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KAL Media announces that Shannon Okey, editor of their flagship title Yarn Forward, is stepping down in order to develop additional creative publishing and media opportunities, both with KAL and her own company.

Okey remains associated with KAL as an editor-at-large and will continue to contribute occasional content to KAL’s magazine titles, which include Yarn Forward, Inside Crochet (the UK’s first crochet magazine) and Sew Hip, the top UK sewing title. Day to day editing duties will remain in-house for the time being.

During Okey’s tenure, Yarn Forward expanded from 10 to 12 issues per year and added digital magazine publishing to its worldwide publishing portfolio.

“While we are sorry to see Shannon step down as editor, we are incredibly pleased that she has agreed to continue to work with KAL on an at-large basis.” says Kerrie Allman, co-director of KAL Media.

Interweave, publisher of so many excellent fiber arts books and magazines, also produces a television show called Knitting Daily TV, which recently launched a blog here.

If you are in the UK and have a DVD player that can play multi-region DVDs (or you’re in Region 1, i.e. North America), you can catch up by grabbing copies of the DVDs, or check out clips online at YouTube.

(Speaking of which, when I appeared on Knitting Daily TV, I taped Annie Modesitt knitting in her own superspeedy ‘combination’ style — check out the video here).

Frequent YF contributor Claire Montgomerie passed along a message to us at Yarn Forward inviting all of you to Loop, the Islington knitting boutique, to celebrate the launch of her new book, Easy Kids Knits. There will be complimentary wine and cakes, raffles and 10% off the book on the night.

Thursday 6th August, from 6pm
Loop: 41 Cross Street, Islington N1 2BB

Hope to see you all there!

In case you hadn’t noticed, Yarn Forward added on 2 new issues this summer, and now, instead of 10x per year, we’re a true monthly. Needless to say, that’s kept all of us rather busy! Our summer interns have been helping out, but still — adding two new issues is a challenge at any time of year, let alone summer when so many of us would rather be outside sipping a cold drink! What’s on your needles for summer? I’m knitting a sweater for fall with a modified feather and fan stitch, and designing something for the magazine in some very lovely Debbie Bliss yarn, so no spare moments here! Hope you are all having a lovely summer…

We have three randomly-selected winners in the Yarn Forward yarn giveaway, plus a special prize for making us laugh so hard!

Congratulations to Yve (comment #9), Cathy (comment #56) and Lynne (comment #99), and the special “wow!” prize to Susetheslowknitta for writing us a sonnet (comment #45).

And thank you again to everyone who wrote in — your kind comments really meant a lot to us, and they’ve helped us learn more about what it is you like to see in the magazine.

Do you sell on Etsy, Folksy or the like? We’re taking our ad section for smaller, independent shop owners to a new level. Book an ad in Yarn Forward for only £40 (with discounts for a series of bookings).

First come, first serve to the first 20 people per issue. Email lilly@kalmedia.co.uk for details or to sign up!

Want some yarn? All you need to do is to leave us a comment with the 3 reasons you read YARN forward, and we’ll pick 3 winners who will each receive a bag of yarn from our sample box. (If you think your stash is bad, imagine ours!)

The fine print:

• No guarantees what you’ll get, we make the selections.
• International readers can enter too, but yarn will be posted via surface mail.
• “Because it’s amazing and great” will win our love but dig a little deeper, will you?

Good luck!

From Telegraph.co.uk:

A model village which took 23 years to create entirely from wool has gone on sale.

Many of the landmarks of Mersham near Ashford in Kent – population 1,022 – have been knitted by members of the village’s Afternoon Club since 1986.

Creations include the local primary school, the church, both pubs, the local shop, residents playing cricket, and even some of the local teenagers smoking a cigarette outside the bus shelter.

Many of the houses have also been stitched, complete with flowers occupying the gardens and cars on the roads, to help capture a slice of everyday life of the village.

Thousands of hours of intricate handiwork have gone into creating the knitted village over the past 23 years by members of the 40-strong Afternoon Club.

Be sure to click through and look at the pictures, it’s amazing!

One bright spot in the news about the recent Italian earthquake: a 98-year-old woman pulled alive from the rubble spent her time knitting and crocheting while waiting to be saved.

From the Telegraph:

Maria D’Antuono told rescuers that during the 30 hours she was trapped, she occupied herself by knitting and doing crochet. The stone house where the 98-year-old was buried under her bed in the village of Tempera, was a scene of devastation having completely collapsed on one side.

Let this be a lesson to you — always keep your knitting nearby, you never know what might happen and it’s good to be prepared!