Donna Druchunas's Blog

I got my Ravelry invite yesterday! I signed on and set up a few things, but it will be the weekend before I have any serious play time. My ID is druchunas (I know, I'm not very creative). So if you're on Ravelry, say hello & add me as a friend!

Now, let's talk lace. For years, I have been thinking that I would never make an Orenburg-style lace shawl. But I recently changed my mind. I got some lace weight cormo yarn in Taos earlier in the month, and it wants to be a shawl. Of course, I have to change the way the shawls are traditionally made because I can never do anything following instructions. Here's what I'm changing:

My yarn is much heavier. Even though it's lace weight, it's nothing like the cobweb yarn used in real Orenburg shawls.

I want the border to be a different color. I'm making the main body of the shawl in gray, and I think the border will be black (or maybe white), so I am going to add the border afterwards instead of knitting it along at the same time as the rest of the shawl.

I think that's it. I've got my design partly worked out, but I'm not charting it all before I start knitting. In her book, Galina says that Orenburg knitters just make these things up as they go, and that's my plan. I find that less intimidating than trying to chart the whole thing out in advance. So I've decided on the stitches I want to use to frame my piece, and I'm going to cast on and get started.

Here's my main frame swatch:


I don't like the solid triangles, so I'm going to add more yarn overs in between, like this:



The second swatch is very interesting to me. See how big the YO holes are compared to those in the first swatch? They look a lot like the big double yarn over holes in this piece, don't they?



But they're not made with any double yarn overs! Check out these two charts that show how the holes are formed. They both end up with the same finished look, but one uses double yarn-overs, and one uses a two-row pattern that somehow stretches out one of the yarn overs, and swallows up the other.

Hi Everyone, I've been working all weekend to wrap up a huge freelance project, but I don't want you to miss out on the Ethnic Knitting Discovery blog tour finale! I ended up the tour at FEAST, the blog of my friend and neighbor Rosemary Carstens.

Rosemary and I met at a writing critique group a few years ago and discovered that we live around the corner from each other. Rosemary is the author of Dream Rider, an adventure memoir about her experiences as a women motor cycle rider in America. She's also the editor of FEAST, an e-newsletter about books, art, film, food, and travel. What could be more fun?

I wrote a guest post for Rosemary's new blog about how we can follow our passions and how to fund those dreams with work that's not always as much fun as we'd like it to be! Working on my books is what I want to do with all of my time, and I do make some money from book sales. But it's not enough to pay the bills! I have to constantly remind myself why I do my other work. It's to fund my dreams. To pay for my travel. To buy myself time off. To have a house with an office so I can work at home.

Wrapping up the blog tour tomorrow. Was supposed to wrap it up today but I'm just now getting ready to write my last guest post!

Here are the two most recent stops:

#24: Knitting in the Shadows where Helen has done a terrific job of walking through all the steps she took to design her own seamen's scarf from Chapter 3 of Ethnic Knitting Discovery. Helen followed the steps in the book to some degree, and made some changes to suit her own tastes. You can make up your own scarf as Helen did, or you can download her pattern to see how it all comes together into instructions for a finished project. Helen has some other patterns for sale here.

#25: Fruitful where author Gayle Brandeis interviews me about how the topics in Ethnic Knitting Discovery relate to creativity in general. Gayle is the author of my favorite writing book: Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women who Write. Here's the synopsis:

sing the metaphor of fruit to mirror the fruitfulness of women’s bodies and their creative potential, award-winning author and poet Gayle Brandeis combines thoughtful exercises with provocative poetry, providing inspiration for women at any stage of life. From “Seeds” and “Roots” to “Flowers” and “Fruit,” Fruitflesh follows the growing season, encouraging your growth as a writer while expanding and deepening your self-awareness.

Each section of the book begins and ends with a “Fruitflesh Meditation”—an exercise centered on a particular fruit that will help bring your body into the act of writing, adding a delightful, satisfying dimension to the creative process.

Lively, poignant, often humorous, and including many practical lessons, this distinctive approach to writing will take you to the true source of your creative power.

Gayle's also written several novels. We've been email friends for several years, but we haven't gotten to meet in person yet. Maybe next year?

Only a few more Ethnic Kniting Discovery blog book tour stops to go. Today, Marnie MacLean has taken a break from her normal blogging activities to interview me about knitting, publishing, and Barbara Walker.

Right now I'm tech editing one of Marnie's patterns for Stitch Diva Studios. The sweater is called Giselle, and the style completely matches the name. Marnie is such a creative designer (not to mention a beautiful model).



