Every (Interweave Knits Spring 2007) Change is Yoga

My lovely Interweave Knits, what has happened to thee?

I was just getting over the news that Yoga Journal has been sucked into the maelstrom of women's fashion magazines, since its purchase by Redbook. I still have a subscription, which comes as a freebie with the yoga insurance that I purchase through a California health and fitness insurance company. But they lost me when they added a fashion section, weight-loss articles, and spa treatments in a higher proportion than yoga articles. The magazine arrives in the mailbox and now travels almost directly to the recycling bin. Now poor little Knits is taking on the appearance of every other knitting-fashion magazine on the market.

Didn't you appreciate the calm of this magazine? Nothing flashy in the way of typeface or layouts. Good, large, clear pictures of the designs, on models close enough to real women but beautiful enough to make you want to spend some time with their make-up person or stylist. Consistency in presentation, tone, lay-out. Real settings. Cafes, coffee shops, sidewalks, but in some romantic, seaside-ish place, where you could imagine having time enough to knit, wander, sip a cup of tea and watch the waves break on the beach.

And one design, one designer, one pattern per page. Large, lucid pictures. Often, a pattern that fit onto two pages. Easy to read, easy to follow. And once you finished gazing at that design, reading through its instructions, deciding whether to place it in the mental to-do category or on the not-me list, you could go on to the next pattern with a clear mind. No distracting advertisements, no competing pictures of other designs jostling for attention. A mindful experience of reading a knitting magazine.

At first glance, the Spring 2007 issue seems so much more a cousin to every other knitting magazine, with themed lay outs and patterns relegated to the back of the book. I'm prepared to back down on this. I've only skimmed the magazine, as I was on an afternoon escape out of the house, going to sit at a coffee shop and read The Heart of Yoga. I'm more than willing to take a closer look. And I did love the designs. Is it possible that I'm becoming a groupie? But, as Fig and Plum notes, Must. Make. Bonsai.

And I love the look of Wenlan Chia's incredible piece, and could imagine knitting it for someone.

And even the knitted thong, that is sure to become the darling of all internet chatter on knitting blogs, intrigued me, mainly as concept rather than execution. You gotta hand it to someone who knits a lace thong, then displays it for the world to see.

But, oh, I did love the quiet focus of the old design. "Every change is yoga," says Desikachar in The Heart of Yoga, meaning that everything, everywhere, changes. And when we manage to accept the change, we are doing yoga, in the sense that we're finding ourselves someplace new, someplace where we couldn't have expected to be. You could be touching your toes, or learning to accept the design of your favorite knitting magazine.