June 5, 2021

The past and the future - following my blog

It's been a long time since I wrote my first tentative blog post in 2009! Would anyone ever read what I wrote? Would anyone even be able to find me in the big wide world of the web?  ... and if they did find me, would they come back and follow my stitching journey?

 This is the Children's interactive toy quilt which had a sneak peak in my very first blog post:

Amazingly, statistics tell me that 88 people actually read my first blog post! The launch a couple of months later of my first free pattern, "What is Love?" table runner, brought in lots of new readers:

I reused the concept of that original free pattern and it was transformed into the "Love Never Fails" wall hanging with removable mini quilts and a bag in which to store them. It is one of my earlier designs but I still love it and the pattern is still available here.


I have been ever so grateful for so many who have continued to read what I share and for the lovely blog friends that I have made along the way. 

Now, enough of the past - what about the future? 
You probably have heard on the grapevine that Google Blogger is discontinuing its email auto-delivery of blog posts from July. 
So that you will continue to receive email notifications of what I have written, I have moved from the soon-to-be defunct Feedburner service to Follow.It. 

You don't need to do a thing - the wonderful people at https://follow.it have been ever so helpful and have done all the hard work of transferring my subscribers and getting everything set up so that you will continue to know when I have something to share.

And on that note, I know that my blog posts have been few and far between of late. Given my new situation, I hope that I will be able to share a little more often in the future. (Look out for the next instalment in the Gentle Gems programme next week!)

Of course, if you are a new reader and would like to follow me, I would love for you to fill in the "Subscribe to my blog" form at the bottom of this page.

Happy stitching!

Val

7 comments:

Little Penpen said...

A nice trip down memory lane. Such pretty projects! I blog to keep a record of what I’m working on, for myself, not really caring if others read or not. I’ve actually thought about turning off comments, so no one feels obligated to respond. 🤣🤣🤣

Shami Immanuel said...

Love all your designs. Will be following you.

Susan said...

I wondered where you were, but given my own issues, I didn't follow up. I'm sorry. I'm so happy to see you posting. Google is starting to act like yahoo!

Christine M said...

Hi Val. I was the same when I first started my blog back in 2009 too. Who would have thought I'd still be blogging 12 years later! Although I don't always comment on blogs as much these days, I do have quick peeks at them.

Nanna Chel said...

Val, I have no idea about what to do as regards Feedburner as I don't really understand what it is in the first place. I guess I will just have to see what happens. Anyway, I don't many comments on my blog these days as I think there is a problem with it loading up quickly and those who start to comment lose it halfway through writing. I have no idea how to fix that but people are reading it anyway so I will keep going although not as regularly. I now keep it as a kind of diary more or less.

LJ said...

Yes, love reading your blog. Keep it up. Thanks, Val.

Susan said...

My blog posting and reading has dropped off lately but I always enjoy popping in to see how you are going.