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25 Jun 2007: A Continuation
Right around October of 2005, I came up with the idea for a craft book that people would want to sit down and actually read. There had been a bit of a buzz on the crafty weblogs around that time -- people trying to answer the question we're so often posed: why do you bother? Why go to all the hassle of making things by hand?
Well, a year later, and I'd pulled together The Crafter's Companion, a book that tried to answer exactly that. Seventeen craft bloggers, seventeen different stories, and seventeen patterns. I've been amazed at the positive feedback it's gotten. I had felt that the idea for it was sound enough, of course, but there were all those worries as we launched the book: would people find mistakes in the patterns? Were the photographs good enough? Would anybody BUY it? Each and every time somebody leaves a kind comment about the book, I breathe a sigh of relief.
The problem with putting together a book of bloggers -- the problem with any sort of welcoming community, really -- is that new faces are always popping up. By the time I'd finalized the contributor list for The Crafter's Companion, there were already half a dozen newcomers I wanted to include. There may or may not be a second Crafter's Companion book on the horizon -- I honestly am not sure, and I don't want to simply recreate the book with a different set of contributors. But this blog is a way for me to keep the idea going, to keep it fresh.
But as for the blog, I'm planning on featuring interviews with crafters from our on-line community, asking questions along the same lines as The Crafter's Companion -- why do you craft, where do you get your inspiration? One thing the book taught me was that you can ask those same questions to a hundred different people, and you'll get a hundred different answers.
I'll also be linking to exciting new blogs and crafters as I find them (if there are any you think I should consider, please e-mail me -- remove the asterisk from the address -- and use the subject BLOG SUGGESTION). With any luck, we'll also be able to offer the occasional pattern, and I'm hoping to run a few polls and contests as well.
So I guess that's that. Welcome to the blog -- let's see what happens!
about
The Crafter's Companion came out in the UK in October 2006, bringing together seventeen crafters and asking them why they create. The Crafter's Companion Blog continues the theme, searching out exciting bits of craft from around the world and blogosphere. It is updated by the book's editor, Anna Torborg.