Some Blog Housekeeping

It's overdue . . . and I'm finally get around to cleaning up and updating some things on our blog.

I've decided to take out the thumbnails photos of the blocks we've made in that long left sidebar and create some Quilt Block Index blog posts that will contain photos and links to the directions (and more block photos) for each year of the Block Lotto. I've completed 2009 and 2008 so far and, if you missed them, you can find them here:

Quilt Block Index.

I know, from my experience putting this together so far, that the search engine on about.com isn't that great, so I hope that digging out and adding the links to the patterns will be helpful.

On my wish list for these Index posts is to add links to the photos of tops and quilts made by the winners (or others, inspired by the blocks) which have been posted on the blog. After I've worked my way back to 2002–yikes, sometimes I CANNOT believe I've been doing this for that long–I'll put together a (text) list of all the blocks and when we made them, which will be interesting for me and hopefully will make tracking down something you remember from the past a little easier.

Speaking of tracking things down, I recently added a search box (in the left side bar) that makes it easy to search the blog. I also added the Google Followers gadget (in the right side bar, just under the list of blocks for the month). It's fun to see who is following the block lotto . . . even if they never play.

Another thing on my blog housekeeping list it to review the authors on the blog and remove those that haven't participated in the block lotto in a long while. There is a finite limit on the number of authors allowed and, while we still have quite a bit of room to grow, you never know . . . we might become wildly popular in 2010 ;-)

I'm also taking care of some small things, as I encounter them, like cleaning up tags and fixing some dates–when I moved from one time zone to another, blogger decided to change the date/time on all old posts to reflect my new local time. That means that some "first of the month" posts now appear to have been posted the night before. It bugs me, if no one else ;-)

Happy New Years everyone. I'm enjoying a sunny morning in Dallas and I hope that wherever you are, you are having a fabulous first day of the new decade.