S5 E6: The Evolution of Knitty & Community with Amy Sadler

In this episode of The SweetGeorgia Show, Felicia Lo chats with Amy Sadler, editor of Knitty.com, the longest-running free knitting magazine online. They talk about how Knitty got started, Amy’s path through the knitting world, and how both the magazine and the community have evolved over the years. Together, they explore the changing landscape of online platforms, the role of Patreon and BlueSky in building community, and how designers can find support while navigating the pressures of creative work. 

This conversation offers thoughtful insights into the heart of the fibre arts community, along with advice, inspiration, and a look at the trends shaping knitting and crochet today. Please join us!

Takeaways

• Knitty was founded in 2002 and has become a staple in the knitting community.
• Amy Sadler's background in editing and proofreading shaped the quality of Knitty's content.
• The magazine started as a way to centralize independent knitting patterns.
• Knitty has launched the careers of many well-known designers in the knitting industry.
• The transition from print to online allowed for more detailed and accessible patterns.
• Community engagement has shifted from traditional forums to platforms like Patreon and Blue Sky.
• Amy emphasizes the importance of making patterns understandable for all knitters.
• The knitting community is diverse, including many neurodivergent individuals.
• Knitty remains free to readers, supported by patrons and advertising.
• There is a growing interest in returning to long-form content and blogs.
• Monetization strategies for creators include Patreon and YouTube views.
• Support from patrons can lead to feelings of guilt for creators.
• Good design and quality patterns are essential for success in the knitting industry.
• Trends in knitting are influenced by yarn availability and fashion.
• Cropped and oversized designs are currently popular in knitting.
• Crochet is gaining recognition and popularity among knitters.
• Resources like Knitty provide valuable information for knitters and designers.
• Innovation in design is crucial for standing out in a crowded market.
• Building connections and consistently producing good work can lead to greater visibility.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Wonderful. Welcome to the show. I am super excited for this conversation today. We are joined by Amy Sadler from Knitty Today. Thank you so much for being here today, Amy. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm really excited for this conversation. So for any of our listeners who, just by way of introduction, and I'm going to ask you to elaborate a little bit more about this, but in case anyone has not yet heard of Knitty, you've been just joining sort of the knitting community now, Knitty is the longest running free online knitting magazine on the web. It was founded back in 2002 by Amy Singer, who's now Amy Sadler in Ontario, Canada. And Knitty publishes patterns by independent designers four times a year and has been the source of many, many wildly popular and also very viral knitting patterns in the past. And so I wanted to sort of hear a little bit about you, like a little bit about your background when you started Knitty and how it got started. What inspired you to start this online knitting magazine and sort of what the goal was around all of this.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

Well, I actually went to school for radio and television production and couldn't get a job in that. And I was stuck proofreading, basically. And I was good at it somehow, which I actually have ADHD. And the fact that I was able to proofread successfully for 20 years and make a living at it is a miracle. I don't know how. I actually would credit estrogen. But I was not really happy. I was just doing something that I was good at and getting paid for it. And at the last full-time job I had... I started to think that editing was what I really wanted to be doing. And so I'd always had multiple titles at all of the jobs. I'd been proofreader. I had been, well, I called it Mac artist right when Macs first came out in 1986. And then I started editing the stuff that would come as well as proofreading it, which was a miracle because in ad agencies, you're not really allowed to step out of your lane. And my lane was proofreading, but they were okay that I was an editor. And then they actually sent me to George Brown to take an editing course, so I officially had some training. And then within, I don't know, a year, they laid off my whole department, which was the production department. It was kind of weird, but that's what happened. We all got laid off. And I had been laid off multiple times before as a proofreader. It was not really a very secure job, although when you're good at it, you can usually get work. But as a full-time proofreader, you're not really safe. So I had this editing certificate and I had this interest in editing. And I had said, I think, to my then husband way earlier when I was in my quilting phase at the end of the 90s, I think I want to start a quilting magazine. Well, that's a ridiculous thing. An actual quilting magazine would be really hard to make. But I had gotten back into knitting and then I thought, OK, so I'm not laid off yet. OK, I got to go back a little bit. I'm not laid off yet. I've got this editing experience. I've got this knack for knitting. messing with words and making them, you know, make more sense, at least when I'm in writing, not always when I'm talking. And I looked up one day in the middle of summer and he walked in and I said, I think I want to start a knitting magazine online because online became an option, you know, in the early 2000s. And I said, what should I call it? And he said, a knitty. And I went, oh, hang on, typed on the, you know, the search for names and no one had taken knitty.com. So I did. And that was it. And that was 2002 in June. And the first issue came out in September and then we all got laid off in November. But by then I realized that I had found my dream job because I was good at it. It was an interest I had always had since I was little, this whole knitting thing. And people seemed to really like it. And keep in mind, we were talking about the baby internet when everybody was nice and things were shiny and new. So it was friendly and welcoming and supportive and, And it wasn't until the next issue came out that we got our first, oh my God, you stole my idea for the cover pattern, which if you take a look at the covered pattern, it's a V-neck vest with a stripe on it. And somehow we had stolen that from, yeah, I know. Anyway, that almost made me quit because I was very, very young and very, I mean, young 40, but right now that feels very young. And I just wasn't sure I could take, you know, being yelled at. But we stuck it out. And that was actually thanks to Jillian Moreno, who was my co-collab for so much of Nidhi's history. And she's like, no, you can't give a cut to that. That's just dumb. So it passed like all kerfuffles do. And 22 years later, we're still here.