In addition to designing for Stitch Diva Studios, Marnie also has patterns for sale on her own website, and she's got some interesting items for sale on cafepress. Her designs have also been featured on MagKnits, Knitty, and Knitty Gritty.

The other day, while I was driving home from the Women Writing the West Conference in Colorado Springs, about a 90 mintue drive, this song came up on the CD I was listening to:

Workin' for a livin' (workin')
Workin' for a livin' (workin')
Workin' for a livin', livin' and workin'
I'm taking what they giving 'cause I'm working for a livin'.

It made me think, "You know what, I may be workin' for a livin', but I sure as hell am not takin' what they're givin'."

I've been really irritated about having to work so much lately. Now it's not that I'm lazy or anything. It's just that I want to spend time making things that I love, things that give meaning to my life, things that are important to me. I don't want to give my energy to projects that I don't care about. And lately, I really don't care about much of anything that I've been working on for money. I think something is seriously wrong with the whole system of capitalism, where people give up most of their lives to help some rich people who own stocks and who are on the boards of corporations get even richer. A lot of the work I do is for smaller businesses, but it still seems like too much of the work is done to put money into someone else's pocket. I am not very happy with our consumer society and a culture that values profit above pretty much everything else. I don't want to participate in making that system work smoothly. I don't want to be a cog in the wheel. I want to be the sabo, the wooden shoe, that breaks the machine. A participant in sabotage. The saboteur.

I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog again today, and Neil was talking about how he got started as a writer:

When I started, I made my day job writing. I was a journalist, I wrote a few short stories, I interviewed people, I wrote non-fiction books. It taught me a lot about the way the world worked, a lot about deadlines, and it meant I wrote enough to develop a style, a voice that sounded like it was mine. And it paid the bills, and I edged over towards prose fiction and comics and only gave up my last few regular columns when I could afford to. That's how I did it.

I tried that, but that's now how I'm doing it. I don't want to write, either, just to make money. I only want to write things I love. I love knitting books, but I don't want to edit other people's knitting books any more. Some of the books I've edited were great, some were mediocre, some sucked. Only a few of them have been realy and truly worth publishing in my opinion. (I think about 1/100th or less of what gets published is worth the paper it's printed on. And that's because so many books are published just to make money. They have no souls.)

I wish I could make enough money writing what I love but until that money starts rolling in, I've decided it's easier to have a day job and a regular paycheck. Fortunately, I've been able to find a day job that takes place in my home and that has flexible hours. I can also work anywhere there's a wi-fi connection, which means I don't have to miss two month's work when I go to Europe next summer and, yes, I can go to Europe for two months next summer! In the meantime, I will continue to write for a couple of hours a day at a local coffee shop, and I will continue to dream about my books bringing in enough dough to let me quit selling my soul for a buck.

Why is being a writer so hard? Why can't I just be happy like my husband is, doing a job for the money and coming home and being content? Why do I always seem to feel like crap just after my newest book comes out?

Somehow I've messed up on the blog tour schedule probably by missing that day while I was in Colorado Springs, because I have two Ethnic Knitting Discovery blog tour stops to write about today.

Stop #21 is at Keep Talking, my friend Joanne Conklin's blog. I wrote a guest post for Joanne about how color and texture are involved in yarn selection.

I don't remember where I met Joanne, but we run into each other at knitting events in Colorado several times a year, and a few more times a year we just get together for coffee or lunch and to talk, mostly about knitting! Joanne teaches at A Knitted Peace, in Littleton, Colorado -- one of my favorite yarn shops. She knits non-stop and also designs many of her own projects. She also designs projects for Matilda, an incredibly cute teddy-bear, who was featured in the Knitting Pattern-a-Day : 2007 Day-to-Day Calendar, edited by Paulette Lane. In this photo, Matilda is sporting her qiviut toque and scarf and ready for the cooler days of fall. And just in time, Joanne got about 5 inches of snow this weekend. Even though she only lives about an hour from me, all I got was a few hours of drizzly slush.

Stop #22 is at Fiber Femmes, Great Women Building a Gracious World. (What a fantastic tagline!) I wrote a guest post about the Andean "Girl's Only" sweater in chapter 6 of Ethnic Knitting Discovery, and I explain why this is my favorite project in the book and how the somewhat generic instructions are used to create very specific sweaters.

