8 Years Of Blogging!

Two days ago, on Sunday, I celebrated my 8th blogging anniversary. Can't quite believe it's been 8 years. I was brand new to the online knitting community back then. I'd just discovered knitting blogs and thought that sounded like good fun. I didn't know a thing about blogging which I think is fairly obvious from those early posts. 

I've spent some spare time looking back through old blog posts over the long weekend and some of it is fairly embarassing. Awful photos (hoping they've improved) but it's also fun to see how my family has grown. Simon always looks at my blog as a kind of history of our family as I've shared a fair bit of what we get up to on holidays and days out in Cornwall.

All in all, it's been fun blogging and I've learnt so much and made so many friends. When I started blogging I was knitting things to sell at craft fairs, things like felted bags and scarves. Turned out it was difficult to actually make back the money I spent on buying the yarn so I gave that up pretty quickly. I then started selling my patterns and dyeing yarn. I do cringe now when I think of those first few patterns I sold. I've got a long, long way since then. But if it hadn't been for the online knitting community, blogs and online forums, I wouldn't be doing what I do now. And I can't quite believe I'm still blogging after 8 years.

We had a long weekend in the UK this weekend. Weather was a bit mixed. On Saturday we went out to Newquay for the afternoon. I wrote about that on Sunday. Saturday evening I was quilting away on Em's quilt when suddenly my machine jammed and stopped. I couldn't release the fabric. I cut the thread on top and bottom and had to cut the fabric out. Luckily I was at the very beginning of a new quilting line. I'd only done two stitches. When I got the fabric out I noticed the needle had broken. I couldn't see the needle in the fabric/wadding so assumed it had gone down into the machine. Long story made short: Simon helped me take the machine apart. Two lovely Twitter friends tweeted suggestions and advice to me. But after about 2 hours we still couldn't find the needle tip and the machine was still jammed. I assumed it was a mechanical problem and on Sunday after church I took the machine back to Argos. I explained what had happened and they kindly gave me a new machine. I set it all up, picked up my quilt and found the needle tip stuck in the wadding! Couldn't believe it!

At least i know that the needle breaking wasn't the cause of the machine jamming as the needle must have broken when I freed the fabric. So that's a relief. So there must have been a mechanical fault with the machine. I got going again on the quilting and spent most of Sunday afternoon happily quiliting away while Simon and the girls were at the lake sailing. Weather wasn't great, or I would have gone with them and gone cycling.

I'd hoped to finish the quilting yesterday but we were out for much of the day and i had some knitting work to do. 

Yesterday afternoon we popped down to Looe and went for a walk around Hannafore in West Looe and then in to East Looe to meet Vanessa after she finished work. We had a lovely milk shake in the coffe shop, The Rusty Bucket, where she works then walked along the seafront and river. 

I'll leave you with some more pics from yesterday's walk around Looe.

Don't forgot there's 15% off in the shop with the code: mayknit. Valid till end of May. Treat yourself to a little luxury.

I'm off to Cowslip Workshops, a lovely quilting shop nearby, with a friend today. I'll tell you more about that later in the week.

Happy shopping x