Ten Years of Blogging! Looking back over the first year.

I've now been blogging for exactly ten years, wow!  That's quite a milestone, isn't it?  It may even make mine one of the longest running embroidery blogs, although I know it's nowhere near the biggest.  My main claim to fame is that I've been going for almost a year longer than Needle'n Thread!!=)  It's worth marking the occasion, I felt, so I decided to create a series of review posts sharing what projects I featured on blog over that year, what else was going on at the time and any other blogging activity, as I have a few other blogs which I play with here and there.

If you look back through the Sew in Love archives for the very first post from 26 June 2005, you won't find it, because I had a bit of a clear out of 'clutter' posts about seven years ago.  I do remember that it was written two days before the surviving first post, had no photos and was just welcoming any readers to where I planned to document my unfinished projects, both textile related and others.

This was the very first finish I shared on blog, along with the finishing up of a cross stitched needlecase for my mum.

This was taken from a photo in one of the Country Bumpkin books ('Embroiderer's Handbook', although it's a project in 'The A_Z of Crewel Embroidery' I believe), and was made into a little cushion for friends' wedding gift.

I was also working pretty hard on this Chinese Junk cross stitch for my hubby for a while during my blog's early days too and proudly showcased the finished piece back in early September '05.

I didn't actually get it framed until last summer, as some of you might remember, but that's for the 'Year 9' post!!!

BTW, sorry about the size of these photos.  They were from the days when you couldn't put decent sized shots on Blogger and so all those I sorted for upload here were made about the size they would appear.  I'm actually using slightly larger ones here from my computer files.

During this first year I carried on doing a lot of the sort of project I'd been doing in the previous 3 years (I started stitching as a regular hobby in late 2002), and that included a good number of pieces of hardanger - cards, bookmarks and even a scatter cushion/pillow cover for an old friend.  I was especially proud of this one as it was a my first large-scale hardanger piece and also the first time I'd made up a cushion cover, complete with zip.  The hardanger panel also needed backing.

In those days, I did all my sewing up by hand and it was, I think, 2011 before I ventured to use the machine for it.

I also started on this piece, but ran into difficulties with it.  I'd got quite a bit further on with it when I realised that I'd mis-counted in the middle and about two-thirds of the work had to come out.  You can actually see many of the 'imprints' on this photo from where the original threads had been.

This photo is from a year or so later when I picked it back up again, but this is how it got left back in mid-November '05.

I also posted about a few stitch and craft shows I'd been to and showcased the stash I'd bought both there and a few mail order hauls. =)

Another project I wrestled with during this first year was the dog thread painting.  This is still the most ambitious piece of stitchery I've ever done, I've yet to top it.  Back then, when I was even less experienced than I feel now, it was over-challenging in the extreme and, once the initial enthusiasm had worn off a couple of weeks after it was started back in around December 2004, I found myself neglecting it wherever possible!!  As you can see from these two photos (how it looked first, in late June 2005 and second, in June 2006) I didn't get much progress made during that firtst blog year.

There were two other major events in our lives that year.  One was my doing a successful treatment programme for CFS/ME and enjoying my first dance in years at Chinese friends' wedding.  This is my old chum, Caleb, with me and me still sporting the hair fringe that I grew out the next year.

The other was the renovation of our home.  We used to live in social housing and the Council had decided to do new bathrooms and kitchens as well as a complete re-wire in each flat.  It took several months to get back to where we wanted to be.  Months?  Years really, as it 2008 before we'd got the whole lot done.  We had to move out during the initial few weeks of work as it was just terrible, with the whole place in turmoil!  How other residents managed to stay in their flats, I can't imagine.  We moved in to mum's for the duration and came back every day to work on the place.

Those are the highlights of my first year of blogging.  A few nice projects, terrible wiring jokes and poorly formatted posts given the limited capabilities of free blogging platforms in those days.  Is there anyone still around who remembers reading any of these things on Sew in Love?  Any long-term readers?

Year 2 coming up tomorrow.... In the meantime, what nicer way to celebrate my tenth blogoversary than to find myself featured in today's Embroidery News newsletter from the 'Inspirations' magazine team? ♥

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015