librarysarie

300!

And no, I don't mean the movie.  ;-)  The lovely Kim has left the 300th comment on my blog!  The 200th was left only back in October, so it was a pleasant surprise to see how quickly the stats went up by another hundred.  I also just made my 200th post, I just realized.  My little blog is growing up!  [sniff]  Anyway, I'll be sending Kim a little goodie or two.  Thank you to all my commenters -- if you didn't comment, I wouldn't post!  (Of course, for some people that might be reason to NOT comment... ;-))

Blog 2.0

Administrative post, probably not of much interest to the general population...

I've been thinking a lot about my blog recently (in no small part because I'm facing a huge website overhaul at the library, and so these sorts of issues have been on my mind anyway) and pondering ways to change/improve it.   I need to stop being lazy and start tackling some of these items.

1) My not-so-inner librarian is cringing at the uselessness of the tags I use.  When I first started this blog, "knitting" seemed like a perfectly reasonable tag to use, but with all of the knitting content I have here, it's now become pretty much completely meaningless.  I need to reconsider my use of tags and come up with something more descriptive and useful, if only for my own mental well-being.  ;-)  (I've been thinking about this lately because I've recently started using LibraryThing, and there was a recent article in Library Journal about tags on LibraryThing and the relative usefulness of user-generated tagging systems as opposed to "official" ones like the Library of Congress subject headings.)  And of course, for matters of completeness, I'll have to go back through and re-tag all of my old entries, because it just won't do to have some entries go untagged.  I can never leave well enough alone.

2) I've been using Photobucket for my pictures, but I'm starting to feel the pull of Flickr, and I think I'm going to have to experiment with it a bit and see how I like it.  Anyone out there used both and have thoughts on this?

3) I've toyed with moving my blog off of typepad and getting my own domain and etc.  That might be more trouble than it's worth, though -- I like having most of the hard work done for me already.  ;-)

Funny, how a leisure-time activity can get so time-consuming...!

Merry Christmas!

The only thing that makes me feel better about not blogging lately is the fact that most of the blogs I read have been pretty quiet too.  I'm going to be reckless and quote a recent post by CygKnit (hope you don't mind!), who summed up quite nicely what I've been thinking (and fretting) about for the past few weeks:

I was told once that if I didn't post regularly then no one would be interested in hanging around to read what I write. Though I was absent for 18 days or so (not that I'm counting) the thought has been very much on my mind. I worry, though that starting each post with an apology isn't a good idea, as it will most likely get annoying after a while. Rather than apologize yet again for the embarrassingly long time between posts, I would like to thank you for sticking by and still reading me. Thank you.

As they say on my favorite TV show, so say we all.

Your friendship (that's a collective "your" there) has meant so much to me over the last year.  My "imaginary friends," both in the knitblog world and in other communities I'm a part of, are an important part of my life, and if it were at all practical I'd send each and every one of you a gift.  It's not, of course, but I've just made a donation to Doctors Without Borders in honor of all of you, as a thank you for all that you are to me.

I'm in danger of hurting myself with sentimentality here, so I'll stop now.  :-)  Merry Christmas to you all!   

on blogs

I see that Jessica has given me a shout-out.  :-)  If you've found my blog through her link, hello!  (And if you're a loyal reader of my blog, you should go check hers out, too!)  Recently in her blog, she did a small poll about why we read the blogs we do.  Personally, I read blogs for a number of reasons, but the blogs I'm the most drawn to are the ones where I share a large number of interests with the writer (of course, when you're a cat-loving, book-loving knitter, there's not a shortage of like-minded people to choose from!).  I find most through word-of-mouth (or word-of-blog, as the case may be), and I also like the knowledge that the relationship, such as it is, is often reciprocal.  So if you're reading this, do drop me a line!  You don't have to feel obligated to comment often or anything like that, but I'd love to know that you're here, and I'd love to read your blog in return.  One of the main reasons I keep this blog is to meet new people, after all!  :-)

That having been said, the number of blogs I read is finally getting just unwieldy enough where I need to do something to make my reading more efficient.  Right now, I just have all the URLs in my "recently visited" pull-down thingie (I'm sure there's a technical term, but I'm too tired to retrieve it from my memory!) and I click to each of them individually.  I need to decide whether I want to set up a collection of bookmarks, or set up something at Bloglines, or what.  How do you keep track of the blogs you read?

More tomorrow, or at some point over the weekend.  Happy Friday!