Skeinspotting

I have subscribed now to the Vogue publications. I have been a little disappointed with some of the UK publications of late, I want to look at these mags and go ooooh I wish I had thought of that! So I am searching further afield. I already buy the odd Rebecca magazine, but do tell me about any other publications in Europe that get translated into English (or maybe not and I can learn to knit in French or German. Vive le tricot? Tricot c'est une passion pour moi? Do correct me if I am writing gibberish)

The latest Spring/Summer Vogue Knitting International has a bias towards lace, and not as complicated as you would think if broken down in sections. I've yet to find the time to read all the articles, I just flick through the pics. At a later date, I will have a look at the design briefs given for the issue as well and get my head around the connections between the language used to describe something and what they actually ended up with. The most common stumbling block with submitting designs is missing the target because language could not describe exactly what was required or was misintepreted by a designer.

This fascinates me, I always draw with my submissions. Honestly, I am no artist but I view my diagrams as a scientific drawing with labels that visualise my concept. It really does help. Also, as I keep whingeing on, I am a slow knitter due to disability and I don't have time to be making up loads of stuff and then submitting each design. I might do 50 - 75 drawings over a period of a year and only make a few of the things. I recycle a design as well, something I drew last year might not be suitable for that time and yet a season changes, new colours become available and I can take elements from my little cartoon drawings and not waste a good concept.

As you know, I have some designs coming up in the Anticraft book being published later this year. What you don't know is that I submitted 13 separate ideas in sketch form, and out of that, only 3 made it in. Now what if I hadn't drawn, and I had made one item? It probably wouldn't have made it, not because it wasn't good enough but purely because it didn't fit into the collection of patterns chosen for that section.

Also a lot of publishers can afford to keep a generalised, open brief, then see what comes in and build a story around the ones they like best. Not your fault if your beautiful lace dress didn't make it into their Tomboy nautical story for that season because that was the theme that emerged from the majority of designs sent in. A lot of publishers will tell you though if they liked your work but it didn't fit in. Only a few will ignore you completely and sadly these seem to be the smaller on line magazines who are running their mag as a second job and just cannot keep up with the influx of emails. They will inform you though if they have a policy of 'if you don't hear back, it didn't make it in'.

Also magazines have submission guidleines and it pays to read them and follow them, even if your magazine pays nothing for your design. I made a bit of a hurried entry into the mag For The Love of Yarn and thought I had covered everything with regards to the pattern, only to find to my disappointment, there was not a proper link to me as a designer or a biography...ooops. Entirely my fault and they were kind enough to add my details as soon as I told them. Many wouldn't have had time, and then amendments later miss the moment as well as wipe out the mutual benefits of publishing for no fee.

I have also received 2 other magazines you will have heard of, there is Vogue Knit 1 which seems to serve a more youthful urban kind of knitter and tends to promote Lionbrand yarns which at first I thought was not inspiring but actually, they make the yarns look much more palatable than the yarn companies pattern support. I am sure I am missing some good yarns in there at reasonable prices,and they do organic cotton, but I am left totally uninspired by the online patterns on the Lionbrand site as the designs look a bit clumsy.


The other mag is a Vogue publication too, Knit Simple and is exactly what it says on the cover, simple but classic designs and lots of tips and tricks and articles and some good book reviews.

This is just my first sub, so I am looking forward to getting the next Summer issues out. See below for Knit 1 - The Green issue which I haven't got yet.