Colour Moves is published!

I want to thank everyone for your comments on yesterday’s post. Reading them, I was struck very strongly by the feeling of our all facing exactly the same pressing issue in our disparate regions in the world – an unusual sense of connection, but not one to be ignored. Today’s is an ‘announcement’ kind of post, which also might suggest to you some of what’s being going on here in recent days behind the scenes: our sixteenth book – Colour Moves – by Claudia Fiocchetti – has just been published.

If you’ve been following Claudia’s blog, you’ll know what a great job she’s been doing to introduce the story of each of the beautiful, colourful designs in her collection.

(Floral Tapestry)

To say it has not been an ideal time for a first-time author / designer to promote and launch her book would be something of an understatement. Claudia lives in London, and had been commuting to an out-of-town conservation job, under incredibly stressful circumstances, until the city was restricted. We’d sent her book to print a few weeks ago, and Claudia had begun taking pre-orders, but we all had doubts whether, given the very serious nature of what was happening, we’d be able to publish the book when planned, or be able to deliver Claudia’s copies to her in England in anything like a timely fashion. In the larger scheme of things, publishing a book is a pretty insignificant matter, and we were all happily resigned to handling a significant delay. But then, after some back and forth our Glasgow printer, Bell & Bain, came through, and managed to publish and deliver Colour Moves before ceasing operations. We were unexpectedly delighted!

We work with some great manufacturers – of whom Bell & Bain is just one – and it is fair to say that in the past few weeks we’ve gained a renewed appreciation both of them, and the good relationships we’ve developed. All of us have been hugely impressed by the ability of our suppliers to work so professionally and flexibly to get things sorted out for us at what is, for all businesses and industries, a hugely difficult time.

So thankyou, wonderful manufacturers.

In the past week, the Colour Moves designs that Claudia’s revealed have included

Taighean (a design that shall now, thanks to Sam, forever be known as the ‘stay at home’ mitts)

Sirente – a pair of vibrant, joyful mittens

Gran Sasso – a cosy set for head and hands with rhythmic stripes

The Broken Herringbone snood, worn on the book’s cover with such great aplomb by Fenella

and the mesmeric, monochrome Hypno.

. . . a pair of mittens and fingerless mitts

. . . that have been happily modelled by our very own Sam.

There are 17 accessory patterns in this book in total, for hands, neck and hands, and the gloves and mittens have been designed to suit a range of larger and smaller sizes. The book even includes a set of templates to make your own glove and mitten blockers out of those foam mats that so many of use for blocking.

Producing Colour Moves has been a big team effort. As well as Claudia, myself, Mel, Jane, Sam, Fenella, tech-editor Frauke, copy-editor Ivor, and Ravelry-group-guru Claire, the KDD team was joined on this project by Sarah Mackay, who did a brilliant proof reading job. Tom’s photographs, as usual, bring the joyful spirit of this book to life.

As the first title of our Make // Mark imprint – from which all profits go to supporting the work of first-time authors and designers – Colour Moves is a project of which we are particularly proud. We hope you love this book!

To close, just a note to say that if you are also subscribed to our monthly shop newsletter, I apologise for the fact that you’ll be hearing from me twice in one day today. March has been very odd and very busy, and there are many things to summarise!

I think I’ll post another poem here tomorrow. Look after yourselves and enjoy your Sunday!