There may be trouble ahead....

Following the enormous success of my participation in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week this year, I've been stalking the blogosphere for new and interesting ideas to blog. Sadly, I can't do them all, but I thought I'd put together a small list of the ideas I've considered, and what I will be getting up to once my exams are out of the way.

Square a Day in May is a great idea currently ongoing and organised by Melisa over at Hooked on Handmade. They're making thirty 12" crocheted blocks from a set list of free patterns collated by Melisa, to be sewn together on the 31st May into, well, whatever people's imaginations lead them to. I expect lots of afghans and cushion covers to appear in my bloglist by the end of the month!

Unfortunately, with most of my spare time in May sidelined by revision and question practice, I can't take part in this CAL, which is a shame, because I love the idea behind it. Some of the squares chosen are beautiful; some of the finished squares I've seen so far have been fabulous.

Quite clearly, I've missed the boat on this challenge! Hosted by Arlee Bird's Tossing it Out (among others), hundreds of bloggers across the blogosphere got together in April to blog their way through the alphabet. I first spotted this meme halfway through April, on In the Loop. Mindy kept to a crafting theme, in line with her blog, but a quick scan of the hundreds of blogs signed up to Tossing It Out's page show the huge array of blog styles that got involved. I won't even pretend to have read all of them, as that's an insane plan! However, what I have seen has been great.

So I wanted to do it myself. Because it's 26 days, it works for any 30 day month, taking out the Sundays. So I thought I'd schedule it in for June. My A to Z won't be about crafting, though, I thought I would go off on a bit of a tangent and use the challenge as a means of blogging a bit more about myself and my other interests, in the hope of giving all my lovely new followers a bit of a better idea of who I am. I'll try and keep up with my more crafty posts alongside, with WIP Wednesday, FO Friday etc, and my photography challenge.

If anyone wants to join me, you're more than welcome! If blogging the alphabet in a month seems a little insane, let me point you towards The Accidental Knitter.

Charlotte has (quite independantly) decided to blog through the alphabet at a more sedate pace, over the course of 6 months - thats one post a week (nominally Mondays). I can't see that she's posted about it on her blog yet, There's a post on her blog here, but if you're on Ravelry there's also a thread in the Blog Hub forums about it, where you can ask questions and sign up. That starts next week (Monday 9th May).

As if that wasn't enough, the lovely Gingerbread Lady has organised a Day in the Life themed blog posting day for the 6th June. Again, nothing on her blog yet, but there are a couple of threads (here and here) in the Blog Hub about it. The idea behind it is to dedicate a blog post on the 6th June to talking about a typical day in your life. We may all say we visit each others' blogs for the crafts, to ooh and aah over projects and discuss technical things like toe-up sock techniques and the magic loop, but what we really love is the little sneak peeks into our fellow bloggers' lives. It's especially interesting for readers who live in very different countries to get an idea of what it's like to live on the other side of the world. And rather co-incidentally for me, the 6th June just so happens to be day four of my A to Z challenge - D is for "Day in the Life"!!

Marie over at Underground Crafter came up with a great idea for a Blog Hub Yarn Swap, rules here. Basically, it's members of the group swapping single skeins of yarn, blogging about it, and potentially making special projects from the swap yarn and blogging about that too. A good one for anyone with yarn to spare, but since I don't stash, I'm not getting involved in it. But sign up is open til Sunday 8th May, if anyone is interested and hasn't seen it yet!

Last but not least, there is one more in the offering. Blog through a Book, the brainchild of Keri over at When Did I Become A Knitter. Starting in July, we'll be setting ourself the challenge of knitting/crocheting our way through a book/queue of patterns and blogging about it. Thread discussing rules etc is here in the Ravelry forums. Again, too early for a graphic or hosting blog post, but one for the diary! Keri has now posted about the challenge, and is in the process of setting up a linky to sign up for it here.

Plenty to think about!