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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

At the end of our year of ‘rest’ we went on a very peaceful holiday to Ireland. Within two days of returning we received two very significant emails. How did these people know that this was the time we had set ourselves to start picking up the threads again?

We were now in an era when it no longer seemed strange to get emails from people we had never heard of but who knew all about our work because of the way the internet disseminates information so easily. Some of them must have been mind-readers too.

The first email was from a book packaging company asking if we would be interested in providing material for a book that was to be based on the ideas we had used years before in Woolly Thoughts. It would cover much the same ground but in a completely different way. It was to be ‘visually-led’, which means it would be very colourful with lots of pictures. This was to be a completely different way of working from anything we had done before. In the past we had written as we wanted to and were always prepared to argue that this was the best way. Now we were to be directed in quite specific directions. We had been doing it our way for a very long time. We decided that it might be time for someone else to put their slant on it. It was another new avenue to explore.

The other email was even more surprising as it was an invitation to take part in Festival della Scienza 2004. Our first reaction was amazement that we should be invited to join such an illustrious event. The second reaction was panic. How could we possibly do this when we do not speak a single word of Italian between us?  It was to be an expenses-paid trip and the timing was perfect. The Festival spanned two weeks and we were able to decide when we could slot into that. Yet again it was one of those lucky coincidences that one of the weeks was the Half Term holiday. The school holiday itself was only three days but the other two days of that week were Staff Training Days so Steve would not need to be replaced in his absence.

It was also perfect in another way. One of the long term effects of the immunosuppressant drugs I had been taking for many years was the damage they had done to my skin and which is still being made worse by exposure to ultraviolet light. This means that all natural light is dangerous and I need to be completely covered from the light when outside. Going to Italy in the summer would not be a good idea. Early November was as good as it was going to get.  

Everything was in our favour. It was another road that had appeared in front of us and we had to go along it. Despite our reservations about not speaking the language and terror of working on a par with famous scientists we had read about and seen on TV, we agreed and awaited instructions. A few emails were exchanged. Our contact, Luciana, had a far better command of English than we had of Italian but some of the messages still took some disentangling. We were asked to run workshops on three days and one of the first messages was offering us the choice of staying, at the expense of the Festival organisation, in a hotel for three days, or in ‘a beautiful private house’ for a week. We had slight misgivings about how we would cope in the home of a Genoese family but there was not really a decision to be made. We opted for the week.

These two new avenues that had opened up for us dovetailed perfectly.

We were asked to write a synopsis, for the new book, and were told more or less what had to go into it. Not surprisingly, the synopsis was accepted and the next task was to produce three double-page spreads that could be taken to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Again, we were told which three spreads these were to be and were sent yarns to make the samples, and a finished cushion, to be used on those pages. These pages were to set the tone for the rest of the book and, as they were taken from various parts of the book, it seemed a very strange way of working. Our previous approach was to start at the beginning, say what we had to say, and stop when we reached the end.

The three spreads were completed, along with the requisite knitted items. We were informed that they were to go to Frankfurt with the hope of selling the book to publishers from UK and US. It would be about six weeks after the event before we knew whether we had, according to the book packaging people, ‘the green light’.

25b. ADDING MORE STRANDS continued