What's New? An Open Letter to Peak Media Properties, LLC

The S-Curve Rug, my first design in the
2015 Interweave Crochet Home edition.

Dear Peak Media:

You are the “new” owner of many Interweave magazine titles, including Interweave Knits and Interweave Crochet. Purchased from F+W Media as a result of its early March, 2019 bankruptcy filing, you are also the owner of the online communities and other intellectual property associated with the titles. However, given that Terry O’Toole, the owner of Macanta Investments (the money behind Peak Media), was the chairman of the Board of Directors of the bankrupt F+W, Greg Osberg, the new CEO of Peak Media was the most recent (and interim) CEO at F+W, the sole editor posting knitting design calls was a former editor with an Interweave magazine title, and even Peak Media’s contracts administrator is the former contracts administrator for Interweave under F+W, I wonder, what, exactly, is new at Peak Media?

From your lack of clear communication with the design and maker communities, to your focus on padding your own bottom line (the only two avenues of electronic contact on Peak Media’s site are for advertising or media inquiries), this seems like business as usual at an F+W Media property – you know, the F+W that failed to listen to employees as it squandered millions in equity funding and imploded – the one that the former chairman of the Board is now in control of the investment money here at Peak Media Properties, LLC. If I was unsure of the exact posture of Peak Media, a recent email from you (addressed to “Dearest Contributor,” which elicited a hearty, ironic laugh from this recipient) made it abundantly clear: the communication stated it had good news – an expanded version of a program, in which I have no control over my intellectual property, and for which you provided absolutely no particulars, was in the works! Best of all, I had less than two weeks to opt out of all this good news. Wow. Insert so much additional hearty, ironic laughter right there.

Now, as an independent designer with 7+ years of design publishing (my own and with third parties), it would be easy for me to just let all this sit right here and marinate. However, as a proud female small (ok, micro!) business owner who has managed to survive the last almost eight years designing in a medium - yarn and textiles - that I have loved since childhood, I find it only fair to put out into the world how I might go about things in this “new” version of the F+W legacy. So … well … here goes nothing:

1. Please let Peak Media Properties, LLC find its humility muscle, like, yesterday.

2.  Once it finds such muscle, let it be flexed in the form of a DAMNED APOLOGY: to designers for squandering their good will and stomping on their intellectual property without any respect, and to the maker community at large for this lack of respect. I not-so-elegantly remind you that, if not for the collective intellectual property of the independent design community, there would be no publication foundation upon which Peak Media Properties, LLC could build.

3. Please publish this DAMNED APOLOGY not only in all of your publications, but also in your competitors’ publications. As I have stated previously elsewhere, we all rise and fall together. What you are doing right now, Peak Media, will have a ripple effect on the entire hand knit and crochet industry which, at its zenith, was a large portion of the income bread and butter at F+W.

4. Going forward, please be transparent in all communications with the design community. It is our intellectual property you wish to leverage for your own gain at, if the past is any indication, our direct expense. In case you were not aware, there is not one independent designer I know that can earn a living wage designing solely for third party publication. Not one. Yet, Peak Media personnel seem to be earning a living wage doing just one job.

5. Sort of in tandem with #4, and on the eve of the long U.S. Labor Day weekend, please pay a living wage for our designs, be transparent about that wage, and provide greater flexibility in sharing intellectual property rights with the independent design community. Interweave publishing titles provide compensation at the mid-to-lower end for independent designs and currently have some of the most restrictive intellectual property rights’ contract clauses in the industry.

At this point I sigh. When I first wrote about the bankruptcy, I was willing to keep an open mind, to see what would transpire, despite the fact that I am one of F+W's creditors (albeit a very small one - other designers were in for far more than me). I maintain that I, as an independent designer who erroneously believed in the good of being published in an Interweave publication, expected too little in the past. Not anymore.

Despite the above, Peak Media does have an incredible opportunity right here, right now. Start to rebuild the trust and good will that F+W eroded. It can be done. Don’t take a wait and see approach – seize the day! Truly lead the Interweave publishing titles you purchased to a brighter place where mutual respect might flourish instead of the muscular, opaque, and lop-sided approach of the past. That, of course, will take a significant amount of public courage and a willingness to think and do things differently.

As the organizational posture currently stands, I will not be creating submissions for any design calls issued by Peak Media titles. I genuinely need to see some deep, structural changes. I am happily close to self-publishing my second soft-cover publication, have third-party-published designs in the works, and consistently self-publish single designs. I have a small core of makers with which I regularly make garments and accessories, and to whom I am not only dedicated, but for whose support I am supremely grateful.  Nothing would make me happier than to augment the former with future designs published in titles run by a Peak Media that viewed me and my creativity as a respected partner and equal, not merely a “dear contributor.”

