(image from "FreeFoto.com," apparently copyright-free or at least free for this usage of it)

It's my eighth blogiversary!

I remember my eighth year (I mean, of my life) as being a fairly happy year: I had some skills (reading, basic math, I could do basic hand-sewing, I could crochet, I was able to identify a few plants and bugs). I could climb trees, I was fairly good at kickball, I was excellent at hide-and-seek. I was old enough to have passed most of the stormy tantrummyness of being a younger child, but was not yet stuck in the teenaged years. (My teenaged years were not so bad, actually, with the exception of the thirteenth.)

I would have been in third grade; third grade was a fairly happy year. Mrs. Irish was my homeroom teacher, she had red hair and was nice and was interested in science. I went to school in the big old Hudson Elementary - a big old, three-story brick school (not unlike the school shown in "A Christmas Story"). It had hissing radiators and I remember climbing up the stairs - all the way up - to my homeroom in the corner (I think it was the northeast corner, if I'm not misremembering) of the third floor.

I also remember quite fondly doing spelling words. The way they did it was they paired us off - I think I often paired off with a girl named Becky (? maybe, maybe it was Beth) who had a similar imagination and sense of humor to me. And the idea was, you learned these words by putting them into sentences. We had a long, on-going story involving Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf (who actually was not so bad, at least in our story), the Three Little Pigs, the Woodman, and Red Riding Hood's Grandma. I remember we were actually allowed to go sit on the steps - or out in the hall - to do the work, and how we would make ourselves giggle over the silly stories. And how we could pick up the "next installment" the week after the previous one.

it's funny that I remember that all these years later. I think it's because it's such a happy memory, me just being turned loose to sort of riff on words and be creative.

And really, that's what I do here, I guess. I really like playing with words. I have a pretty large vocabulary (Probably those early years of the Red Riding Hood Adventures helped with that, and all the SSR (silent sustained reading) I did in school). And words are fun to play with.

I've said on several occasions that I found the craft blogs where people actually wrote - wrote about the process or about their inspiration for a project or their feelings or their lives - were far more interesting to me than the blogs that were either just catalogs of finished products, or, as is the case in some cases I've seen, just really advertising for the designer's patterns or for the yarns they sell. (That's not to say I don't enjoy blogs written by shop owners - I regularly read the Simply Socks Yarn Company's owner's blog, because she writes about more than just, "Hey, this new yarn that knitters love to fight over is coming into stock in my shop in two days, get your F5 keys ready!")

And as a few of the nice commenters I've got in the past couple days have said, I guess other people like my playing with words as well.

And you know, the eighth birthday of my little blog brings up another issue: the whole issue of popularity. It seems to me that third grade was probably the last year (sadly) where popularity was not an issue; where I really didn't care what other people thought of me. I had my friends, I liked my friends. Like other little kids I got teased, but I don't remember the teasing as becoming particularly harsh until later on. (Thirteen. Thirteen, in my experience, is a horrible age to be if you are a sensitive sort. The people around you are mature enough to know what to say to push your buttons, but are not yet mature enough to have developed the tact not to say the very worst things. [and sadly, some folks never quite develop that tact or empathy.])

I don't know. I think from time to time about popularity, my seeming desire for it, and the fact that I never have been, really, truly, popular.

I remember once as a kid, telling my mother (tearfully, I think) that I wished I was popular at school - or rather, "I wish everyone liked me for who I was." Even then I knew that changing myself to be more popular - even if I would succeed - would be a hollow victory.

But really, I would like to be popular. I would like to feel well-liked. (Oh, I know I am, at least among the people who really know me). I think a lot of that is the shadow of the little kid, who somehow changed from a happy and fairly secure 8 year old to a 12 and 13 year old who felt that none of her peers cared about her, and that, in fact, she existed mostly as a target for their scorn.

Sad, really, how you can let junior high experiences serve as somewhat of a template for the rest of your life. (Junior high should be abolished! I really think so some days. It's a miserable time - it was for me, it was for my brother, it seems to have been for the kids in my Youth Group.)

So, though I still carry around with me the memories of the funny clever 8 year old who could put herself and her friends into gales of giggles with silly stories, I also carry around the 13 year old who ate lunch alone most days after her supposed-BFF got invited to join the "popular table."

It's funny, looking back, I really wasn't unpopular ALL of my childhood, though when I was, it sure colored my worldview, making me think that there had to be something wrong with me because people either teased me or ignored me.

And you know, I still feel that from time to time. Part of it is that somewhere, I have internalized the idea that good = popular, and therefore, the corollary, if something is not popular, it must not be good.

Hrm. I don't always feel that way about books and movies: I've experienced a few popular pieces that either did not move me in the way they seemed to move others, or, of which I said outright, "What? *I* could do better than that!"

But you know, it occurred to me the other day, another thought: Perhaps longing for popularity is a form of ingratitude.

