Thursday, December 09, 2010

No Blog Left Behind

Every blog I've started represents a part of me and a special time in my life. Some of them fall by the wayside as my interests change.  But I rarely lose interest in my passions completely.  For example I don't juggle much anymore, but every now and then I get re-inspired and juggle up a storm.  So I'm happy that I keep my juggling blog.

Sometimes one thing would fit in many blogs and I don't have time to add them to all the blogs.  Like if I knit a hat, it could go in my knitting blog, my fiber arts blog, my hatitude blog, or my craft blog.  Usually I put it in the blog with the most readers because it's most likely to get seen there, but then the more specialized blogs don't get updated.

Today I just updated my rubber stamping blog for the first time in a year.  I haven't been stamping much, but suddenly I'm interested all over again and hope to post all my new stamps there.  I just bought 4 packages of erasers that all need to be carved.

So every now and then I sort through all my blogs and try to give each one a post or two.  I want to keep them alive even if some of them are barely breathing.
Some of them, like my Second Life blog is dead because I can't get onto Second Life with this computer. So I have nothing new to add.

The same with my Steampunk blog. I mean well but haven't had the time or the space to make my Steampunk projects yet, so I have nothing new to add. My new 'job' making videos is sucking a great deal of my time.  I'm just making hay while the sun shines because who knows how long those people will have a budget to pay me to make videos.

To a degree blogging is driven by comments.  If no one comments on existing posts I don't have much incentive to make new posts.  In short, if everyone comments on my knitting blog, I'll post a lot more to it.  If no one is interested, I don't really feel like talking to myself. I have a real life longhand journal to write in if I'm just writing to myself.

I've seen blogs which literally have three posts about their topic, and fifty comments. And the blog hasn't been updated in two years. I'm always amazed when people draw so many comments. I'm lucky to get one or two per post ever.

I know Google will crawl blogs and they seem to like two things; fresh content, and longevity.  It works in your favor to keep updating your old blogs.  The spiders look at that and say, "Oooh, that person has been blogging for five years and they also have new posts". That's my goal..to always have a reason to give people to drop by my blogs.

Sunday, December 05, 2010

Snoods

Every time I'm in the Etsy chatroom someone says to me, "I love your shop name." Which is Pigglewiggins. It seems to have a universal appeal.

Here I am in the photo with a snood I just finished. I love the word snood. I think it's so funny and it always makes people ask, "What's a snood?"  Snoods were popular in various times of history including the Renaissance, and the Civil War era.
I used to make snoods for an opera singer with long hair. They were part of her signature look. She was very picky though, so after the last order I said no more.  She kept wanting me to remake everything, for no extra pay of course. I'd much rather just put a stack of them on my vending table and let the customer try them on and decide which one they want. They are fun to make and many types of thread or yarn can be used. I think now that it's winter I'll start wearing one. They are great for bad hair days too.