Blog As Muse

Last night I read a question at InTatters about how bloggers felt about setting up a tatting blog. 

I wrote a response, getting somewhat carried away.  Ahem... 

This morning, when I re-read it, I kinda liked what I had written, so I am posting it for anyone ambitious enough to slog through some of my - sigh - gushiness...

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Well - I can get wordy, but here goes!

I started tat-ology in 2009, after I had been tatting for only about 5 months. I was a novice about all of it, but I must say it was the best thing I could have done - to start tatting and blogging simultaneously.

I have made wonderful on-line tatting buddies, exchanged tatting treasures with tatters all over the entire globe, had fantastic advice and lots of laughs, received unexpected snail mail from far, far away and experienced an insanely obsessive personal challenge to tat better - to be the best tatter I can be.

Through these experiences I surprisingly find I have tons to write about on tat-ology. It astounds me that after nearly 5 years(!!!) I can still find enough to compose a few posts per week.

There is also a colourful record of my progress, for I have used an online company to make books of all my posts, from the very beginning. I love having the history of my work and I hope the books inspire my grand kids or their friends to pick up shuttles and play some day.

Tat-ology is a way for me to keep pushing past barriers, as I share my ups and downs, constantly striving toward mastery. Truth is, I am very shy and private, yet the blog provides readers, comments and support galore. It makes me feel so acknowledged if I read just one friendly comment.

At the start I felt I had absolutely nothing to say! Go to my first post and see that I was just like every tatter who wants to start a blog, feeling scared, shy and very uncertain. It is confronting; I know.

Tat-Land, found online, mainly through blogs, is a wonderful community. There it is possible to talk to one another over vast distances, so we do not tat alone. Many of us, myself included, tat in a vacuum, with no in-the-flesh tatter to share tea and a tat, except through our keyboard and the desire to belong to a lace-minded group.

Blogging is the conduit to that world where we can share our passion with one another. Blogging is a doorway to the many wonderful things that do indeed happen between strangers with nothing in common sometime except a simple knot and a shuttle, or a tatting needle and thread.

We connect, we learn, we support, we challenge; sometimes we even argue! Blogs are an amazing tool to be able to share this obsessive addiction from which we all derive such pleasure. It is just so much fun to have knowledgable and talented tatters just a few keystrokes away!

Blogging is definitely not for everyone. But if you have the thought that you might find some satisfaction and pleasure in the vehicle of a tatting blog; should you feel excited and have a little flutter in your chest when you think about it, I urge you to just dive in, pick a heading and let your fingers type a hello, whether on Blogger or WordPress - it doesn’t matter which. Just do it! We will be watching to hear from YOU!
Fox