Besides the blog, Fiber Femmes is a really cool onine magazine where you can find tons of fascinating information about all things related to fiber. Right now, they're looking for articles about any of these topics (which should give you a very good idea of their usual content), "any aspect of fiber craft, fiber animals, fiber tools, types of fiber, textile museums, art such as paper making, felting, knitting, spinning, etc. We will also consider articles on subjects such as web design and other helpful aspects of running a fiber business." They also have columns about guilds, women-in-fiber, fiber festivals, and patterns.

Today the blog tour stops by Carol Metger's blog, Carol's Experiements in Textiles with a fear-busting lesson on cutting your knitting. Yes, you read that right. When you knit a circular sweater, one way to make the armholes and neck opening is to cut your knitting open. It's not as scary as it sounds, and you usually secure the knitting with machine sewing (or hand sewing or crochet), before you cut it. I've written a short lesson for Carol's blog that walks you through knitting a swatch and cutting it open. Once you try this, you won't be afraid to approach your knitting with scissors any more.

Carol sells patterns on her website, CFM Designs, and finished items in her Etsy store. Her current obsession is beaded knitting, and you'll find many beaded knit projects featured on her website.

Carol describes herself this way on her site:



I love this definition and this explanation of how art is used to discvoer and express truth and to make a difference in the world. It's the same reason that I write.

Yesterday while I was out speaking at the Women Writing the West conference in Colorado Springs, Annie Modesitt published a guest post I wrote about designing with color and texture.

Annie is one of today's most popular knitting designers. She teaches constantly around the country -- and recently in France! -- to sold out classes, and her designs are featured regularly in magazines. She's got so much stuff on her website, you really need to explore it yourself.

Most recently, Annie was profiled in the new book KnitKnit, that discusses the intersection of art and craft. Annie's work definitely fits the bill, whether she's designing a romantic evening gown, a rasta-inspired dog sweater, a lacey summer hat, or knitted wire jewelry, her design senabilities and detailed vision show through on the finished project. While this makes some of her projects more difficult to tech edit or more suited to intermediate and advanced knitters, the extra effort involved is totally worthwhile.

Annie's husband is very ill, recently had a bone marrow transplant, and hasn't been able to work in some time, as you probably know if you already follow Annie's blog. You can download the pattern for the evening gown shown here. If you can afford it, please make a donation to help out with the insane medical expenses the family has incurred. It's a shame that we have to do this in a supposedly advanced civilization, but it's nice that there's a way to help indivdually when society lets us down.

I am a writer. It took me over a dozen years of writing before I was comfortable saying that. Now it flows off my lips automatically. It is what I am, even though I sometimes do other things to make extra money.

When I read through mailing lists for kntiwear designers, I don't fit in very well. I don't consider myself a designer. I make up knitting designs for myself and sometimes I make some up to enhance or promote one of my books or to make a few bucks. But I've never thought of myself as a designer and I don't really want to be a designer. I want to be a writer. I have so many things I want to write about that have nothing to do with knitting, and some are finally bubbling up toward the top of the idea file. One is fighting with another knitting book for the position of "what to focus on next."

Today I read two interesting blog posts about writing that really clicked with me. The first is by Wil Wheaton. Wil says:

I like writing, and I like blogging. Despite what many of us who keep blogs have argued over the years, I'm starting to believe that these are two different things, requiring different disciplines and abilities. While they use the same basic skill sets, the difference between them (for me, at least) is the difference between playing third base and right field. If I were to cut away the safety net, I'd have to stop blogging, I think, and just focus full time on being a student of creative writing. Yeah, I'm about fifteen years too late for that one.

I feel like that a lot, but it's a lot more than fifteen years too late for me. So I go along, doing the best I can to find the time I need to write while at the same time spending more time than I want to doing things to make a buck. I haven't been very successful in finding any kind of balance since July when I got back from Europe. Somehow the ecstacy I experienced in Europe has to be paid for by six months of overwork and stress over deadlines that it's impossible for me to meet.

Wil quotes from the second blog post, by Neil Gaiman, who says:

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.

You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.

I fly sometimes, too, even though I haven't written much fiction. My book that wants to be next up is one that sometimes lets me feel the thrill of discovery and the high of seeing things fall together. At other times it gives me nightmares (literally), and makes me so nervous that I can't face it. I've taken a few weeks off working on it recently and I feel better, but not really good because I know I can't abandon this baby, even though it's past the fun part. The fun part being starting the project. Just like in knitting, starting a new project is my favorite part. There are great moments along the way. Editing and forming the rough idea into a polished product is very satisfying, and finishing brings a quick buzz. But the real excitement for me is in the planning and research, and in the conception of the idea.

