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News
Archive
15
December 2004 & 22 December 2004
Our apologies for the apparent
lack of news in the last few months. We have been scrambling to keep all the current
balls in the air and the News page was one that managed to escape. Our current
web site–related project is to provide individuals with the ability to order
directly from the Nomad Press site. We hope to have this operational in early
January 2005, but we just might manage it sooner. It could happen.
In other news:
Simple Socks is in its fourth printing
Don’t miss Ann Budd’s “Old Way Gansey” in the Winter 2004
issue of Interweave Knits. Ann made a gansey based in Knitting in the
Old Way’s design on page 246. She used Blackwater Abbey worsted-weight
yarn, and fulled the fabric. Beautiful! Happy holidays to all from Nomad
Press!
2 August 2004
Just went live with Nomad’s new website, located at www.nomad-press.com!
We decided that Nomad needed its own location.
31
July 2004
Since this update was such a long time in coming it will
be rather extensive.
What have we been doing that has caused such a gap on our news page? Well,
here goes: General news
Both Knitting in the Old Way and Simple Socks are in their third
print runs—17,700 copies of Knitting in the Old Way and 11,000 copies
of Simple Socks paperback so far this year.
Deborah attended BookExpo in Chicago. Miles and miles of books! It took several
days to get through it, and even then she is sure she did not see everything.
Both Deborah and
Rebekah attended Convergence and helped out at the WARP
booth.
We
have decided to publish a few books in the middle-grade/young adult fiction realm.
While this may seem somewhat at odds with the current selection of Nomad Press
books, we feel that it will be a fun addition to our current title list. Also,
Rebekah is quite familiar with the genre and Deborah’s BA is in creative
writing for children. See the bottom of the books page
for a bit more information. Upcoming knitting books and author news
Priscilla had a
wonderful article in the Winter 2003 issue of Interweave Knits: her “Eastern
European Footlets” presents one of her intarsia techniques along with a low-cut
pair of socks that would make great slippers. Those are also Priscilla’s
fingerpuppets in Melanie Falick’s Weekend Knitting.
Donna Druchunas went off to Alaska for firsthand experience with the Oomingmak
Musk Ox Producers’ Co-operative in preparation for her book, tentatively
titled Arctic Lace and due in 2005. Donna’s book from Lark, The
Knitted Rug, will be available in September. To be kept in touch with its
progress, you can sign up at Donna’s
web site. Donna also had an article in the Spring 2004 issue of Interweave
Knits, “Uncommon Gardening Gloves.” She combined cotton with elastic
to get washable gloves that fit.
Beth Brown-Reinsel has an almost-complete manuscript on Scandinavian sweaters.
We’re working with her on it with a planned release of 2006. For those who
would like to become familiar with Beth’s work in advance, you can visit
her web site, locate a copy of her Knitting
Ganseys (Interweave Press), or see her recent “Beyond the Basics”
articles in Interweave Knits: “Different Ways to Knit” (Spring
2004) and “Working with Two Yarns” (Summer 2004). An aside: speaking
of “Beyond the Basics,” this series is terrific. In addition to Beth’s
contributions, check out Pam Allen’s coverage of thumb gussets for the Winter
2003/2004 issue of Interweave Knits. KnitLit, Too
Deborah’s
essay in KnitLit, Too
examines the reasons she spins—other than the incomparable, can’t-be-bought
yarn that handspinning provides her with. For a photo of Deborah and of the dog
we adopted last October (see 10/25 posting),
see
http://www.knitlit.com/too/contributors/robson.htm
We also attended
a Christine Lavin
concert in Boulder, where we took our knitting and joined the knit-in. . . . Christine
Lavin is another of the contributors to KnitLit,
Too.
Deborah’s gave a reading at the Boulder Bookstore with fellow KnitLit,
Too contributors Tara Jon Manning (Tara’s new book is Mindful
Knitting) and Beth Walker.
Tara, who grew up in a Buddhist family, is uniquely qualified to consider the
contemplative aspects of knitting. Beth, a multi-talented writer, has a special
interest in women and ADD (as do we). It was great to meet and spend an evening
with these two fascinating women! Not Nomad books, but books you may want
to check out if you like to knit outside the lines (as we do): Annie Modessit’s
new, independently published Confessions
of a Knitting Heretic. Along the same lines, if you missed or need an
excuse to re-read Anna Zilboorg’s Knitting
for Anarchists, now’s a good time!
