Martha Stewart Living Less Large

There's going to be less Martha Stewart at Martha Stewart Inc.

The domestic doyenne resigned Monday from the board of directors of her namesake empire, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and relinquished the title of chief creative officer. This, the latest aftershock from Stewart's March 5 conviction on federal charges of lying about a stock sale to investigators.

In a statement, Stewart, 62, said, in true Stewart fashion, she was doing "the right thing."

"I am heartsick about my personal legal situation--and deeply sorry for the pain and difficulties it has caused our employees," she said.

While Monday's move represents a distancing between the embattled Stewart and her corporation, it also may represent a concession that, threatened appeal or no, Stewart's next residence will be accented with steel bars.

"If she goes to prison, they're not going to give her an Internet line so she can do editorial content. She's going to be folding sheets or something," Dennis McAlpine of the research firm McAlpine Associates told Bloomberg News.

Stewart is scheduled to be sentenced June 17. It's believed she could be ordered to spend as much as 16 months in a federal pen.

While an inmate, the lifestyle expert would be required to take on a behind-bars job (i.e., folding sheets, cleaning toilets, arranging water lilies).

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, however, isn't ready to write off its former chieftain to the ranks of workaday laborers. The company said Monday it has created a new title for Stewart: Founding editorial director.

As such, the corporate board said Monday, "Stewart will continue to provide creative inspiration for new product design and development." (Idea No. 17: License plate planters--they're a good thing.)

Additionally, the company said, Stewart is set to ink two books, Homekeeping and Baking. (Doing Time is not yet announced.)

"She is not about to fade away into the night," Robert Passikoff of the consulting firm Brand Keys told Reuters. "No matter what happened, she is too much of a celebrity to have just disappeared."

Still, her resignation comes in the wake of an Advertising Age report that her company applied in January for a trademark on a new magazine title that sounds an awful lot like Martha Stewart Living, minus the "Martha Stewart" part.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia would not comment to Ad Age as to whether "Everyday Living" was being eyed as the new name for Stewart's monthly homemaking bible. It said the timing of its trademark request--which occurred during Stewart's trial--"could be coincidental."

Already, Stewart has seen her name removed from two newspaper columns distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. "AskMartha" has been retitled "Living"; "AskMartha Weddings" has morphed into "Weddings."

On the TV front, Viacom-owned stations have pulled the tube version of the Daytime Emmy-nominated Martha Stewart Living.

But as far as pariahs go, Stewart is still a relatively popular one. From Martha's Kitchen, a stripped-down version of Martha Stewart Living, continues to air on the Food Network.

Also, a new survey from media services agency Universal McCann shows Martha Stewart Living magazine readers plan to continue to seek wisdom about garlic roasting and such in its pages, despite Stewart's felony conviction.

And in perhaps the biggest sign yet that Stewart remains a style guru, Monday's Los Angeles Times reported that the dyed chinchilla scarf modeled by the onetime happy hostess on the day of her conviction has become as must-have pelt among Manhattan fashionistas.