I’m a fussy reader. I’m a crank about grammar and spelling and am easily aggravated by sloppy thinking. These qualities severely limit my enjoyment of most of what’s available in the blogosphere, but here are some blogs I do read regularly.
Straw Cottage is written by my long-time friend Judy, who can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or window coverings out of some burlap she had laying around. Judy sees a discarded wicker chair and knows that with a little apple green paint, it is destined to become a planter on her patio. She’s like Mac Gyver — she can transform an unlikely collection of materials into something useful and make it look easy.
Another friend, Dan, posts on This Just In! Unlike many of us who barely manage a couple entries a week, Dan writes every other day or so about a variety of topics, many inspired by his broad reading from different news sources. But his interests aren’t limited to current events. He also writes about yoga, as well as personal anecdotes about his family history. He’s a fine photographer (he took the photo of me for this site), and many of his posts are enhanced by his photographs.
Mason-Dixon Knitting and Yarn Harlot are specialty blogs for knitters, but I read them even when I’m out of knitting mode, as I’ve been lately. The women who write these blogs are just plain funny — the fact that they’re collectively so knowledgeable about knitting, spinning, and sometimes quilting is a nice little bonus.
Recently, Judy turned me on to Rock the Silver even though I don’t have any gray hair yet. No, honestly — I don’t! Donna writes about her successes and failures as she attempts to embrace her age and still rock it. She doesn’t take herself too seriously and sometimes posts photos of the disasters. It demonstrates great courage to take pictures for an entry called “Bad Hair Night.”
Margaret and Helen is not for the easily offended or those with conservative political leanings. Margaret, who is purportedly in her 80s, writes to her lifelong friend Helen in this blog and addresses all manner of absurdities, mostly political. She swears like a sailor and pulls no punches. She’s not polite, but for a ranter, she writes pretty well and makes me laugh. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And finally, because I am a Creative Writing geek, I also subscribe to Nuptial Vowels which is devoted to “writing, editing, grammar, language and style.” One of my favorite recent posts from that site is entitled “Spellcheck is the Devil.” Unless you’re a word geek too, you probably won’t understand my enthusiasm; if you care about these things, you’ll feel like you’ve finally found your people.
One last thought. I love RSS feeds (see the sidebar on your left), even though I don’t know what RSS stands for. In practicality, it means I no longer hunt all over the web every day to see if my favorites have posted something new. I’ve set up RSS feeds that link my favorite blogs to my email and automatically deliver new entries as they are posted. This keeps me up-to-date on new postings and frees up lots of time that I can put to better use.
Just yesterday, for instance, I ordered a new compost container for my kitchen…
talent is everywhere……….gonna check out Rock the Silver……there IS silver under all this blonde! Especially with a 13 and 11 1/2 (going on 20).
Thanks! (and she also allows me to publish blog posts, disguised as comments here).
Do you think Margaret and Helen are real people?
I think somebody real is writing Margaret and Helen. If it turns out not to be somebody in her 80s, I still like the blog, so I can live with the uncertainty.
~MY