Favorite Things: Kinfolk Magazine

I used to be a voracious reader.  These days it can take me months to get through a book unless I'm on vacation.  Part of that is being a mother, and part of that is having an iPad and checking Facebook, blogs, and Pinterest when I would have been reading a book in the "olden days".  Although I don't make it through whole books, I do read a few magazines cover to cover.  They are like a mini-vacation from my real and digital worlds.




Kinfolk magazine is what I buy my housemate when I want to make her exceedingly happy.  She totally geeks out over this magazine and blog.  I, not too secretly, buy her issues just so I can read them too. Kinfolk is a beautifully curated collection of photos and essays about building community through small gatherings.

I love their manifesto:

"Kinfolk is a growing community of artists with a shared interest in

small gatherings. We recognize that there is something about a table

shared by friends, not just a wedding or once-a-year holiday

extravaganza, that anchors our relationships and energizes us. We have

come together to create Kinfolk as our collaborative way of advocating

the natural approach to entertaining that we love."

There is a very distinctive Kinfolk aesthetic that features traditional materials like natural wood, linen, leather, and simple dishes in desaturated photography.  It inspires me to invite a few friends over, put some flowers on the table and serve dinner.  It creates that quiet, intimate, calm world that seems like such an unattainable goal most days.

I'm curious if others have read this magazine and what you think of it.   At $65 (yikes!) for a year's subscription, I haven't jumped for it yet.  Although I've liked the issues I've read,  I'm not sure if their limited scope of subject matter and style will continue to appeal to me or if it will somehow seem predictable and boring.  I'm interested enough to buy the next issue to find out.