Now tell me about your blog...

Recently I had the rare pleasure of coming across a meme full of nosey questions that I REALLY REALLY want to put to other people. So much so, that I have taken it on, despite not being named and shamed, via Charlotte's Web.


1. Do you promote your blog?

I am uncharacteristically shy about telling real-life people that I blog. To many non-bloggers I suspect it sounds ridiculously self-indulgent and a total waste of time. We, the enlightened, know differently of course, but I don't often feel like defending the benefits of blogging.
My husband, on the other hand, has an annoying habit of 'outing' me to people. My in-laws, his work colleagues, goodness only knows who else.
Other than that, my Flickr photos often link back to my blog, but I'm not part of any blog rings or suchlike.


2. How often do you check hits?

More often than I care to admit. I'm obsessed with knowing where people come to visit me from. Some of the google search criteria that lead to me are understandable (too many cobwebs in house), some are tenuous (bad bunny pics) and some are downright bizarre (alpaca cbc chem profile). In my imagination, there is some poor student of veterinary medicine still scratching his head over that one.


3. Do you stick to one topic?

Me me me me me me. Isn't that the core of any blog? No, but seriously, domesticity I guess. For me that's a bit of craft, a bit of cooking, and a slice of family life.


4. Who knows that you have a blog?

A few friends, my family, the folks at my local bookshop and in my book group and all of you of course. Sadly, no people wanting to do magazine spreads on my home, ask my advice on cooking or give me free review copies of craft books seem to have noticed yet.


5. How many blogs do you read?

Far far far too many. I'm trying to cut down, but I'm plagued with guilt about removing a blog from my bloglines subscription (currently standing at 283 feeds). I remember the first time I noticed that the number of subscribers to mine had gone down. I was mortified - what had I said? Was I offensive or just plain dull and untalented? Cue extreme paranoia. So now I fudge the issue by putting blogs I'm not loving quite so much into a 'sacrificed' folder which I try very hard not to read. I am also implementing a little rule of thumb which says that for each new blog I subscribe to an older subscription has to be sacrificed. It's hard - I'm not naturally ruthless.


6. Are you a fast reader?

Yes, thank goodness, given the 283 feed situation. So one of my pet peeves is the folks who have set their feeds up so I only get the first few lines of a post. I then have to click over to the blog to read the post. I hate this, it wastes time. Time I really need to read all my bloody feeds. So have a heart peeps and don't do it!


7. Do you customise your blog or do anything technical?

I can just about manage to crop a photo, make a button work or do a manual link. But I just use a standard template. I figure there are a lot of folks much better at this stuff than I am, so why not take advantage of their expertise! I have wondered about changing my template to something else though. Do you hate the dots? Be honest.


8. Do you blog anonymously?

No. Real name, photos of the kids, the lot. I'm really not worried about child snatchers. If they took Mark, they'd be on the doorstep within the hour begging me to take him back! But in all seriousness, I feel that there is no more danger from my blog than there is from some nutter watching my the boys in the playground. Perhaps if something negative happened to my photos, I'd feel differently, but for now, open it is.


9. To what extent do you censor yourself?

Hugely!! I try to follow the 'If you can't say anything nice...' principle. So consequently, there is plenty I don't say. I'm not sure crafty blogland is really the place to be controversial (although I am intrigued by the soap opera quality of the occasional spats I have followed elsewhere).
I do find though, that purposefully concealing something big from my blog leaves me feeling very uncomfortable. If the blog is not a fairly honest reflection of my life, it feels a bit of a sham. So you do get the 'ugly' sometimes, even if I only tell you to give you a laugh.


10. The best thing about blogging?

There are so many great things: finding like minded chums, always finding someone who can answer a little question I might have, inspiration, making me appreciate the small things more, the fact that I have a record of the last couple of years of my little family's life. But the best is the fact that I watch a lot less crap telly than I used to.


I am uncharacteristically keen to tag people for this. I really really want to know the answers to these questions. Whenever I have had the pleasure of meeting a fellow blogger in real life, these topics always seem to come up in conversation. So, Alicia, Manda, Lynn, Laura, Zoe, Angela, Beki, Simmy, Sally and any other blogger I have ever read (all 283 of you) - I am fascinated to know, so go on, indulge my curiosity.