How do you follow?

I follow a lot of blogs.  I mean A LOT of blogs (like 200 or so).  I don't read them all every day.  But I read/scan MOST of them everyday.  But, I have my own methods of following.

Usually, I follow using my FEEDs button in Internet Explorer.  I love FEEDS.  I love to see the title of the blog in bold and click on the blogs I want to read first.



I have my favorite blogs - do you?  I have 2 or 3 that I click on before ANY others if I see they are bolded in my feeds list.

I follow blogs mostly about crafts - how about you?  I follow a TON of sewing/quilting blogs because there seem to be a lot of those out there.  Most of them overwhelm me a little bit because I'm such a beginner in the areas of quilting and sewing.  I am amazed and fascinated by the sewing and quilting talents of those I follow.  Really, there are some gals out there who can seriously sew and they astound me.  A few of my favorites in the sewing/quilting category are:

 Faith at Fresh Lemons Modern Quilts,

Jess at Craftiness is Not Optional,

Katie at Swim Bike Quilt,
I also follow a lot of blogs about crochet.  I tend to look for crochet blog updates BEFORE I move on to the quilting and sewing ones.  I find that I'm more apt to see an idea from a crochet blog and act on it because I'm more confident of my crochet skills than my sewing skills.

My MOST favorite crochet blog is ATTIC24  I wouldn't be surprised if that weren't the case for many, many crochet followers. 
Attic24 is written by Lucy from the UK. 

She's just lovely.  Getting to meet Lucy in person would be like winning the lottery for me. 

Other crochet blogs I love are Crochet with Raymond, LemondeSucrette, Sarah London's Hip to Hook, and Bunny Mummy.

I also follow a few blogs about gardening, several about UPcycling and such.  One I really like is Blue Velvet Chair.

And, a few others are blogs more like mine which covers a mishmash of crafts and day to day musings.  A few of my favorites in the MishMash category are Day to Day written by Melissa Goodsell in Tasmania and Sew Many Ways written by Karen in New England, US. I also like Maureen Cracknell Handmade and Betz White.

I read them so often I feel like I know them which is really weird because none of my favorite bloggers whose lives I enter daily have a clue who I am but I do hang on their words and look forward to just hearing about their days - it's really weird.

I also follow a few blogs about scrapbooking.  Since I am a professional photo organizer, it's right up my alley.  My favorite is Pixels2Pages.  The pixies at P2P post something new EVERY day and provide the most awesome training on the Creative Memories digital scrapbook software called StoryBook Creator - my all time favorite digital scrapbooking software.  P2P has a free portion of their website/blog and a subscription portion.  I'm a subscriber and I plan to continue as a paid subscriber.

Humorously enough, I also follow a few blogs because I think their quilt designs and fabric choices are SO BAD.  I keep them in my blog list more out of amazement than anything...maybe humor, maybe what NOT to do...I don't know but I DO keep them in my list.  I will DEFINITELY not name those blogs.

The blogs I've listed are just a smattering of the ones I truly enjoy - I'll have to feature some other of my favorite blogs in future posts so you can read and enjoy them as well!

I do try to become a FOLLOWER of blogs.  Though I'm more likely to add them to my RSS feeds than to click on the public follower button. 

When I opt do use the public follower button, those blogs DO show up in my Blogger profile - but I don't usually go to Blogger to read the blogs

I definitely try to publicly follow blogs of those blog authors who don't have many followers in their list - to show support and encouragement to them and to hope they will keep at it.

So I'm curious - how and why and what do you do to follow blogs.  What types do you follow - what do you like and dislike about blogs?   How do you read the blogs?  How often do you visit new blog posts?

I like it when bloggers, have a photo of themselves, tell me a little bit about them, show where they are from, give little windows into their homelife, post often, use clear photos, provide tutorials and free patterns, make it easy for me to join their site, allow RSS feeds, have labels and categories so I can find things, offer a search button on their site, use a google translator gadget when they aren't in English (something I need to add to my own site for non-English readers), and respond to reader comments.

I don't like it when bloggers have blogs that are hard to navigate and use bad photos.  I don't like it when I can't see their photo or know where they are from.  I don't like music to play when I open a blog.  Karen from Sew Many Ways did a post about what she liked and didn't like in a blog.  Go here to see it.  I was right on the same page with most all of what she said.

I'd love to hear back from you about HOW you FOLLOW.