One of my favorite things about blogging comes from the ability to look back on my life and creative works. My first blog was also focused on knitting and showcased parts of my life over the course of seven years, with the first post published in July 2007 and the last in March 2014.
My life looks so different now. I live in another state. I am divorced and remarried, with my second marriage already entering its fifth year. That’s what a decade of living can bring, I suppose. I chose not to resurrect that past blog, since the author bears little resemblance to who I am today.
But, I do appreciate the part of my journey that this former catalog of my creative pursuits represents, with some aspects explicitly written and others known only by me. There’s something special about capturing the long-lasting hold knitting has had as a hobby, especially when compared to the long list of forgotten crafts that I’ve explored through the years. From craft shows to podcasts and iPod holders (yep, I made those!), the images from my former blog definitely represent a time that feels long ago, both in the output of my knitting needles and the person holding them.
With brightly colored yarn, faux fur, and flowers with beaded centers, the projects certainly reveal the decade’s fashion influence on what I chose to create. Indeed, I happen to recall watching many episodes of Sex and the City while knitting those craft fair items, sometimes while talking to a friend on an old school cordless phone, in fact! These materials and project ideas feel foreign to the aesthetic of 2025 and the new, modernly demure items on my upcoming project list.
My eyes can easily observe the change in trends through the years. For example, I haven’t even considered a faux fur project in at least a decade! And yes, thankfully, my personal sense of style has changed over time too, even if sometimes lagging behind the times or never quite catching up to what’s in fashion. It is natural to take a critical eye to compare my projects to things I would or could make today, a representation of how my style or skills have changed in the years that have passed.
The bigger challenge seems to come from trying to observe the changes in myself, the slow transformation that the years have brought.
Yet, that’s exactly what my knitting also compels me to consider:
How am I growing?
How am I bettering the world around me?
Am I radiating positivity into the space that I’m in?
Scrolling through the images of past projects, I am proud of the joy that radiates from each one. I made gifts for others. I challenged myself with new techniques. I made things that were both useful and unique. These small but mighty qualities of my past projects is a gift as I start blogging again, and reading my former blog increases my awareness of where I’ve been, how I’ve changed, and who I want to be.
So, I’ll keep the time capsule cracked open with a small sample of photos from that time, as cataloged by a former version of myself.
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