You'd think I'd be really happy right now. Ethnic Knitting Discovery has just been released, the blog tour is going well, it's been featured in Interweave Knits' Holiday Gift Issue, and Arctic Lace was just honored as a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards. But all of that is already in the past for me. I'm working on books that won't come out until at least 2009. Being a writer is like having a time machine, you are always going to the past to promote books you wrote years ago that have just now been published, or peering into the future working on books that won't make it onto shelves for several years into the future. And yet writing happens in the present. It's so hard to just fall into the writing, to be in the now, to enjoy the process, to be a writer.

Wednesday night I went to the Colorado Book Awards banquet. It was a lot of fun. Arctic Lace din't win (pout), but it was a finalist and the book that won was about Colorado, so I wasn't really expecting to win. All of the competition in the nonfiction category was put out by BIG publishers, so it was really exciting to be in that company as a finalist.

Anyway, here's a slide show from the event and a photo of Arctic Lace with stickers of the awards it's won:

IPPY Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze

Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award Finalist & Silver

and, TADA!

Colorado Book Awards Finalist



UPDATE:
To read much more about this, see a new post by my editor Deb Robson.

Today's blog tour stop is with Kim Smith at Knitting Matters. Kim's designing a Norwegian sweater from chapter 5 of Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

Kim's main website features patterns for her own knitting designs. Kim designs Flex Patterns. According to her website:

FlexPatterns TM give you more value and satisfaction from your knitting. Each pattern contains assorted FlexTips that give you ideas for simple modifications you can make to your project. By using a different type of ribbing for the hem, or adding a pocket, or even using a completely different yarn, you get multiple projects from one pattern. FlexTips list specific yarns that you can substitute in each pattern, so if you have trouble finding the one used in the model (maybe it's discontinued or your local yarn store doesn't carry it), you can switch to another yarn that IS easily available to you.

I love this approach. It's right in line with my goal for Ethnic Knitting Discovery, which is to empower knitters to make their own decisions and customize what they're knitting to suit their own tastes and to fit their own bodies.

(Kim's also got a great article on green knits.)

Speaking of green... I love the black and green colors Kim is using for a modernized Norwegian sweater! (That green is one of my favorite colors.) I hope Kim actually makes this sweater some day, but for now, she's written a post on how she is making her design decisions before she starts knitting.

It's interesting that a lot of people who are making designs from Ethnic Knitting Discovery chart out the whole sweater before they get started. I never do that. I just fudge as I go. (Unless, of course, I have a deadline for a magazine and I have to get the project to a test knitter.) I figure with horizontal panels, I can decide what I want to do next whenever I finish the stripe I'm working on.

With Aran sweaters or any designs with vertical panels you have to do a lot more planning in advance because the designs have to fit into the desired width of the sweater and you need to know the total number of stitches to cast on.

In general, once I have the ribbing/edging and the bottom of the body figured out, I cast on and start knitting. I make up the rest as I go. I don't usually decide if I want a crew-neck or a v-neck until I am almost up to the armholes. I sometimes make a rough sketch, as Kim has done for her design, to figure out approximately where I want to put different patterns, but that's as far as I go before casting on.

It's so interesting to see how different knitters and designers approach their projects. I hope to have much more to share on this topic, with a lot of photos of sweaters, in a few weeks when I get a gallery started on www.ethnicknitting.com (the only thing there now is info about the book, but much more is planned for the upcoming monhts so bookmark the site). If you're working on something from the book, you'll be able to submit your designs to the gallery as well. It's a place to show off your creativity and knitting.

Today Dani Greer has a double-hitter on the blog book tour with stops on two blogs that she runs: Blog Book Tours and Queen of Socks.

On part 1, Dani asks me for some advice on getting even tension on color knitting, on part 2, we discuss some of the mysteries of reading charts.

I met Dani at the Women Writing the West conference last year after we'd been talking in email on and off for some time. She's both a writer and a knitter (and a sock knitter at that), and she's definitely web savvy when it comes to marketing. I'll be speaking about web marketing at this year's WWW conference which is this coming Saturday, but unfortunately Dani won't be able to make it. Bummer! Half the fun of attending these conferences is seeing old friends!

