We're here to help you stitch sustainability into every aspect of your making.
With our carefully curated selection of non-superwash, plastic-free yarns and notions, we have everything you need to get started on your next project - and the one after that.
Here's to a wardrobe of knits we love and want to wear for years to come!
We need to talk about Sockmatician.
We need to talk about Sockmatician. Many of you will be aware of his recent actions, starting with an Instagram post with highly problematic views and language, and culminating in threatening a WoC at Yarningham this past weekend. These actions, and his subsequents reaction to the criticism he faced, are despicable.
We have an article by him in our next issue, Issue 2. It's a long one, we're referencing it in our letter from the editors, and his name appears on the cover. When we initially contracted him to write about his HIV story, we were excited to share it. We can't, and won't, do that anymore. His behaviour is despicable and dangerous and it's very much at odds with everything we believe in here at Making Stories and the values we base our work on. We want our magazine to be a safe space.
We've been working frantically at figuring out with our printer how we can remove the article and his name from the magazine. The issue is already printed, but we might have a solution that would at least ensure the article is removed by taking out the respective spreads so that our contributors don't have to share a space with him anymore. In addition to that, we're working to get quotes for reprinting the cover without his mention and letter from the editor. If that doesn't work, our plan B is to either add a wrap-around cover or a sticker to the cover. We'll also add a printed additional letter from the editor to every copy and adjust the digital version of the magazine so that his article and name are removed.
Furthermore, we'll donate 6% of the profit of Issue 2 to anti-racism causes. This is the equivalent to how much space his article would've taken up in Issue 2 (8 of 136 pages). We're currently looking at different organisations, both in Germany and internationally, and I will update you on which ones we suggest as soon as we've finished our research.
We've reached out to our contributors to hear what else we can do for them to make Issue 2 a safe space again. The same goes for you: We're thankful for every comment and action step that you want to see from us and that you decide to share with us. The action steps outlined above are rooted in our perspective and the values we live by, and with us being a white team, this means that they're inevitably connected to the white privilege we have.
I should have shared this sooner. Period. There's nothing that can take away the harm that we and I caused by not talking about this earlier, and I'm so, so sorry about that.
Claire and I will be taking turns over the weekend to respond to your comments and to make sure that the conversation that happens in the comments remains safe. Whenever we're unable to do so, we'll switch off the comments. If you would like to talk or write about this and don't want to to this here, you're more than welcome to do so by reaching out to us via email, either to our official business address or to my personal Making Stories one: hannalisa@making-stories.com.
With lots of love,
Hanna Lisa
Leave a comment
Comments will be approved before showing up.
Also in Blog
Thoughts on closing down a knitting magazine
As a lot of you might have suspected I have, at last, made the decision to definitely close down Making Stories Magazine after Issue 14, our 2025 Fall & Winter issue. This means we still have two issues to go - Issue 13, coming out in March (Confetti & Rainbows!!), and Issue 14, coming out in September. I wanted to share this decision with you bright and early as I don’t feel like holding this in when we publish our last Spring and then our very last Fall & Winter issue. I want to celebrate those issues, and the work that we have done over the last eight years, and I want to be able to share the bittersweet feelings that will inevitably come up when the list of “lasts” still do be done gets shorter and shorter.
Read More
All the knits I finished while recovering from surgery
About three weeks ago, I had surgery. Nothing major, and it was planned - but it was my first time undergoing general anaesthesia and facing an uncertain recovery period, both of which made me quite nervous. I knew that I was going to be in the hospital for two days, if everything went well, but then it was between one and three weeks of recovering at home, depending on how fast my body was going to heal.
Needless to say, I packed knitting for the hospital, but I didn’t feel like picking up my needles until my second day in the hospital. And then I knit. I knit, and knit, and knit. Curiously enough, I always get the urge to clear off my needles this time of the year - something about the weather changing, sweater season approaching, maybe? And this year, this urge coincided with me wanting to do something while watching copious amounts of Netflix without having to think very hard about what I was going to knit. Win win!
Art Nouveau Sample Preview Video - Issue 12, Fall & Winter 2024
Let’s wander the streets of Brussels and Paris, searching for the hidden architectural Art Nouveau gems – houses, doors, windows, street lamps. Let’s explore Berlin’s Jugendstil tile art, marvelling at the colors and shapes taking form. Let’s get lost in the work of water color artists, glass blowers, jewellers, embroidery artists, and myriads more, who dive into the shapes and curves of plants and flowers, moving, flowing, mirroring.
Read More