SPEAKER_02: 4:45

It's incredible. Like you mentioned Jillian Moreno. I wanted to say that Knitty, when it came out in 2002, so 2002, I started my knitting blog back in 2004. And I remember Knitty was such an important part of my knitting experience. I went there and I used some of those patterns for my first ever sweaters that I knit. I knit that cheesy love sweater, which I mentioned to you before. And I knit it in exactly the yarns that were specified

SPEAKER_00: 5:15

Of

SPEAKER_02: 5:19

course, that's what we all did because we didn't know how to swap. In terms of starting that very first issue, did the concept of reaching out to independent designers, did all of that come for the first issue? How did that idea come together? And how did you reach out to these people?

SPEAKER_00: 5:59

I had actually, I had started at the end of the 90s through some cable channel we were watching. I can't remember what, a tech TV or something on Canadian cable. There was wired TV and there was an interview with a guy who had started Diaryland, which is like LiveJournal, but prettier. This is the 90s. This is what we had, right? It was very, very simple. And I thought, I wasn't really, I didn't know how to code very well then, although I had started coding at the end of the 90s. I had done websites and things like that. I actually did Jane Silvery's website, which was kind of cool. I volunteered because, you know, she was like an amazing talent, but no budget. So I volunteered. And I saw this diary place and I thought, well, that looks like fun and you could be anonymous. So I went on anonymously and was just venting and I'd lost my grandma. So I was venting, you know, that was really hard and I had a place to talk about it. But I also started to find community there online. That was the first bit of community. And in finding community, every now and then someone would say, oh, you knit too? Because that wouldn't be the first thing I would say about myself. It would be one of here's the things I'm into. And this was one of them. And I started looking around and I would find all of these patterns. There'd be one over here and one over there and one down here and one over there. And they were wherever they were. And the only way to find them was the web ring. And if you are not familiar with a web ring, it is a tiny piece of code you put on your blog page, which is probably sitting on WordPress or one of those other sites. And if any single character was missing, the blog ring dies. But if it works, click on it and it goes to some random person who also has the code on their page. And the knitters would find each other that way. And so there was this knitting blog ring and I saw the little devil hat and a few other really cute things that were honestly the first viral patterns on the web because before that it was the knit list and it was all in text. There were no pictures. So this actually had a picture, a drawing of this little hat with pointy ears and like a little devil tail as the tie. And people started talking about that. And then there's one over here. And I thought, well, why aren't they all in one place? And I had this web designing skill from doing Jane's website and a few other bands and some other stuff that I did. And I thought, well, at least I could do is put them in one place and make them look nice. And then I started talking to my friends about this and finding out, oh, wait, tech editing. I didn't know that was a thing. Like I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. I knew how to knit. That was it. And I was also slavish. Like if you saw a pattern at a yarn shop and it was, you know, 20 stitches wide and you had to cast on this many stitches and knit for this long until like the simplest thing, I had to have it written down for me. I just had absolutely no mental permission to even try to experiment. So I was not some kind of wonderful talent that did this. I just had some skills and I thought, well, I can make these people get some more attention by putting them all in one place.

UNKNOWN: 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:53

So that's what I did. I said I was going to do it. I put the notice up on my blog. And as I did this, I realized I could no longer be anonymous. Because you can't be anonymous if you're going to do this thing. You're asking people to send you their work. We're all going to do it for free. So am I going to steal their work? What am I going to do? Am I going to make money off their stuff? It was so early that advertising wasn't even a thing. People were more trusting, but I also knew I had to have some kind of cred. So here's my experience. And actually I still have the post that says, you know, here's what I've done. So I can tell you, I know how to code websites and I'm a proofreader and editor. So I know how to make things make sense and hopefully not have too many typos. And I put it up on the blog and that was enough with that in the blog ring to get people to send stuff in for the first issue. That was so new and so different because this is three years before Ravelry. And all of those people who put out their patterns didn't have any centralized place to get attention. So at the beginning of the internet, we were like the biggest deal in town for quite a while and it was really nice. I have to say I did enjoy that. I also came with a lot of pressure because I had never had any concept of being a business owner of running any kind of business like this. I was an introvert. I still am. I'm less awkward and shy. But all of those things were like, I think this is a safe place, but now I have to do all these things. And so there are people who I communicated with in the early days who don't really have the best opinion of me because I was a mess. I did the best I could, but emails didn't get answered. I wasn't great about fixing mistakes on the website as quickly as I should have. I had all sorts of myself to get over. And it's taken years. And bit by bit, things have gotten better. But especially the last 10 years, I felt like really solid about this job. And one of the things I've loved most is because at first, when everything came in, we took whatever we got. Like if there's this one pattern, if you go back in the first couple issues, you will see a faux fur poncho. Now, I love that that was on trend at the time. It was camouflage color. It was a very tiny moment where that was cool. Very short. And that came in. And there's some things in there with pictures that are blurry. And there's some things in there that are not made that well. We took everything because that's what there was. And as time went on, we got better and better things to the point That people like Isolde Teague and Stephen West and Romy Hill and all these other people sent in their very first patterns to me, to Nidhi. And so we got to launch these people who are legends in the industry. So that was kind of amazing. And I never knew any of this was going to happen. It literally happened yesterday. because I wanted to try a thing and then it was let's put on a show and then oh people like the show let's keep doing it oh I'm unemployed all right I'm gonna keep doing this I don't make any money but maybe it'll turn into something and there you go so it was a very swirly path

SPEAKER_02: 12:08

But it's incredible because like you said, you launched many people's careers through this. Just being able to centralize everything in one place and get people some attention absolutely created careers for people. The other thing that I noticed that you guys have done over the years is that because of your editing background and because having to structure everything in a way where everything's consistent and all the patterns coming in, everything is done in a really consistent way. You very much sort of set the, the template and the standard for how patterns should be communicated to people. You know, like this is, you have your section with your yarn information and your needle information and then the notes and then the pattern and the instructions and the step-by-step and very much. I think a lot of people, have modeled their pattern writing after what is available on Knitty.

