I’m starting a magazine along with Erin Birnel and Monica Kirby! I spent forever trying to think of a snappy hook for this post, but sometimes it’s best to dive right in. Our new magazine is called Stranded Magazine, and the title is a little bit of a play on words because of the interconnectivity metaphor that represents what we’re hoping to do, the knitting term, and we also were seriously considering making our first issue beach themed. Haha! Here are the details on how we got started and what to expect.
After about a year of designing full-time, I started to miss some things about working with other people. My previous job had been an editor position at a cake decorating magazine, and I often found myself thinking about the great ideas I came up with when I talked things out with my coworkers, the fun of promoting other creative people’s wonderful work, and so much more. I love doing independent design work, but it’s very insular, and sometimes can feel very, “me, me me.” My long term goal became starting some kind of knitting magazine. It was the thing I talked about whenever someone asked me about what I wanted to do with my career. I came up with many different variations on the theme, and I eventually settles on a concept I liked best, but it wasn’t something I could do on my own.
Cut to sitting down with two of my good friends last March to try to work out if we could realistically do this. And what we found was that it was going to take a lot of hard work, but it looked like we could do it. So we did! Our first issue, the Warm Weather 2016 issue, comes out at the beginning of next month.
Now that I’ve told you a piece of the origin story, let me tell you more about the magazine itself! Stranded Magazine is an exclusively digital magazine that combines everything I want as both a magazine reader and a magazine contributor. When you buy an issue, you get all of the patterns, plus tutorials, articles, and other craft projects, and designers get a percentage of every magazine sale along with a flat fee, so everybody wins. (Most magazines that include all of the patterns only pay designers a flat fee, and most publications that do pay designers a percentage of the sales require you to purchase the patterns individually.) We’ve managed to make this work by being digital only and having each issue be available for only a year. After the year is up, rights revert back to the designers who can do what they like with them. There will be three issues a year, one for Warm Weather, Mild Weather, and Cold Weather, and we’re packing them full of good stuff.
So that’s my new big project! We’ve been working on it for a long time, and I hope you’ll support it as much as you’ve supported my self-published work. You can follow us on Instagram, join our Ravelry group, and/or visit our site and subscribe to our mailing list. I think you’ll love what we’ve got in store for you.
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