A Book

I have hinted to this several times, and I decided it’s well past time to make an official* announcement! I’m writing a book!!

EEEEeeeeEEEEEEeeeeee! Ahem.

I’m teaming up with Coopertive Press and my friend Calley Hastings at Fat Toad Farm for this endeavor. We’re all very excited because this is a fairly unique idea which (I hope) will appeal to a lot of you. The book will not be just knitting patterns, but knitting patterns combined with cooking and baking recipes.

Calley and I are working together to develop patterns and recipes which are tied together through ingredients, colors, textures, and the seasons. Calley is responsible for many of the recipes on the Fat Toad Farm blog as well as a series on the Burlington Free Press and most recently in the print edition of the Boston Globe.

The recipes will use seasonal ingredients, the patterns will use thoughtfully sourced yarns. We will include suggestions for substitutions and modification in both ingredients, styles, yarns… We believe there’s a lot of similarities between taking a knitting pattern and making it your own sweater and taking a cooking recipe and making it a family favorite.

The process is well started already. Just about all the fall knitting is finished and Calley is polishing those recipes. The winter yarn is rolling in and another round of knitting is under way. I love the feel of this project growing organically through our hands. I love reaching out to my favorite indie dyers and the small farms and mills I’ve always respected to ask them to be partners in our project.

In order to express the seasonal feeling, the ties to the land, that we feel are so important for this project Calley and I are also providing all the photography. This is where the deadline knitting comes in. Rather than having a whole passel of designs that are all due at once I’m working with rolling deadlines. The october project needed to be photographed in conjunction with the foliage. The February design needs to be done while there’s snow on the ground. This connection to the seasons is actually a change from my normal design process. For most magazine publications I’m working on winter designs just as spring arrives.

So if I seem a bit preoccupied, or if the knitting photography seems a little thin around here for the next 10 months please excuse me. Know that I’m busy behind the scenes!

On that note, we do have a request. Over the next year we’ll be looking for test knitters AND test cooks. If you’re interested please leave a comment below. Make sure the e-mail address you provide is a good one and I’ll get in touch with you about your preferences. We’ll need all volunteers to agree to keep the details of their work secret until the book is published. But once it is you’ll be welcome (and encouraged) to write a blog post, put details on ravelry, post food photos to flickr, and tell all your friends!

*As opposed to the unofficial announcement I made on twitter, if you’re wondering where else you’ve seen this.