My Dizzies have mostly given up and I’m able to function again, thank goodness. It’s a lot of work catching up after all that down time. I’ve been grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning and am currently in the middle of 5 loads of laundry. Sheesh! Unfortunately my No Snow chant failed last night while I was asleep so we have over 2 inches of the white stuff on top of the spring flowers this morning. I’ve got little plants under the lights that will need to go out to the greenhouse soon to harden off but there’s no garden ready to plant them in. Global warming? What global warming? Apparently our area has had colder wetter springs than normal over the last few years and it takes until halfway through July for the plants to catch up. Today is near record low temps. Go figure. At least the sun is trying to come out now and it’s finally above 0 C. for the first time today.
While we were shopping this weekend I found the premier issue of the new British magazine “The Knitter”. Mason-Dixon seemed to be thrilled with the quality of this new publication (well, they are featured in it!) and indeed it’s got very nice production values, heavy coated paper and a readable layout. But it cost me CDN$19.25! Yikes! For 15 patterns (some of which have already been published in other sources) and a couple of articles. It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think they’re planning a monthly + 1 extra publishing schedule which would add up to several hundred bucks a year to buy them all. Not happening. I wasn’t super-impressed with the content and truth be told I see way more items I’d want to knit in IK (half the price) or Knitty.com (free). YMMV as they say but I’m giving this one a pass in future. Good thing too – if I really loved it I’d have to take out a second mortgage on the house to afford it!
I’m dropping (or have already dropped) several magazines that I’ve bought diligently in the past. This includes all the bead ones (I’m not feeling the love), any of the knitting mags (other than Interweave Knits), Piecework (may be seduced by one of the knit-centred issues though I will try to resist), and any of the gajillion pricey Stampington mags (except perhaps Art Quarterly and Stuffed). Besides IK, I’ll keep Interweave’s Crochet, Handwoven and Spin-Off plus Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors. I get a lot out of those and re-read them frequently. A Needle Pulling Thread is somewhat more problematic – it has many different needlecrafts, some of which I’m not interested in, but it’s Canadian and a lot more personality-oriented than many other mags. Nice to see what’s happening in my home and native land for a change. Also problematic is Rug Hooking. I haven’t done any hooking recently but I still enjoy reading about it. And there’s only one commonly available mag devoted to it. I think I’m going to keep getting those last two, at least while we can still afford them. If I’m counting right, that’s 10 different titles! Luckily they don’t all come out every month. Or we’d be eating a lot of mac & cheese around here.
Back to laundry load #3 and scarf repeat #12. I think the snow is melting! Yay. Ooh, maybe I should try some snow dyeing before it goes away?
5 comments:
I finally saw a copy of The Knitter today at Bolen Books, and I have to share your sentiments. Beautiful magazine to look at. But 2/3 of the content has been previously published. Its one thing to open IK and find a excerpt from an upcoming book - a teaser, as it were. Quite another to find a magazine that mostly consists of patterns from books that have been out for some time. And, at nearly $20.00 a pop - I'm afraid not....
Glad to hear that the spinnies are settling down.
Cheers from Vancouver Island, where its is snowing. Again. Still.
sigh...
What happen to global warming...
-9 here this morning..and only warmed up to -5 today..
I've given up on a lot of magazines, too. In fact, my LAST ISSUE of IK arrived a week or so, with a special cover identifying it as such, and it was as if they had set out to design an issue that would keep me from renewing. I'm going to let go of it & of Piecework even though I've subscribed to both forever. Handwoven & Spinoff are the only ones I'm renewing.
what is snow dyeing?
Thanks for the review on the magazine. I won't buy it at that price and now I know I am not missing anything.
Snow dyeing is done with Procion MX dyes and fabric (usually cotton). You soak the fabric, scrunch it up on a plastic mesh or basket over something that will catch the drips and cover it with a layer of snow. Then you pour concentrated dye solutions over it and let it work as the dye seeps through and the snow melts. Apparently (since I've never tried it myself yet) it results in attractive crystal patterns on the fabric which can then be used for quilting or whatever. I missed my opportunity since most of our snow is now gone.
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