Deb wrote the fifth post in her series about the illustrations in Ethnic Knitting DIscovery. Here are links to all of the articles:

The full series of posts on developing illustrations for Ethnic Knitting Discovery

Here are links to the full series of posts on developing the illustrations for Ethnic Knitting Discovery:

Cover development
Swatches and charts
Schematics and flat drawings
Technical drawings
"Model shots" or project drawings


Supplementary post on why Nomad Press books use black-and-white illustrations instead of color photographs.

Yesterday I got distracted and didn't report on the day's blog tour stops, so today I'll get caught up!

Connie Chang wrote a review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery an her blog, PhysicsKnits.

I met Connie last year during the Arctic Lace blog tour when she was trying to break into the field as a designer. This year her designs have appeared all over the places including Knits and Knits (yes, I'm linking to 2 different designs) magazine, as well as on MagKnits and One Planet Yarn and Fiber.

MK Carroll also has a review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery on her blog. She's written up a nice compare/contrast with Knitting in the Old Way.

MK had designed such things as a knitted sushi toilet paper cover, a drink can cozy, and a knitted womb. Obviously she's not shy or subdued! You can learn more about MK and her work in this interview on CraftBits.

The bonus feature is another post by my editor, Deb Robson, about the graphics in Ethnic Knitting Discovery. As part of as a blog action day for writing about the environment, she's answered the question, "Why don't you have color photos in Ethnic Knitting Discovery?"

Every once in a while I need a short break from everything. Now is one of those times. I stopped working at 4:00 and right now Dom is making potato pancakes so I'm just waiting for dinner. What do I do when I'm doing nothing? Knit or read or surf the web. Today is #3. Look what I found!



This is a collection of Lithuanian mittens in an exhibit at the Lithuanian Folk Art Institute in 1985. The Institute was established in 1977, but I'm not sure if it still exists in physical form. They do have a lot of info on the internet and the Litaunus magazine is still published.

The article that inclues the photo is about several exhibits the institute put on in the 80s. I wish I'd been able to go to them and I hope I can track down the items that were exhibited! I wonder where they are now? You can read the whole article here.

And OMG, check this out (on another page that I found from googling "Lithuanian spining"):



Edited:
The photo is of Sharon Winsauer with her Pegasus Shawl. This photo is shown on the blog Three Sheeps to the Wind and if you scroll down, you can see a photo of a spinning wheel from Lithuania.

The file name seems seemed to say that this was designed by Evelyn Clark, who I'll be meeting in April at the Mile High Lace Knitters Conference in Denver, where we'll both be teaching. But after paying more attention to the text, I see that it's actually Sharon. You can buy the pattern on her Aurora Alpacas etsy shop for $15. Worth it just to drool over. Or else just click on the link to look at the other amazing designs she has.

I have to work all day today and I just got the mail and found the next issue of Craft magazine, and a copy of Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis from Schoolhouse press.

Oh well. Tonight. I'll post about the next blog tour stops later, too.

Cindy at FitterKnitter has written a review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery that discusses how the design of the book works to make it easy to use and to help you step through the process of designing your own sweaters. She breaks down the tables, the fashion illustrations, the garment schematics, and the knitting charts.

Cindy is a technical illustrator, editor and designer. You can read about her professional work on her website. She has a couple of very interesting free patterns on her website, including this mop cover.

My favorite thing on Cindy's site is the Lace Project. Here's a blurb in her own words:

The Art of Knitting [1897], now in public domain is copyright free and is a virtual trove of stitch patterns. It is my goal to rewrite and chart as many of these stitch patterns as possible...

Why Am I Doing This? I like making charts. I find this fun and challenging. I like knitting lace but there are so many shawls and scarfs out there I want to make and will never find the time. Knitting these swatches will let me experience a variety of stitches without a huge committment.

Cindy offers the charts and modern instructions under a Creative Commons license!

This is SUCH a cool project. Cindy actually likes to make swatches, like me! Unlike me, she's doing more with her swatches than tossing them into a box. She's making an altered book. Do take a few minutes to check it out.

Today I am interviewed by designer Chrissy Gardiner on her Knittin' Mom blog.

Chrissy is a work-at-home mom of two small children who spends as much time as possible knitting and designing knitting patterns. Chrissy has patterns for sale on her website (I'm going to make this passport pouch before my next trip to Lithuania), and her designs have been pubished on MagKnits, Knitscene, Spun Magazine, and in many other places. Her Sweetheart Socks are in the Holiday Gifts issue of Interweave Knits.

Chrissy is also co-founder of the breastfeeding advocacy group Mom's Milk Anywhere.

