Ten Year Blogging Anniversary

I cannot believe it has been 10 years since I published my first blog post.  I had been thinking of how I can celebrate but decided to just take a quick look through the stats. I have published 717 posts. I  have 72 followers. There have been 209,048 page views. There have been 5234 comments. Did I respond to each and every one? Possibly, but I want to try to respond quicker in the future. 

I have met quilters all over the world through blogging. I even went to Australia, not once, but twice to meet up with quilters.  

Because I have this philosophy that more is better, I started not just this Quilting at the Farm blog, but I also started Quilting Jane at the Farm, Quilting Morrell at the Farm and just last month How to Stay Married for 50 Years. The previous 2 sort of went by the wayside when those projects went in to the timeout closet. The most recent one is an ongoing project where I plan to release a post each week giving an alphabetical glimpse into our long years of marriage together. Our marriage has not always been happy but we made choices to work through the stuff and have come out the other side stronger and more together than we could ever have imagined. 

This Quilting at the Farm blog has chronicled my quilting journey over the past 10 years. I figured out not only how to write up posts and publish them, I also figured out how to add pictures. I started keeping my camera next to my sewing machine and taking both the camera and hand needlework on airplanes, trains, cars and stitching memories all over the world over the years. 

I especially love process rather than actually completing projects. That is why taking pictures each step of the way has been such a part of this blog. Finished quilts are nice, but I usually gave them away and that was that. But if I just keep pulling them out and adding a few more stitches, that keeps them alive for me. But then, just as our adolescent children need to grow up and become productive adults, my half made quilts need to grow up also. I had given away quite a few ufos a couple of years ago when I reduced my fabric hoard by half. That was hard making that decision, but harder trying to do the work myself, so I asked for help from some of my quilty friends and let them help themselves to whatever they wanted in exchange for sorting and bagging and escorting fabric to other homes. I plan to donate some more very soon as an appeal went our for fabric for donation quilts. 

My computer crashed last month and I am still trying to sort out the unexpected changes with the new hard drive and missing documents that were saved but it is a treasure hunt looking for them. But I have so much of my life documented here on this blog. I really should figure out how to publish some of it in a book form. Great idea, but another thing to learn. 

I turned 71 this summer. This past year has had far more age related health issues than I was prepared for and am working my way through. I  had cataract surgery on both eyes in May and will have laser surgery on the left eye later this week to correct the smudge that has been blurring my vision. 

School resumes tomorrow and the girl grandchildren are very excited to be going to their new classrooms and new teachers and they have been joyfully packing lunches and chattering about the coming day. We did remember to buy some lunch worthy groceries this weekend. Daddy picked up his fancy dancy new company car for his new job so will be driving them to their schools in grand style. We plan a celebration for the first day after school of roast beast and all the trimmings. I may even bake a pie. Maybe. I have one in the freezer. Grampa does most of the cooking these days and I like that. All I am responsible for these days is washing dishes and there are plenty tonight after supper. They were away for the weekend and returned singing and laughing and I wonder if someone else's children returned in their place. 

I spent most of the day writing and I even managed to pull a few weeds and continue to deadhead the many geraniums. They seem to wither quickly in the late summer rains of which we have had a plenty. And (drum roll please) I even got a few stitches in the Wedding Quilt which is now named Laurie's Quilt. 

So to celebrate 10 years of blogging, I will rejoice in all the wonderful friends I have made around the world and the memories we share as we work on the same patterns and chat back and forth in emails and zoom and facebook and messenger and even face to face at retreats. Thank you for making this a special place by sharing it with me. 

Blessings,

Chris