colour compass: what’s going on?

Hello! I thought I should give you a heads-up regarding what’s going on with Colour Compass: our big project here at KDD for this winter. For those who don’t know, Colour Compass is an advent calendar, a pattern collection, and a guide to playing with colour. For all those who have subscribed, the fun will begin on December 1st (for those who haven’t I’m afraid the advent calendars have sold out, but you’ll be able to join in the fun of the Colour Compass KAL with us in the new year).

I said that the fun will begin on December 1st, but of course I and the rest of the KDD team have been preparing for this project for many months. First, we developed 6 new shades of Milarrochy Tweed to augment our existing palette of 18, and then Tom designed and developed exactly the right kind of packaging in which to present 24 balls of yarn beautifully as an advent calendar. Working with our suppliers, this took a reasonable amount of time.

While Tom was designing the actual calendar, I was designing the Colour Compass collection and developing its patterns together with Maylin, a talented guest designer, and the KDD test and sample knitting team. I’m happy to say that the patterns are all written, and some beautifully colourful samples are beginning to appear. This stage (for me!) is very exciting. There are two garment patterns and four smaller projects in the collection. You’ll be able to knit at least one of the garments and two or three of the smaller projects with the yarn in your calendar.

While I’ve been working away designing and knitting, the KDD warehouse has become a hive of activity as Tom, Kate C, Ivor, Mairi, Susan, Aileen, and Kendall prepare and pack your advent calendars. Each calendar includes 24 individually wrapped balls of Milarrochy Tweed, carefully presented and stickered, with a number for each December date on which you’ll be able to unwrap your tasty woolly parcels. The calendars are quite labour intensive to prepare and pack: working flat out, a team of five can manage between 160 and 240 advent calendars in a week, alongside shipping out all our ‘normal’ orders from the KDD shop. The warehouse team has now begun shipping the advent calendars to the destinations that are furthest from us in the world, such as Australia and New Zealand, or to places where parcels can sometimes take a fairly long time to arrive, such as Canada. If you’ve subscribed and received your shipping notification – hurrah – your Colour Compass package is on its way! If you’ve not yet received a notification, don’t worry – we anticipate several more weeks of packing to come, with the last of the Colour Compass packages shipping to UK knitters in early November (all in good time for advent).

So what should you do when you receive your box in the post? Personally, I would suggest putting it away, immediately, so you aren’t tempted to peek . . . then, on December 1st, you can happily begin opening your parcels, with a colourful surprise each day. We’ve designed the calendar packaging specifically to help each knitter develop palettes, and play with their yarn. I won’t spoil the surprise, but the calendars are designed in a way that means you can admire the jolly and jewel-like colours of your opened yarn alongside your unopened parcels throughout the duration of the month.

Then, on December 24th, you’ll open your final package to discover. . . your Colour Compass golden ticket! Using the information and / or QR code provided on your golden ticket, you’ll be able to access a web page, and from there, download your Colour Compass e-book. The web page and e-book will go live from 9 am on December 24th, and will not be available before this date (so if you are the kind of knitter who likes to open every door in your advent calendar before December begins, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little longer for your patterns and e-book).

Obviously I can’t spoil the surprise, or tell you exactly what’s in the Colour Compass e-book, but I can say that because this is a project designed to encourage creative play, that the e-book is basically all about that. There are sections about, for example, developing palettes, and different approaches to colour, as well necessary technical matters, such as dealing with ends (of which your Colour Compass projects will involve inevitably many).

If you have any further questions about Colour Compass (that aren’t spoiling any surprises!) then do leave them in the comments section on this post, and I’ll do my best to respond. I’m really happy with how this project is coming together, and am already looking forward to seeing what knitters do with the patterns I’ve designed! Meanwhile, all power to the hands of our hard-working warehouse team, who will be very busy for the next few weeks, packing and shipping your advent calendars.

We are all looking forward to December!