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Bonus: My editor, Deb Robson, has posted the fourth part in her series of articles about creating the graphics for Arctic Lace. Today she talks about creating the technical drawings to illustrate knitting techniques. She's included a terrible photo of my boobs, too. (It's OK Deb, no-one can tell it's me because my husband took the photo with my head cut off!)

I also wanted to let you all know that my husband has posted a photo album of pictures he took at the Taos Wool Festival last weekend.

My blog is licenced under Creative Commons although I have been negligent about putting the correct copyright notice up.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

I support the Creative Commons efforst whole heartedly, and I encourage you to do the same. Don't know what it is?

Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

Today I'm hosted by my friend Joanne Seiff, on her blog Yarn Spinner. I've written a guest post about designing sweaters with handspun yarn. The post also includes a bonus picture of the Andean sweater I want to make with my own handspun. I was going to buy alpaca in natural colors, but I think I'm going to use corriedale that's already sitting in my closet. Now to get it cleaned and processed, because I don't want to do that part myself!

Joanne's a freelance writer, knitwear designer, and handspinner. Her designs have been featured by Knitpicks, MagKnits, and Lion Brand, and she writes for several of the big-name knitting magazines and many other pubications. She's also working on a book, but I don't want to give away any of her secrets. I can't remember if she's mentioned it on her blog. All I can say is that it will be good and if you read her blog you'll get a general idea of what kind of things will be in it.

Joanne's also on Ravelry now, so I'm spitting jealous! But today, only 9418 people are ahead of me in line.

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P.S. Thanks to everyone who's posted comments lately. I'm behind on a few big deadlines plus working on the blog tour, so I haven't had time to reply individually. But I do appreciate hearing from everyone.

Today the blog tour stops by Designer's Note where Leanne Dyck has a review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

Leanne is the owner of Olavia's Knitting Patterns, where she "design[s] wholesale and retail hand knitting patterns that combine stylish design with basic knitting techniques." Leanne is also the author of Novelty Yarn, a terrific audio book about knitting-related experiences, and she has a personal blog called Leanneism.

The bonus stop for today is with my editor, Deb Robson, who shows how she took my sloppy kindergarten sketches and morphed them into the gorgeous drawings in Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

Who's on Ravelry already? I'm on the waiting list. Sigh. I should have signed up sooner. At least I'm not last in line.



There are so many cool knitting sites out there that it's driving me nuts. I just signed up on the forums on KnittingHelp.com too.

Hi All, there are two blog tour bonus features today:

1) Amy O'Neill Houck follows up on my guest post with a Q&A.

2) Deb Robson continues her series about the graphics in Ethnic Knitting Discovery by talking about swatches, charts, and tables.

I hope you're all enjoying the ride through the land of knitting, researching, writing, and publishing. I think a knitting book is 3 or 4 times as much work as a novel or general nonfiction prose book.

Today I answer questions from readers on Susan Lawrence's blog, I'm Knitting as Fast as I Can.

Susan sells patterns on her blog and has a photo gallery showing off her gorgeous knitting work. She also posts some free patterns on the blog from time to time.

This gorgeous Branching Beauty scarf pattern was featured in Knitty:



Susan's designs have also been featured in MagKnits.

Today my editor at Nomad Press, Deb Robson is writing about how we designed the cover for Ethnic Knitting Discovery.


Her post today is part of a series she'll be posting over the next few days explaining how she came up with the gorgeous drawings in the book starting only with my kindergarten-style pencil sketches. I'll post links to the rest of her articles as she gets them published. I'm sure you'll find this very interesting.

Today Velda Brotherton has posted a review of Ethnic Knitting Discovery on her blog, On Being A Writer.

Here's an excerpt:

It seems that though all these techniques differ in details, they share a few common traits. The one I found most interesting was that there are no line-by-line instructions or written patterns. This is the way I learned to knit. A dear friend who spoke French better than English endeavored to teach me. So I suppose I learned ethnic knitting and wasn’t aware of it, for I have yet to use a printed pattern. According to the author, it is common in many countries for accomplished knitters to create their own patterns and color designs.

Her assurances that the prospective knitter needs little knowledge of mathematics to design knitted sweaters and other accessories, will be a relief to many who might dread spending hours doing mathematical equations just to knit a hat or scarf.

Velda is a member of Women Writing the West. Her newest book, Fly With the Mourning Dove, was the September reading selection for the group's online book club. A native of Arkansas, she was raised in Wichita and lived in New York for a while. She has since returned to Arkansas where she lives with her husband on an acreage in the Ozark National Forest.

