Editing

 Just an update of Little Tiny. She’s growing up big. She’ll be 2 in August in case you were wondering.

And on to my main point of today.

My kids like to ask me, a lot, what is my favorite song, what is my favorite movie, what is my favorite TV show? Well, the what is my favorite song question arose again and I gave my usual answer – for what?

Today was the first time I realized that I give that answer all of the time when asked about my favorites. In almost every class i teach a student asks, “What is your favorite wool?” My answer for years has been, “For what?” When i answer the kids with that they roll their eyes and it doesn’t go any further. In spinning classes, the subject often goes a little bit deeper and I talk about what wools are my favorites in each category.

Then we move to how I categorize wools and why.

This kind of thinking was the reason I wanted to write a book. I felt like my approach was a little different than many teachers I had taken classes from. Lucky for me, my publisher thought it was a good idea too.

So I wrote this book and spun the samples from May of 2011 to May of 2012. I turned in my manuscript in May 2012. It was in Word with about 160-ish pages and over 50,000 words. the most I had ever written about one topic in my life. then I waited. Some other books were in the works and things were delayed and so I waited. And then Christmas came and I waited.

Then, in early March of this year I got it back. With lots of notes and questions and comments. Well, i actually didn’t know that at first because I didn’t open it for at least a week. I needed the strong support of my friend Jillian. When I opened it the world did not come crashing down and everything seemed manageable.

Well, it took me just over 3 weeks in the midst of washing about 85 pounds of wool in at least 17  breeds. the last few days only consisted of editing all day. I turned it all in for my editor’s eagle eyes to review again on April 2 and it included 183 pages and more than 60,000 words!

There are still a few charts to fill in and some new samples to spin but progress is happening and I am glad.

There was a lot of hot chocolate drinking…