Very truly yours -

Some Publishing Updates

Well, my maker friends, we are entering the last week of August, and with sunset times getting earlier each evening, as well as a slight nip in the night air, that almost-autumn feeling is upon us. To where has the summer gone? 

I have been so busy over the meaty summer months that I did not get the opportunity to post here on the blog, and considering the fact that I released the third sneak peek from my upcoming book, that is saying something. So, without further ado, here are most of the additional patterns from the third sneaked chapter of the book.

Watercolor Pops is thehe amazing crescent-shaped shawl, thanks to lovely colorways from A Hundred Ravens. Just two skeins of fingering weight yarn produces a shawl that easily stays on the shoulders or (my preferred way of wearing it) coiled around the neck cowl-like. The "pops" of lace in the body offset a rather linear stitch pattern which, with a final little bit o' lace at the edge, combine to produce an accessory that is feminine and graphically pleasing.

The necklaces and earrings are pieces in a series of jewelry designs all put together in the same chapter under the title "The Month of Jewelry." Each of the pieces appear throughout the book and are meant to be worn with other designs. I am definitely loving the mixed media approach to these jewelry designs. Researching the materials used was definitely a great guilt-free way to get in touch with my inner material girl.

I am about a month away from commencing the mother of all pattern tests for the designs in the book. I have so much to prepare between now and then, but if any readers are interested in testing some of the book's designs, definitely send email and I will be more than happy to add you to my tester list. Be aware that all patterns will be crochet, and there will be a good mix of accessories and garments, across a wide spectrum of sizes. 

This is, of course, my second self-published title. Self publishing is more important than ever to me, given this year's earlier F+W bankruptcy filing. We are coming to the end of the bankruptcy, and the relevant design magazines and related online resources in which I have intellectual property have been sold to Long Thread Media and Peak Media Properties. I will have more to say once the final bankruptcy dust has settled (because there are motions before the bankruptcy court that could have implications on the shared intellectual property rights I have with both new entities), but in the tentative first communications between both, Long Thread has been awesome, and Peak Media has been ... well ... just like it's predecessor, F+W. One wonders what, exactly, has changed? All I can do is sigh, shake my head, and pour my energies into my own book.

It is going to be a busy autumn of design publishing here at chez Voie de Vie, so I hope you'll be around to take a peek both at the new book, as well as a few single designs published by third parties, all due between now and the end of the year. 

Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary - Book Review

Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary

125 Essential Stitches to Crochet in Three Ways

Dora Ohrenstein

Paperback

9 ½ x 7 ¼”

287 pages

Publisher: Abrams (May, 2019)

There are two basic avenues to gain knowledge of any subject: (1) via study through books and/or the classroom; or (2) from direct experience. Both have their place, but when it comes to crochet, the former is almost impossible as there is scant formal written information on the subject, especially when compared to its’ big sister needlework art, knitting. Just to provide one cursory example, I pulled out a general textiles book from my personal library, written in 2005, and searched the index for knit and crochet entries. I was expecting a fair amount on the former, but was unsure whether crochet would have made the cut. I was surprised when, after mentally recording that more than three quarters of the 24 entries under “K” in the book were about knitting, the almost 2 pages of “C” entries contained exactly one about crochet – “crocheting.” And that lone entry in the textile wilderness was contained, tellingly for my current purposes, in a chapter entitled “Nonwovens and Other Methods of Fabric Construction,” and was grouped together with macramé, netting, and tatting, as alternative ways to create openwork fabrics. Of some note, this textiles book also included hairpin lace as its own method within this grouping, indicating it as a subset of crochet. I can only guess that the frame used to create hairpin lace was the reason it earned its own distinct entry separate from general crochet.

Enter Dora Ohrenstein.  She has been writing books on crochet and crochet design for the better part of the last decade, and the title that had, until now, the biggest impact on my designing career was her 2011 title Creating Crochet Fabric. Before it, I was not a fan of swatching, and initially I purchased the book for the design projects (and have made one, the Juliette Shawl, which project made the blog in this entry back in May, 2011). While the design projects drew me in, it was the brief, ending stitch dictionary and fabric creation that kept me coming back to it, again and again and again. Dora spent considerable time throughout the period when that book was first published attempting to get everyone – both designers and non-designers – to just swatch. Ohrenstein was trying, back then, to get everyone to learn to love the art and beauty of crochet fabric as much as she did through the means she knew best: direct personal experience with hook and yarn.

A swatch sampling from Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary

Fast forward to now, and Ohrenstein’s latest title, Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary, picks up rather elegantly, and with some innovation, where Creating Crochet Fabric left off. In keeping with my theme of how one gains knowledge, Dora’s opening words in this book provides her personal roadmap: “I taught myself to crochet as a twenty-one-year-old hippie while living on a houseboat in Amsterdam.” It doesn’t get any more hands-on than that. While she would leave crochet for a singing career in the intervening years between that hippie houseboat and now, creativity has never left Ohrenstein, and it shines brilliantly in this, her most recent entry, on the way to get everyone hooked (no pun intended) on the possibilities of crochet fabric. (Note: Dora has also completed an Artfully Voie de Vie Questionnaire here back in 2012.)

