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Pom Pom Magazine to Cease Publication

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The makers of Pom Pom magazine, known for its lovely production values and stylish but accessible patterns, have announced they will cease publication. The upcoming January edition, number 48, will be the last.

A letter from the founders posted on their website and on Instagram said the magazine was launched by the founders in 2012 with a £600 investment and has grown to include offices in the UK and the US and is stocked in more than 700 shops around the world.

They said in their statement:

Pom Pom was founded during a renaissance of printed magazines, when many believed print was dead. We knew that makers are tactile people, and our readership appreciated the beautiful paper and lithographic printing that has always been a hallmark of our publications. We have always sold more in print than digitally. The world has changed unimaginably since our foundation. The cost of paper and printing has more than doubled in recent years, as has the cost of shipping. Though we tried many, many ways of continuing to make Pom Pom work as a print publishing company, we cannot continue without compromising the values on which we were founded. It has been an incredibly difficult struggle but we can safely say we gave it our all. 

The upcoming issue, they say, is “among the best issues we’ve ever produced” and the company is still incurring a lot of costs to be able to produce it. They ask for help from those for whom “Pom Pom has been a meaningful part of your crafting life over the past twelve years” to buy back issues and books to help offset the costs of production of the last issue and allow them to pay their staff and freelancers.

You can visit their online store here, were almost everything is 50 percent off. You can check out back issues on Ravelry if you want to find the designs you’re most likely to make more easily.

It’s a shame that the production values that have made it such an asset to knitters and crocheters are also what makes it impossible to continue as they have, and we wish all involved the best in their future projects.

[Photo: Pom Pom]

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Patchwork Blanket Knitting Patterns

Any time of year is a good time for stash busting, but if you can combine it with knitting a blanket that will keep you warm when it (finally!) gets cooler that’s even better. Let’s take a look at some fun patchwork blanket knitting patterns. 

If you want to keep it super simple, you can just make blocks of garter stitch and sew them together, like the beginner’s patchwork baby blanket from Mini Baa Baa or the color block blanket from Make and Do Crew. Both projects are worked in strips and sew together, with the baby version calling for two strands of DK or light worsted weight yarn held together and the larger one using bulky yarn. 

Add a little more texture with the mixed blocks of the cottage quilt throw from Mama in a Stitch. This one combines garter stitch and seed stitch and uses worsted weight yarn. She used a crochet join to make the chains on top of the blocks, but you can join them however you like. It calls for eight colors but you can use what you have, and there are three size options. 

Get a real sampler style patchwork blanket with this design from Knit Sew Make. It calls for worsted weight yarn and has four size options. All of the patterns just use knit and purl stitches so this one is still pretty easy for beginners. 

If you want a more complex colorwork project that will keep you entertained all season, try the Peace by Piece blanket pattern from Needle and Feather. This one is made up of two color colorwork blocks and calls for worsted weight yarn. You can choose to use just a few of the blocks and repeat them more often, or make multiples of the whole set. 

The knitted patchwork recipe from Martine Ellis (free on Ravelry) uses mitered squares in fingering weight yarn, so it’s perfect for using up all your leftover sock yarn and mini skeins. This one is a tutorial more than a pattern so you can make your blanket as big as you like or keep going until you run out of yarn. 

Susan B. Anderson’s 100 Squares blanket (find it on Ravelry) has a lot of mitered squares, too, but they’re arranged in fun ways and includes some quilt inspired designs as well. This one also is a bit of method more than pattern but it sure looks like a lot of fun for using all the leftovers. 

Of course you can totally improvise a patchwork blanket using the yarn and stitches you like, but I hope these patterns inspire you to look at your leftover yarn in a new way.