And So it Begins

The day before yesterday I activated my blogs for public searches, yesterday I added a link to my hub page to all of my craft boards on Pinterest. As of today, the only visits have been from one page to another, even after I have disabled all of my own page views. So it's just me visiting me right now. Since I have no desire to earn money off of this little project, this complete lack of public scrutiny feels rather liberating. Think of all the hate mail I won't be receiving. :-)  Ahhhh, what a relief that there is rarely hate mail in the world of crafts!

I have completed most of my infrastructure arrangements. I'm sure there will be links to correct, and I have several new boards that I will need to clean up and add, and I have information off of my old crafts dictionary attempt that I will be incorporating. Because everything is on blogger, I will no longer be dependent upon specific code writing software and special programs to upload my coded pages to a central website. If blogger ever folds.....well, we'll be bloggered, eh?

So, now I have reached the fun part: it's time to actually add content!  I'm really big on setting up systems, I work at it compulsively. I've been less big on the part that involves thinking and judgement. But this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing (among many other things), researching crafts and arts and encouraging myself, as well as anyone who stops by, to learn more techniques and to borrow designs and patterns from other crafts.  I am all about cultural and historical "appropriation"....without borrowing and outside influences, all ideas go stale. Our customs and traditions should not be hidden from "outsiders." Which is not saying I am advocating that one start making molas while claiming to be a resident of the San Blas Islands....unless, of course, you are. But the techniques are there for us all to learn, otherwise they may die out. And when we have been inspired by a technique, or a set of colors, or even subject matter, or a particular artist, we should use that as an excuse to share our enthusiasm with others.

I am also mostly not a fan of kits, though the more I poke around the internet, the more exceptions I find. Kits are certainly appropriate for learning new techniques. We need encouragement that we are "doing it right" when we start out. But for me, cross stitch kits that someone else has designed, where no new techniques are to be learned but a predictable result churned out, these are boring. So my links on Pinterest will rarely include these things. And I don't do "cute" well. No little country bears or sun bonnet girls (even though I still have two sunbonnet pin cushions that my mom must have made close to a century ago).

I will make a "page" for this particular blog where I will list which topics I hope to cover first. I will start with some of the more obscure crafts with the hope that resources will be limited enough that I won't become overwhelmed. I will use them to get into my stride in researching. If any real person does visit this site and I have said something inaccurate, please do leave me a message about it and point me towards better information than I have used. Also, I would love, really love, for anyone with a particular expertise to come and be a guest blogger. Especially once I have solidified the format that I want to use in my investigations. I am not at all an expert in most of these things, that is why I am setting up this site, so I can consolidate my knowledge. I have a librarian's soul, even though I dropped out of library science school years ago.

Enough "meta", I hope to make my first topic posting early this week. See my "Future Projects" page for some likely topics. On with the show.....