My version of Plump Posts, p. 126, worked in
Cascade 220 Superwash + a 5.00 mm hook

For designers and non-designers, swatching is the cornerstone of most any knit and/or crochet endeavor. For the maker, it yields vital information on gauge and fiber behavior with a particular stitch pattern, the lynch pin of whether a project will be successful. For designers, swatches are mini-fabric windows through which designs flow, morph, grow. Each attempt yields different informational fruit, all of which goes into the trifle that will become future fabric. We designers become the masters of the 4” fabric square, the going industry size for determining whether a design is, or isn’t, a potential publishing winner. The swatch is, of course, conventionally a means to a bigger design end and, most probably, was created in service to a design idea already formed.

What Ohrenstein wants us to recognize and internalize is that the swatch is a vehicle for stitch patterns that, in and of themselves, are a wealth of design information and inspiration. Exercising the swatching muscle can (and I might argue) should be one of the foundational design inspiration tools in any self-respecting designer’s tool kit – to be exercised at any point, whether or not with a particular design in mind. This book shows that how one manipulates a stitch pattern via increase and decrease can just as easily lead to other design inspiration. Stitch pattern increase and decrease is just as much an art as a skill.

My Open Ovals swatches, p. 236, using
a fiber cocktail of Habu Textiles Silk
Mohair + Tahki Stacy Charles Luna
held together + a 4.25 mm hook

After introducing some perfunctory basics on stitch patterns and how they create designs, Dora lays out the book’s organization – stitch patterns in five flavors over six chapters from closed stitches to open, texture to lace, and that final crochet mainstay – ripple stitches. After thumbing through each section, I chose the first three stitch patterns that caught my eye to work up for this review.  My gut is consistent when it comes to the types of stitches I like – I chose one from the texture section, one from the classic lace section (and that’s my favorite section in the book, truth be told), and one from the ripple section because its increase was just so darned intriguing.

Working these swatches was not only a pleasure because each is charted (such a treat – work the chart and fini!), but also because I chose stash yarn for each, and for this textile fan pairing the right fiber with stitch pattern is always a fun exercise. Working some of the decreases on the first texture stitch swatch instantly gave me other ideas on what could be done along that particular edge. The lace swatches were the most satisfying, not the least because I chose to work them up in a mohair blend. The ripple increase swatch was, however, the most enlightening. I know I shall be going back to that swatch as well as that 

Tilted Ripple, p. 270, was by far the most fascinating
swatch worked. I used Drops Puna + a 4.25 mm hook.

section of the book (at the end, and the shortest) to further investigate.

While this is technically a stitch dictionary, I find the title slightly misleading. I do not find the stitch patterns themselves to be the star, but how we can learn to manipulate them. In that respect, this book is indeed innovative, because stitch repeats in whole cannot always be successfully increased and/or decreased. Ohrenstein, through her instruction for each increase and decrease, is giving us the underlying tools to successfully get any stitch pattern to do what we want it to.

It is a shame that we (at least in the U.S.) tend to look down our noses at craft (although this continues to change and evolve). Ohrenstein, with this latest title has, along with her title from 2011, created a one-two punch for anyone wanting to create crochet fabric, or learn more generally about fabric creation and manipulation. As crochet is seen more and more regularly on the fashion runway, it takes its place alongside knit fabrics as a potential design fabric staple in any house’s seasonal collection. Resultingly, I find both of these Ohrenstein titles should be useful not only to a general craft public (as each title is categorized by their respective publishers), but also relevant in any textile or design classroom setting. Then there would be, at minimum, three crochet entries in any thorough book on textiles.

If you love to create fabric (crochet or otherwise) as much as I do, and you’ve read this far (ha!), now comes the payoff: I had no idea Abrams would be sending me two copies. Therefore, I am so thrilled to be able to give a copy of Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary away to one lucky winner. All you need do is comment below on why you want a copy of this book, and what you hope to learn from it. I will be awarding the copy to a winner via random number generator from all comments received between now and the end of the day next Monday, June 17th. 

Good luck ... and happy swatching!

Wednesday, June 19th Update: Sorry I am a few days late in awarding a winner - but I gave the random integer generator a whirl just a few minutes ago, and it picked number 1 (and 5 was the alternate), so Missy of A Tree Hugger's Wife wins this awesome book! I will also be posting this on Instagram, so everyone can see it there as well. Thanks to everyone who read the review, and especially to those who took the time to leave a comment. I urge everyone to add this title to your crafty book shelf - you will not be disappointed.