Yesterday, while driving between Toronto and London, my husband and I were brainstorming new names for my blog. I'll be returning to work soon, and since this blog's purpose was to document my maternity leave, it makes sense to retire it. Also, I hate the name of this blog. I only chose it because I'd already wasted several weeks trying to come up with a name I liked and and I suspected that if I didn't just pick a damn name, my leave would be over before I wrote my first post. I'm glad I picked something, but the name just doesn't work for me, so come end of February, I'm going to retire this blog.
There were we, in the rental car somewhere near Hamilton, DH at the wheel, me with iPad in hand, brainstorming blog names. Being a purist, DH insisted that we brainstorm properly, meaning we were to throw out words without judgement. This is difficult for me, as I'm a judgy McJudgerson. I was scolded a couple times, but more or less succeeded in withholding comment. This is pretty amazing given the doozies DH threw out. I mean, do I strike you as the type of person who would have the words lollipop or sparkles in her blog name? I thought not.
As part of the exercise, I decided to peruse my google reader feeds. This is how I discovered that I am currently following 66 sewing and/or quilting blogs. This doesn't include the 20+ knitting blogs I follow, or the 20+ general craft blogs I follow, or the 20+ mommy blogs I read many of which include writing about crafting with their kids. Nor does it include the various individuals I follow on Pinterest, Flickr or Facebook who craft it up. These are specifically blogs about sewing or quilting. Recall that I began sewing in July of this year, at which time I followed a grand total of zero such blogs. Aside: many of these 66 bloggers also began blogging within the last year. Many are extremely prolific. We sewists and quilters know how to commit, yo!
As this was my first year immersed in the craft blog world, I was not fully prepared for December. You see, come December, craft blogs become ALL CHRISTMAS, ALL THE TIME. There are Christmas mug rug swaps. Christmas tree skirt tutorials. Christmas cookie recipes. Christmas wreath ideas. Christmas ornaments to make with toddlers. Christmas ornaments to make with tweens. Quilted stockings. Gifts for teachers. Gifts for babysitters. Gifts for children, sisters, second cousins once removed.
I am not a Christmas person, although I try not to begrudge those who live for the season. As someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, I generally do my best to tune out commercial Christmas. I avoid malls and mute the commercials on TV (I actually do this year round, but more fervently during the month of December). I find the whole secular holiday season a bit much, what with all the BUY, BUY, BUY. I don't like how people equate Hannukah with Christmas in order to be multi-cultural and/or to try to keep the Jewish kids from feeling left out. I never felt left out as a kid. I felt SUPERIOR. Because I knew Santa Claus didn't exist and all the other kids believed in him. Yeesh. How immature. (My mom made me promise not to tell the other kids in kindergarten what I knew to be true about Santa because that would be mean). Basically, when it comes to Christmas, I just try to get through December without being grinchy.
Having my beloved blogs taken over by Christmas has been annoying.
Well... just for you, how 'bout eight days of Chanuka-related blogging? Are you with me?
ReplyDeleteSara...the whole point is that I don't *want* to blog about the holidays. Although...I did come across this block and could be talked into making and blogging it: http://generationqmagazine.com/2011/12/playdate-a/
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