A PLY-ing Giveaway!

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UPDATE:

We have a winner! Chris P check your email!

 

Woo-hoo it’s a fiber giveaway!

My article about plying with color in the new issue of PLY was so much fun to write! My favorite part was spinning and knitting the samples, there are so many options it’s hard to stop.

I know when I read an article that gets me excited to spin, I want to do exactly what the author did, maybe with some tweaks of my own.

Thanks to Scarlet at Huckleberry Knits, one of you will be able to spin along with my article. She gave me a bundle of 5, 2-ounce braids of Targhee/silk , in the exact colors I used for the article for a giveaway!

What do you need to do to win? Leave a comment below telling me your favorite thing about PLY Magazine, before midnight EST, Tuesday December 20th, 2016. I’ll use a random number generator to pick our one winner.

Don’t forget a PLY subscription or renewal makes a great gift for your favorite spinner, even if that favorite spinner is you!

 

 

 

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Winning!

Wow. If the last post was any indication, y’all like us and that feels great! I’m proud of this magazine, of the people that work on it, write and design for it, and support it in any way. I feel passionately about what we’re doing and the way we do. And that could be enough. It really could. But the fact that y’all like it too, that it means so much to so many spinners, well, that just fills my heart.

I made a page of the reviews so feel free to take a look. We’re hoping it’ll help influence those that haven’t made the jump yet, to give PLY a try.

As for the random drawing winners, here they are!

Number 1, for the fiber from Wild Hare Fiber, the winner is Becca H. Roy!

Number 2, for the mystery prize from my studio, the winner is Jennifer Hewett-Apperson.

But really, I feel like I’m the winner and whenever I get overwhelmed and stressed, I’m going to push play on the recording I made of Levi reading all those reviews aloud in his sexiest voice.

Give-away: What do you think of PLY Magazine?

Hi everyone!

PLY Magazine has been around for almost 4 years now and it’s going pretty well, I think. We’ve spent some time learning how to make a magazine and then we spent some more time learning how to make it great, but we haven’t focused much on marketing and now it’s time!

The short of it is, our low-ad/good-quality paper/fair wages model relies on subscribers to pay the bills so we need more subscribers. Since people are doing more and more research before they commit to buy or subscribe to something, we need to show them this magazine is worth it! That’s where you come in.

We’re building a review page on the website. If you have a few minutes and would write what you think of PLY, either as a spinner, a teacher, a contributor, or any combination, that’d be so great!  

Feel free to post your reviews and endorsements here (with a name we can attribute it to) and I”ll extract them and build the page soon. 

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Next Friday (11-11), I’ll randomly draw 2 people that gave reviews and send them 1 of 2 wonderful prizes. The first is the fiber from Melissa at Wild Hare Fiber Studio that we used in the gorgeous Traveling Hood designed by Jolene Mosley for the latest issue of PLY.  You’ll get 4 ounces of the colorway and 4 ounces of the solid so if you want, you can recreate this exact pattern, all you’ll need is a mysterious cloak and a wandering road.

The second random winner will get something secret, something from the PLY Magazine studio. I can’t say what it’ll be but if you’re a spinner, you’ll want it!

Thanks for all your support and we promise we’ll keep getting better and better

Wanna try spinning cotton? (We’re giving it away!)

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Our Beautiful Cotton issue has been in subscribers’ hands and store shelves for a few months now, and we’d love to know what you think! Are you a seasoned spinner of the fiber of our lives, or a novice? Did this issue teach you something you didn’t know before, or encourage you to try something new? Did you find it mind-numblingly gorgeous? Have you worked through any of the projects, or spun a new yarn inspired by the information in the articles?

Ruane2 We love hearing what the spinners of the world think about each issue! It also helps us entice new readers to pick up a copy of PLY. So we’d really love it if you would click here and leave a review for the Cotton issue of PLY! (Just scroll down to the product description and click on the “Reviews” tab to enter your thoughts.) As a thank you, we’re going to give away some fabulous cotton fiber! This cotton was actually sent to us by one of our readers, who is sharing her personal cotton harvest with a lucky winner (THANK YOU!). Isn’t it fabulous? It’s super clean, and so much – there is about 1 lb of it!

