Happy 6 Months!

I started this little blog 6 months ago this week and thought I’d share a few things with you.

The stats and boring stuff

Number of Posts: 103
Number of Views: 2,089
Number of countries (where people have read my blog): 30
Most popular post: (after the homepage it is a post about my first ever sewn skirt – https://woollyorbit.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/first-ever-skirt/ )
Number of Visitors: 603
Number of likes: 663

Projects

This year I’ve done a variety of crafts, mostly knitting or sewing. I’ve had periods of not doing anything at all, I’ve been ill, I’ve lost my mojo, or just got fed up with a particular project and put it down for a month or two.

So far I have finished:

Knitting

A Neon Fair Isle Bag
Bauble, 3 mini stockings and a toy mouse, using up scraps of free yarn from knitting magazines
Knitted headband
Hand knitted woolly hat
Loom knitted woolly hat
Loom knitted cowl
Finished a Christmas jumper (my first one EVER!) I started late 2020
Done more on my orange jumper, I’m about a quarter of the way finished with the front.

Crochet

Granny Square Shawl
Started Baby Blanket for a friend
Started Christmas Granny Square blanket…will finish nearer December this year as I was only using up yarn

Sewing

2 x zipper bags
Denim Rucksack
Denim Tote Bag
Yellow headband
Yellow skirt
Yellow pj bottoms (still need to redo the waistline)
I cut out the pieces for a practice baby dress, I’ll sew that up in a few weeks – I’m all sewn out for a bit!

Books

Prelude to Foundation
Robots and Empire
The Complete Robot
The Naked Sun
I Will Teach You To Be Rich [spoiler alert: the book did not!]
War and Peace

Cross- stitch

Started a rectangle placemat to use up old threads
Fortune Favours the Bold sampler
Make the Days Count sampler
Birthday card

Miscellaneous

Tall candle and candles in jars to use up wax
Tried out new techniques – Entrelac knitting, changed sewing machine needle, Sewed with Denim, Made pockets – both inner and outer, sewed webbing, used belt buckles, created repeating patterns and had a large sample of a pattern made up on fabric, made my own Procreate brushes
Digital ‘Art’ – figured out Procreate, Photoshop and Canva properly
Joined RedBubble, Medium, Spoonflower, Patreon and all the sites
Joined Etsy as a seller and my digital download shop is coming soon
Joined Amazon as an author and my first book will be coming soon

A Random Waffly Roundup

I had a similar blog a few years ago which I closed down and I realised this year how much I missed writing and posting. I don’t think I follow trends or whatever, I just generally tend to post what I’m doing. Mostly, it’s crafty stuff like knitting, crochet or sewing, with the odd life post.

I try to post a couple of times a week, but if a month goes by with nothing, I won’t apologise for it! Sometimes life happens and that’s that.

Photography is always going to be my downfall, but I’m actually OK with that! I’ll try and take a nice picture, but if I can’t I’m not going to beat myself up about it!

I love to write. I might not be the best writer in the world, but hopefully I can communicate my thoughts in an easy to read way! This blog is mostly about my crafting and my life to a certain extent. Although, since it’s my blog, I reserve the right to talk about whatever I want. That being said, I did start to write on Medium about a different topic as I thought it wasn’t a great fit here (although some people might find it interesting and relevant if they have a small crafty business).

On Medium I write about making Passive Income online, and to be honest I have struggled writing there somewhat. I feel like I have to up my game and the articles, whilst OK, aren’t the best. So, I’m trying to improve my longer form writing over there. The difficulty is trying to write without every article sounding like it’s a listicle – you know, the clickbait sounding ones…3 Things You Didn’t Know You Needed (and they’re not what you expect them to be) or 5 Ways To Make A Living Online With This 1 Thing…

I hate that kind of content…it’s so Buzzfeed-ish (if that doesn’t sound TOO snobbish!). I prefer to just write whatever is in my head and I find it quite hard to organise my thoughts sometimes. Maybe it’s the adding value part of writing for money?

Speaking of money…my best month ever on Medium this month – 6 cents! I’m rich! [Although I haven’t posted much at all over there with being sick for most of June]

And the post that made most of that was this one where I talked about Low/ No Content Books on Amazon:

https://woollyorbit.medium.com/lowlow-content-books-on-amazon-kdp-low-quality-books-acec85abf1aa

I’m using Canva to make Pinterest pins and I’m adding a pins to each article on Medium, which is something I haven’t been doing here. BUT, I’ve started to try and start using affiliate links on this blog, but not all the time as I don’t want to spam everyone. Incidentally, you CAN use affiliate links on a free WordPress site, as long as the site doesn’t exist solely for that purpose and you’re creating content around the links.

Am I getting off topic now? Feel like I am…

So, what’s to come?

The projects I want to finish or at least make a lot of headway with in the next few months are:

Knitted orange jumper
Knitted sock yarn shawl
Crochet Baby blanket
Cast on knitted baby cardigan and entrelac heirloom blanket
cast on pair of knitted socks
Sew together baby dress that I have already cut out the pieces for
Read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (then ALL of the books on my bookshelf will have been read!)

I want to make some bread as I did a bit in the last couple of years, but I’ve got out of the habit lately. And I want to try more vegetarian recipes…I’m NOT a vegetarian not at all. But I think eating one or two veggie meals a week is not only better for my dodgy digestive system but the planet too, so I’m going to try and start cutting out fat and sugar (she says drinking a full fat Coke on the hottest day of the year). So, I want to post a few more recipes on here too.

I also want to use my stashes of, well, everything. I have lots of wool to use, some fabric (although with the week of sewing last week, the drawers are looking a little bit emptier) and other random things like shea butter and ingredients for homemade beauty products, paints, things like that.

I have a leather handbag that is all ready to be saddle stitched together.

I also want to write more often on Medium, have 200 designs on Redbubble, and open my Etsy shop in the next few weeks.

So, there is a lot going on behind the scenes, a lot of plans and most of all dreams. It does seem like I post on here something I want to do and a week later I’m like, Nah! Forget that! I’m doing this instead!

Well, that was the last 6 months, here’s to the next!