B is for Blogs

Yeah, I know...pretty obvious choice, isn't it? And how many others of you will be making the same choice for the ABC-A-Long?

The fact is, I really never considered posting a picture of me knitting while reading blogs to be a valid entry for my personal Knitting Around challenge. After all, one of my criteria for Knitting Around is that the place or circumstances in which you're knitting have to be at least as interesting or meaningful as the knitting itself.

But then I thought about it. And thought some more. And when you get right down to it, the meaning that blogs and blogging hold in the context of my life is pretty darn special.

Two years ago, I knew that blogs existed and they were the next "cool thing" on the Web. One year ago, I had made my own first small forays into the world of blogs by starting one for my then bead store.

By May of last year, I was blogging heavily. And I'd begun to read knitting blogs.

That's one of the keys. The knitting blogs that all of you creative and clever people have out there have given me a sense of knitting community that is sometimes hard to achieve in a small town. Watching as you all create your various knitted pieces, hearing you discuss the designing/knitting/frogging/joyous/tragic progress, seeing the pictures of the finished objects - it has all supported and nourished my own knitting in a way that I don't think I could have managed through any other means.

And so:

B is for Blogs

Folkcat does her daily blog reading while knitting on Edgar

I read yours daily, I post to my own multiple times a week. You nourish and inspire me. You encourage me. You connect me to the world, and tell me about knitting ideas and options I would never hear about otherwise. You help me to see that our knitting foibles, failures, skills, tricks, and cleverness are universal - that we are not alone.

My own blog helps me with accountability (I said I was going to knit this, what happened?), documentation (Hey, that worked great, here's what I did so I can repeat it!), experimentation (Well, that sucked. Let's make note of what didn't work and what we'll try next), celebration (Look! I did it! Woohoo!).

Blogs are the most significant instrument of change in my life in the past year. I can honestly say that, without blogs, I'd still be knitting as regularly as I do every other craft in my life. But with blogs, I'm doing that knitting at a much more challenging, skilled, interesting, useful, and above all, enjoyable level.

Thank you to all the bloggers I read, and even to all the bloggers I don't, because you are read by others and your knowledge and spirit are part of the general knitblogging cosmos that is so important to me now. The whole of the blogging knitiverse is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. (If you'd like to check out the blogs I read that I count among the more direct of these influences on my own knitting, please find the "Whose Blogs Do I Read?" item on my sidebar under Links.)

And thank you to all who read me, whether you're a blogger yourself or not. Because of you, this whole thing becomes a two-way street, and that's how we keep the flow of ideas and creative energy going.

Thank you!

Technorati : ABC-A-Long, Folkcat, blogs, knitting, knitting around