Skeinspotting

MagKnits has gone!

If you were looking for Erssie Major's free patterns from Magknits, you can still get a free download. Email erssiemajor@yahoo.co.uk as these patterns will be available from the end of April 2008 onwards. I am having these patterns republished on a different site, but definitely free to knitters. Apologies for leading you here, the archives of MagKnits are not available to the designers yet and we didn't know this was going to happen.

Vintage Magknits! Bee Hat and Booties by Erssie Major

Free updated version of Pattern coming soon

Email: erssiemajor@yahoo.co.uk

This was a bit of a shock to me. I usually check Magknits round about the 1st of the month, rarely in the middle. A reader hoping to get hold of one of my MagKnits patterns, told me it no longer existed.

It seems a shame that it has closed so suddenly, without access to archives or some sort of memoriam at least for the readers who enjoyed it. For designers too, especially for me, this has happened at a bad time without warning. It does mean that my Ravelry records need updating, and that I don't have links to free patterns for knitters for those designs and I apologise for that. It means I have to check biographies that went out to anyone where my work is under submission, as it won't look good when links to previous work will come up as NOT FOUND!

There are more than likely designers out there, who still don't know that their published work is no longer public. I noticed the holding page mentioned that designers were advised for March and April, and at first glance it reads that we were contacted in those months, but no, only those designers who had current designs in the recent issue were told, not previous designers.

Cinderella & Skywatcher Baby Socks

Magknits pattern available free
if you email me

There will be archived patterns on the Yarn Forward site and I am considering whether to have them hosted there, or elsewhere depending on how long it takes as I want them to be up again by 1st of May. Yarn Forward have contacted me since this post to let me know that is what they intend to do.

Anyway, firstly I am tidying up all links so that readers don't get annoyed at reaching dead ends. bear with me.

G8 Mother and Daughter Hats
MagKnits pattern is still free if you email me
I am thinking of doing some variations on this, with African patterns

I will supply these patterns free to anyone who emails me and if they are hosted by someone else in the future, they will still be free to the knitters. I just need a few days from now though to tidy things up.

Still can't get over the sudden removal of MagKnits, I always imagined that archives would remain as a static element and would have thought that links to archives could be a good way to bring those Magknits readers people to the Yarn Forward magazine.

There are always changes in the backgrounds of businesses. They may have branches of it closing, new staff, a takeover etc but I think the trick is to have a smooth transition from one to the other, without customers even noticing the joins. If YF can get free patterns up in their archives, that could only be a good thing. MagKnits could become 'vintage'!