Grow Your Blog...

Welcome to all my old and new readers.  I'm taking part in this year's Grow Your Blog Party which is hosted by Vicki at the  2 Bags Full blog.  This is a great event which helps to introduce bloggers to each other.  It worked for me when my blog was still quite new.  I'm hoping to find many more blogs to follow this year.

I have lived in London, UK, all my life and am a very busy person.  I used to work full time in a library until 2011 when my employer decided that making me and 25 other colleagues redundant was part of the solution to the world's economic problems. (It wasn't!!)  Luckily, I was just the right age to take early retirement, so I now work only one day per week in a library and the rest of the week is spent enjoying a new lease of life. 

After a few weeks getting used to being a lady of leisure, I had the brainwave to return to knitting which I used to do many years ago.  I had given away all my knitting needles and didn't have one ball of wool in the house.  I restocked my needles, built up a good collection of wool and the rest is history.

I started my blog at the end of 2012 mainly to record my knitting projects.  I used to have a gardening blog with a total of 6 followers.  I didn't have any higher expectations for my knitting blog, so reaching the dizzy heights of nearly 100 followers has amazed me.  The figure is only approximate as some of my followers use Bloglovin', some use Google Friend Connect, some use Ravelry and some follow me through other blogs.  Blogger has a great "stats" feature which tells me the various countries that my visitors come from.  Most recently, there have been visits from:

• United Kingdom
  United States
  Czech Republic
  Canada
  Romania
  South Africa
  Russia
  China
  India
  France

Previously, there have been visits from Vietnam, Iceland, Australia and many other exotic places.  I find that truly amazing.

If you have come to my blog as a new reader, I would love you to follow me.  I write about knitting, crochet and sewing.  Knitting is my first love and I have been doing it for over 50 years.  I am a competent sewer and occasionally make girls' dresses for charity and tops for myself.  I am teaching myself to crochet and very slowly making some progress.  I still think of myself as a knitter who crochets.

My family work or go to college full time, so I am usually aided and abetted by Fleur:

I don't think one day goes by without me picking up knitting needles or a crochet hook.  I mainly make things for various charities and seem to concentrate on blankets, hats, scarves, and babywear.  I sometimes make things for my family and even for myself, though there is a limit to how many scarves one person needs.

I find that reading other blogs and seeing what other people make is very inspiring.  I have been so inspired that I have made things I never dreamed of a couple of years ago.  I love taking photos of them and showing them off.  Every year I select my best photos and use them in a banner at the top of my blog.

I follow many many blogs and have "met" some lovely, generous, helpful bloggers.   There are some great blogs out there!  My favourites are listed at the top of my home page and also further down the right hand sidebar.  I love reading them and looking at the amazing photos. I love to receive comments, though I can't always think of witty replies!   Let's all have a great party in 2015!