Incoherent Scribblings

Stitching for Baby

I made some real good progress on the baby sampler this weekend. I would say I am about 70% done. I might finish it this week if I am diligent.

I received the baby’s name shortly after I started stitching it. (I am not telling what it is… you will have to wait for the finished picture to find out!) The baby has three names (a first name, duh! and TWO middle names) and I think it might be a slight headache trying to center them all on there nicely. Luckily though, I never put the length or weight on a baby sampler, just the name and date, so I should have enough room (I hope!)

(Click for a larger picture!)

Exploding, Rolling, Bad Designs, and Popularity

It has been about two months since I started regularly surfing Blog Explosion and overall, I would say that I have had a pretty good experience.

I joined Blog Explosion for three main reasons: First of all, I wanted to find some new blogs to read. At the time I joined BE some of my regular blog reads were a bit stale and so I was looking for something to freshen up my Blog Roll. Second, I was interested in seeing how other people design their blogs… I guess you could say I was looking for inspiration. And finally, I wanted to give my blog greater exposure.

As far as new blogs go, I have found some new blogs to read, even though I have only added a few to my Blog Roll. My Blog Roll serves two purposes. First and foremost it is for me: I find it is a great way to directly jump over to someone’s page when they have updated their blog. Second, it is a recommendation list for my readers. When I first started surfing Blog Explosion I tried to add every blog that I blogmarked to my Blog Roll, but that quickly became cumbersome. When I stopped and thought about it, I decided to divide my Blog Roll into categories based on my own interests, and came up with three: Expatriate Blogs, Cross Stitch Blogs, and Other Blogs of Note.

While I don’t really mind Mommy and Daddy blogs (even though I admit I loathe Jesus and political blogs), the fact is that I prefer to read blogs from bloggers that share similar experiences to my own. (I think most of us do, that is why there are so many Mommy and Daddy blogs out there… there are a lot of parents!) Anyway, I started my blog to chronicle my life as an expatriate and many of my posts reflect this. Therefore, my favorite blogs to read (and those that I find the most interesting) are those of other expatriates.

Somewhere along the way, I started talking about my favorite hobby, cross-stitching, while I was blogging and discovered there are a lot of cross-stitching bloggers out there. Some only talk about their stitching, but many talk about their lives too. Since they are another group that I can relate to, I read a lot of cross stitch blogs. Recently, I decided I wanted to go into more detail about my stitching, so I put up another blog dedicated to that, but it didn’t change the fact that I use this blog as my spring board, so I left those stitching blogs in my Blog Roll.

The third section of my Blog Roll is dedicated to general blogs that I like and those people who link back to me. Since joining Blog Explosion, this is the area that has grown the most. However, there are many more blogs that I have found while surfing BE that I like, but I don’t consider regular reads and as a result have not Blog Rolled. After all, I need something to read while surfing for credits, don’t I?

As I said, another reason I joined BE was to be able to see other people’s designs. And boy, oh boy, have I seen lots designs! Some are quite good and inspiring, while others give me a headache just looking at them.

I love blog banners. You can tell by looking at my blogs. However, what I do find a bit problematic is when the banner takes up half my screen space. Add on top of that, that little BE box and I have to do a lot of scrolling just to get to the entries. If my 30 seconds aren’t up by then, I might read an entry, but don’t count on it.

And then of course, there are the color blind people, the people that put way too many blinkies on their page, (A blinkie or two is OK, but if your page is full of them I might have a seizure!), or those pages that are just too BUSY. I know you design your page for you, but please, have some compassion for those that visit you via BE!

In less than one year I have had over 10,000 visitors to my blog, so I guess I can say that my blog has gotten exposure. I doubt I will ever win a blog award or become a “Large Mammal” in the TTLB Ecosystem, because after all, blogging is really another popularity contest and while I have never been a total outcast, I have never won one either. But that is OK with me… that’s how I like it anyway!