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Knitter’s Magazine to Cease Publication

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Knitters magazine ceases publication.A note from Benjamin Levisay, CEO of XRX, Inc., says that the 32-year-old Knitter’s magazine has ceased publication with its Winter 2016 issue.

The magazine published 125 issues, but Levisay says they have stopped producing it because of financial strain based on “the major shift in the marketplace from paid-print to free-digital content [that] required different approaches” to publishing. He says “key members of our publishing team” recently retired, allowing the company to shift focus to its fiber-related events (the company puts on the STITCHES shows), the “occasional” book and a new online experience.

Our newest “pub” will be on-line, free, and cross-craft, extending beyond knit, crochet, and other fiber and fabric crafts—creating a space big enough for all we love to do, all we love to make. We’re cycling back to our beginnings with energy, passion, and, we hope, you.

It’s unfortunate to see traditional publishers close down publications and have to shift focus, but it seems inevitable in the current environment where so much is available for free or individual patterns are so easy to purchase online.

What do you think? Did you subscribe to Knitter’s? I’d love to know your thoughts.

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Comments

  1. I am not surprised. It was a vibrant and interesting magazine that published lots of innovative, fun, and wearable patterns. However it transformed over time into a one-voice trumpet. I am sad to see the demise of an outlet for designers’ work, but I do note that there hasn’t been something in Knitters I personally wanted to knit in over 8 years.

  2. I canceled my subscription about two years into Rick Mondragon’s mandate. I started buying the odd edition but have never liked it enough to subscribe again. Since then so many good resources have come available that I didn’t miss it. They needed to retool to stay relevant.

  3. I cancelled my subscription about 2 years ago. I started collecting in the 90s, but eventually found their focus changed to more “scrappy” projects. I wouldn’t make enough out of the magazines to justify buying it, and wasn’t getting inspired by the rest of the content.

    I also really enjoyed going to the Stitches events, but since they moved the venues far from me, I haven’t pursued them either.

    It is a shame that such a legacy will be gone, though. They published some great patterns in their day and solid tutorials, which are still relevant today.

  4. The magazine got really uninteresting after Mondragon’s seat at the head of the editorial table. Cancelled my subscription several years ago. Vogue Knitting got better and better and Knitters got worse and worse. Nothing in it that I remotely wanted to knit.

Have you read?

Knit a Linen Stitch Hot Pad

Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough. 

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern. 

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed. 

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do. 

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces. 

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls. 

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry. 

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