Vintage Knitting, Retro Dressmaking, Make do and Mend, Original and Vintage Inspired Knitting Patterns, Vintage Inspired books

Monday, October 31, 2011

Dates for the Diary

November is going to continue where October left off by being extremely busy. Later this week Gavin and I hit the road for booksignings, trunk shows and events. We will have with us all 80 designs from A Stitch in Time Volume 2 and the book itself available to purchase.

Our first visits this week are to:

Marmalade Yarns, Catherine Hill, Frome, Somerset, on Wednesday 2nd November from 6.30-8.30 pm. This lovely little yarn shop is in my wonderful tech editor's village and I will then be spending a couple of days with Jen vintage button shopping!

We then travel to London on Sunday 6th November for our London book launch at Loop, 15 Camden passage, Islington were we will be from 2-4pm again with all the samples from the book and Loop will be offering 10% off a wide range of yarns to celebrate the launch.


We will then be home for a few days and then hitting the road again - more details of these in a few days!

for now
Ruby

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The next stage - signing!

Once we had received all the books the next step before they could be packaged up for sending out was signing. So it began

all calm and collected. Every book carefully signed with a message




And so the books began to pile up!

and up!

and up!

 and up!
 and up!

 Until finally the last book was signed


I was kept going by the thought of a roast dinner to follow after I had completed all the signings but unfortunately one or two purchasers almost received books with the charming message

"Best wishes, yorkshire puddings and gravy"

but they were spotted before it was too late!

but for now, 2 dislocated wrists, 1 dislocated thumb, 1 twisted shoulder and a raised collar bone later, the signings are complete :-)

Ruby xxx

(all images Copyright Gavin Crawford 2011)

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Delivery Day!

An early morning phone call surprised us with the news yesterday that Volume 2 of A Stitch in Time was on its way to us and would be with us that day. It was all very exciting and Gavin raced off to the Studio to await the new arrival. We were also expecting a delivery of 100s of packaging boxes so I had to stay at home and wait for them.

I paced up and down, I jumped around and did a little dance as my nervous energy built and built. Eventually the call came from Gavin telling me the delivery had arrived.

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
When I got there the unloading had almost finished with only 3 pallets remaining on the lorry. This is the friendly delivery man, who had the enormous task of manouvering all the pallets out of the van, down the drive and into the studio.

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011


This is what the room looked like as it began to fill up. And then the moment the delivery was complete the first box was opened. And here it is:

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
400 pages of loveliness.

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
Copyright Gavin Crawford 2011
And here I am exhausted and very shabby holding the first copy of A Stitch in Time Vol 2. Please excuse my tattiness. I didn't sleep the night before and as I've mentioned before we have no heating at the studio yet and we were moving 1000's of books around so I wasn't really dressed for an official photograph!

So then the first chance to actually look through the pages of our beautiful book -

Copyright Gavin Crawford 2011
Copyright Gavin Crawford 2011
Copyright Gavin Crawford 2011
It is everything I hoped and more. There were many times in this two year process when I doubted if we would actually get to this point as so much seemed to go against us but at the very end everything worked like clockwork and we have the most stunningly beautiful treasury of vintage patterns that I could ever have imagined. I love our book and I truly hope you all will too.

For now
Ruby xxx

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Publication Date and a trip to Wales

Without further ado, I am delighted to announce that A Stitch in Time Volume 2 will be published on 25th October (in two weeks time).

An email has gone out to all pre order customers which advises that orders will be despatched in order of them being placed, so earliest order first. Wholesale orders will be going out in much the same way and then its over to the stores to deliver how they see fit. UK orders could take up to about a week to be received therefore, and depending on the individual country's postal service I would allow three to four weeks for delivery overseas. We'll also be taking the pre order special price off the website at the end of this week so the price will be going up to its full price from Monday. So if you would still like to take advantage of the pre order offer for a few more days, now is the time to do it.

So a couple of days ago, Gavin and I set off through the countryside to meet with the lovely printing firm who are printing the book for us. The pages of the book were being printed 16 pages to one sheet of paper, so 8 pages to each side of paper. With 400 pages to the book that means 25 separate 'sets' of 16 pages. This doesn't sound so much until you see all spread out in front of you!

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011




Where the chap is at the far end of the row is the other end of the book and it is all the piles that you can see. I almost burst into tears as we walked around the corner and saw it spread out in front of us.

And it wasn't just the number of piles

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
It was all the sheets piled up too!

We were given a guided tour of the factory and shown the enormous press that our book was being printed on

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011

Each one of these sections prints one of the four colours needed, the paper is turned over and the process is repeated on the other side. Every stage of the process is followed by cameras so that the print machine operators can check every single page as it passes through the press. The firm is very enviromentally active and have won all manner of awards and accreditation for their efforts to reduce waste and work in an enviromentally friendly way - their canteen even has a wormery for all kitchen waste! All the paper used is FSC approved and of particular interest to me, the inks used are vegetable based. This was common practice in the past but inks became chemical based over the last 60 years or so which has an impact on the enviroment in various ways. I was keen to find a printer who used vegetable based inks so was delighted when this was the case. My other concern was that the printer would be reasonably near to ourselves. So although not on the doorstep, they are only 4 hours away and with the book binders being used only an hours trip from the printers, the amount of travelling the books have to do before they reach us is minimal.

Here are a few more images of our book 'curing' before it leaves the printers to have its beautiful hard back case wrapped around it.

Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
Copyright Susan Crawford 2011
I think most of the images are just about blurry enough to keep you all guessing!

for now
Ruby xx