SPEAKER_00: 13:00

It's a huge compliment. And I got the initial style sheet by looking at the print magazines because at the time we had a huge stack of print magazines and they're almost all gone. And I, just to make this clear, I started on the web because I had had a 20 year history of proofreading for print and So things that went in your credit card statements, brochures, all these things that cost thousands and thousands of dollars to print. And if you make a mistake, lots of money to fix. And then I saw the internet was a place we could do it. And if I made a mistake, I could just go fix it. And people might not even notice. And as like the proofreading is actually a huge part of why nitty is the way it is because of that. Um, Then I went to all the print magazines and I looked at the way they were presenting it. And the one thing that had always bugged me is like at the time knitters, they for some reason used wraps per inch, which is really a great measurement if you're a spinner, but not something that knitters were using. And you can't go to a yarn store and look at a ball and go, oh, this has that same number of wraps per inch. Like it really, for me, was an absolutely useless measurement. The other one was a measurement in pattern. And I said, fine, like have your gauge measurement and pattern, but you have to have it in stock in that. Cause that's, what's going to be on the ball band. Like what are knitters going to need to go buy a yarn? So I, in some ways it was very much what I wanted. And I try to be every person in my head. I wanted it to be as understandable as possible. And I just learned how many years ago now, four years ago that I have ADHD, which again, a miracle that I was able to do this. But because I have this challenge, it's harder for me to understand knitting patterns. And so making them understandable for me makes it easier for other people to understand them. And that's been great. I just want to say I have this team of tech editors. Kate Atherley has been leading our team of tech editors for more than a decade. I've actually lost count of how long she's been here, but it's a long time. And up to then, we've had other people who were super dedicated. We had Christy Porter. We had Mandy Moore. But then we realized we needed a team because we were burning out our tech editors. So Kate leads Ashley and Rachel, who are different parts of the world. And the three of them work to a style sheet. And when the style sheet needs updating, they will tell me and I will put in a new requirement. So they make sure that everything is understandable, is consistent, follows the same language. Like there is no do all of these things and then repeat on right side. We will write out the right side because we have an endless length of a page. We're not constrained to print anymore. So we can do all of those things now.

SPEAKER_02: 15:42

Yeah, actually that's one of the biggest things is like, yeah, when I was starting to jump back into knitting and I was reading knitty.com and then also going to the library to get the Vogue Knitting back issues. Yeah, it's incredible. And because the printing has to be so tiny and the patterns are super condensed, it was sometimes very tricky to get like longer, more explanation on the patterns. And so I think it was around that time that one of the patterns came out. I don't know if you remember this pattern. It was called And it was a hoodie.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

community in knitting is huge. And considering that both ADHD and autism, which overlap in a great many places, One of the things that makes it easier to function in the regular world as someone who has either one or both of these conditions is stimming. In other words, fiddling with your hand, doing some kind of movement, repetitive movement. What is knitting? What is crochet? It's all that. And so it's not surprising that there are so many of us in this world. And then to make explanations, not unnecessarily wordy, but explanatory. We don't need to abbreviate. I don't want to explain 47 times how to do a three needle bind off. Here's where the link is. This will show you how, but if there's something weird, or if we're going to go here and then say, now we're going to do the shaping for the neck. Why not say that in a line? Like you'll say it, you know, briefer, but that is huge because as someone who can't visualize so well, seeing that goes, Oh, now it's why it's doing this. Okay. That makes sense. That's helping a lot of people. And that's one of the joys of being on the web. And honestly, it's, For the print magazines we've lost, I don't know how many will transition to online, but I would love to see them all join us here because this is the format. This is the place to be. And yeah, it's nice to go to the grocery store and pick up a knitting magazine, but I think it's even nicer to get it whenever you need in your pajamas at all hours. And one of the joys that we have is that our magazine is free to readers. And that started out because nobody was making money. So I'm not going to charge them. Who am I going to pay? How am I going to do it? It's too hard. It's too hard. Free. We're going to be free. Then we started getting advertising when people kept asking, could we advertise in your magazine? Because it was before the big recession in 2008. And so people had money to spend. And so I put advertising on and then immediately diverted the revenue to all the designers and then figured out a structure to the point that in 2006, I could quit my day job, make a living doing this and pay everybody back. better. And as time has gone on, I've only increased the amount I pay people. So nobody who works for Nitti works for free, but no one pays for the patterns except for at this point, it's our patrons. It used to be advertising up to 2015. And then we transitioned because advertising was not working anymore. And now our patrons give us a pot of money. And with that pot of money, we can pay, basically, it's$300 US for a sweater pattern, a smaller amount for a less complex pattern. We have fixed amounts that we have negotiated with the tech editors. We have money for the server. We have money for the sysadmin. All of that happened because of the patrons. But still, Knitty is free, which means unlike a pattern you have to buy and then sit there and look at and go, oh, I'm never going to knit this. You can try it. And if you don't like it, you didn't lose anything. And if you want to support us, you can support us.

