Visionary Round-Up

What a week! I just spent 8 days in the company of other knitting-and-fiber-related book authors (and aspiring authors) up at Cat Bordhi's Visionary Retreat for self-publishers. It's always an exhausting, emotionally-draining, inspiring, crazy week and this year was no exception.



I adore the chance to head up to Friday Harbor, one of my favorite places on earth, and spend the week on-island. We got lucky on our drive up and snagged one of the last spots on the ferry deck. I love this shot of the cars separated from water by only a thin net fence. Hope their parking brakes are solid!



Once on the island, we settled into our cabins and the lodge at Lakedale, another gorgeous, inspiring spot.



I brought Donna with me this year for moral support (and because she's helping with the next book, including by standing by as the voice of sanity and organization amidst my perpetual chaos), which was really nice. I love hanging out surrounded by all that crazy creativity, but sometimes I just need to hide my introvert self and chill out. We had a little cabin to ourselves with a bedroom downstairs for Donna and a loft upstairs for me, and a living room and kitchen with fireplace and DVD player for the necessary chilling out. I got to wake up in the morning and look out the window to this view:



It was too cold to enjoy the fire pit but not too cold to enjoy the ducks and various other waterfowl. I took a few walks (the first steps in my pre-pre-marathon training) and generally enjoyed being out of the city. We also took a drive to the west side of the island one afternoon and stopped to see baby alpacas and eagles along the way. I didn't remember to grab my camera, so no alpaca photos (they were incredibly cute!).

I was lucky enough to spend two mornings learning about book design and typography from small press owner Deb Robson (she is just as delightful as you'd guess from this photo of us on the ferry).



It's amazing what a good time can be had talking about setting baseline grids in InDesign and selecting the perfect font for display text. I'm such a font novice, but after Deb's typography class, I was ready to spend the next three days surfing MyFonts.com! But first I need to get a little bit more of my next book written...

I'll save the rest for another post - I've got a little guy who's been missing me all week waiting upstairs for some before-bed snuggles. If you're following the book tour (and are still waiting to win your own copy of Toe-Up!), head over to my tech editor Amanda's blog for a fun little interview and to the Knot Another Hat blog for some Olympic knitting inspiration. Also, check out Knitspot over the weekend for a guest post involving wild tales of book photography.

Until next time, here's a final view of Friday Harbor. Can't wait to get back there!