17
April 2004
We just got news this morning that we received a favorable
review in the April 15 issue of Library
Journal. 13
April 2004
It’s been a whirlwind around here since January! We
keep (relatively) peaceably working along on image-processing and editing for
Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ Knitting Cowichan Sweaters, between flurries
of activity related to Knitting in the Old Way, Simple Socks, and
various computer issues. Reviews of Knitting in the Old Way have
appeared in (in alphabetical order) Black
Sheep Newsletter (Winter 2004), Interweave
Knits (Spring 2004), Knitter’s
(Spring 2004), Knitter’s
Review (December 2003 and January 2004), Midwest
Book Review (January 2004), PieceWork
(March/April 2004), Spin-Off
(Spring 2004), and Vogue
Knitting (Spring 2004). The book has been intermittently out of stock
because copies have been selling faster than we could print them, but that should
even out soon. The second print run is being distributed now, and we are ordering
the third print run this week. Simple Socks has not received the
same review attention because it’s a re-release in paperback, but it, too,
has already gone back for a second print run. Crafter’s Choice®
Book Club offered Knitting in the Old Way beginning with a January mailing,
and will include Simple Socks in May. Meanwhile, author Donna Druchunas
is in Alaska, visiting with knitters and other supporters of Oomingmak Musk Ox
Producers’ Co-operative for her next book, tentatively titled Arctic Lace,
which is scheduled to be published by Nomad in 2005. (Donna’s Knitted
Rugs will be issued by Lark Books in fall 2003, and the Spring 2004 issue
of Interweave Knits contains a pair of gardening gloves Donna made.) She
is posting regularly in a blog, at www.domanddonna.com/alaska/alaska.php,
for those of you interested in reading about her experiences. She has also posted
some pictures of baby musk oxen! Deborah Robson has finished knitting a
Cowichan-style sweater—it’s being blocked right now, and will get its
zipper later in the week. A devoted fan of fine yarns and needles, the bulky-but-not-cumbersome
garments from this tradition are giving her a whole new view of the knitting world.
She’s a convert. An essay of Deborah’s appears in the newly published
KnitLit Too: Stories from Sheep to Shawl . . . and More Writing about Knitting,
edited by Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf (Three Rivers Press, 2004).
4 January 2004
The first reviews of Knitting
in the Old Way are coming in! Knitter’s Review’s Clara Parkes
calls the book a guide to “off-road knitting” (we love the image) and
has included it in a pretty short list covering the best of 2003’s knitting-related
developments. (Although it’s a 2004 title, its review copies were mailed
in late 2003.) www.knittersreview.com. Both
Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits have indicated that they’ll
be reviewing the book in their Spring issues. And Crafter’s Choice
Book Club will be featuring both Knitting in the Old Way and Simple
Socks, Plain and Fancy as alternate selections.
23
December 2003
Wow! Where does the time go? Since late October, we have
redesigned Simple Socks and sent it to press, shipped out many review copies
of both Knitting in the Old Way and Simple Socks, and half of our
human workforce have come down with and recovered from the flu. The first
copies of Knitting in the Old Way have reached readers . . . and the first
news of errata has reached us. We have strong perfectionist tendencies. A computer
glitch affected the entire first printing. Working with the printer, we found
the source of the problem—an electronic box swapped two files between final
proofing and the press (a group of Swedes now precedes a group of Norwegians). For
a half-day we wept, gnashed our teeth, wailed at the heavens, and considered hara-kiri. Then
we realized that computers are computers; that hara-kiri precludes further knitting
(not acceptable); and that the significant errata (so far!) can be summarily corrected
in two short sentences that will fit on the smallest size of Post-It®
note: Pages 131-142 should be pages 146-157.
Pages 143-157 should be
pages 131-145. Perhaps this is the spirit trail of human imperfection that
gives us the opportunity to continue our work. For those who would prefer
the alternative, our wonderful indexer has produced an alternate index that corresponds
directly to the first-edition page numbers as printed, and we have a slightly
adjusted page 7 (the affected portion of the table of contents), both of which
will be posted later this week in PDF format. NEW!
Corrections page.
