SBQ: Magazines

What cross-stitch magazines or other publications (as opposed to blogs) do you read on a regular basis? What do you like about them? What do you not like? What would your perfect publication include? I subscribe to Just Cross-Stitch, Piecework, Fine Lines, and The Gift of Stitching. I think people may know how I feel about the first two. I think JCS should rein in Martha Beth. Enough with the bloated articles already! I think the stitchbooking series is dirty. I do tend to like the interviews with designers. But I haven't stitched anything from them in a while. I am thinking about doing one of the dance pillows for my mother, but I'm going to change the colors. The colors are so weird, so wrong. I think JCS is on autopilot. It's the same writers, the same designers, the same, the same, the same. They need a focus group! Or something.

Piecework keeps hounding me to renew even though I just sent them a check. What's up with that? I like their articles on the whole, but I wish they had better editors. They could also use some interesting projects. Maybe I should think of this as a reading magazine rather than a stitching mag.

Fine Lines...are they even still producing this one? I can't remember the last one I got. Not a peep out of them. Their website seems to have disappeared. Uh oh.

I've only received two issues of The Gift of Stitching, a new online magazine, so I'm withholding judgement.

Because I'm a member of the EGA, I get their magazine too. You know how I feel about that! (See September 13, 2005, 14, 16, 17, 18.)

Maybe there's just a point where magazines don't do it for you anymore. I have so many charts that, with the exception of the JCS Ornament issue, I'm rarely excited by the designs in my mags. Am I just jaded? (I have subscribed to JCS for over 15 years.)

What would the perfect magazine include? Let me think about that.