Spring Cleaning the Blog

One of my 2010 goals for Sel and Poivre was to sort out my sidebar elements. I've been picking away at them over the past few weeks while they stayed down below the live area to keep their messiness out of sight.

Its been fun testing out the gadgets and tools that are new since the last time I tried this many, many months ago now. Probably most people are familiar with such things but they were new to me so I  thought I might blather on about them a bit...

Google Search

I finally added a Google search bar and put it right at the top. It should be helpful when in an LYS I need to reference a yarn or pattern or source I've used in the past.  (I guess you could use it that way too if you've seen something you like here and are out shopping!) I could do the same thing on Ravelry but my blog goes further back than my Ravelry projects page does. Eventually I may add the early '08 FO's to Ravelry so everything matches. I've found having complete records of my knitting details on line to be very useful.

Followers

I put up a "Followers" box. If you click on any one of them you can check out their blogs (for those followers who have them). Some others seem to have information pages that list even more blogs!

Blog List
I put my own up again after removing it quite a while ago because I was too lazy to keep it current. But I appreciate using the bloglists on other people's blogs and so figured I should at least make that an option on mine. I visit a few more than listed but I didn't add blogs that only post occasionally. I opted for the list to appear in order of who has posted most recently so it should be fun to watch that change.

Another reason I wanted to put it back up is I know the effort posting takes and figured if I'm enjoying someone's regular posts I should not only comment but also link to their blog on mine. I feel better having now taken care of that. (Kind of like putting a thank you note in the mailbox!)

FO Links
I still have a few to add to the FO's from the first few months of '08 but all the FO's since that time now are linked to their original FO post.

What I'm Working On
'Time to get real with this one. If I'm really only working on one then that's all I'm putting up there. Hibernating projects all got the boot and will not be included hence forth.

A Cloud of Labels
The "Labels" list is now formatted as a "cloud" rather than a list. (its waaaaaay down near the bottom of the sidebar.) I've seen that sort of thing elsewhere but I never understood why some words were bigger than others until I saw mine and realized their size relates to the number of posts each word represents. Neat!

So all in all, it wasn't that bad to revisit the details around here. I'll be happier when its all completed but then what isn't like that anyway?

Thanks for dropping by today!
...Oh and thanks to Laurie for her comment on yesterday's post about Number One Son's surfboard looking like Rice Crispy Squares, I had been trying to think of just what it looked like and she nailed it on the head for me while also giving me the inspiration to whip up a pan of them for the after school onslaught!