25
October 2003
A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed
the printer’s proofs of Knitting in the Old Way. It looked fantastic—all
that work coming together in a form knitters can use and love! This is a book
you won’t outgrow. It has concepts for beginners, and it leads the experienced
to continue learning and enjoying our craft. Simple Socks, Plain and
Fancy came out as a hardcover in 2001 and we’ve sold a lot of copies.
In fact, it has sold well enough that our distributor asked us to release it as
a paperback. It’s due in March 2004 in yarn shops and bookstores. Always
looking for ways to make books clearer, easier to use, and friendlier, we aren’t
taking the easy way out. We could have decided to simply reprint the hardcover,
but one thing led to another. . . . We’ve lightly re-edited, laid out the
pages again, refined the illustration files. The information is essentially the
same, but the presentation is (we hope) even nicer—and it’s got a brighter
cover, to help this edition hold its own in a larger marketplace. Limited
quantities of the hardcover Simple Socks are still available, primarily
through yarn shops (some of the shop owners have ordered extras because they
like the hardcover format). If you would prefer to have the additional durability
offered by the sewn binding and solid covers, order it from your local store soon! In
other news, both Knitting in the Old Way and Simple Socks are now
listed in a variety of online bookstores’ databases, making it easier for
those knitters who do not have access to a local bookstore to get their hands
on our books. The books should be in all the major databases before long. Completely
off-topic, we now have two dogs and a cat assisting in the office. The
extra dog was an escape artist at her former home. Our Border collie had already
tested all our fencing thoroughly, and the new dog seems content to hang out while
we work.
Friday, 19 September
2003
Lots has been happening. We sent Knitting in the Old Way
to press last week! After all the slow detail work and then the waiting and then
more slow detail work, we are suddenly in a flurry of activity. The proofs arrived
yesterday and look great and have been shipped back to the printer. A year and
a half of intensive work (and close to another year of preparation and pondering)
are coming together. More news soon. . . .
Saturday,
2 August 2003
Simple Socks has been reprinted. A new print
run is always a cheerful thing; it means that the books in the previous printing
have made their way to readers, who we hope are enjoying the books as much as
we do. Priscilla
Gibson-Roberts has an article in the Fall 2003 issue of Interweave Knits.
Her instructions for “Love Stamp Socks” give knitters the opportunity
to sample several ethnic intarsia techniques.
Deborah Robson is knitting yet another pair of “simple socks.” These
will accompany an essay that will appear in an anthology next year (details in
a future news note). Of course she’s using Priscilla’s toe-and-heel
techniques (which have revolutionized her sock-knitting). She’s embellishing
the legs of her indigo-colored socks with Barbara Walker’s “Lace Rib,”
from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (Pittsville, Wisconsin: Schoolhouse
Press, 1998; page 48). We’ve proofed our copy for the catalog that
National Book Network will use to present its new publishers—including Nomad
Press—to bookstores beginning in early September. The cat continues to monitor
our work at the computer. She has, fortunately, been content with a “paws-off”
approach to management and we don’t think she has made any new editorial
changes. Much of our time over the past month has been spent organizing
the foundation tasks common to all businesses, and we’re looking forward
to getting back to the activities that we prefer: designing books!
Thursday, 3 July 2003
We have just signed
a distribution agreement with National Book Network, Inc. (NBN). That’s big
news for a small press, and we’ve scrambled to get together information and
images for the catalog deadline.
Yarn shops also had an opportunity
to see samples of the new Knitting in the Old Way at the June trade show
sponsored by The National Needlework Association (TNNA) and to order advance copies
of the book, which will be shipped as soon as they’re off press this fall.
No, it’s not too early to reserve individual copies or place
orders with the wholesalers or NBN!
Saturday,
31 May 2003
Despite our best intentions, the book won’t be perfect.
Its editing and layout are being done with the regular assistance of a 16-year-old
black cat whose preferred contributions include sitting on top of the computer
monitor (tail dangling in front of the screen), sleeping in the opened desk drawer
on which we balance our working papers, and jumping across the keyboard. While
preparing part of the “questions and answers”
section of this site, we discovered to our dismay that she had turned the title
of Melanie Falick’s Kids Knitting into Kits Knitting (amusing,
but inaccurate) and had added the random letters st bb to the end of Interweave
Knits. When the book is available, we welcome notes about errors we may not
have located and will make all reasonably feasible corrections in future printings.
Meanwhile, we are doing the best job possible (given our levels of help). | 
