Thoughts on Blogging

I've been thinking a lot lately about blogging and what it's become for me. I started this blog about five and a half years ago, just when I was getting serious about knitting and just when I was first discovering all the online resources that were out there. Because of the blog (and, more generally, due to my discovery of the fact that there were such things as knitting blogs), I've made good friends online and in real life. I've truly developed into a Knitter-with-a-capital-K and become a spinner as well. I've even started doing some designing.

The blog started out as an outlet for me when I was between jobs and alone much of the day. I'd always kept diaries and journals, so this was yet another way for me to think things through and record my thoughts, though in this case they were specific to crafting. Then it became a way for me to keep track of projects -- what yarn I'd used, what adjustments I'd made, what problems I'd encountered and how I'd solved them. Finally, it became a way for me to connect with other knitters, both those I knew in real life and those I only knew in the virtual world.

Obviously, once Rainbow was born, my time to blog shrank dramatically. Still, I knew (or at least hoped!) there were people still reading, so I tried to post regularly, albeit with some reduced frequency. Lately I've been aiming for two posts a week, which has been pretty doable. I've tried not to let spinning take over the blog because this was, after all, started as a knitting blog. But I've also struggled because there are times when I'm just not doing much knitting and I don't feel like I have much to say.

I think it's also important to note that the blog started in the days before Ravelry. At the time, it was great for me to have a place to document all the stages and details of a project, but now that I can do that in my Ravelry notebook, the blog starts to seem a little redundant. That said, I do still like the writing aspect of a blog post; I suppose I could write copious notes in the relevant section of my project page, but hitting "Save" doesn't seem to give me quite the same sense of satisfaction as does hitting "Publish Post."

I guess where all this is going is that I'd love to get your feedback, dear readers (if, in fact, there are any of you left!), on where this blog is heading. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a bit of a comment "hoar," as they say on Ravelry, and I've notice that for the past month or so, there have been very few comments on my posts. I know that I read a lot of blogs and don't always post, so I'm sure some of you are still reading, but it would be nice to know for sure! If you're reading but not commenting, I'd love to know why. Are you too busy? Not interested in what I have to post? Something else entirely? If I do decide to keep this blog up and running, I would like it to be useful, and one of the most useful things I've found about it is the dialogue it has started with readers.

In the interest of doing some market research, I've put up a poll in the sidebar. It'll be up for the next week. Please feel free to leave a comment as well! (Oh, and you'll also notice that I changed the layout again. Seems I was still in the dark ages of Blogger and wasn't using all the tools available because I hadn't upgraded my template.)