You can read an interview with Velda and learn more about her new book at Ezine @articles.

The next blog tour stop is at Amy O'Neill Houck's blog, The Hook and I. Amy's working on a book, so I decided to talk a bit about the process of writing and publishing a book.

Amy is a knit and crochet designer, who sells her patterns on lulu.com. (These knitted elfin slippers are her newest pattern, comfy for anyone, and especially fun for fans of LOTR. She also offers some free patterns on her blog. Both her knitting and crochet designs are fashionable and fun. Two of her designs are featured in Interweave's new book Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution and a google search shows her creations scattered all over the internet. Amy also writes for Vegetarian Baby & Child.

Today Janet Riehl features a guest post I've written on the issue of how the craft and art of knitting currently is perceived.

I've been thinking a lot about knitting as art for the past few months, and the ideas have resurfaced recently when I got the KnitKnit book in the mail. KnitKnit was (and still is) a 'zine that focus on knitting as art.

The creator of KnitKnit, Sabrina Gschwandtner, has a new book out (with the same title, perhaps confusingly, perhaps not). The book features designs by 27 contemporary knitting artists. If you're like me, you've only heard of 3 or 4 of the designers in this book. There's an inspiring in-depth profile of each designer, and a pattern for a project from each. There are a few projects that normal people might make, and a bunch of bizzarro art projects that are totally inspiring but completely impractical. That's the difference between art and craft, isn't it? Craft creates things that are useful, while art creates things that tell a story or have a message or are just beautiful but that are not (always) used for any purpose other than making people think.

Another book I'm waiting for is Contemporary Knitting: For Textile Artists by Ruth Lee. It's coming out in January. Here's the description from Amazon:

This is not your grandmother’s knitting book…unless Grandma happens to be a cool, creative textile artist. What it does have is detailed information on a spectacular range of contemporary designs—both wearable items, such as a breathtaking star-shaped neckpiece strung with glass beads, as well as exhibition pieces like the author’s Spirit Dresses, knitted from insulated bell wire. Other materials used include paper yarn, plastics, rope, elastics—and even regular knitting yarn! Ruth Lee, whose work has been shown in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, offers a wealth of background on techniques from big knitting and knitting in rounds, to wrapping, coiling, and twining. Plus: dozens of color photographs provide powerful inspiration for adventurous knitters.

Here's what someone said about my author photo from Ethnic Knitting Discovery:

[Donna] apparently knits with NEEDLES THE SIZE OF TREE BRANCHES. Holy crap. She could knit a sweater in a minute with those things.

These are actually made for knitting rugs with about 20 strands of yarn held together, or fat strips of fabric. I found them in England. They were being sold by fiber artist Ingrid Wagner.

I'm at the Taos wool festival. I went shopping this morning, and I'm getting ready to go teach a class this afternoon.

Yes, the blog book tour posts are out of order. Tomorrow I'll be stopping by Janet Grace Riehl's blog, Riehl Life with a guest post, but Janet's got an early start with an overview of Ethnic Knitting Discovery and an eclectic interview with questions ranging from what's included in the book to how I became interested in knitting traditions from different cultures.

Janet is an award-winning author, artist, performer, and creativity coach. Her poems, stories, and essays have been widely published in national literary magazines such as Harvard Review and the newly-released anthology Stories to Live By: Wisdom to Help You Make the Most of Every Day. Her life moves between two great bodies of water-the Mississippi River in Southwestern Illinois and Clear Lake in Northern California. Feel free to contact her by email.

I'm leaving for Taos today to go teach at the Wool Festival. The blog tour will be going on while I'm away, and I expect to have internet access, too.

Today's stop on the blog tour is hosted by Women Writing the West, a writing organization that I've belonged to for several years. I joined before my first book was published, and stuck around during the writing of Arctic Lace, because the annual conference was so inspiring and I always learned something new and made new contacts every year. I am not writing about the West any more, but I am a women writing and living in the west, so I've stayed on as a member of the organization.

I've written a guest post for the WWW blog telling a bit about how I became a freelance writer and how long it took me to get from filling notebook after notebook with raw text to becoming a published author. Ethnic Knitting Discovery is my third book, and I have no plans to ever stop writing about things that I love.

I just got my copy of the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts Issue. It features these Norwegian Ski Sweaters that were designed using the "recipe" in Ethnic Knitting Discovery.

