A Hat in Time has arrived!

Great news: The print run for A Hat in Time has arrived! For anyone who has pre-ordered, I shall endeavour to post your copy within the next week (as soon as I can, really). K1Yarn in Edinburgh and Glasgow are now also selling copies and any orders for books that I receive will be dealt with as soon as possible.

As a reminder, the book is priced at 7.50 pound Sterling plus postage. I'm in the process of creating a nice looking store front for this site, in the meantime, you can purchase your copy by clicking on the pre-order button.

Remember all profits from the book will go to Save the Children's vital work. Don't you think A Hat in Time would make a lovely stocking filler for your knitting friends/family members?

A Hat in Time has arrived!

You can buy A Hat in Time now!!!

As of today, A Hat in Time is available for purchase as an e-book at £5 on Lulu, £4 of which will go directly to Save the Children's vital work on ending child poverty. You can also buy the ebook on Ravelry, for $10 with an even greater share going directly to Save the Children's work.

The book is now also available for purchase on Lulu.

If you wish to support a cheaper print run, please pre-order (button on your right) and pre-pay - these limited print run books are retailing at £7.50 per copy plus postage. They will be posted at the end of October. And as of 1st of November, they will be posted within 3 business day of purchase. It's up on Amazon too, but due to their share I had to make it a bit more pricey, feel free to purchase it through amazon.co.uk though.

Can I also ask for your help to promote A Hat in Time wherever you can - feel free to grab image and text from this blog. Thank you!

You can buy A Hat in Time now!!!

Errata

I've just been informed that the Lace Leaf Hat chart in the book contains an errata. I will edit the book by the end of this week to include the correct chart. If you've bought the ebook already, please email me knit (at) cartside dot co dot uk and I'll email you the correct chart. And here it is:

Errata

Preorders taken now

A Hat in Time, a charity knitting/crotchet book with 35 different hat patterns celebrating the work of Save the Children while raising funds for this charity, will be published in about two weeks as an ebook on Lulu. This will be the cheapest option for me and for anyone buying it. Ebook means that the book can be downloaded as a pdf file.

This is not great for giving the book as a present or for those among Save the Children supporters who prefer an actual book. A Hat in Time will therefore also be available as an on demand book through Lulu and through Amazon. It will cost significantly more because both Amazon and Lulu incur charges for production/marketing.

Finally, for those not online, the plan is to also have a limited number of printed books. Here is my dilemma with this: To cut costs and make it viable, I need to print a run of 2500 books. I'm positive that these can be sold if all available channels are used. The book will be out well before Christmas and it would be an ideal Christmas present. This printed book would be reasonably priced at £6.99 which leaves a significant donation for Save the Children. The disadvantage is the outlay cost. I've done my sums and the outlay would be paid for if 585 books were sold.

A small risk considering the total funds that could be raised by going down this route, which is close to £15,000.

Yet, I do not have the cash for the up front cost of printing these books. So I'm trying to raise this. It occurred to me that this could be done through pre orders. Consider this: I need £4,100, which is equivalent to 40 people pre-ordering 15 books which they would then sell or give away as presents. That sounds manageable, doesn't it?

So, as of today, you can pre-order A Hat in Time. If you think you will be able to sell/give as present any number of copies, you can order and pay for them up front and they will be posted to you as soon as printed, with plenty of time before Christmas. There is be a shopping cart/paypal button on this page and I can issue a receipt. So you don't think I'm some stranger taking money off you, I can verify that I'm employed by Save the Children, and provide my work and home address to those of you who pre-order.

Of course, I'm the first person to pre-order 15 books.

To pre-order, simply click on the cart button at the top right of this page. For more details or any questions, please email me at s.keir @ savethechildren dot org.uk (deleting the spaces in the address and substituting dot with a .).

Please pass this on to anyone you think would support this, retweet etc. THANK YOU!

Preorders taken now

About A Hat In Time

In 2008, Save the Children’s launched their Knit One Save One campaign, for which people were asked to knit a hat for children in countries where child mortality is a massive problem, and to send a message to the UK and US governments to invest money to reduce preventable child mortality.

The hats kept coming. More and more arrived, and the head office of Save the Children had to transform the basement into a hat sorting station.

To me, it demonstrated the generosity of people, particularly crafters, and the very strong link between those who decide to make things by hand and those who will give to charity.

When it came to celebrating Save the Children’s 90th anniversary in 2009, there was no question that this celebration had to also celebrate the contribution of so many knitters to the Child Survival Campaign.

I decided that I would put together a book of knitting and crochet hat patterns to celebrate Save the Children's work and fundraise a bit while doing so.

Thanks to the community on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/), even more generosity was found. This time, knitters all over the world donated patterns for this book. I would like to thank them wholeheartedly because without their donation, this book would never have been.

The book will also include photos and case stories taken from real work that Save the Children undertakes around the world, with a look back into the history of what Save the Children has done and achieved in the last 90 years.

All profits from the sale of this book will of course be donated to the vital and ongoing work of Save the Children. We will only rest once the rights of the child have become a reality across the world. Much more work is needed, and this work needs money, dedication, time and commitment. So thank you for buying this book. With it, you make your very own contribution to realising our vision.

Please follow this blog or follow me on twitter to get updates on the publication of A Hat in Time (estimated date of publication: first week of September 2009).

About A Hat In Time