5th anniversary = wood (know of any good yarns made of wood?)

Over the weekend I celebrated my five-year blogiversary.

Yes, believe it or not, five years ago this past Saturday, I entered the blogosphere with a post that said simply "Just what the world needs: another knitting blog."

A lot has changed in the five years since I first started writing here. I've tweaked the look of the blog a little, I've started an on-line yarn & fiber business, I've started selling my own patterns, I've written two knitting books, and yet when I look back on all that has happened, the thing I'm most grateful for are the people I've met through the on-line knitting world.

I often say that the ability of the internet to create connections is a magical thing. It helps to erase the constraints of time (I can read this at 6 am when I get up; you can read it at 11 pm after the kids have gone to bed; someone else can read it on their lunch hour or on their Ipad while waiting in line at the DMV). It helps to erase the constraints of space: I've found, much to my delight, that I have readers all over the US and in a bunch of other countries, too. The internet also can help to erase boundaries that we create ourselves: by distilling communication to what's on the page, we don't get bogged down in differences of age or race or religion, and we don't judge each other based on what we look like or how we dress or where we encounter each other.

Over the past five years, I've mellowed a little bit. Once I began really working in the knitting industry, I came to realize how little is accomplished by pointless snark but how much can be done by voicing criticism more kindly. I've come to experience a renewed recognition that there is room in the knitting world for lots of different people, with different goals for their knitting and with different tastes. And I've come to count so many of you out there as friends and colleagues. I've become something of an insider instead of an outsider, which necessarily changes one's take on things.

So let me take this opportunity to, once again, thank you all for reading. Thank you for commenting (because a lot of times, blogging feels like spitting in the wind). Thank you for recommending books for me to read. Thank you for buying my books and yarns and fibers and patterns, which I hope bring you as much joy in using them as I've had in creating them.

And I thank you all for being my friends.