So close…and yet so far

I’ve been waxing dangerously neurotic as the book release date draws nearer. According to my calculations, the advance copy should have arrived last Tuesday or Wednesday. So of course I couldn’t sleep Monday or Tuesday night, and during the day, every time a truck rolled by I sprinted to the front door to see if it was the advance copy arriving.

It did not arrive Tuesday. It also did not arrive Wednesday, despite my increasingly fervent pleas to the gods of shipping. So Thursday I sent my editor an oh-so-casual email asking about several minor details, and breezily inquired where the advance copy was and whether my book order was still likely to arrive by the date of the book launch party. Then I spent the next several hours obsessively checking my email until her response arrived.

It turns out that the book was a bit late coming from the printer’s, so the advance copy was also mailed later – it will arrive on Tuesday, via FedEx. So now I know, and I can stop jumping every time I hear a truck! Which is great because it means I might actually get some work done. 🙂

The full printing will be arriving in the warehouse early next week. I’ve asked that the majority of the order be shipped ground freight, because a 250-book order is going to be heavy! But I’ve also asked for ten books to be shipped via faster means, because I want to have some copies available at the launch party. So one small package will arrive next week, and the 450-pound gorilla will arrive the week after.

Meanwhile, I have been working very hard on my Creating Craft website to get it ready to launch alongside the book. I’ve also been designing thank-you cards to tuck into each book order – here’s the front of the card:

I’ve also been working away on the website, getting it ready for launch day. I’m almost there – another day or two should do it. I’ll likely unveil it sometime next week.

Meanwhile, I have finally started feeling secure enough about my launch schedule to get back to work on important things. Like this beauty, who has been sadly neglected the last few months:

One of the reasons I haven’t been doing much on Amazing Grace is that I ran into problems during “Bipolar Prison”. The red and blue warps are a mix of mercerized cotton, unmercerized cotton, and a silk/nylon yarn. Cotton is rather dusty, which wouldn’t normally be a problem. But the third warp is an alpaca/wool mix, which is collecting the dust, creating a gray “halo” around each thread:

Aside from being unsightly, the fuzzy balls catch on each other once they get big enough. So I spent a good chunk of my weaving time in “Bipolar Prison” picking off the fuzzy bits so the warp would weave properly. Not pleasant, and not terribly effective, either. So it became abundantly obvious that the alpaca/wool warp would have to go.

After weighing my options (including simply removing the white warp), I decided to replace the alpaca/wool warp with a silk warp. And there I got stuck for several months, because (frankly) I’ve been dreading it. I need to wind sixteen skeins of silk onto cones, wind a new 20-yard warp, remove the alpaca/wool warp from the beam, wind the silk warp onto the beam, and rethread by tying on to the previous warp – 880 knots to get just right. You can see why I walked away for several months, especially given the overwhelming effort required to get the business going.

But I’ve now reached the point where I can take some short breaks from working on Creating Craft. So I’m getting back to the stuff that’s more important in the long run – weaving!

So far I’ve spent several hours winding the 20/2 silk onto cones:

I’m hoping to finish the skein-winding today, and start winding the new warp tomorrow. My goal is to be weaving again by the end of August – a long time, to be sure, but there is a lot of work to be done, both on Amazing Grace and Creating Craft.

I’m also planning on developing more design sketches for woven work, so hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to show soon!