Just Like That

The very day that I posted about a lack of photographic evidence of the things I'm working on, I found something new to share after all.  The thing I needed was right there on the dining room table, and I had been walking past it for two days without seeing it.  Typical.  My dining room table erupts piles of mail at an alarming rate.  One day I'm gonna locate the continuum rift conducting these piles and plug it up for good.  Until that happens though, my strategy will be to manage the mail-hills by ignoring them until they become mountains.  Works a lot like the laundry heap, I notice:  Must come from the same quantum rift.

If I had opened the front cover of the latest Knit Picks catalog, I would have noticed that I had a photo for you the other day.  If I had remembered that I made a swell pattern for them due out in April, I might have visited the KP website and seen that there was a perfectly good show-and-tell opportunity right there:

This is the very same reverse-engineered pullover that I wrote about last November, finished in its proper yarn and pretty Dang Cute, if I do say so myself.  

{SOAPBOX ALERT:} I especially love that Knit Picks uses real humans to model their designs (isn't she lovely?) - I can imagine this on my sister, my neighbor, or any of the beautiful ladies in my life.  If you agree, let them know please - I'd love them to hear that showing designs on actual women instead of emaciated teenagers is appreciated by more than a few knitters. {END SOAPBOX}

I have to admit that I am still new enough to the design world that seeing something I dreamed up right there in the flesh is a real thrill.  I hope it will always feel like that.  It's not every day I get a horn of this nature to toot, so I'll just leave it like this:

Hope you like it too.
 

A Visual Medium

It turns out that if you want to be a knitter, or in any case, a knitter who shares what they're up to with anybody else, you had better also become a photographer.  Not that I had any clue about that when I went public, or I probably would have contemplated it a bit longer.  Nevertheless, here I am with a bunch of stuff to report on, and no pix to show you.  Why no pix, you may ask?  Because one wee drawback of being a knitter who publishes work is the fact that I'm supposed to (usually) keep my work under wraps until it's available for your use/enjoyment.  Why, I'm not fully sure, but I think it's mostly to preserve the surprise.  You are (so the theory goes) less likely to dash out and snap up my latest books and patterns if you have already seen them in gruesome detail for the whole time I'm developing them.  Makes sense, I suppose.  Who wants to buy a pattern once you've endured photos of me frogging it nine times?  Still, the issue does make for bland blog posts sometimes; notably the busier I am making things, the less likely you are to see engaging photos of works in progress. 

Here is what I learned this week about photos of knitting:

            1.    You cannot photograph Dark Purple knitting in any room of my house.  The photos are all overexposed, underexposed, too yellow, too blue, too close or too far away.  If you want a decent shot of Dark Purple knitting, you have to go outside on a nice sunny day.

            2.    It rains in Portland, Oregon, every single day.

            3.    If it has stopped raining in Portland, Oregon, then one of the following must apply:
                a.    It's the middle of the night
                b.    It's the weekend and I'm in a windowless arena observing my children's athletic activities.
                c.    It's the Rapture

So while I have a swell purple vest, and an equally inspiring gray sleeve to show you, they are on the QT for now.  Be patient with me - I really am up to something good.
 

What Fresh Hell Is This?

A Medieval Editing Tool

The day started out great:  I finished the Sommelier Vest (that's the real name of the Pin Problem, by the way - pix and pattern are coming soon) last night, so today's list began with e-mailing Blackwater Abbey with that happy update.  I was gonna submit a design proposal to a magazine, post to the blog, start a presentation for my new class, maybe work on this little sock I've been ignoring...

Then all hell broke loose.

Backing up a bit, I will tell you that earlier this week I wrote the acknowledgments for my book.  This felt very much like the fat lady singing, in terms of completion: "I'd like to thank the Academy..."  There have been odd corrections, little questions from the editor here and there, but overall it seemed as if my writing maelstrom was behind me.  I know that the layout is getting done around now, but other than some vague project milestones, I have no clue what is happening to my baby.  The work of making the book is largely in the hands of skilled professionals, as it should be at this stage.  So even though I haven't met them and probably never will, there are scads of other humans collaborating with me.  The baby isn't just mine anymore, which is surreal, even if it is the whole point of the endeavor.

But this morning the first thing I did was open an e-mail from my editor containing a 4th version of my entire text.  Version 1 was mine.  Version 2 was my editor's.  Version 3 was a compromise between 1 and 2.  And now there is Version 4.  A more experienced author would have known to expect this; that I wasn't as close to finished as I thought.  A seasoned writer would not have been lulled into complacency by the deafening silence coming from the publisher.  This being my first time at the Rodeo though, I was unaware that it was time to hide in the barrel. 

It seems that Version 4 must be corrected by me into Version 5, TODAY.  Not next week.  Not whenever I get around to it.  Right Now-ish.

Version 4 was created by a whole new player, whom nobody told me was on the team.  And she's WAY SMART.  She's my technical editor, and in charge of finding problems in the writing like spelling and context, and the whole Way Knitting Works.  There is no getting away with being vague or faking anything with her, because she has an encyclopedic knowledge of my subject.  Not that this bothers me - I really want the book to be as good as it can be, and I have no doubt that the tech editor (I'll call her Ms. K) knows how to get it there.  It's just that it's so humbling to have somebody question your assertions.  I am totally sure of what I mean and how I said it.  Except when I'm not.  And Ms. K has this ninja-like skill for finding every single weak spot. 

So the real problem is not that a skilled professional has located chinks in my armor.  The problem is that I was emotionally caught unawares.  Today is the day that Ms. K's hard work causes me to shore up my weaknesses.  Today is the day that someone I have never met points out my weaknesses.  In case I'm not already unsure enough as a rank beginner, here is a person whose job it is to make sure I'm not full of crap.  Daunting bit of work, that.  How's that thick skin coming along now, Smarty McBraverton?

Obviously, I will need to spend some time separating ME (my personality, my feelings, my self-ness) from the THING I MADE (which is just a pile of work that I did).  Funny how hard that can be to get done: if the project came from inside of my head and (quite literally) out of my fingers, then how can it not always be an extension of me?  Kind of an emotional ass-kicker. 

At least I don't have time to wallow in introspection for long.  TODAY means TODAY, after all.  Better get over it and do what needs doing.  And then I'll promise myself Therapeutic Fiber.  I'm SO going yarn shopping.