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We’ll pick a winner at random from the cotton issue reviews on this page on June 15, and contact you to send out your cotton! Remember, don’t leave your review of the issue here, leave it on the issue page, here! Thanks so much, as always, for your support.

 

Concrete shots and free fiber!

It was slow coming to you international folks, I know, but I think just about everyone (minus a few South American subscribers) has their Winter issue of PLY. What did you think? I have to tell you the truth, this one took the most for me to love but it wasn’t the content or articles or samples, it was our photoshoot venue!

We learn as we go, as usual, and what we learned this time was that grand, wide-sweeping locations aren’t for us. They just don’t work as well as the itty bitty gritty shots full of textures and detail. We shot at the gorgeous Longview Mansion in Lee’s Summit, MO. And just like the website implies by it’s own lovely photography — your bride will look stunning as she glides down the grand staircase beneath the crystal chandelier; your fish and/or chicken plated dinners will look delectable as your guest consume them along side copious amounts of champagne from the champagne fountain that’s placed under the twinkling stars; and never will you and your spouse feel so majestic and magical as when you walk down the column-lined promenade punctuated with extravagantly shaped shrubbery. The location was all of that and more.

However, when you’re attempting to capture the tiny felted corner of a Wendsleydale swatch, you tend to shoot a little closer. Heck, you tend to shoot a lot closer. With our specific photo needs, it’s hard to capture the grand staircase, the champagne fountain tower, the topiary shrub that’s skillfully pruned to look like an actual tree, and the imposing stone columns. In fact, when we what you see is mostly the wood on the staircase, a stump of the shrub, and the concrete at the base of the columns.

Bernadette and I worried and woe-ed. We did. We actually woe-ed. It’s a thing.
Woe: a feeling of great sorrow or distress.
to woe: to slightly sway back and forth while consumed with a feeling of great sorrow or distress.
Woe-ed: to do all the stuff I just said but, you know, yesterday, last week, in the past.

We woe-ed. We woe-ed all the while we waited for the issue to go through layout, then to go to print, then to make it through the USPS-mystery-system. And then we got it, cracked it open, and we thought and then texted each other “oh, that’s a pretty good issue.” I mean, it’s no “ruins of a castle” but in the end, it looked cohesive and it told the story it was supposed to tell.

So what do you think of the issue? And I don’t mean the photography in particular (Bernadette always does such a good job with what I give her, right? and she did rock those concrete shots!) but the issue in general. I love hearing and reading what spinners think of each issue! Plus, it helps people on the fence decide if they should give us a chance. So, if you’d be so kind, head over here and leave a review for the Singles issue of PLY!


On feb 15th I’ll pick one reviewer at random (I totally promise it’ll be random) and send him or her some of the fiber we used in the issue. That’s right, you’ll get 4 ounces of the same fiber used to spin and knit the Ondulant sraft by Carol Feller. The fiber is dyed by the wonderful June Pryce Fiber Arts and it’s the same light to dark gradient you see above. You’ll also get 2 Crosspatch Creations fiber blended batts. This is the same fiber Sue Tye and Jill Sanders used in their amazing Saori Tunic. You want this fiber, right? It also just so happens that it all goes together beautifully! Go, leave a review on the issue page (not here) tell us what you think! It makes us smile, keeps us striving to get better, and helps us keep on keeping on!

Review the Texture issue and win some batts!

small colorful battsIt’s that time again, the time when I ask you to review the current issue. I want to know what you think. I have some gorgeous textured batts to send one lucky reviewer/subscriber. They’re the kind of batts that make fantastic corespun yarn, the kind that Steph Gorin wrote about in this very issue. If you’ve never tried this technique, it’s be the perfect opportunity to give it a whirl. Of course, if you’ve already tried it, you don’t have any need for more fiber do you? Oh, right, spinners always need more gorgeous fiber!

So here’s what you do. Just leave a review for the texture issue of PLY Magazine here, under the review tab. Also make sure to leave your name! On December 3rd, we’ll use a random number generator to pick a number, find the comment that matches that number and announce the winner! We’ll use your name to look up your address and ship your gorgeous batts the very next day! You’ll be corespinning in no time!

