Thinking Blogger Award

My friend Gerrie has tagged me for a "Thinking Blogger" award. This is an idea that was started here and involves nothing more than identifying 5 blogs that make you think, writing a blog entry about them and passing along to each of them the opportunity to tag another 5 and so on. (OK, OK, it's a meme, and normally I don't do memes, but...) So the blogosphere is currently being littered with these awards! However, that fact does not diminish my pleasure in being tagged and named by Gerrie as one of her favorite blogs. Hers is certainly one of my favorites, but I won't tag her since she has already been tagged.

Here are my choices:

Deborah's Journal
I enjoy Deborah's posts of the great things she does with her kids, as well as her artistic endeavors. She typifies a certain kind of young Mom, who is devoted to her family, but continues to nurture her own creativity. She has recently self-published a small book that she is selling, along with some of her artwork on a new web site. I admire her entrepeneurial spirit and her easy-going writing style.

Kristin LaFlamme
Like Deborah, Kristin is the mother of young children who is also nurturing a family life while keeping her own creative fires burning. Kristin's quilts are simply wonderful and I look forward to seeing each new creation, but equally enjoy the posts about their life, as a military family, in Germany.

Both Kristin and Deborah make me think of myself at their ages. I spent late nights working on art and sewing, after my children were in bed. I sold my artwork at art festivals and taught occasional classes, but worked really in isolation for the most part. What a difference the internet and blogs and online communities have made! I would have been in heaven, at that point in my life, to have the kind of connections the internet provides.

Sandy Donabed
Sandy is a quiltart pioneer and I have long admired her work. I love her blog because it does make me think and it makes me laugh and it makes me wish she was my best friend and we could shop for shoes together and have two glasses of wine with lunch at some chi-chi new restaurant in the art gallery district.

June Underwood
I need to give credit to June's husband, Jerry, as well. The two of them trade off days on the blog. And they never miss a day! I can count on going to their blog every single morning and finding something beautiful, or quirky or thought-provoking.

3191
This is a new favorite. Two young women, one in Portland, Oregon, one in Portland, Maine, (which are 3191 miles apart, thus the name) post a photo each morning, which are posted side by side without comments. They are not only glimpses into very private lives and everyday images beautifully captured, the interplay between the two photos, taken independently without any effort to coordinate colors or subjects, becomes eerily coincidental or quirkily compatible in very unnexpected ways.

So, those are my picks. I could have added a dozen more easily.