SPEAKER_02: 19:34

Yeah, absolutely. Just like that over 20 plus years, right? Platforms change, community moves from one place to another place, goes to Ravelry, wherever. Where are you finding community nowadays? What is it like to try to bring together a very fragmented community?

SPEAKER_00: 20:20

Well, we actually, the message board, there are people who still talk about that message board. The reason we killed it is because it became a security risk. It actually took down the site at one point because it was hosted on the same server. Anyone who runs servers is gasping right now because you don't ever do that. I didn't know enough. They were running together. And instead of putting it back online somewhere else, we just decided it was time to end it. I actually kind of regret that we did that. We should have been smart and moved it somewhere else and left it because that was our greatest mistake. community resource. Over time, we ended up, I didn't even know, but one day I looked up just to see what was happening on Facebook because I'd opened a Facebook page for no reason. And there were 125,000 followers on Facebook with no content. So that was there. And we had a whole bunch on Twitter. And when you have to leave a place because a toxic man buys the platform, that's hard. But I walked away from 37,000 followers there. That's where I had, I found the most engaged community, but that was up to about when did Musk buy about three years ago, four years ago. It's been, we've been out of there ever since we left. I left personally, it left Instagram last year because of what's been going on. I don't like what's happening with meta. And although I do put some energy into the Instagram and Facebook platforms, that's not my main means of communication anymore.

UNKNOWN: 21:43

Um,

SPEAKER_00: 21:43

There are two platforms that I use specifically, and number one is Patreon. Now, Patreon, we started in 2015, and I saw it because a musician I admired had started and written a book about how to make a living from the art you've created and the community you've built and in a non-traditional way and up to about 2015 we had been trained as internet consumers that everything was free because ads paid for it all and it was true to a point but in 2008 that started to change to the point that ads weren't paying for anything anymore up to 2008 we were making a significant amount of money from google ads that we no longer make um So if advertising is no longer working, then what else can you do? Well, you can use this model of having the people who love your work support you directly. That has taken some education. In 2015, I had to say it's kind of like an ongoing Kickstarter. So every month or every quarter, your patrons give you a certain amount of money based on what it is they value. And they don't get necessarily a tangible thing in exchange. What they get is the satisfaction of supporting the thing they love and seeing it continue. Thankfully in the, what has it been now? It's been 10 years since, oh my God, it's been 10 years since I joined Patreon. People understand that now, whether they want to support it, not everybody does. Not everybody feels it's okay. Um, But there are enough people, and this is the beauty, there are enough people who are willing to put in whatever amount it is. It starts at$3.50 an issue, so four times a year, and it goes up from there. And they're willing to do that knowing that they are helping pay for people who can't afford to or don't want to. That's huge. I spend a lot of energy there because those are the people, they're basically my bosses. They're wonderful bosses. They don't check if I'm in at 9 a.m. As long as the magazine comes out, they're happy. And so that's where a lot of stuff goes. I can have lives there. I can chat with them. I also have people who follow and don't pay, and they get a tiny little taste of what they might be missing. The other place I go that is completely open to everyone is Blue Sky. And what happened was when Twitter was going, everyone was looking for an alternative that was not owned by a billionaire. had better protections so that people weren't being abused for being in any way different, whether it's a different race or a different sexuality or whatever it is. And I wanted to find a place and we tried Mastodon and it was just too high a learning curve for most people. But the concept of the protocols behind Mastodon, which is a decentralized place where people can post stuff and anyone who subscribes to the server you post on can pick that up Blue Sky took that concept, created their own protocol. And now we have a place. And they opened up beta and then took off beta and everyone could come in. And as soon as that happened, and the election happened this last year, and then the president took over and things started to change really quickly. People started to go, holy crap, I need to be away from Honestly, meta, that was the first thing, if they weren't off Twitter already. And I saw so many people who were knitters joining me on Blue Sky, and all of a sudden, the followers went up hugely. One of the coolest things about Blue Sky, and the reason I'm a bit of an evangelist for it, is that there is no algorithm. What there is, is you curating your own feed. And so you are not force-fed anything. Just because you click like on something doesn't mean you're getting more of that. That's what happens when there's an algorithm. There is one place, the Discover tab, where that happens. Otherwise, if I have a tab that's all about knitting and crochet, it follows the little knitting ball icon. And anyone who puts that in a post, I will see that there. It's like a miracle. It is not private, and people who want private interaction, and some do, I actually always find that a bit odd, people who are on social media but don't want just anybody to see their stuff, That you can do in Facebook. You can't do that in blue sky. If you're there, you're open. For me, I'm there to be open. So I'm fine. And we have chats. I meet new people. I meet locals, which is awesome because it's kind of hard to meet people when you're my age. And the engagement is good. Like the discussions are good. It's not just buzzwords. It's actually people talking to each other. And so it's never going to be like it was in the early 2000s. We're never going to have the joy of the new discovery, the overwhelmingly positive world. You know, we have this. It's like everyone is is mentally recovering from what happened on Twitter and to Twitter, because I think so many of us that knitters were really there and we really loved it. And then when it went, some people stayed anyway and just looked to see that their favorite creators and some people couldn't take it like me and we left. To have some kind of engagement now in a place that feels welcoming and safe and supportive and you can customize it to what you need, that to me is, I never thought we'd see that again. I thought it was done for good. It's like early Twitter was. So that's where I find the most community. I know that for others, some people still are on threads. That's a meta product. So I've chosen not to be part of it. And I have seen really interesting discussions there. And I'm sorry that they have not moved over as much to Blue Sky as they did on threads. That's not something I can control, but I stay where I'm comfortable and that's where I'm comfortable. So the other thing that's kind of interesting is there has been a discussion about a return to blogs. Because in the early 2000s, that's what it was. Everybody had a blog. We all had a page that was our page that we controlled. We could say what we wanted. And if somebody wanted to see it, they had to go to it. There were basically, what do they call them, like newsreaders that you would put on the code and it would automatically tell you, Amy's posted something new today. And that's how we spent our day. Who posted new today? We would sit there waiting for someone to post. But it wasn't short form. It was long form content. It wasn't 144 characters, 200 and whatever. And I just got this thing today from Patreon. It's interesting. They sent us, literally just got it from the mailbox. And in here, there's an article saying that although most people end up consuming short form content, what they would rather engage with is long form content, which is like what you do on a blog. And so that's what people want. And although we will not get the kind of volume we got in the days, the good days of social media. I think what we're getting is good quality conversations. And so that's what I'm trying to cultivate on Patreon and on Blue Sky.