PLY Away Winners and Registration

It’s coming!  Registration for the first annual PLY Away is only a few short days away (Wednesday, Nov 11th at 10 am, CST).  We’ve made a few guides to help you choose and to get you ready for the registration process, they’re here !  I think they’re really helpful so take a look if your plans on Wednesday include constantly reloading to see if it’s live yet.

We have had our first batch of early registration winners through already and except for a couple of small things (that we’ve since fixed) everything went swimmingly!  There’s another batch of 10 registering the day before it opens for real and I think it’ll go off without a hitch.

When it does go live on Wednesday, I’ll also post the registration button on this blog and on facebook, just in case the PLY Away site goes cabloohey (which totally shouldn’t happen) you’ll still be able to get to the actual registration page on EventBrite.

Now on to the fun news!  You know we had the scholarship raffle, right?  Donate to the raffle and get a chance to register early or to win a free trip to PLY Away etc.  Well, we have our winners!

Our actual scholarship is going to Devin Helmen and our big raffle winner is Ruth Blau!  Congratulation to both, I can’t wait to what happens!  

Picture of lady and shawl

Want some Camelot Dyeworks fiber?

I think most readers have gotten the Fine issue of PLY by now, right?  If you haven’t and you feel deep in your heart that you should have, email me and we’ll figure it out together!

Otherwise, what did you think?  I’ll tell you what I think — I think it’s our finest issue to date. By finest, I mean so stinking good that I just look at it and smile.  I love everything about it — he authors, the articles, the photography, the graphics, the more subtle layout, the oh-my-stars cover!

I also love the project by Corrina Ferguson — Bernata shawlette and hat. Almost every project we feature starts with a perfectly timed dance between dyer, spinner, and designer.  First I find the designer and we talk about what the perfect yarn for the project would be. It has to fit within the issue’s theme but outside of that constraint, it’s all up to the designer.  If the designer doesn’t spin (and so often he or she doesn’t), I find a spinner that can take the wishes of the designer and translate it into the perfect yarn. While all that planning and chatting is going on, I find a dyer that can dye a perfect colorway for the project.  I like to try to use a colorway that a dyer has already developed so that if people want the same one, it’s available, but sometimes they do something special for us.

In the case of the Bernata pieces, the spinner and designer came as a package deal and I knew I wanted to use Herman Hills Farm‘s delicious Cormoso so I only had to find a dyer. After a bit of looking and lusting, I decided on Camelot Dyeworks. Herman Hills farm agreed to send Camelot some fiber, she dyed half and sent it all on to the Kimberley to be spun and then Kimberley sent it on to Corrina to be made into something you all would love.

So, like we do each issue, leave a review on the review page of the Fine issue and on July 28th I’ll randomly pick a winner who will get enough of the Herman Hills-grown, Camelot Dyeworks-dyed fiber for the Corrina Ferguson Bernata shawlette and hat.

Remember, don’t leave your review here, go to the review page of the Fine issue.

A longwool stole

Leicester Longwool Give-a-way

One of my favorite projects in any PLY is the Pacific Trillium Stole by Melinda VerMeer. I love the drape of the Leicester Longwool, the running lace stitches throughout the length and the gentle lace edgings. I like that it’s so wide and so long. It feels substantial and delicate at the same time. The color is also perfect, a silvery purple dyed to perfection by Solitude Wool. If you don’t know Solitude Wool, check them out. As spinners, any time we can get breed-specific fiber is a good time. Clun forest, Karakul, Jacob, Tunis, Leicesters, Romney…it’s all there. Did I mention they have black Karakul? I want somebody to make something fantastic out of the black Karakul!

I also want somebody to make the Pacific Trillium Stole and I want to give you the fiber to do it! I have the same silvery-purple Leicester Longwool from Solitude Wool that we used in the Leicester issue and I’m giving it away. Leave a review of the Leicester issue of PLY Magazine here (on the Leicester page under the review tab) and on April 17th I’ll randomly pick the winner from everyone that left a review!

*don’t leave your review here in the comments, go here to do it!