In praise of blogrolls

While I haven't figured out how to add one to my blog's template (yet), I love the idea of blogrolls. These lists of other blogs the author finds interesting can be a gold mine, especially for people like me who spend time aimlessly browsing, looking for other interesting sites. But blogrolls are seductive ... you start down one path, and an hour later you've looked at 10 different blogs and have no idea how to get back to the one in the middle that you found most interesting. For example, today I started at dooce.com, my favorite blog. Heather posted some photos there of a doll she received from another blogger, so I followed the link to her site. I wasn't super interested in her site, but I picked one of HER favorite blogs from her blogroll, and I found this:

http://weewonderfuls.typepad.com/wee_wonderfuls/2006/04/heed_my_warning.html


For those of you who are too lazy to follow the link, it's an entry in a blog where the woman talks about a quilting project that went horribly, horribly wrong. I mean, I've screwed up some quilts, but this lady takes the cake. Here's her description of the project, from an earlier post:

How about the whole story in one big long run-on sentence? Make sure that when
you think you're clever and can get all Gee's Bend with the
ubiquitous red shirt section of the thrift store that one, you buy enough shirts
because otherwise you'll run out and end up with half the front pieced with red
gingham sheet you'd picked up for the backing and two, you have a single big
enough piece of batting so you're not basting overlapping bits and pieces of
batting so they don't slide right out of your pillowcase binding and three, you
don't try to combat the 'I wanted to make something beautiful out of thrift and
all I did was make something that looks like it should be discarded at the
thriftstore' effect by attempting a very cool skinny stripe machine quilting
because if you have a sloshy, ill made pillowcased quilt it will pucker and
gather and end up a discarded ball of effort on your craft room floor.

In fact, the quilt turned out so badly that she actually printed advice to other quilters onto pieces of fabric, and then added them to the quilt. It's kind of hard to make out, but this one says "Puckering is not a design feature."



I laughed so hard I cried ... I NEVER would have thought of doing that, but it is SUCH an awesome idea. It fits right in with the "dorky homemade look" advice from Lisa Boyer, a quilter whose style I seem to be unconsciously imitating. Here's a link to her book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1561483516/102-9656163-0868947?v=glance&n=283155

Two of my favorite pieces of advice from Lisa:

"Realize that patterns and templates are only someone’s opinion and should be
loosely translated. Personally, I’ve never thought much of a person who could
only make a triangle with three sides."

and

"Throw away your seam ripper and repeat after me: "Oops. Oh, no one will
notice."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go try to find that site again so I can bookmark it, and then I have to go work on a quilt that a friend commissioned. Luckily, it doesn't involve any triangles, at least not intentionally ...