2016: Well, that was something, eh?

Challenging in ways many of us didn’t expect, 2016 has been a hell of a year. We’re starting to lose our cultural heroes, often unexpectedly, and we’re a bit raw with the changing political climate in the US, and crazy people with weapons worldwide. Yeah, 2016 has sucked.

But it’s also been joyous, surprising and a wonderful year for knitting and knitters.

Here are some things that happened:

Knitty didn’t close in Spring 2016. We would have had to without the financial support of our Patrons . We launched this new funding model in September 2015, and by March of 2016, Knitty Patrons had stepped up and were carrying 2/3 of the cost of producing the magazine. We are grateful on a daily basis for their support. Thanks to them and our fiercely loyal Advertisers , we…




Rewrote our website code, making our pages responsive , so that they’re much easier to view on mobile devices of all sizes. This was a big project and we completed it on time so that the First Fall 2016 issue launched when it was supposed to, and the cool auto-resizable pages worked from the get go.
Published four great issues , full of patterns like these:

Laurel, by Amy Christoffers, from the DF16

 

Anyadell by Senja Jarva from the DF16 issue

 

Pincha by Pinpilan Wangsai from the FF16 issue

 

Gocce by Paola Albergamo from the SS16 issue

 

Ennui by Justyna Lorkowska from our FF16 issue

And my favorite meta-meta crazypants pattern of the year:

Toilet Paper Toilet Paper Cozy by Christine Olea from the W16 issue

On the personal side:

O Canada!

I became a Canadian (after living in Canada since I was 8), and took a train across the country to celebrate! I welcomed a new rabbit, Tully, into my family, got rid of my misbehaving uterus, and had both my Carpal Tunnelly hands surgically fixed. I stepped back from teaching and concentrated on healing and taking care of myself. Rather lovely.

 

Jillian and Gwen Steege from Storey Publishing, celebrating Yarnitecture!

Jillian continued her crazy busy and successful year of travelling and teaching at legendary venues, while (at the same time, mind you) finishing her brilliant book about spinning the yarns you want to knit: Yarnitecture. And continued to raise her kids, along with her hubby, with love and compassion. She’s on the road in 2017, too…will you be lucky enough to be able to catch a class with her?

 

Kate and her groundbreaking book!

Kate was on the move too! She taught all over the US and Canada, and popped over to her homeland, hitting Bath, Manchester and Oxford in the UK in spring, as well as taping several new online classes. She’s added video columnist to her resume, as Knitty’s newest columnist on the subject of techniques. She wrote the book all knitwear designers need to read. And just for fun, she and her darling husband and nutso dog Dexter moved house, too. She’s already got a busy schedule lined up for 2017. Go Kate, go!

 

So that’s a lot of good stuff that happened in 2016. I’m glad to be able to celebrate it with you, and I’m honored to work with such great people as Jillian, Kate, Chris (Sysadmin gift from above), Ashley and Rachel (our gloriously wonderful Tech Editors). Thank you for being here, too.

Here’s to a happier, more joyous 2017!