Finally done

Most of my crocheting (and now, knitting) time for the past 9 months or so has been spent working on a collection of patterns for sea creatures. It's finally done - just communicated the few last edits to these proofs to the publishing company - and the release date is evidently set for January 17, 2012. The format is 8.5" x 8.5", softcover (that actually stays open nicely) with nice glossy photos. You can preorder it on amazon, which is what finally makes it seem real to me now!

The book follows the form of other titles from St. Martin's Griffin, which I really like - there are big gorgeous full bleed "selector" spreads in the front of the book that cross reference the patterns. And, at the end, there are nice examples of how to assemble the random stuff you made into larger projects.

The wonderful editors at Quarto who put this together did a fantastic job making my scribblings presentable, and every crochet pattern has a chart. I didn't appreciate the utility of those until now, especially for patterns that double back on themselves (like this octopus).

I actually wrote close to 100 patterns for the book, but some of them were cut due to lack of popular interest (diatoms! algae etc). Since those are dearest to my own heart, I will definitely be finding a way to make them available to my fellow dorks out there.