This blog has changed a bit, certainly because I have changed a bit myself (having moved from one city to another, among other things). I had grown quite tired of the former design (the enigmatic and inquisitive Miss Dior by René Gruau), so it had to go (altough René Gruau is still there, as you can see). There were more in-depth modifications, among them :
– Phew! The blog is now really bilingual, with separated English and French versions. I was never pleased with my solution, which consisted in writing the English translation of my post right below the French text. It took a lot of work, since I had to duplicate and alter every single post, but now I hope it’s more comfortable this way, especially for you, my English-speaking readers who had to do with “your” version below and some titles in a foreign language. No more of that. This being said, feel free to hop on the French version to brush up your French, or to point at any spelling or grammar mistake, since English is not my mother tongue! On a more technical point, this altered the rss feed, so you might need to update you subscription.
– I got a new design, too. I’m not a graphic designer at all, so this part was a bit frustrating. I’m still dreaming of a lovely neat design adorned with custom illustrations such as Candice’s blog, of or a pretty design with fancy widgets such as Juliette’s. But reading Marie Guillaumet’s posts about web design (there’s a long list of links in the French version of this article, but I’m afraid they’re all in French), confirmed that this kind of work requires skills, talents, time, or, when you don’t have all three of them… money! But I happen to be saving for my dream sewing machine… So I had to do it all by myself, and learnt some stuff in the process. I’m still struggling with some parts, but all in all, I now have a clean design that’s compatible with the pictures and illustrations featured on my blog, and I found a few motivation to write here. Not bad!
– Finally, I took some time to think of Carlotta Stermaria and its purpose. Its original baseline, “style(s) files”, states that I never saw it as a blog dealing only about sewing, yet sewing is definitely what attracts most of my readers. I studied marketing and I know that it would be better, in order to appeal to a larger audience, to talk about fewer subject and to make it a sewing blog, but… I really don’t want to! I know my quirky thoughts about the Donkey skin complex or Koromogae aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, but they have their place on this blog nonetheless. What’s worse, I’d like to write about even more things in the future! Then I realized that some of my favorite blogs deal with many different subjects, and made my peace with this. Now expect some posts about style and sewing, but also ukulele, travels, etc.
This being said, if any of you readers have faced a similar kind of “blogging crisis”, please share! I’d very much like to read about it.