After all, I have friends. Longing for more means I overlook those I have. I get a few comments now and then. Longing for more means I am not appreciating those I get.

The grass always seems greener on the other side. It probably isn't, actually. I thank my lucky stars I've never had a comment-stalker, or someone who was openly and brazenly rude to me, or who did excessive spamming, or any of the problems that some of the wildly popular knitbloggers have to deal with.

And maybe, really, since I tend to celebrate peace and quiet in my everyday life - and I really am truly thankful that I don't have any "ex drama" in my life. And that I have managed to avoid most bad forms of trouble. That my general reticence and tendency to be able to imagine the consequences of something before I do it have kept me a life that is peaceful and quiet: my only dealing with the police was having to report a sprinkler stolen out of my front yard.

And so maybe I should just transfer that gratitude for peace and quiet to how I feel like the blog: I may be in a little backwater here, but you know, there's a pretty weeping willow that grows on the bank, and there's enough shade, and once in a while there is a family of ducks that comes by. And maybe, if I'm very lucky, a deer comes out of the forest to drink at the little backwater pool.

Maybe trying to be out fighting the current of popularity is really not all it's cracked up to be.


Oh, and another thing that eight brings up: the Magic Eight Ball. Let's ask it a little question:

"Is this blog going to continue?"



Eight Ball says: "Signs point to YES."

Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, thanks for your support. I probably wouldn't still be doing this without the nice readers and commenters I get.

My blogiversary is this week. I guess this makes 8 years, now?*

Hopefully I will think of something insightful to say. Or if not insightful, at least clever, on the occasion. Though right now I'm drawing a blank as to what I could say.

That may be partly because I think I have started in with a cold today. Sore throat, catarrh (that sounds SO much better than "post-nasal drip"), my head feels congested, I'm tired, and I have that brain fog I always get when I'm on the cusp of getting sick.

I drank a big mug of hot tea with "Bavarian wild berries*" in it (total vitamin C content: 0 per serving) with lunch, and I'm going to make my slightly-spicy chicken-and-mushroom broth for dinner (chicken broth cooked with a couple good slices of fresh garlic, a goodly shot of vinegar, a tiny bit of cayenne pepper, and some garlic, and with mushrooms cut up and simmered in it.

The only thing that's really bothering me right now is the "brain fog." Hopefully that will go away shortly as the cold progresses.

(I strongly suspect they are neither truly wild nor truly Bavarian; I probably would have paid a lot more for the tea if they were.)

(*The jealous and not very nice part of my personality is whining that I've been writing lots longer than OTHER knitbloggers out there, why don't I get more comments. And my Inner Critic responds (predictably) with a "because you suck, compared to them?" Lynn isn't the only one who feels Internetally ignored some days.)

(This was written Monday afternoon. When I was hamstrung from doing what I wanted to do because of NO PRINTER CONNECTIVITY (boo). Depending on the weather and cancellation-whims of a particular group tomorrow, I will either be at home, comfy knitting, or risking my neck trying to drive safely through likely ice to go to a workshop over in Ardmore).

Anyway. More on the blogiversary.

Ironically enough, A Very Popular Blogger (Yarn Harlot), who even Has Written Several Well-Loved and Well-Received Books is having a blogiversary - as noted inwhat this post.

(I don't read the blog regularly - pop in now and then - I figure if she's said anything particularly earthshaking I will hear it on one of the blogs I do surf through regularly, or on Ravelry.* Nothing against her, it's just, I guess, I prefer to give the less-well-known blogs a little reading love with my limited reading time.)

(*I know I don't have near the commenters, or the readers, that she does. So when she refers to her Blog as a sort of collective of her writing + comments from readers, that doesn't really apply here.

I WILL say I love and cherish every comment I get, even if I'm sometimes bad about responding to them. Hint hint).

Anyway, one of the comments she makes about the blog rings true for me, even if, as I said, some days I open up my mailbox and am a bit saddened to find 40 people who will happily sell me a "fake genuine rolexxx watch" (or at least take my money for same) but nary a comment-notification.

As she says:

I am less lonely because of The Blog.
I feel welcome many places because of The Blog.
I am less of a crazy knitting person because The Blog is crazy too.

Less lonely: that is true in both an immediate and a more cosmic sense. "Immediately" speaking, I often feel lonely because I am, quite literally, the only person I know in real life who is as craft-obsessed as I am. Some of the other people I know MAY quilt once in a while, or MAY do embroidery, or knows how to knit. But I don't know ANYONE (well, outside of my mother) who ALWAYS has some project - let alone more than one - going on at a time.

But in the blogworld, that's more or less the norm. People who knit have several projects going (except for a few smug sorts who claim they ONLY buy the yarn sufficient for a single project and then ONLY work on that project until it is done). Life is messy, people are weird. But there were a lot of times that I felt like the only one that was weird in this particular way until the blog.

