stuff you maybe didn't know

I had a good e-mail chat with M, a designer who'd submitted to the summer issue, ABOUT the summer issue. He couldn't believe the issue was full of designs for men created by women. Where were all the male designers?

I ask the same question. As I told M, according to my count, we had 4 men submit patterns for summer. FOUR! Of those, two were accepted, two weren't. [As I told M, we don't do reverse discrimination here...and as always, I picked what I thought were the best patterns for the issue, no matter who designed them.] I got to corner my new favorite designer in person at The Point, and you'll be seeing his work as one of the summer surprises. But still, that's just 5 male designers in all. Where are the men?

I don't know. As delighted as I was with all the features that came in from male writers, I was really surprised to see so few men submitting patterns. But maybe that will change in the future. Here's what M is doing about it: he's calling for submissions to his new online mag, menknit.net. His message follows:

"We've extended our fall deadline to August 15 - which gives folks almost 5 weeks to put something together. We're looking for patterns written by men and women that are for men, and articles/essays that are relevant to mens knitting stuff. All the details can be found on the menknit.net homepage - and submissions/questions can be addressed to me at submit@menknit.net"

So there you go. Maybe guys are shy. Maybe they didn't know about the issue. Who knows? Anyway, there's a new forum now for them to express their creativity. And Knitty always welcomes cool designs from guys. Seriously. If you get the Knitty style, we want to see your work.