Siopa Eile

Well, I must admit, I haven’t being putting a great effort into my blog since Christmas, mainly because of work and other commitments. I have a little more time on my hands now, so I am going to try and reignite my efforts to promote artisan blogging. I got an email from Sara Cullen recently, where she told me about some of the work she and others have been doing as a result of blogging in the knitting and weaving community. Here is what she had to say:

There are a number of knitting groups that meet up around Dublin andkildare, and Cork also, and the main stitch and bitch group alsomaintains an online forum for people to share ideas etc. I have agroup in Celbridge myself, which meets every 2 weeks, and the SnB groupin Dublin meets every 2 weeks also.

She also supplied me with a list of blogs:

www.teaandcakes.net

www.asimpleyarn.net

www.winonaqueen.blogspot.com

http://chicwithstix.blogspot.com/

http://turtleknits.blogspot.com/

http://www.knittingneels.com/

I do like the name Stitch and bitch;-) Even guys are into the knitting apparently8-0

One day I am going to try it, I promise. Great to see,though, that the revolution has started, even if it did so without me;-)

So I’ve put my thinking cap on and come up with a number of ideas for promoting artisan blogging.

Firstly, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am going to do a series of interviews with established Artisan bloggers. I have a very exciting line up of bloggers for this. One of my goals will be to try and find out what they have got out of blogging, both from a personal and business perspective. I’m also going to ask each one for their favourite tip regarding blogging, so it should be well worth tuning into.

One thing, I have realised is that some artisan bloggers, are not overly technical and sometimes struggle in certain areas. If there are any artisan bloggers out there who are looking for technical advice, feel free to email me and I will do my best to help you. I don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to this, so if I can’t come up with a quick answer to your question, I will try, at least, to point you in the right direction.

I am also thinking of setting up a forum for artisan blogging. This could be used for technical advice, marketing advice and also for exchanging goods and arranging partnerships. We saw from the interview with Jenny Vorwaller that a number of partnerships have developed out of her blogging. Obviously, the more community tools that evolve around the artisan blogging movement, the greater the opportunities for these kind of collaborations.

Finally, I plan to create a group blog for 10 artisans who haven’t as yet got a blog presense. It will take me a while to find them, and if you have any suggestions please let me know. I am looking for unique artisans who do high quality work. I will provide the blog free of charge to them, in the hope that this will give further impetus to artisan blogging in Ireland.

I do have one other very substantial idea, which I will reveal at a later date. Please let me know what you think about this and all suggestions are welcome.

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