Sunday Evening Thoughts

Good evening...

...well firstly thank you for questions, I will start to answer them one by one! I hope to have a little more time and spirit for blogging this week. Carl and I have had some rather bad news, and sadly until he sees a lawyer tomorrow, I cannot share the details. Suffice to say things have been rather gloomy this week.

However we have had a lovely Sunday together. I have been to a vintage fayre where I bought a pair of lovely soup bowls, and then home to Carl, and an afternoon of Sense and Sensibility on dvd, this time the Emma Thompson version. 1995 was a good year for Jane Austen adaptations! Since trying OPIs Start To Finish base coat and top coat, I find that my manicure lasts at least a week, so I have started doing my nails on a Sunday afternoon, and having a film to watch while they drive is just lovely. This week I have very pale natural looking nails, as I am visiting a prospective employer whom I wish to impress! I loved Sense and Sensibility. Recently I have developed a sudden appreciation for Alan Rickman, and his interpretation of Colonel Brandon is wonderful. He is so repressed by his own feelings, knowing they are unwanted, and then when Marianne sees the light it is like a dam bursting forth with happiness!

So, the first question was how did I get into blogging. Well, I was reading blogs before I had heard the word blog. I remember searching for a craft project online, and discovering www.ljcfyi.com and became a regular visitor. Then I discovered www.getcrafty.com and they had a page called 'blogs' and I discovered other people like me who liked to make and write. I started my first blog on livejournal, because a friend from work used it. I called myself 'she of the sceptered isle' and wrote about knitting patterns and recipes, crafts I had made, things I had cooked. I remember in particular teaching myself to knit, and buying expensive yarn for my first project, a purple fuzzy and very long scarf. I would really encourage buying nice yarn to knit with for the first time as it feels heavenly to work with and you end up with something you are really proud of at the end! I think my writing 'voice' was quite a lot more quirky back then, perhaps a little self consciously so. I was very young, in my defence!

I am not sure why I stopped writing on that blog...I have always wanted to keep a diary but have never really kept it up, so perhaps it was just the same kind of lapsing.

Anyway, I also discovered www.brocantehome.net which just spoke to me, and I loved (and still do!) Alison's writing. She once linked to www.vintagepretty.org and I realised that there were other people writing about the kinds of things I love and do, and it was towards the end of the year when I start to think about things I want to do over the next year, and it all just came together. I remember sitting with a pen and paper for ages trying to decide what to call the blog, and what to put in the 'about' part at the top of the blog. I haven't changed it since ten, so I must have got it about right!

To begin with, writing was a bit odd, because it was like sending words out into nothing. Not even an echo to hear back! I was so happily surprised and amazed when I started to get comments and visitors to my blog. I try very hard not to get too het up about numbers and things, but it is amazing to think that there are people out there who come here to read my musings.

I think my writing has changed a little bit on here, at one point I was writing almost essays, and I think that was because I was also writing little bits for Alison at Brocante Home, something I would love to get back into doing. Recently it has evolved a bit more into a kind of journal, with recipes. I would like to try and get a bit more organized, with more recipes and reviews, projects and how-tos as well as little articles and just journally bits.

I do love writing here and find it a wonderful outlet, although it is odd having a conversation and really only knowing your own half. I hope I am not tempting fate, but I am jolly lucky never to have had hateful comments as some bloggers have, such as the lovely www.yarnstorm.blogs.com which was another blog I was reading back in the early days, and still do. I do find myself wandering around sometimes, composing blog posts in my mind. I have one in mind on my new walk to work, talking about the beautiful little row of terraced Victorian cottages that I go past, but that is for another day.

To me, my blog is almost like a patchwork blanket that I work on from time to time. There have been times when I have not posted as often as I would like to, but having a blog never really goes away. I like that it is never finished, that I am always adding a little bit more here or there to it.

A blog that I really enjoy, that I have mentioned recently is www.attic24.typepad.com and I love how Lucy shares so many photographs. I think that is really lacking on this blog, although that is part to my ineptness with modern technology, but also because blogger does not seem particularly well set up for sharing photographs. I would like this blog to be a little more illustrated than it is though!

I realise I have talked a lot, but I am not convinced that I have really got down to the nitty gritty. I suppose I started this blog because I was reading a lot of blogs and thought 'I can do that too' and it was a way of finally keeping a diary. I am surprised to see that it will be 6 years this December! Time has passed by in a flash.

I hope you all are having a lovely Sunday evening, and I will be back to answer more questions soon, and, I hope, with better news.

Love, Mimi xxx