diff --git a/Changelog b/Changelog
index 732f76dd..790bee95 100644
--- a/Changelog
+++ b/Changelog
@@ -2,6 +2,34 @@
  Change history
 ================
 
+.. _version-1.4.2:
+
+1.4.2
+=====
+:release-date: 2011-10-26 05:00 P.M BST
+:by: Ask Solem
+
+* Eventio: Polling should ignore `errno.EINTR`
+
+* SQS: str.encode did only start accepting kwargs after Py2.7.
+
+* simple_task_queue example didn't run correctly (Issue #72).
+
+    Fix contributed by Stefan Eletzhofer.
+
+* Empty messages would not raise an exception not able to be handled
+  by `on_decode_error` (Issue #72)
+
+    Fix contributed by Christophe Chauvet.
+
+* CouchDB: Properly authenticate if user/password set (Issue #70)
+
+    Fix contributed by Rafael Duran Castaneda
+
+* BrokerConnection.Consumer had the wrong signature.
+
+    Fix contributed by Pavel Skvazh
+
 .. _version-1.4.1:
 
 1.4.1
diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index b00a5b9a..7933bed8 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
  kombu - AMQP Messaging Framework for Python
 #############################################
 
-:Version: 1.4.1
+:Version: 1.4.2
 
 Synopsis
 ========
diff --git a/contrib/release/bump_version.py b/contrib/release/bump_version.py
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
diff --git a/kombu/utils/encoding.py b/kombu/utils/encoding.py
index 3d07a49d..c076d2d7 100644
--- a/kombu/utils/encoding.py
+++ b/kombu/utils/encoding.py
@@ -35,7 +35,8 @@ if is_py3k:
 else:
 
     def str_to_bytes(s):                # noqa
-        return s
+        if isinstance(s, unicode):
+            return s.encode()
 
     def bytes_to_str(s):                # noqa
         return s