SPEAKER_02: 28:35

It's fantastic that there are options for people for whatever priorities you have and whichever values you have. And there's so many different platforms to go to. I think this return to blogs idea is also really interesting. The fact that people want to engage with long form content. I know that our community, a lot of the conversation originally started on my blog when we had this blog. All of the comments, that's where the community was. They were in the comments of the blog. And then after like a number of years, there was a time where people stopped commenting on blogs altogether. And then our blog had to evolve and change and our websites completely changed as well now into more like a magazine kind of site or like a, like a media site, um, that has tutorials and helpful content and, you know, valuable stuff. Um, but all of the comments have moved to YouTube videos. So

SPEAKER_00: 29:25

on our YouTube channel. Yeah. And you guys are great with the tech you guys share.

SPEAKER_02: 29:30

Well, we making like long form video content and that's where all of the comments are like the, where they were on the blog. They've just kind of moved over here and they're leaving the same kind of, um, comments. So I find it really, really interesting where everybody's moving to. So I just continue to try to follow and see, uh, where everybody's at because this is, it's exactly this. It's like, um, I'm a knitter. I'd like to meet other knitters. Where are the knitters hanging out?

SPEAKER_00: 29:54

I don't know. Where, where is everybody? Exactly. Um, some of my favorite content to consume right now is through YouTube. Um, I have this, this woman, Chris atomic starting KR is atomic she is a narrow border in england she's cool as hell she is a knitter she lives the dream on this boat with her her boyfriend and they have the most beautiful pastoral scenes of british countryside i adore it and this is starting to happen for me i now am a patron of hers because she's monetizing that content and extra stuff that is not shared on YouTube on her Patreon. So although there are other places where you can get content, like longer form content, what's that called? Substack is one. That's all written. I've seen a lot of people coming up with substacks and you can support that financially. There are ways, I don't think there are secret ways on YouTube necessarily, but just the views themselves can end up being monetized if you get enough of an audience. There is one YouTuber I was watching for a while who's in Korea who camps with these inflatable tents. And She's gorgeous and has a great figure, and I'm sure that doesn't hurt. But the camps are fascinating, and just watching her set up an entire home, having this, her tiny dog, and then taking it down a day later, she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month just by viewers.

SPEAKER_02: 31:17

Now I have

SPEAKER_00: 31:18

to check out that camping channel. But like anything else, that took her a while to build up that kind of skill to make good content and to get an audience that's large enough to watch it. When it comes to knitting, I don't know that we're going to be making so much money off of video content unless we are providing stuff that is beyond the easy, like how to do a pattern where you really want to see someone's hands doing the hard part. There are some patterns that are kind of tricky and it would be great to see that laid out. I know there are also content creators like knitting content creators who are doing that and making nothing.

SPEAKER_01: 31:58

are

SPEAKER_00: 31:58

making not enough to survive, which means they're being subsidized by something else.

SPEAKER_02: 32:04

So the Patreon model, I think, is actually really, really interesting. And I mean, we used Patreon for a short amount of time in 2017 when I was starting the School of Sweet Georgia because it was meant to be sort of like a kind of like a test to see if anybody wanted what we wanted to make. And so it was just kind of like an experiment. But the whole model, I think, is really interesting. And especially since I just got back from a trip to Japan. And in Japan, I just noticed that there's just this massive attention to detail and quality and craftsmanship. And when I look at it, I'm like, that would have taken so much time already. Like, how can you afford to do that? How can you even afford to spend the time to put in all of that extra care and all that extra attention? And so I feel like the Patreon model sort of allows for that because you're able to be that person who's creating something that you're super passionate about. You can go into detail. You can make it really great. And you are supported by people who are, like, helping you do this thing that otherwise there would be no way for you to do this thing. So... I think that model is actually fantastic for anybody who's thinking about doing creative work.

