The Tides of Time

That title was really only to justify using this photo.

It is relevant though - today is my blog is one year old! 365 days, 168 posts. That's an average of a post every 2.2 days (although maths was never my strong point so I could be wrong).

I went back and read my first post and got ready to have a big cringe, but actually it's fine. In it I explained myself by saying: 'this blog has come into fruition not because of any resolution to share my life with anyone in the world who is remotely interested...but because I just completed my very first knitting project and am ridiculously proud.' And that mostly still holds true, although the blog has become about all aspects of my life as opposed to just knitting/sewing/craft times. And I love that even though I have been knitting for over a year now I still get ridiculously proud of successfully finishing something. It still surprises me that I can knit something and have it turn out pretty well. Okay, AWESOMELY (I mean, did you see the sock? The cupcakes?).

I went through a period where I wondered if anyone would ever read the blog and then when I found out some people were and people left a few comments I got really excited and felt a bit validated. At the time it felt like that kind of thing was important. But since then I have decided I couldn't care less if no one read ever this blog (although it's very nice that some people do, because it's become a really important record for me. What did I do in the first weekend of April 2010? I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but through the magic of my blog, I can see that I was down in Christchurch, visiting Ursula Bethell's grave (I got no further with the correction of the spelling of her name on the headstone than a man who writes a book column in the Christchurch Press contacting me and me replying but him not following up, which still bugs me), Jo Seager's cafe in Oxford, and a house stuck in a 1970's time warp.

I love that! I kept a diary for a year or so when I was about 10, but since then I have tried again a couple of times and never stuck at it. But blogging seems to work because I can type so much faster than I handwrite. And I can have photos. Which is another thing I love about the blog, it has made me better at taking photos (not that I take great photos but I think about them more when I'm taking them) and it's made me take a lot more photos than before. I used to take heaps when I had a film camera but when I got a digital I really only took photos at family events. With film cameras it used to be so exciting getting the photos developed and remembering things that had often happened quite some time earlier and then putting them in a photo album (I have about 6 at my Dad's house). But with digital I would upload the photos and rarely get any developed and they would just sit there. Sometimes I would see them when my screensaver was scrolling through them. But now I have a wee album here with little stories attached, which is even better!

Anyway, so while I don't detail all the trials and tribulations of my life here (which I might do if I kept a diary I knew no one was going to read), I love that this blog has become a record of the good things that happen in my life. One of my favourite blogs is SouleMama and I really like this post she wrote about why she blogs. Obviously I'm not a parent so it's not entirely relevant to me, but the gist of what she's saying kind of sums up why I blog and why I blog about what I've ended up blogging about over the past year. Because it reminds me of the good things and makes me appreciate them more.

I love when she says that reading her blog could make someone think her life is "nothing but joy, and peace, love and knitting needles" when of course it's not. And of course mine isn't either. I have had one of the hardest times ever this year in some respects, but that doesn't make for good photos. And I'm not likely to forget about it anytime soon either. But all those little daily things (like Anita's unique booties) or the many many events that get packed into a year (like my great aunt's 80th birthday), I probably would forget about them in time if I didn't have such a handy dandy record!

Okay, so enough. I love my blog. I love it enough to admit to having it (for a while it was a secret that only one person knew about - aside from the people I didn't know who were reading it), although I still don't run about telling people that it exists. And that's fine with me.

Happy birthday Oui Cherry!