Conversations

I just spent an enjoyable hour or so reading other people's blogs. Some are sisters, some are friends, and some are complete strangers whose blogs I'm finding through links--from other blogs, mostly, although also from quilting websites.

There are those who naysay the blogging trend--their opinion is that blogs are simply is a venue for people to feel they're important enough that others would want to hear their opinions. Which begs the question, why is the naysayer's opinion any more important than those of the masses of bloggers?

Sure, there's several blogs I visited tonight that I don't feel the need to go back to, but there are lots of TV shows I don't bother watching again and lots of radio stations I don't ever listen to and lots of books and magazines I don't read. That doesn't mean I don't feel people should produce TV shows or radio stations or books or magazines. They have every right to. And I have every right to choose how to spend my time.

What I find fascinating about blogs is the ability to have conversation. Yes, it may be mostly one-way, but if you become a follower of blogs you find that there's actually interactivity there. Not only in the "comments" option, but in the way one blogger will refer to another blog, or to a prior conversation with a comment-maker, and so forth. And with the blogs written by naturally good writers, you get insights into slices of life that you may not experience yourself. For example, tonight I visited the Berkshires, New York City, and somewhere in California, all within about 15 minutes of one another. I defy Expedia to set that trip up for me.

I don't tend to find myself heading to quilting blogs that are just a list of projects, unless I know the blogger personally or it's a quilt artist I particularly enjoy. But I did find some quilting blogs of people doing something similar to this--their blogs reflecting on their quilting within the context of their lives. One woman grabbed me right from her profile--her sense of humor and unique perspective on life jumped out in the first sentence. I learned from her almost immediately--I'm going to be following her blog partly out of enjoyment, and partly as a way to improve my own writing by analyzing what I'm liking so much about hers.

So tonight is a short, less personally reflective blog entry--one that simply extols the value of blogging as an art form and a conversation.

Playing Catch-Up

It's been about a month since my last post but since I was out of town on business for two of those four weeks it doesn't quite count, does it? I took last week as vacation and intended to use it as a personal little quilt retreat at home but it didn't quite work out that way. Life tends to get in the way. My son had wisdom teeth removed, I had meetings related to my volunteer work with the Karen and Chin communities, I took my daughter and some of her friends to a local amusement park, and I had a bunch of friends over one afternoon, so I only ended up with one sewing day. But as I reminded myself, soon enough I'll be empty nesting and have all sorts of time to spend at my sewing machine so I only slightly feel bad about my lack of quilting productivity.

I did manage to finally catch up with my guild's block of the month challenge (woohoo!) and I put together the backing for a quilt that I'll be giving a niece for her bday later this week--one of those "open your present, and then hand it back to me so I can finish it!"

But today was probably the most productive--I finally managed to get my new cutting table put together! OK, so I bought it a year ago, and the box has been leaning against a wall in my sewing room, providing a convenient shelf for works in project. Now I need to find a new limbo location for my UFOs, but at least I'm no longer negotiating a warped cutting surface. The old warped cutting table is being relagated to the basement where it will find redemption as a "gift-wrapping center".

I don't have much worthy of pondering at the moment, other than the sense of satisfaction one gets when one finally finishes something that one has been tripping over for a year. I'll work on getting back in my Tessellations Game and be profound again soon enough. Time to flex my furniture-putting-together-mojo again building a desk and bookshelf for my son's room...