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

It's great. The challenge, I mean, I actually follow some channels on YouTube that show Japanese creators making tabby sandals. And I watched the number of steps this artisan put into creating every little detail. And I don't know how he doesn't charge$1,000 a pair for the amount of time. Yeah, they should. They should. Maybe they do, and I just don't know. When it comes to what we're doing, the challenge here is part of it is getting over yourself because if you are having people support you, whether you want it or not, you are going to have innate guilt. People are paying me money. Am I giving them enough? And what I have found is, I mean, we have little levels of rewards. We created something called Knitty Plus, which is a way to view a pattern without all of the extraneous text that does not apply to the size you're knitting showing up. So it takes a pattern that's this long and condenses it. And for people who have ADHD and issues following stuff, all of a sudden now it's condensed to the smallest amount of text without getting rid of anything important. People who subscribe at a medium... medium level on our list, they get that. And people at a lower list get to use it, but none of the changes they make are saved, so they have to print it out. We try to give them things like that. When I try to give them more than that, they don't get excited. They just want me to keep making Knitty. And that's pretty awesome. The fact that I've got about 3,000 people who are able to financially support Knitty at whatever level is great. And people leave every issue. Every time I send out a bill, I will notice a drop of several hundred dollars because people just, they're done. They can't do it anymore for whatever reason. But then new people come in. And the part about new people coming in is you have to ask. You've got to say, we need more patrons. You cannot sit there and just hope people will find you. It's like word of mouth only goes so far.

SPEAKER_01: 35:19

And

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

so it takes a lot of skill for people like me who are introverts and also Canadian and don't want to bother people. I don't want to ask. I don't want to disturb. I just want to do a nice job and not offend anybody. Unfortunately, my politics have gotten in the way and I can't not say things anymore about those. I didn't for years. But other than I've tried really hard not to be inoffensive. When you ask people who love what you do to support you, And a good chunk of people do. It is immensely validating. But you have to just continually thank them, give them what they asked for, and then try to get new folk. And so it's a process that is not for the timid. You have to be brave.

SPEAKER_02: 36:05

Absolutely. I mean, it is awesome. hard to do the ask I'm Canadian as well I know exactly the sentiment that you're saying like I just want to do a good job and then hopefully people will notice that feeling absolutely um Like we talked about at the start, I mean, you have helped launch a lot of these careers for designers and things like that. I remember attending a lecture that you gave years ago and it was called like how to make a monkey. And it was the whole thing that like Cookie A, who is a knitwear designer at the time, she designed a lot of sock patterns. She designed a sock pattern called monkey, monkey sock, right? And this like became super viral, took off like crazy. And you were giving advice to people on what they could do to make a design submission that would sort of pop off with that kind of virality right um what kind of sort of guidance or feedback or suggestions do you have for people who are trying to carve out a path as like an independent knitwear or crochet designer nowadays like in this time what advice would you give to somebody who wants to do this or start this or continue this

SPEAKER_00: 37:11

things have changed so much from when I started, from when we were the biggest thing to when we were the little, you know, the old biggest thing to where we are now, which is sort of like the grandma. So you'd like to hope that there's this crone wisdom. And what I have seen is a couple of different paths. I have seen beautifully attractive designers who take advantage of the fact that they are gorgeous to look at and make pretty knitwear and model their own work. And they get a cult of fans who love them for how they look, love them for how the knitwear looks on them. And then when they make it themselves, it works. So part of it is the luck of nature. Part of it is actually having the chops to design a good pattern. And not all of the big viral patterns are good. There is one I will just hint at that I think is hugely popular because it's always on the front page of Ravelry. And It doesn't really look good on anybody, although it is a really interesting pattern. It's not designed to be, you know, to take the way the body is built. And it just sort of, you can make these neat things happen and it looks pretty in the yarn, but on the bodies, it looks kind of, and it's there for technical reasons I won't go into because I don't really want to point it out. But just because you're popular doesn't mean you're good. If you are good, If you make good patterns that are sized well, that understand that bigger bodies are not bigger the same ways everywhere, that just mathematically sizing up an arm to the same proportions that you size up a torso is not going to give you a good fitting sweater for most people. If you can make a good, well-written, easy to understand pattern and photograph it well, that is the number one thing. I know a lot of designers do this and it has worked for some. that when they release a collection, they will release the entire collection and make it free for a period of time, which means, of course, it's going to take over the entire front page of Ravelry for the time it's free. That's great. That makes you no money. That's not something everyone can do. So I will always send people to the place where their skill is showing and If you can get a couple people to say, I've loved this pattern, it's great. Word of mouth will help you there. One of the things Nidhi can do now in this changing place, our role has changed so much. When Ravelry is hundreds of thousands of patterns, how are you as a new designer going to get your one pattern to stand out? Sometimes Nidhi can make that difference. We are not the only magazine. There are other magazines. There's not as many, but they are still out there. If your work is good enough to get into Lanya or any of the other still printing magazines, for some reason in Scandinavia, the print magazines thankfully are still thriving. It's the only place that I know of. Otherwise, it's sort of tabloid knitting magazines in England. Any place you can get published will bring attention to you. I think... It comes back to how we made our reputation is do good work, consistently do good work and reach out to the people who like your stuff and whose stuff you like and build connections. And by doing that, you start to get seen by more people. But there's like no magic recipe. I just think it always comes down to. Good work. And for Knitty, my specific approach is, and if you look at our archives, look at our sock archives. We have some of the most ridiculous ways to build a sock in our archives for free. Sideways, flat, top down, back down, up in the middle, afterthought heel, heel first, everything you could possibly imagine. Do it. Spiral around the foot. I'm not making it up. It is in there. There are so many different ways to create a sock. Think about sweaters that way. Think about wraps that way. Like another triangular wrap is really boring. Another wrap that is shaped the same way as find your fate is really boring. That's been done. What else can you do? Innovation is what gets attention and good innovation. Like when you do this, like find your fate was brilliant. It was of the time. It was perfect. Everybody wanted to see it. What people may not remember is that happened before. And it was called Charlotte's Web. Charlotte's Web took five skeins of Koigu and every time you wanted to switch a skein, you alternated for a few rounds and then you alternated for the next one. And it was the first time we had seen that because we all came from grandmas and moms who would knit with one plain, solid, flat colored yarn and never had these beautiful, you know, self-striping or automatic color changing yarns. So that happened in the early 2000s. But Find Your Fade made it relevant now. So what else can you do that is relevant now? A lot of it is research and skill.

