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| Image courtesy of Knitting magazine |
The magazine costs £5.99 in newsagents, or £6.99 if bought directly from the publisher, and comes with a sock workshop booklet aimed at those new to sock knitting.
At first glance the patterns in the magazine are quite conservative and there's only one - the jumper on the cover - that I'd like to knit. Where the magazine does shine is in its content, with features on and profiles of small niche British wool brands along with interviews with home-grown cutting edge knitting entrepreneurs such as Louisa Harding and Isobel Davies.
I've long found that Knitting and The Knitter magazines have more editorial to get your teeth into than the newbie-knitter orientated titles such as Simply Knitting and Let's Knit. Two monthly features I particularly like in Knitting are the 'Style File' section where a few of the patterns are shown in different colours along with fashion advice on what to where them with, and the review section of latest yarns.
Features-wise this Made in Britain issue contains a guest column from podcaster and blogger Louise Scollay of KnitBritish fame, and a fabulous map of the UK showing businesses that create brilliant British yarns.
One huge fact I learned from the interview with Louisa Harding is that she no longer has anything to do with the yarn and pattern business that bears her name. She now runs Yarntelier, producing lace cashmere yarns and designs to support them.
Back to the patterns - is June really the time to publish cowl, mitts and scarf patterns? There's a cosy-looking Shetland Snuggle Blanket pattern knitted in super chunky yarn that caught my eye until I looked up the price of the yarn and discovered it to be £185. Amongst other patterns are a man's jumper, a tea cosy, and a few women's sweater patterns including one called Seawrack, which to me looks like first-time knitting that's gone wrong, though obviously that's my personal taste and perhaps I'm not very fashion forward!
All in all it's an issue worth buying for anyone who wants to know more about British yarns and it's great to see magazines supporting the British wool industry. One slight bugbear about the plastic sealed packaging of the magazine is that when browsing the newsagents' shelves the potential customer cannot flick through to see if they like the patterns or not before buying. All magazines that provide free gifts tend to do this - can they not print an overview of the magazine's contents on the back page to help the consumer?
I think it is good to publish patterns for winter knitting in June for slow knitters or,those like me who have more than one project in hand. At present I'm crocheting a granny square blanket now,too large to be portable, portable project is socks for DH, no rush he has plenty of handknit socks already, a Beyond Puerperium size 12 - 18 months although Grandchild is just 3 months old and finally for myself a Rowan 2 ply lace wrap for myself that was started September 2013.
ReplyDeleteAt KCG meeting this evening there was a discussion about knitting magazines, I subscribe to Knit Now, I bought the first issue, subscribed when there was a good offer, I feel I am supporting a small business, however there will become a storage issue and I have rarely used any of the patterns, I have been buying patterns on Ravelry instead. The magazine supports the British wool industry too, if I stop my subscription I would want to donate the magazines where they will be of use to others rather than the recycling bin.
In the UK yarn is labeled in ply. A ply is a single strand of yarn. Lace weight, or 2-ply/3-ply is a very fine yarn used for lacy garments . scarves and baby clothes. bomullsmattvarp
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