Can you believe it's been 11 years? I started blogging on April 9, 2004 and have enjoyed it ever since. Originally, I thought to sell all my patterns (and create hundreds more) through my blog. I have neither designed hundreds of patterns (tens of patterns is more like it), nor have I sold enough to do anything more than buy more yarn. But what I gained instead has been far more precious.

FRIENDS - I've gained a lot of virtual friends who have become real live friends from around the world.
TRAVEL - Some of those friends have come to visit me. I have gone to visit others.
RECORD - I've managed to record, not only my own knitting history, but also capture a part of my life through posts. My family has chosen to remain somewhat anonymous, but they're still there - under the radar - in the memories that each trip evokes.
FIBER - I've turned my travels into FIBER-TOURISM. It started as trying to visit a LYS every time we traveled. While I like that, I have turned it into more of a fiber arts travel destination. Some of the most memorable (even though I have forgotten many names) were: an unusual blend your own yarn store in Portland with Super Eggplant; trips into NYC for fiber arts festivals or yarn crawls; Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival; discovering Liberty of London's tea room and meeting Jane there; and my favorite fiber tourism of all was my trip to Bogota, Colombia and touring the textile museum, artisanal fiber shops and the fine arts college.
WILMA - Wilma on Wednesdays has been a fun feature these past nine years. You all love Wilma and her famous lolling tongue. Now I get to add by having pictures of Otis and Duke. The bulldog fun never ends!
YARN - Of course, having the blog has encouraged me to horde buy new yarns. Therefore, I have amassed a small arsenal of yarn that needs to be knit down to a reasonable size. I'm working on that, but it's so hard. Generally speaking, the exact project I want to knit is something that I have absolutely nothing in my stash that will work. So I buy more. I hope that some of my charity knitting projects will help me work on downsizing my stash. Please keep your fingers crossed.
CHARITY KNITS - The yarn stash leads me to one of my favorite kinds of knitting - charity knitting. You know that I like to knit blankets for the children at the Jackson Recovery Center's Women and Children's Center. In fact I have an ongoing contest/collection for the month of April where I'll send some thank you yarn to the first six people who donate. You can read the details HERE. So in honor of my blogiversary and to enhance the blanket collection project for those children who need it I am going to give away some special yarn.

I have added a drawing. For everyone who donates a blanket or swatches or hats as outlined in the directions listed HERE during the month of April - I will put your name in the drawing. On May 15th (allowing time for everyone's donations to arrive in the mail), I will draw the name of one lucky winner who can choose either of the skeins pictured above:
- Cephalopod Yarns - Skinny Bugga! Blue Lobster color way - value $28
- MissBabs Hand-dyed Yarns and Fibers - Shush! It's Okay colorway - value $24
So thank you for a great 11 years. Here's to the next 11 more!