SPEAKER_02: 42:05

And it's going to become much more challenging because, you know, like you said, with hundreds of thousands of, you know, patterns out there published on Ravelry, it does feel a little bit like, has everything been done? Like what else can we innovate? What else can we try? What else can we make seem fresh and new? So yeah, absolutely. I can see that it is a challenging sort of landscape for people wanting to join now and everything like that. In terms of like, trends and knitting trends and crochet trends. When you are doing that editorial selection for Knitty Now, what are you sort of looking at? What do you think knitters are looking for nowadays?

SPEAKER_00: 42:40

It keeps changing. Part of it changes based on what yarns are showing up at the trade show, if you happen to be lucky enough to get there. And that comes out, used to be twice a year in January and June. Now it's once a year for North Americans in May. But the yarns still come out twice a year in January. And then I guess the fall ones come around summertime somewhere, depending on which company. And you will start to see trends there, which are originated in Italy and in China and other places where the yarns are being created in the first place. So some companies will be going to Italy to Pitti Filati, for example, and that's like February, to choose the yarns they're going to offer for the fall in June. and customize colors and things like that. That's coming from Italy. So in some ways they're driving the trends. So we started to see a little tiny resurgence of novelty yarn. And I don't know that that's going to come back. Although right now people could use a little bit of lightness in their heart. But we saw huge trends to, you know, all the variegated, super bright variegated. And then it went, of course, full circle the other way. And it went natural fibers, pure, you know, Rambouillet yarn. Or, I mean, Merino's fine, but there's so many other breeds of sheep. What else can we see? And so we're seeing those breed-specific yarns. We're now seeing heathered yarns. We're seeing so many people who do Indy Dye-in doing superwash, but some will still do pure yarns that aren't superwash. which is a different animal to knit with. If you've been knitting with superwash your whole life, you won't believe how different a non-superwash wool is. It has the grab you have never had, really, with a superwash. I am someone who's allergic to wool, so I'm always knitting with silk and linen and cotton and those things. I'm always looking for a new yarn construction. What I'm seeing in the trends now especially for knitters who've been around longer are things that we want to add to our wardrobe. So very specific wardrobe filling pieces. Some people are still trying to bend the envelope and come up with something different just because it's different, but it has to also be really wearable because for years we've had interesting shawl shapes, but not always the most wearable. Like a pair of dragon wings is really cool. How do you wear it? Right. Is there a way to wear it? If you look at Jewel Closures, she's brilliant at coming up with things like that nail that she calls it goes through shawls and makes a sweater almost out of any knitted shawl fabric. And so that makes that more wearable. The trends change so fast at this point that I just try to keep up with them. One thing I've noticed lately is that we are following fashion to a degree. And one of the things about knitting that is different from the way print magazines have been, which, you know, print magazines have trained us. So print magazines take a year. A book takes a year to produce, which means whatever you've created, is it still fashionable a year later? With knitting, people can often design it and it's in print, like it's on the web in three months.

SPEAKER_01: 45:40

So

SPEAKER_00: 45:41

what I'm seeing everywhere now, and it has been for a while, which means it's just about ready to change, is cropped and oversized, but still fitted in the arms so that you don't look like you're wearing a tent. But huge body, and then you'll wear something narrow underneath to offset it. It's kind of that Danish Scandinavian aesthetic that we've been seeing from knitwear designers like Petite Knit. Everyone loves Petite Knit stuff because it's beautiful. It's wonderfully photographed and the patterns are great.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

that's

SPEAKER_00: 46:09

like the three key things so that kind of fashion is really appealing to people and we had this trend of yokes how long have yokes been going on now two three years to the point that dyers are creating just you know dye colorways just for a yoke you could just go buy the yoke from x dyer and then you'll use whatever for the body um I wish I had some kind of genius about it. I do love that crochet is becoming much more fashionable so that knitters maybe could put their noses down about it because crochet is cool. It just makes a different fabric. I am always trying to find things that are kind of mysterious about how they were created. When you look at it, you don't even maybe know if it was knitted or crocheted. And Tunisian crochet kind of does that. It looks halfway in between both. So I'm just looking to be surprised when stuff comes into me. I just want to look at it and go, oh, I never thought of that. That's beautiful. Or it's just so perfectly photographed that it's great. Like it's just it's just right.

