Proposal to Interweave Knits

So the main knitting magazine I read is Interweave Knits - it's the only one I subscribe to and usually I don't even buy other ones. Although I do leaf through them at the magazine rack, I don't like the styles of the projects in them, being either (Vogue Knitting) too out-there avant garde fashion world-y or (Knit.1 or Knitscene) too youth culture of today or (Knitter's & others) just plain dowdy. The worst is Cast On, which is published by the Knitting Guild of America, which I got a subscription to when I joined TKGA in order to take the Master Knitter program but didn't want.

Over the past couple days I worked on a proposal to IWK based on the guidelines posted on their website which were for the Spring '08 issue. I thought, that's really kind of a short lead time, but that is what is posted up there, so that must be accurate. I spent all this frickin time creating swatches and writing a proposal that would grab their attention and finally, as I was rereading the guidelines to make sure I had dotted all my i's and crossed all my t's, I came to the bottom where it said, Deadline May 18, 2007. I fairly plotzed. The worst is it is my own fault for not noticing, although they are jerks for not taking it down once it was outdated and also for not putting up the Summer one, for which the deadline was August 27, 2007, which I found out today when I phoned them up.

Fortunately, the lady on the phone was really nice and she said I should just go ahead and send in my proposal anyway, that she is the one who will be logging all of the submitted proposals and she will be doing that on Tuesday, so if I send it to arrive on Tuesday she will include it in with all the others! Hooray! So I retooled the proposal letter so it wasn't so Spring '08 specific, and put my little package together and am sending it via Fedex today. I am very hopeful, though since I am new to this and to IWK, my chances are less than those of a seasoned designer. But it's a very cute design, a great looking proposal (Adam read it and thought it looked very professional too), and I definitely have a shot.

I wish I could post the scans here of my proposal, because I am so proud of it! But I can't, because it all has to be double probation top secret until they make a decision.

Along these same lines ... I still haven't heard back from Knitty.com. I really hope they decide to use my design; everybody who has seen the prototype here in my house really loves it and thinks it is awesome. Pete even said he thought I should have them mass-produced in China! Which, if I could figure out how they could incorporate lead-based paint into the final product, I would probably do.