Brave Little Blog: Episode 1

Hello friends! Welcome to the Brave Little Blog! Won’t this be fun!

Approximately one million years ago, before blogs were called blogs, I had an Online Diary. (opendiary.com, anyone?) I wrote in it, on and off, for the better part of a decade and I really loved it. I’ve missed it. And I’ve been meaning to start a proper blog for years. So today is the day. It’s finally happening. Look! I’m doing it!

Now, to be fair, the sorts of things I wrote about back then were drastically different to the kind of content I’ll be offering today. I daresay you’d be quite alarmed if you ever stumbled across that early internet version of me, all Young and Wild and Fancy Free (and, most importantly, completely anonymous) back in the old Open Diary days! I wonder if she still exists somewhere deep in the archives… Please don’t look! But one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that I am now, and have clearly always been, a Shameless Over Sharer.

Most of the time, this blog will be about what I’m knitting, sewing, cooking, eating, growing, or otherwise generally enjoying. But do be warned, sometimes it will be about that Really Annoying Thing that happened, which I will rant about in a long and whiny way (Classic BLB). Sometimes it will be about That Time I Had to Have a Colonoscopy and Other Personal Stories that are not generally fit for mixed company. (I’m sorry, I really struggle with, like, boundaries?) And, while this will not be primarily a Business Blog, from time to time I will obviously also talk about things that I may be making or doing for the shop, and any other relevant Buckaroo Business that comes up.

Until now, the main way I’ve interacted with people on the internet, especially when it comes to BLB, has been on Instagram. I’m not going to go into why or why not Instagram may or may not have become a Soul-Destroying Pit of Despair for small businesses over the past couple of years. (It has. Because corporate greed.) But the fact is that probably 90% of the people who know about me and my little business found me there. Which is great. And so many of the artists, makers, and creators that I now love, I also found on Instagram. So Yay Instagram! (But also, kinda, Boo Instagram, ya know?)

The most fun part of posting on Instagram for me is writing the captions. I don’t know if many people actually read the captions or care about the captions or even like the captions. But I like writing them. And there are always a lovely handful of people who do interact with them, and that’s great. The thing that always makes writing captions less fun, is the word limit. (Also, I have a theory that the longer your captions are, the less Instagram shows your posts. Because who wants to waste time reading my wordy nonsense when you can just keep scrolling though noisy dancy TikTok thingies and ads upon ads of rubbish they’re trying to sell you, right? Ah, sorry, I’m slipping dangerously close to Rant Territory here, aren’t I. Pull it back, Tamsyn!)

Anyway! In an effort to do more of the fun stuff (that is: ranting… I mean, writing) and hopefully to really connect with a few more of you lovely people in a more expansive way, I have decided to start this blog.* I hope you will pop in from time to time and see what I’m up to. I don’t have any set plans or a posting schedule to offer you. I will make no promises about the future. I am literally figuring this whole thing out as I go along. (I am currently writing this in a Word document. At this moment, I don’t even know how to set up a blog! Adventure!) So hopefully you’ll see this one day.

If you are interested in reading this blog and would like to be reminded periodically that it exists, please consider signing up for my newsletter at the bottom of the BLB homepage. I have never sent one. I don’t know how to. But some day I will figure it out and then won’t we all be wildly impressed!

In the meantime, if you happen to have any thoughts, suggestions, or requests straight out of the gate, please do let me know.

Okay! I love you! Happy Blog Day! Bye friends.xo

*Yes, I know I am one hundred years old and if I really wanted to be relevant, I would be starting a YouTube channel, not a Ye Olde Blog. HOWEVER! I have neither the skills, nor the equipment, nor, quite frankly, the emotional fortitude to ever dream of pulling that off. We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got over here, folks. I hope you will forgive me.

xo