SPEAKER_02: 47:09

Yeah, I think if anybody didn't know, I mean, even though you're called Knitty.com, you still have crochet patterns and you have for a long time now. And then now also Tunisian crochet patterns as well. And the other thing that I really like about your patterns is that you kind of highlight and feature and tag almost the patterns that are suitable for hand spun, which I think is also really, really interesting. it's very supportive of this idea of being multi-craftual and like doing all the things and that you spin and then now you can also use that yarn to make this pattern sort of idea

SPEAKER_00: 47:40

well one of the things about that specifically see we've been on for 22 years there are all of our archives are available for free to anybody all they have to do is just go on and look at pattern and features library in our menu bar and everything is there sorted by issue by pattern type by topic if you want to read the features And the Knitty Spin stuff was specifically Jillian's concept. Stuff you would spin specifically to knit it, as opposed to just spinning it because you just want to make the yarn and you don't know what you're going to do with it. And she has a whole bunch of columns you can read anytime for free on Knitty under her type. So if you take a look at Knitty Spin in the Features section, And look at all the different things. She will take you through. Here's a pattern that I found online. I'm going to spin for it. And it was one of the knitty patterns. And she showed, here it is. Here's how I'm going to create this yarn. All right, now I've spun this. Now here's how I'm going to adjust it. All right, now how much do I need? I've got to make this much. And then she knits it. And you can see that she spun to knit a thing. And that is something I think that has come out of this internet environment. I don't think that that's something we ever talked about publicly. I don't think books were published on that topic up to the 2000s. But Jillian specifically does this stuff. And so that resource is always going to be there. And unfortunately, Jillian and I don't work together anymore because we just couldn't afford her anymore. And but those resources will always still be up on NIDI. And I'm so grateful that we have that.

SPEAKER_02: 49:04

Yeah, no, I'm just saying that, like, it's incredible the amount of work that Jillian put in to create a lot of these resources. I mean, I referenced them as well, you know, learning how to spin a gradient yarn for the first time and things like that, looking at, you know, the different ways of plying, just there's so many things that I've learned from knitting. Specifically, I learned how to graft the toes of a sock. Yes. So there's so many things that I've learned. Also, you know, you mentioned Kate Atherley has taught a lot through the magazine as well. And so it's just been such an incredible resource. And now also hearing about how much innovation and how much intention there is towards promoting the innovation of knitting and this craft, I think is really, really important. just has been so important to this whole community and growing everything. All of these designers who have come out of the process of writing patterns and being published in Knitty, like the whole, everything that we know of for the past 20 years has kind of come from this place, really.

SPEAKER_00: 50:13

Thank you. I mean, you know, we were lucky in that we got people who designed beautiful things. And some people have been quiet and invisible designers. The Aeolian Shawl by Elizabeth Freeman is an example. Elizabeth Freeman is invisible. You cannot find her. She does not want to be found. I think she's a mathematician. I don't even know what she looks like. She did some of the most beautiful things for us. She put them out there. They're exquisite. She disappeared. I wrote her a while ago. She does not want to be back. She has not written back. She just likes being able to get published and then go away. And that is her thing. I have no idea. She could be the ghost of Elizabeth Zimmerman, for all I know. I don't know who she is. I just know she's a genius. And we've had a lot of these really unique creators who've come forward, created beautiful things, and then just left them out for everybody to enjoy on Knitty, which is a miracle. And then when you start to get people innovating socks... And you didn't know that people could innovate the way a sock was created. Then you start going, I want more innovative socks and more innovative socks keep coming in still 22 years later. And so then I, you know, as someone who has a deficiency in dopamine in my brain, I always want that extra bit of dopamine because, oh, my God, here's another new way to make a sock. And I get really excited by that. I mean, working with Wooly Wormhead and all her unique ways to make hats for all the years has been wonderful. Um, and I love that we have that for people and that it's all still there. And my goal now, um, you know, we went through this little, this lull in sort of the mid 2010s, uh, personal thing and went through divorce, all that stuff. And then I came back and I went, Oh, wait a minute. I can make the archive better. I can do this. I can publicize here. So now my goal is to make sure people know we're there because there's so much content. I mean, I'm on Tik TOK, but I'm not on Tik TOK really for nitty. Um, There is knitting content there. There's a couple of creators who are super fun to watch. And I've seen them on Instagram too. And they're doing great. And I'm thrilled for them. I just would love people to see what we have and know that it's there and share it. I mean, the whole point of it is it's there. And if you want it, you can come and use it at any time. And you may find exactly the right pattern you wanted in our archives. And that's why we have it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:32

Yeah, that Aeolian shawl is on my list. So someday I'm going to make that.

SPEAKER_00: 52:38

I love it. I love that so much. I love everything she did. She was one of my favorites. And when she stopped sending stuff in, I was so sad. But I get, you know, I'm also introverted and I get that it's hard. And when knitting becomes a bigger deal and you don't want any attention on you. But you can't stop creating beautiful things. You know, she did it for a while and she was done. I respect it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:58

So, I mean, thank you so much for joining me today. I mean, if people want to come and support you, obviously go to knitty.com. Come find you at your Patreon.

SPEAKER_00: 53:07

Patreon.com slash knitty. Or the link is on knitty as well. And you are welcome to test drive us. If you've never been to Nitty before, come to nitty.com, take a look, hit the patterns and features library, take a look at what the dropdown says. You may find bugs. I mean, the hardest part of being a proofreader who does not have the time to proofread every single thing in her site is that I know there's bugs here and there, there's mistakes. There are ads that have dropped out that don't work anymore. But I hope you will forgive us that and just enjoy the patterns. If you see something big, write me, I'll see if I can fix it.

SPEAKER_02: 53:43

Thank you so much, Amy. I mean, it's just like such an incredible, incredible resource for everybody in the knitting and the crochet community. And I just hope that everybody comes and sees it and gets to enjoy it, knit some patterns out of it. There are some wonderful, incredible patterns. So thank you so much for

SPEAKER_00: 54:00

joining me

SPEAKER_02: 54:00

today.

SPEAKER_00: 54:00

Thank you, Felicia. I love watching your business grow over the years too. You make such beautiful things.

SPEAKER_02: 54:05

Thank you.