border) Cheviots went to New Zealand, where they were later crossed with Romneys to produce Perendales; Ryder, Sheep and Man, p. 638. No, that's not my only source, but it's incredibly useful for getting a well-reasoned big-picture view of sheep over time and across the globe.)

[Feeling the need for more diagrams—for example, one linking to the Perendale—but no time to make them because each leads deeper into the topic.]

Yet. . . . There is at least one other type of Cheviots in the United States. We also have what are now called Miniature Cheviots.

The crazy part is about to raise its head.

[Stepping into the next room for two Excedrin before I continue. . . .]

Apparently, some particularly small-statured strains of Border Cheviots developed in Canada. (That is, South Country Cheviots, now known in both the U.S. and U.K. as Cheviots.)

These were imported into the U.S. and the people who brought them in formed a breed society called the American Miniature Brecknock Hill Cheviot Sheep Breeders Association. Even though these sheep were in no may or may not be in any way related to the Welsh Brecknock Hill Cheviots. They are American Miniature Cheviots.

The breed society has been re-named as the American Miniature Cheviot Sheep Breeders Association (AMCBSA). Hurray.

But some many sources of confusion remain.

There is now also a American Classic Cheviot Sheep Association and registry, an attempt to clear some of the fog surrounding these permutations, and this group includes colored sheep (colors are also available in the WELSH, or, as I've come to think of them, "real," Brecknock Hill Cheviots).

Moving to the wool. . . .

Carol will make the final decisions pertaining to the breeds, but I think I have a good enough picture of the situation now to begin gathering data to support speculations about variations between the wools. I have 25 sources of information about Cheviot wools. The breed societies are not especially interested in quantifying the characteristics of their sheep's wool:

• North Country Cheviot Sheep Society: "White, of good staple, free from curl, hair or kemp. Not hard, but has a spongy feeling when grasped."
• Brecknock Hill Cheviot Sheep Society: "Brecknock Hill Cheviot Wool speaks for itself as three members of the society have been British Wool Producer Of The Year.' "

But I do have some numbers to play with, gathered from other locations, including having sent a couple of samples to the lab for analysis.

My next steps involve assigning each set of numbers to one of the defined breeds (except the ones that just say "Cheviot," with no further information allowing them to be attributed to a specific type of sheep), then looking at the data and forming, followed by articulating, a general description of the breed's wool.

There will be errors in this book.

But it won't be because we didn't try to get all the facts right.

It would be really nice if any of the 3.5 days' worth of workshops I'll be teaching in the next few weeks involved Cheviots. None of them does.

And now back to my (revised) spreadsheets, in search of patterns among the data points. . . .

___

Added 11/14/2010. I think this is as far as I have time to go right now, and I think it's sufficient for our immediate purposes:

I think there are four Cheviot breeds that we would do well to take into account (bright-highlighted and numbered in chronological order of development), and I've put together the meager data I have, along with a disclaimer, and made some educated guesses about how the wools differ. I've also made preliminary notes on a possible fifth breed that may become more of a player in the future. I don't have enough information on it to even begin guessing at stats.

This sign means "not equal to" or "not the same as":

≠

Sheep and their wool are definitely moving targets.

The Project has a face! (that is, a cover)

Finally, The Project's book aspect has a face—which is to say, a cover. There may be minor changes, but what you see here has run the primary gauntlet of approvals and revisions, and I've been given permission to share it:

The book is due out in May 2011. The stage it is currently at is called "first pages," which is a rough layout of the entire work. We're working on callouts and captions; on cutting bits of text (ideally without cutting any actual information) to fit some parts of the book within the design constraints; and on writing other pieces to fill in gaps (where there's open space tempting us to include supplementary information). Yes, we have been working on this relatively short phase of the project since October 22. Even this is not a small job.

We all—Carol and I and the folks at Storey—have a couple of major organizational issues to resolve to eliminate conflicts between the design concept (which is stunningly beautiful) and the way the information needs to be presented (i.e., between the book's visual and textual components). But we are getting very, very close to having a book.

It's scheduled to go to the printer in January.

Last night, I shipped pages i through 217 of this iteration back to the publisher. By the end of the evening, I had completed through page 328. Pages 218 through 328 felt almost ready to go before I had to make up the FedEx box, but I decided to lower my stress levels and not try to push through to 328 in time to get that piece into the shipment; there is plenty for everyone at Storey to work on for a while in the box I sent.

