Behind the scenes...

I have reached the point where I need to declare a blog holiday, though I'm sure regular readers have spotted a slowing up in posts and detected a lack of weaving time.

I'm not short of things I want to make and write about, and there's pile of books by my desk that I was going to review. Top of the pile however was the wonderful true live adventures of Christopher Aslan Alexander, described in his book "A Carpet Ride to Khiva" and Cally's review tells you some of the reasons I love this book (but she didn't mention the amazing descriptions of rearing silk moths, the tales of hunting out knowledgeable dyers willing to share their skills, tracking down ingredients for the dyebaths, accounts of how looms were built and the weaving.)

The reason for the holiday is the project I'm working on in the new office space I mentioned in my last post: I am setting up a business to publish and edit a new bi-monthly British / European magazine for handspinners.



Obviously this draws on my ongoing curiosity and interest in creating yarns and textiles and love of passing on what I learn. I'm also bringing to it business admin. and legal skills, experience of working as an NCTJ trained local newspaper journalist, and work in marketing and public relations, plus I have always enjoyed photography, drawing, and writing.

I have previous of experience of magazine layout and editing and graphic design for print. I started out on the university student newspaper which we designed and laid out on an Apple Mac back in the mid-1980s, later produced all kinds of publicity materials, newsletters, magazines, advertising copy and for 5 years I've produced the pretty membership cards issued to members of the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers which some of my blog friends possess.

I look forward to getting back to weaving and blogging once the magazine is established.

Meanwhile, I will be officially starting my business soon after Easter and putting up a website with more details of the magazine (I'll post a link here when it's done). You can now contact me at my new email address: editor [at] yarnmaker [dot] co [dot] uk