Becky and Bubba on mountain in Nomadic Knits creative knitting magazine

Grab Your Knitting Bag: 5 Crazy Reasons that Nomadic Knits is Honestly an on-the-Highway, “Nomadic” Publication — We’d Love You to Join Us (and the Sheep) for the Adventure!

It’s almost autumn, friends. Two words: Sweater. Season.

That means it’s a good time to gather around a campfire with friends and swap yarns, both figuratively and literally. And boy, do we have some whoppers for you.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for the blog radio silence. Those of you who follow us on Instagram and Facebook know that we’ve been scrambling to create our latest issues of Nomadic Knits. 

Each issue finds us juggling hundreds of tasks, communicating with dozens of contributors, and (lately) combating technical issues of every stripe. Thanks to the incredible response we’ve received from our readers, like you, every challenge has been worth it.

Our New Regular Blog

Because every issue turns into an adventure, we realized that we should be sharing those behind-the-scenes stories with you; sometimes the journey of making a magazine is just as eventful as the actual product we publish.

So from now on, you can expect to see our blog updated with all of the wooly, wild, weird, wonderful challenges that go into making Nomadic Knits. Without further adieu, we’d like to quickly reintroduce ourselves.

Yes, We’re Truly Nomadic

In our conversations with indie yarn dyers, local yarn shop owners, designers, and readers, we find that everyone is a little surprised when they realize that Nomadic Knits really is, well, nomadic.

Our processes vary from issue to issue, but brainstorming typically starts in the Northeast.

Melissa (co-creator) holds down the fort in Upstate New York (and in winters, Florida), and in true Where-In-the-World-is-Carmen-Sandiego style, rendezvous with Becky at designated points to help direct photoshoots and nail down important business details.

Melissa’s home rests on a high hill overlooking Port Crane, New York. Her home office is, by anyone’s definition, a spic-and-span bit of peaceful solitude: neat, clean, refined. It’s a well-organized space where she dreams up many of her newest designs, and it serves as a hub for communicating with the designers, dyers and other creative types who bring so much energy and joy to each issue.

Then there’s Becky, co-creator, the road warrior, the yin to Melissa’s yang.

She travels full-time, essentially moving from one yarn-filled region of the country to another. 

Her Winnebago Travato van is a rolling box stuffed with Apple gadgets, gluten-free snack wrappers, way too much yarn and even a pom pom or two, and her standard poodle, Bubba, who has become (totally unsurprisingly) the official celebrity mascot of each Nomadic Knits issue. 

It’s Becky’s job to scour the fiber industry in each region of the country (and soon, around the world). As such, she’s put tens of thousands of miles on her van, networking with dyers, designers, yarn store owners, and countless others who lend their expertise, kindness, and compassion to each issue. 

If you see her on the road, yes, she’d love to hear all about your yarny project. Just, please, please don’t ask to look inside the van. (And yes, you can look inside the van. But it’s not for the faint of heart, or anyone with an aversion to complete chaos. You’ve been warned.)

Where We’ve Been

Why are we nomadic?

  1. We really, really, really love our subject matter. It’s our obsession. And there’s no better way to learn about the fiber world than to live it, every single day.
  2. Road magic: Google can’t tell you everything. We continually stumble on new and interesting information about fiber and fiber makers when we travel. 
  3. We want to honor the people who work in this industry. The best way to do that is to shake their hands and thank them in person.
  4. Community building: we love connecting fiber people to one another. 
  5. Thanks to her mom and dad, who traveled all over the country with her as a child, Becky has a permanent case of dromomania.

What does it mean to be nomadic? It means living on the run. 

If you’ve never traveled in a cramped vehicle for months at a time, here are some of the challenges we face:

  • You have to know where to find water, sometimes in remote places where there aren’t even gas stations.
  • Eating. Finding a way to make dinner when your fridge fails … for the 20th time. 
  • Navigation in the wilds. Cursing at Google Maps’ laggy navigation, and always, always, always trying to find a place to park so that you can get a bit of precious sleep. 
  • Realizing that there are far too many miles to travel before the next unmissable deadline.
  • Cell phone service. One bar of LTE never seems to cut it.

So far, you’ve seen our issues from Florida, New York, Arizona/New Mexico, and Maryland, Virginia and D.C. Now, we’re about to unveil our next publication (mark your calendar for October 5!).

Being nomadic gives Nomadic Knits its truly regional feel, as Becky and Melissa plunge into each locale with an explorer’s sense of curiosity and a deep love for the fiber world as a whole. We can’t wait for you to join us on the adventure. 

Where We’re Going

We’re already packing for our next round of travel, which will find us journeying more than 3,000 miles in the next couple of months. And although our next region is still under wraps, you can bet that we’re fleeing the impending snowstorms of the Northeast.

Stay tuned and Knit the World!

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