Part 1 of 4: In the sun

Three weeks. I haven’t managed to post in three weeks! The days really crept up on me like bad spandex this time, just a little more silently and stealthily. I’ve been doing my usual things, just a few more dozen of them than usual. So in exchange for my absence, I humbly offer you some beautiful butterflies and flowers today.

People think I must spend simply acres of time on the computer, due to my being a geek, and at work that’s true. But at home, outside of comics and digital manuscripts, I tend to avoid my computer. I wrestle the dog and cook and sew and since it’s summer, I’ve spent time sweating on edible plants and weedy trees outside. Also, lately, I’ve been building websites, which has taken up what little time I spend on the computer at home. Ironically, one reason I’ve neglected the blog writing is to create a new blog template. Hmm. Methinks I should remember Content Before Design.

I also just realized my third blogoversary was yesterday! I started my blog in 2007 after playing around with a bunch of short-lived and hopefully no longer extant websites and blogs. I was mostly practicing HTML and CSS. In the process I wrote various silly pages on trivia, ancient manuscripts, recipes, traveling, and other exercises in existentialism and futility. I recall writing something called the League of Extraordinary Monkeys at one point.

One day I put together a page on crafting, and it turned out I had more stuff to put on that page than any other page. So my next experiment was a crafting blog. I tried LiveJournal, Blogger and Typepad, but really they aren’t so much fun when you want to get your hands dirty. And at the time, I was all about doing the coding myself, all from scratch.  Actually, I’m still into that, and it takes forever. Anyway, I migrated to WordPress next and I’m still here.

My first few posts were random, and then I wrote about making beer. My dad and I made a batch of beer (which didn’t turn out at all) and I wrote about making it, and the ingredients, and all sorts of stuff. I took pictures. I made chemical diagrams. I did research. And it was awesome, because it was intellectually interesting, and I got to do something fun with my dad, and because of the blog I had a reason to record it in words and images. And now I have that memory preserved, like many others. I can go back and read all about the things I’d normally forget.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded pictures, an Im going to start updating about all the various things I’ve been doing since I wandered off into la-la land three weeks ago.  Like flaming dogs, and muslin, and tailoring, and more!