I was just reading over on Ysolda’s blog about NaBloPoMo. The idea is to post every day of this month. Obviously I missed posting yesterday, but I remember doing the advent calendar last year during December, and how much fun it was to post stuff everyday, so I will try and stick to that this November. I am also trying to work with a lot of ideas in my life at the moment and it would be good to set myself a target piece of blog writing for every day. Plus, I’ve been thinking alot about what a blog is for and the social aspect of having one, especially since Yarnstorm opened up the whole commenting debate. Many of her readers left very interesting remarks about comments on the commentary post in particular, which gave pause for thought (at least for me) about blogging and the ability to discuss ideas online.

I was interested though, in the Yarnstorm response to people ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ her blog; so much so that I felt compelled to write a response:

‘It seems some people who don’t like the blog keep coming back to it. I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone to like my blog (there are plenty of blogs I don’t like, but I then again I choose not to read them after the first visit), but really, why return even when you know you’ll find something you dislike (and then bother to tell me and the rest of the world)? Why not head straight to the blogs you do like?’ -Yarnstorm

A good question, and one I’ll try and answer as honestly as I can. There are aspects of your blog that I like very much and aspects I really don’t.But I think that having a critical relationship with something is actually more complex than simply liking or not liking it and I read blogs for many reasons beside pleasure.

As an artist dealing with domesticity myself, I have to be aware of the cultural issues surrounding that territory. I need to ask myself about how people feel about domestic space, about what issues resonate with people, about the ways in which my work may/may not be read in reference to other work/popular ideas, and so on. This means that when I read a blog, whether I ‘like’ it or not is less interesting to me than what kind of readership a blog has, what kind of debates take place on the blog, what kinds of responses appear elsewhere on the Internet or elsewhere in relation to the blog and the issues and ideals epitomised by the blog.

In the case of your blog the vast size of your readership and the strangely vicious media-storm surrounding the publication of your book last year all mean that – within my line of work at least – the phenomenon of Yarnstorm is simply too important a feature of the cultural landscape for me to ignore.

As an artist I recognise that everything I put out there into the world is up for debate. And frankly, I am more grateful for specific, negative comments than for sycophantic ‘it’s great’ remarks, which tell me nothing about how I can improve the quality of what I am doing. I am continually wondering how we can develop a critical language that will allow us to explore the meaning of things BEYOND personal taste and beyond mud-slinging (which, sadly, we all get our share of at times and you more than most because of your blog’s popularity)

I imagine that I am not alone in being someone who reads Yarnstorm with ambivalence re: ‘liking’ or ‘not liking’ your work. But I think I can assume that everyone who reads Yarnstorm has some kind of interest in what you are doing, and that this is the outcome or inevitability of your highly visible presence online and in the media.

I have been fascinated by the whole comments/no comments debate sparked by your commentary post, and I was grateful to you in fact for opening up that important debate, since you got a lot of feedback on that point and it made for very instructive reading.

And I agree with you that while criticism, commentary and engagement are something to be aware of, they shouldn’t entirely steer the direction of one’s work. So it was very interesting to read your feelings about the influence (negative/positive) of people’s remarks on your work.

But none of us are making things in a vacuum; so while you must get on with and continue with what you are doing in your fashion, so must I in mine. Because I am interested in our imaginative relationship with the everyday spaces that we live in, and because I knit and bake regularly, and because my PhD title has the word ‘Domestic’ in it, this means that I must engage with what you are doing.

If I only considered the value of things I ‘liked’ when analysing the context for my work, then I would be missing out on many of the important and stimulating ideas which have been raised in part by the public’s reaction to Yarnstorm.

So I continue to read your blog with great interest, and to value your presence on the cultural landscape. And I reserve the right to do this on my own terms.