Spin-Off Launches New Online Community for Handspinners

Website focuses on engagement and community building through sharing of photographs, spinning videos, blogs, forums, free spinning tutorials, and more.

Spin-Off magazine today officially unveiled its new online community for handspinners, a user-driven website that allows spinners to show the depth of their creativity and engage with other spinners in exciting new ways.

Website: http://www.spinoffmagazine.com

“We launched this web site to help spinners pursue their passion and share that passion with other spinners,” says Spin-Off editor Amy Clarke Moore. “Starting now, it will be easier for our readers and the spinning community at large to talk to us and to talk to each other. We hope the adventure is fun, helpful and informative.”

The editors of Spin-Off will be involved in the new community, posting their own blogs, images, video clips, and free spinning tutorials and references to help community members.

Regular features of the website include:

• New blogs from Spin-Off magazine founder Linda Ligon, Editor Amy Clarke Moore, and Assistant Editor Stefanie Berganini, as well as the SOAR Blog and Spinners’ Connection Blog
• Free spinning projects
• Free spinning how-to lessons and videos
• Excerpts from the pages of Spin-Off magazine

Online extras from columns in Spin-Off magazine, such as “Your Yarn in Action,” which describes how submissions to the “Your Yarn” column are made into a final project and auctioned through eBay’s giving works program to go toward fiber charities.

Members of the Spin-Off online community will be able to:

• Socialize with fellow spinners from around the world and become friends with them
• Upload and share images of their handspun to the photo gallery
• Upload and share videos of their spinning process, or other spinning-related videos found on video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video
• Customize a personal profile and online gallery
• Create a group for their local spinning guilds
• Engage in conversations in the forums

“This is just the beginning of the exciting things in store for the community,” says Moore. “We encourage spinners to visit the site, create a profile and let us know what features of the site you like best and what can be improved in the future.”

SOURCE: INTERWEAVE

Websites

www.Interweave.com

www.SpinOffmagazine.com

www.KnittingDaily.com

About Spin-Off

Founded in 1977, Spin-Off magazine is the only magazine dedicated to the craft of handspinning. With the tag line “It’s about making yarn by hand,” Spin-Off magazine is there, every step of the way, with tips and techniques for beginner to advanced spinners on all aspects of spinning. Its editors will help spinners choose the right wheel; understand the basics of selecting, preparing, and spinning fibers; and provide patterns to help spinners use their new handspun yarns.

About Interweave

Interweave, a unit of Aspire Media, is one of the nation’s largest and most respected arts and craft media companies, with businesses in magazine and book publishing, online media, television and video programming, directories, and events. The Interweave Publishing Group features 18 subscription magazines and many more special interest newsstand publications sold on newsstands nationwide. Interweave has more than 250 books in print and annually publishes about 40 how-to books on the same subjects as the company’s magazines. Linda Ligon founded the company in the 1970s when she began publishing Handwoven and Spin-Off magazines. Since then, the company has grown to employ more than 150people throughout the country, with corporate headquarters located in Loveland, Colorado, and other offices in New York, New York; Malvern, Pennsylvania; Santa Fe, New Mexico; San Diego, California; and Stow, Massachusetts. For more information on Interweave, visit www.interweave.com or call (970) 669-7672