Here's a brief update on my Big Idea. Maybe not brief because a lot has happened. It will be the short version of events, even if that's not going to be short in the strictest sense.

To recap, Save the Children's Knit One Save One campaign was a shocking success. It involved knitting a baby hat and sending it with a message to Gordon Brown about our responsibility to do something about so many million children not reaching their 5th birthday due to entirely preventable conditions that cause their untimely death. The target of the campaign (in the UK) was 50,000 baby hats. We've now received over 650,000 and they keep coming. There is no money left to send them abroad, to be honest, we don't know what to do with them. Well, we do, they will go to other charities so the knitting wasn't wasted!

What the campaign illustrates is that a) you can sometimes capture people's imagination b) unexpectedly and in much bigger ways than anticipated c) knitters love knitting for charity d) there are many more knitters than anyone would expect.

I've been going about pondering how this creative potential could be engaged further. I found the website www.craftivism.com, joined charity knitting groups on www.ravelry.com. I talked to people. Save the Children will be 90 this year and during a brainstorm on how to use this anniversary to raise awareness of Save the Children's work and maybe even fundraise for the organisation, I came up with the idea of a book. The 90 recipies from 90 countries Save the Children works in was well received, the alternative of 90 knitting patterns less so, but I'm just too curious to find out if the knitting theme can pull off another surprise.

So I'm going to publish a book for the 90th anniversary of Save the Children with a knitting theme.

Now to the technicalities. I investigated www.createspace.com where you can self publish. They print on demand, they have a transparent pricing overview. The drawback is the actual production cost - a knitting book really needs colour, and colour books are expensive. The actual profit for Save the Children wouldn't be great. More complex is the issue that they pay by bank transfer into a US bank or by cheque only - no paypal option. So either I need to find a way to open a US bank account, or link up with my US colleagues, or bite even more into the profits by cashing foreign currency cheques (they carry a significant commission). I also learned that there's tax to be considered - any product sold is taxable income, createspace being a US company, this would be taxable in the US. There are ways to offset and reclaim, but it all means hassle and declaring it as personal income when really the profit goes to Save the Children.

So I returned to Lulu. Lulu offer payment by paypal. The also offer e-book publishing - this means that I can publish the book as a download and avoid all book production cost. The only cost to the downloader is that which I set as a "royalty" (read donation), minus 20% commission which Lulu takes. The drawback is that there's no real book, the plus is that this is the best way to create an affordable book without any initial outlay of costs. Of course, Lulu also offers real books by on demand publishing. The price is comparable to createspace, with the only difference that I personally can buy a bulk order at a cheaper unit price and sell on locally in shops / amongst friends. I can do both the downloadable version and the real book version. Tax implications remain but as Lulu's services have always been international, there is lots of information and it doesn't look quite as daunting.

So for the moment I'm inclined towards Lulu. I haven't found any other online on demand book publisher that doesn't require an initial outlay of a significant sum before a book is published, although I'm still open to look at other providers if they do exist.

Encouraged by the cheap option of a downloadable book on Lulu, I sent out my first request on the Ravelry charity knitting group, asking people for patterns they would be prepared to share for this project. So far, it seems that I'm asking the wrong people. While supportive, charity knitters seem to use free and simple patterns, they don't tend to design their own that they can give away. So I may have to go the route of asking pattern designers if they want to get involved, or going around charity knitting websites that offer free patterns. While this is more work, it's also exciting and gives me new ideas. I'm even thinking that the book could be on charity crafting and portray initiatives, what they do, and become a resource of charity crafting.

This was only the first approach to charity knitters, there are many doors that I plan to knock on. However if anyone who reads this has ideas, knows an interesting website on this subject or even has a knitting / crochet / sewing pattern they would like to contribute to this book, please do get in touch! Comment box is below, alternatively send me an email: knit @ cartside dot co dot uk (as ever, remove the spaces, and replace dot with and actual dot).

Did I say it was a brief update?