Lots of other people don't understand. My colleagues try to, and they comment favorably on things I've knit, but I don't think they really understand the drive to make stuff. I've had a few people (not friends, more commonly random strangers when I was knitting somewhere public) speculate on WHY someone would "bother" to do such a thing, when as we all know, you can buy socks for next to nothing at Wal-Mart.

The explanation I could give would not only take too long, but I sometimes wonder how well it would be received. So I just smile quietly and shrug and affirm to myself that I may be "wasting my time" knitting socks, but I am also sitting in the doctor's waiting room doing something other than just sitting...

But the blog also makes me feel less lonely in a larger sense. I have a few regular commenters, a few contacts, people I've come to think of as friends.

I'm not that great at making friends. I have to be honest about that. It seems that it was easier when I was younger (I seem to remember, though this is probably a false memory, that my friend K. and I became friends while standing outside the Intro Bio classroom waiting for the class previous to ours to end. We had a brief conversation and as I remember it, one of us said something along the lines of "You seem cool. Want to be friends?" and the other one said, "Cool. Yeah" and it went on from there...but as I said, it probably wasn't that simple in real life, even though that's how I seem to remember it.)

But now, it's hard. Everyone gets fossilized into their own beliefs and rituals and such once you pass out of your early 20s. Some people have families that take up all of their time. Some people seem to have more drama in their lives than seems right.

Most of the people I regard on a friendly basis are busy enough that I do not feel comfortable calling them up and going, "Hey, want to go grab lunch together tomorrow?" As easy as that was in grad school, it's different when you're out in the workforce. When you have meetings. Or when you have kids prone to getting sick. Or when you have a spouse you'd really RATHER eat with, not this crazy-haired socially-awkward bespectacled woman who just called you up and asked you to EAT with them, of all things....

But somehow having the blog, and sometimes getting feedback (hint, hint) makes it a little easier to live in a world full of those closed-door nuclear family units.

As for Feeling Welcome In Many Places...maybe not so much for me. I presume what she is saying is that the fame generated by the blog has opened doors for her. That she's been welcomes (even lionized, I dare say) in places where her presence as an "unknown" would probably be ignored, or as an author-but-not-blogger would be met by 40 rather than 400 at a book signing.

So of course that does not fit this little blog. And I don't always feel welcome in places, even places where maybe I should. And while I am (at times) socially-awkward enough not to realize that I'm being "frozen out" or that people are consciously trying to make me feel uncomfortable so I will leave, the blog has little to do with that.

Perhaps, well...I have met one other blogger. And I'd meet (and even eat lunches with) others if schedules and locations ever worked out. (Being in the literal middle of nowhere has its drawbacks). So maybe that's some form of feeling more welcome.

And then finally: being less of a Crazy Knitting Person because The Blog (in the sense of the collective of readers and commenters) is Crazy too.

I don't know as much about this. I'd never presume to opine on the Craziness (or lack thereof) of readers and commenters. Perhaps I would be more prone to say I FEEL less Crazy because every time I post some worried screed on how I think a certain way or do a certain thing, and I think that makes me Officially Crazy, some kind commenter will talk me off the ledge, so to speak, and reassure me that whatever it was, while perhaps not statistically "normal" (in the sense of "The norm is for American families to have 2.5 children" - and of course there's no such thing as .5 child), is really not that dangerously unhinged. That some of the things that I think certify me as Too Weird for the World are really actually things a lot of people feel or do or think about, but because other people are maybe better at dissembling to the world (and perhaps, to themselves), I never see The Weird that exists in other folks.

And that perhaps, in even a few cases, the traits that I condemn as Weird in myself are actually, perhaps, even a little bit endearing, and certainly traits that make me different from the mass of humanity.

I do also think the blog (lower-case, here - I am talking about my own writing rather than the Collective Blog of the Yarn Harlot - where the comments take up more space than her individual posts) perhaps makes me less crazy because it serves as a sort of safety valve - a place where I can post about things that bug me, or things that make me wildly enthusiastic, or things that I worry about, so I'm not going around SPEWING them to colleagues or people at church or the few friends I have outside of either of those circles. And that makes me less crazy, or at least it makes me APPEAR less crazy, which is maybe enough of the same thing.

So, happy birthday little blog. Seven years is a long time in the Internet world - long enough for the Really Cool People to have abandoned blogging (apparently in favor of Twitter or perhaps some app I haven't even heard of). The fact that I've stayed at the same place and with even the same template shows either an extreme interest in content over style, or an overblown sense of loyalty, or perhaps stuck-in-the-mud-ness. Make of it what you will.

Now we begin year eight.

Now we are six.



Six years of the little blog.

Six years of socks.



Six years of quilting (these are all mini-quilts, from the days before I did many big quilts - from the days before the blog, in fact).



Six years of trying new yarn, and six years of buying (a lot) of new yarn.



Six years of critters and of worrying that maybe I'm "too old" to still care about toys.



Six years of adding books to my library and talking about the ones that are my favorites and that I use the most.

Six years.



Happy birthday, little blog.