When I cleaned up my blog format a few weeks (or was it months?) ago, one of the things I pulled out of the sidebar was my enormous blogroll - not for a lack of wanting to support fellow bloggers, but because it had become massive and unwieldy (not to mention outdated with sadly abandoned blogs) and I thought I wanted to review and organize it in a more useful format. Which, like everything in my life, is taking about sixteen times as long to accomplish as originally intended.
A couple of readers lamented at the time that they had found the list useful in their own exploration and discovery, and it occured to me that it might be interesting to integrate some of my own review process with a series of blog posts. I don't know that I'll get through every single blog on my roll in this fashion, but I thought it might be fun to post about a few of them every week that particularly inspire me, and I'd love to hear about your own discoveries and inspirations along the way. My collection process has been more than a little haphazard - there are large gaps in the continuity between blogs, Twitter, and Ravelry, and I still run across people whom I correspond with via email whose blogs, tweets, etc. I have completely missed picking up. Twitter now has Follow Friday, so I thought I'd try for Fridays in my own project.... perhaps not every single Friday, but most.
Enough preamble.... here's some blogs that challenge me to think deeply about what I do:
Abigail Doan is a writer and artist who posts about a variety of textile artists, with a particular emphasis on environmental art, sustainability, and the role of individual belief and creativity (as opposed to business jargon and legislation) in eco-fashion.
Red Thread Studio is written by Elaine Lipson, a writer and textile artist who is passionate about Slow Cloth, a textile concept inspired by the Slow Food movement, and dedicated to the promotion and revival of qualities such as mastery, patience, process, tradition, and mindfulness in the fibre and textile world.
Existential Neighbourhood is written by Jane Dunnewold, whose book Complex Cloth became the bible for textile surface design (and has just released a new volume, entitled Art Cloth) Her blog takes an insightful look at the creative process, particularly as it reflects a search for meaning and understanding.
Abby Franquemont, whom I am sure is no stranger to any of you, but whose passionate post on the importance of retaining core "making" skills in a civilized society still resonates with a resounding Yes to the gut belief that the creation of textiles by hand is so much more than idle entertainment.
There's some very nourishing food for thought in these blogs - what sites nourish you?