My friend Debbie O'Neill designed these sweaters. It's actually the same design that's on the cover of the book, made in more traditional colors. The magazine includes the finished pattern in six sizes, as well as an overview about how Debbie designed the sweater using my book. We actually made the adult sweater to fit a man (it's a 44" chest), but they decided to photograph it as an oversized sweater on a small woman. Just goes to show how flexible you can be with sweater sizing! The sweaters are the same, except that we switched the main color and contrast color to give a different look. In retrospect, I'm not sure why we made the kid's version in white. Oh my! That's asking for trouble, isn't it?

The Interweave website includes even more info, in an article called Design Your Own Norwegian Ski Sweaters that shows how we did the calculations for the different sizes and gives some tips about customizing the design and sizing for your own uses. It is not as comprehensive as the book and it doesn't have the blank diagrams or spreadsheets for you to fill in your own numbers, but it should give you a very clear idea about what's involved in the design process.

Check it out!

I hope you've been enjoying the blog tour so far. Late last night I stopped by Community of the Land, the blog of author Susan J. Tweit. I met Susan last year when I gave a lecture about Arctic Lace at her local public library. We'd known each other by email for some time, and it was great to finally get to meet face to face.

Susan is a nature writer, and she's interviewed me about how knitting reflects culture and place.

One of Susan's feature articles for National Parks just won a Silver "Eddie" [Editor's] Award from FOLIO. (The Eddies are like the Oscars of the magazine world - it's a wonderful accolade.) Congratulations, Susan!

Susan is the author of ten books that explore the relationship between humans and other species and the landscapes we share. She's written for markets as diverse as Audubon Magazine, Popular Mechanics, the Los Angeles Times, and the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network.

Today the blog tour stops by the virtual home of Theresa Walunas, a fellow Lithuanian-American knitter. Theresa's blog, Tales of a Keyboard Biologist doesn't really have much about keyboards or biology. But it does have lots about knitting and -- lately -- a lot about Theresa's new baby. (Go ahead, say "oooh" and "ahhh". You know you want to. I don't want to put a picture here because that seems like a breach of privacy, but Theresa's not shy about posting baby pictures on her own blog. I'll post a photo of her cats instead.)

I first met Thesesa when I was googling myself (yes, embarassing as it is to admit, I do that from time to time), and I found a picture of a rug she'd made from a pattern in my first book. Of course, I had to write to her and tell her how much fun it was to see my design interpreted with different yarns and colors. And I guess that she was Lithuanian right off, because of the "unas" at the end of her last name. That's not something you see very often.

Theresa interviewed me about how I got interested in the topics in Ethnic Knitting Discovery, and what I think about when I design my own garments. We also talked a bit about using traditional techiques in original and modern designs. I hope you enjoy our chat.

Today the Ethnic Knitting Discovery blog tour is stopping by to visit Carol at Go Knit in Your Hat.

I wrote a guest post for Carol about how I chose the different techniques to include in the book. It's always a challenge deciding what goes in and what gets left out of a book. With knitting it's especially challenging to decide. Are you writing for a beginning, intermediate, or expert knitter? What do you expect them to already know? What unusual techniques did you use that you want to include? What's enough information so newer knitters aren't frustrated and more experienced knitters aren't bored? I try to think of all of these things for each book, and the answers are different every time.

In addition to blogging, Carol also runs an Etsy Shop called Black Bunny Fibers, where she sells gorgeous hand-dyed yarn. OK, the shop is empty right now. But keep checking back because I've seen how Carol's yarns work up and they're worth the wait!

Look what came into my email today! The cover for Kitty Knits, my book full of projects for cats and their people, due out next Janurary from Martingale & Company.



My editor from Nomad Press (publisher of Arctic Lace and Ethnic Knitting Discovery) test knitted the pink sweater on the cover.

Today the Ethnic Knitting Discovery blog tour kicks off with an interview at the Craft zine blog.

Here's what editor Natlie Zee Drieu has to say about my newest book:

You'll finally learn how to start designing your own sweaters and knits with her helpful illustrations and charts. Personally, I'm always scared to rely on my math skills for knitting projects and this book has made me more confident about my skills. This book makes the whole process easier with her explanations. To me, Donna is the knitting historian of our time -- introducing us to knitting stories of other lands, while giving us the foundation to grow our own knitting skills.

Don't forget to check back frequently over the next weeks so you don't miss any of the interviews, guest posts, reviews, and designs that people will be posting on their blogs! The whole schedule is here.