About – PURL Magazine

About PURL

PURL Magazine’s purpose is to serve as a kind of encyclopedia of knitting knowledge – a stamp of the current moment in knitting time, a record of the evolving line of knowledge stretching out behind us, and a curious look toward the future.

PURL aims to be comprehensive, diverse, and filled with knowledge and learning. PURL is not a magazine filled with knitting patterns – there are already so many places to find stunning projects created by wonderful designers to put on your needles. PURL focuses on the how and why, on expanding, experimenting, edifying. Of course, PURL does include a few patterns, but those will be there to support the articles that explore technique, yarn, stitches, and skills.

We want PURL to be a primary source for knitting knowledge, techniques, experiments, and opinions and promise it will:

support, reflect, inspire, and respond to the worldwide knitting community
provide in-depth material for the intermediate to more advanced knitter
inspire new knitters
experiment with and question things we know and things we think we know
celebrate the diversity of knitting and knitters
give a voice to knitters everywhere
celebrate and elevate knitters across the entire spectrum of color, ability, gender, and queerness
embrace and present the function and the art
record the rich history, report on the vibrant present, and inspire the hopeful future of knitting by creating a themed, archive-worthy magazine
support indie businesses and craftspeople via affordable advertising, fair compensation, and return of intellectual property

What sets PURL apart

Using the model we’ve built for PLY and WEFT, in PURL we really dig into knitting.

We look at how and why, best choices, and great practices.
We collect and reflect technical, intuitive, historical, and theoretical knowledge from knitters the world over with the intent to inform, reflect, and inspire.
Issues are themed so we can dig deep into a topic, get to its core, explore different viewpoints and issues, experiment, and learn all we can about it.
In the interest of diversity and a never-ending quest for knowledge, we go out of our way to find new and interesting authors, thrilling topics, historic and important things, and delve into ideas we take for granted. How it works, why it works, where it comes from, who’s doing it: these are the things we’re interested in – the things we’ll ask writers to explore.
We support our amazing and diverse knitting community (knitters, fiber producers, indie fiber artists, writers, designers, and others who love knitting as much as we do), gather and share the information we all need and want, and also reflect the community in a real way.
On the pages of PURL, you can expect to see knitters you easily recognize, names you might have heard before, and altogether new voices.
You can add your own voice to our efforts – everyone has something to say, and we want a range of diverse knitters’ voices in our magazine!
Each issue is printed on quality paper with a printable spine so that, well into the future, you’ll be able to easily access the information within.

Knitting is an ongoing journey; we aren’t looking for an ultimate answer. In knitting, there’s often no such thing. To that end, you’ll find PURL Magazine exploring various approaches to the same concept, technique, or project and encouraging knitters everywhere to find themselves in their knitting. It will not be uncommon to find divergent opinions in a single issue of PURL, because that’s how the (knitting) world really is. We’ll do our best to carefully present the available facts and opinions so you can find among them the truth that works for your own knitting hands.