Our Staff

from the editor...

As I rush to get our premier issue to press, I have a wealth of mixed emotions... great joy for the opportunity to fulfill a dream, absolute amazement at the avalanche of support you have already shown, and thanksgiving for so many friends and kindred spirits who also love the art of needlepoint. Thank you for your belief in our future and for your wonderful and warm reception.

With my love of the needle and my background in journalism, I guess that this is a natural progression. In my early life I wrote for newspapers, worked for advertising agencies, and was the advertising director of a conglomerate of small department stores in the South. In those early years there was always a stitching project hidden away in a desk drawer. When I "retired" to be at home with my young family, I taught needlework to a few friends and then decided to earn my Teacher Certification and have been teaching needlework on the circuit for the past twenty-five years. For the past seventeen years I served as editor of a needlework publication. And now, with two partners and friends, I am embarking on the journey of a lifetime!

We hope that needlepoint now will help to fill that gaping hole that was left when a favorite commercial needlepoint magazine stopped production several years ago. We want to offer a product that educates, inspires, and sometimes amuses us... a product that is available to everyone who loves to stitch... a product that you can buy in your local needlework shop as well as receive by subscription... and a product that will help to advance needlepoint as an art form.

The shop owners have been so receptive and eager to support us by making this magazine available to their shop customers. How lucky you are if you have a shop nearby! We all need each other. How nice to have a symbiotic relationship of teachers and designers, shop owners and stitchers. Be sure to support the shops in your area.

We are grateful to those very special people who supported our dream for this publication. And, how can I begin to thank dear friends who put their lives on hold to create brand new designs for our premier issue? We so appreciate the needlepoint professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to comprise our advisory council. Think of what our future will be with so much talent working together!

There is so much more I want to talk about. I want to introduce you to our feature writers and others, but space is limited, so some things will have to wait until the next issue. Please let us know what you like and what you don't enjoy. We will print letters to the editor, so send us your thoughts and ideas for future articles.

Joyce Lukomski

from the assistant editor...

Leo Tolstoy, when asked what art is, replied "A human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen." I believe that the same can be said for needleart. I have grown up in a home where handwork of all kinds is treasured and nurtured. My sister makes beautiful jewelry, my brother works with the intricate mechanisms of clocks and watches, my father is an expert woodworker, and my mother is a very talented needleworker.

I have had a needle in hand from a very young age, but initially I did not pursue a career in needlework. My career path has taken several turns. After studying engineering in undergraduate school, I went on to law school and received my doctorate in law in 1986. For seven years I practiced intellectual property law, specializing in copyrights and trademarks.

Although I enjoyed practicing law, my true passion was needlework and my entrepreneurial spirit would not be denied. In 1993 I started my own needlepoint mail order and retail business. From its humble beginnings in a small room on the second floor of a renovated house, my business has grown and flourished. We now have a beautiful retail store with a classroom that affords me the opportunity to teach and share my love of needleart.

Throughout my life needlework has been an inspiration to fire and nourish my soul, a calm port in stormy weather, and it has provided opportunities for me to meet people who now are some of the dearest friends in my life. With the birth of needlepoint now my involvement in needlework is moving to a wonderful new level. I am embarking on an exciting adventure, one that I look forward to sharing with all our readers.

Maria DeSimone

from the circulation manager...

Little did I know what a journey fate had in store for me when I agreed to take a needlepoint class with a friend in 1975. The friend assured me that the teacher was very good, even though she had a strange last name. After receiving my paperwork on the class I wondered what was so strange about Lukomski, since it was pronounced just the way it was spelled.

That class led to other classes, joining needlework guilds, helping with a needlework publication and even starting my own business, supplying specialty metallic threads to shops and fellow stitchers. Needlework gave me an outlet for my creative and organizational skills while still allowing me to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, the best of both worlds.

This journey even led me into the computer age. I admit it has been a love-hate relationship, but it can be useful and a lot of fun at times, too. It has made me especially thankful for people like Todd DeSimone. They know computers and are willing to answer questions in understandable terms. As stitchers we all treasure the heritage and traditional ways of needlework, but to pass these on to future generations we must be able to get to the people. Todd is responsible for helping us reach that goal by creating our web page (www.needlepointnow.com). His expertise also helped establish our data base and kept us from being buried in the avalanche of subscriptions.

Because of the outpouring of support for this new endeavor, it was decided that everyone who subscribed before this premiere issue mailed would receive the special offer of seven issues for the price of six. This is one way the staff can say thank you for believing in our goals.

Through the years I have come to understand how unique the needlework world is. Because of their enjoyment of stitching, people from varied backgrounds and with different abilities can come together and form lasting bonds. When these talents are combined, anything is possible, even the creation of a new magazine.

Sarah Bennet

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Last Updated November 24, 2004