You Make My Day

Yesterday, I was tagged by Suna with a You Make Day Award. I've never been tagged before so I'm doubly honored that she picked my blog.

I started my blog shortly after I started knitting. I wanted to document my new hobby. At one point I was blogging here in order to get links to my knitting podcast, Knitting News Cast. I had hoped to make a living doing the podcast and writing my blog. Lots of other people in the knitting community have gotten a day job posting to their blog like the Yarn Harlot and Mason Dixon (who also have books). And others have gotten writing and television gigs from having a blog, like Vickie Howell and Lisa Shobhana Mason. So why not me?!? That never worked out, of course. It takes awhile to earn money from a blog on the Internet and get book deals and really, the pressure I put on myself to podcast and blog took the life out of it and knitting.

So now I blog because I like to blog. I do have advertising on this blog and my Knitting News Cast website. I use Google Ads and Amazon. I make just enough to pay my hosting bill for the podcast. For me, now that's enough.

So what does that have to do with the "You Make My Day" Award. Well, there are lots of people blogging out there who just blog. No motives, no thinking of key words for the search engines (I admit I still do that), no blogging every day just to be out there. And I like reading their blogs. They aren't forced and they make me feel apart of a wider knitting and world community.

Here are my current favorites:

Amy's House Knitting - Okay, I admit, I look forward to seeing this blog show up in my Google Reader the most. Amy, her Chinese name is 王繼惠, is a woman in Taiwan going through the Japanese Knitting program, NAC. I found her blog when I was doing research for my Japanese Knitting Pattern blog. She has pictures on her blog of the projects she and her classmates are working on. They are incredible! At first I thought it was Amy who was doing all this knitting but she posted so often with pictures, I had to leave a comment on her blog and ask her because the Google translator from Chinese to English just didn't give me enough information. They aren't all her projects, only some of them. The other reason I like to look at those pictures is because they are taken in her classroom. There are stacks and stacks of neatly displayed yarn in drawers along the wall. I'd love to spend my days in a school like that! 王繼惠 also posts pictures of knitting and crochet designs she likes and I enjoy seeing those too.

Baby Davies - apparently I'm not the only person that like reading Sabbath's blog. Last week when I looked at my stats for this site, I had about 5 or so clicks from her site out of 50 clicks. In the Internet click through rate world, that is significant! The reason I like Sabbath's blog is that it is so her. She posts about her daughter, knitting, and recipes she has made. It is a nice look into raising a family that I've never had (and probably never will have). And sometimes she just posts about the things she is trying to figure out about herself like belief systems and what to do with her life. I struggle with those too!

Back Yard Inspirations - I just starting reading Eliza's (otherwise, known as Miss Violet) blog on a regular basis. She is doing the 101 Things in 1001 Days project which I'm also doing. This month she has been posting the Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) she has been working on and also writing about the struggles of trying to do art everyday. I used to really be into paper art and altered art but once I found knitting, I just got away from it. I even have a blog that I used to keep about it, so to read about someone else who is an artist and a knitter is a real treat.

I hope you find these blog just as wonderful as I do!