20th Anniversary

 I am shocked and excited to say that today is the 20th anniversary of this blog.  It all started on January 31, 2005 with this post:

I've always thought that this would be a strange thing to do -- an online journal -- blog sounds so -- well -- yucky. I've seen so many interesting blogs lately concerning knitting, so I thought that I would give it a try.

I am a multi-tasking kind of individual. I am a mom -- I have two sons -- an eleven year old and an eight year old. I am a wife, a daughter... I am a research associate in endocrinology. I volunteer at my church as the chairman of our Nurture Committee.

I also am creative -- that is, I like to create. My current hobby is knitting. On my needles right now are two scarves. Both are being knitted in farrow rib using Encore bulky yarn -- 75% acrylic and 25% wool. They are for my two sons. One is red and black; the other is forest green and black. I must finish them at the same time in order to please both sons. :)

You can tell from the post that the blog began as a Knitting Blog, and was in fact only about knitting. There were some "life" posts, but it was mainly knitting.  In those 20 years, I've posted 359 times (including this post). 

A few things have happened on the blog since then.

• I learned how to add images to posts.  At the beginning, I was posting the images as separate posts.  
• I was a part of a blog ring, but those have gone away.
• I changed the template to this kind of dreamy blue one with a sailboat you almost can't see.
• As my hobbies expanded, I changed the name to Sandpiper Creates (although the address has always been mom4gj.blogspot.com).
• The new template gave me the ability to add pages, so there is a page for each type of hobby and there is a library page that is linked from my other blog.
• I started a second blog for faith posts (sandpipersthoughts.blogspot.com).
• I am still a mom - but the sons are men now.  I'm still a wife, but our marriage is older (and still wonderful). I work at a different place doing a completely different job; I've been there 16 years.
• There have been some years that I didn't post much, and two years (2007 and 2008) where there were no posts. I made a decision along the way that I wanted to keep the blog up and running. My goal now is two posts a month, which is manageable.  Expect that same schedule this year.

So, here we go, into year 21, full of creativity and life.