Summer Rerun


Figure 150: Me on the wrong side of The History Fence.

Greetings! You probably heard that the online knitting magazine formerly residing at magknits.com recently disappeared in a cloud of controversy. All of the not-lazy creators immediately posted their designs as free Ravelry downloads. Me? I had to take a month or two to mull it over. Here’s A PDF version of Judith, and an additional copy should be available as a free download on The Rav as soon as I can get my storefront to work.

I’d like to (belatedly) say something nice about Ravelry’s role in this whole mess. Before knitters had a central online social location, there wasn’t much accountability for shady business practices. YES, the threads about Magknits/Hipknits were lengthy and venty and gossipy and snipy, but they did wonders for the knitting community’s general attitude toward transparency, intellectual property respect, and business-related incompetence.

As some really, really tenacious people were pretty quick to point out repeatedly, Kerrie Allman has had a really tough year and we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves for speaking ill of her. But I do believe that there is a graceful and considerate way to exit from the internet. Gutting a site’s content and running off without paying patrons and contributors? Not such a graceful and considerate way to exit from the internet. Not at all.

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