When I created this website, I wanted a fresh start. A new platform (a blog post is coming about that), a new name, a new look. However, when I was putting the last finishing touches on the current site, I felt a pang of sadness. I was more of a dabbling blogger for the few years I was active, but I still had created content that took some effort, and it was sad to throw it away. So, I decided to import all of my old content into this website as kind of an Archive.
A bit of history
Initially I created a blog on blogger called "Blue Anchor Crafts". In between my history degree and starting my Medical Office Assistant training, I knitted like mad, creating 50+ dolls and selling them to family, friends and acquaintances. I attended a craft fair and sold
a few of my wares. (Last year a donated quite a few of the dolls I had made to a children's charity for christmas.)
Blue Anchor was also my first foray into graphic design and web design. The blog
contained simple graphics, I used Picnik (now Picmonkey) to edit my photos, and
used image mapping to make my links (definitely not responsive!!). It makes me cringe
a little now, but it's the same as looking back at an old sketch book. You need to try to make mistakes and learn.
Design Disaster Management
So, I've tried to clean up some of the content - deleting the worst of the cringe-worthy DIY designed collages etc. There are remaining photos that are a little over-filtered. I seemed to have a love of coloured rounded borders that mystifies me all these years later. (I couldn't help it - I cropped those out where I could!) The photos imported a bit smaller than I'd like, but I think it's worth keeping the posts around, even if they're not perfect.
A lot of the posts from that time are Tuesday Treasures - curated, usually themed lists of goods from Etsy sellers, prefaced with a brief update. It's been kind of fun to read back over the posts as I've been cleaning them up, seeing which year had a cold rainy summer, or remembering my life in the midst of MOA training and how overwhelming that was. Being a bit of a perfectionist, it's healthy for me to include where I've come from, not just where I'm going. I'm sure as my skills evolve, I will always feel slightly contemptuous to what I've created. I'm going to consciously guard against this.
Anyways, that's the history of the archives on this blog. I hope to keep creating fresh content!