It was a good decision. I wasn't done with the "almost" parts until nearly 8 p.m. (The last FedEx pickup was at 5:15.) Sometimes age brings with it small amounts of wisdom ("been there, done that, maybe I'll skip the t-shirt this time").

Co-author Carol Ekarius and I are still processing pages 329 to the end, which is roughly page 438, although some of those final pages will hold the index and other back matter, and therefore we don't have to deal with them now.

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On another topic, yesterday morning I received notification that the U.K. Knit Camp Tutors' Fund had transferred to my bank account enough money to cover the cost of my airfare to the U.K. in August. The expense has been sitting on my credit card, a situation I share with most of the other tutors.

What an amazing, generous, heart-warming set of actions on the parts of many people the fund represents. All of the tutors in the group will be having their travel costs covered. I am very grateful, and would like to thank everyone who has participated in helping with this effort, either by contributing directly or by sending good thoughts.

Many, many thanks.

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And now I'm teaching in Michigan soon (not the same classes that I taught in Scotland) and I have so many ideas that my head is bursting with them, but they're not yet organized enough to present to the folks who will be attending. Plus the rest of the caption-writing will be back on my desk before I know it, undoubtedly before I leave, and again I'll need to get to that task so we don't hold up anyone else's work flow and prevent the book from going to press on time. So I'd better get back to work.

I just had to take a break and share the several types of good news.

It's time to write some captions

Yesterday morning the UPS truck pulled up to the house and left a rather large box. Inside was this collection of objects:

There's a large pile of papers—the printed spreads of the entire book in its first-pages stage—and two CDs. "First pages" means these aren't final, but for this book, due out some time next year, they're at probably 85% complete, maybe 90%. Some photos are final; some are placeholders; some are missing (just white boxes). We still have to adjust some of the primary text: cutting here, adding there. It's definitely time to get serious about captions and about replacing the placeholders with real images and filling in any tiny remaining missing items.

The CDs peeking out contain, as the marker printing on them says, FPO pics. FPO means "for position only," and these discs hold the photographs we shot along with the real images of the fibers, the ones that have all the identifying labels in place. These will make it possible to write captions for those photos without going completely bonkers.

 

Which white yarn was this, and where did the fiber come from?

Ah, YES!

(Thanks again, June!)

 

This job won't be done by tomorrow. There are quite a few pages.

That last number (on one of the pages reserved for the index) says 438. See that big, black clip? It's not really big enough or strong enough to hold the batch together. It tends to slip off, leaving the front and back pages clipped together and everything in between fanned across the floor. However, it's already done its job of getting this hunk of paper transported from one desk (and computer) to another.

It'll be pretty quiet around both Carol Ekarius' house and my house for a while. We'll be turning, and writing on, page after page. . . .

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Hmm. There are 1421 reference photos on the CDs, identified by shooting numbers (like JPolak-363-2023.jpg) rather than placement within the book (like page-327) or subject matter (like Ramgouillet-info). This is logical, but not helpful for the work at hand. Image JPolak-363-2023.jpg actually contains the clues I need to be able to write the Myotonic Goat captions, a fact that I can only discover by opening the image and enlarging it on the screen so I can read the labels; then I rename the file so I can easily find it when I come, in due time, to the page where it appears. . . .

I spent last evening at the coffee shop (between two nice bike rides in the dark) locating and grouping the 452 image files that relate to the fiber-specific photographs (as opposed to the animal photographs, the "fiber in use" images, and so on). I got a few identified and named, and will continue that task this morning at the library.

Yes, I leave my office to work on things like this. I'm far less likely to be interrupted by other matters demanding my attention, so progress is faster. Faster is much better; otherwise an exercise like writing the captions could drag on until after the new year, and the book's supposed to be sent to press by then.

Once I put together book images and the identification data from the reference photos (making notes from the photos on the pages), I'll need to go back to my working records to be reminded of the particulars of processing each fiber. With hundreds of samples spread over more than three years, I can't keep all the details in my head for instant recall.

This job won't be done by the day after tomorrow, either.

It's a good thing I find the topic fascinating.