I'm delighted to announce today, after many months of collaboration with a remarkable crew of creative folks,  that I'm launching a new digital publishing project called Hand and Hand. Our first issue, The Knot, will launch in exactly one week.

While, I encourage you to head on over to the brand spankin' new Hand and Hand website to learn more about this zine, I wanted to use this post to talk a bit about how this first issue came about.  While experiencing a tumultuous time at my dream job, I realized that over the course of 2 years I had nearly abandoned all of the projects that had tied me to the craft community over the past 12 years. I thought long and hard about all the different ways to make a new contribution, one that reflected my involvement in fine art, my love of collaboration, and the things that actually TIE us all to making or handmade things (no pun intended). I'd been back and forth about writing a book (even in touch with some incredible publishers), or about following in the footsteps of amazing folks who manufacture handmade goods as a cottage industry. Nothing really fell into place for me, or really set me on fire – that is until I came up with the idea to make a digital zine about the connections between making/makers and craft/art.

The truly amazing thing about this project, though, has been the help I've had from folks all over this amazing country. In hoping to find the connections between a variety of ideas, I actually found an incredible chorus of voices ready to help me without any startup funds or established audience. Each and every contributor for this issue shared their work FOR FREE contributing amazing projects to this foundling of mine. Generous; I know! I've learned amazing things about collaboration and creating from each and every one of them, but most of all I'm just still speechless about their belief in this project. They've encouraged me along every step of the way. I cannot express how lucky and humbled I am to have their support and contributions. I hope that you will feel the magic of this community as you learn to make the projects in this issue, and read our stories.

This is what creativity and community are all about to me, and I'm so grateful for everyone who has laid their hand on any pixel of this project. I'll extend the same appreciation to each of you who buys an issue next tuesday, and I hope you will enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed fostering its creation.