I think that, with a week’s worth of content under her belt, it’s now time to point out that my mother has joined the world of weblogging. (I can honestly say that that’s a phrase I never thought I’d be saying.) Her site, Paper and Threads, is devoted to her drawing and quilting (hence the title), and I couldn’t be happier to see her taking to the medium like a fish to water.

A bit of backstory: a few months ago (not long after she learned about my site), my mom sent me a link to a weblog run by Danny Gregory. Gregory is the author of Everyday Matters, a part-journal, part-sketchbook that describes how he recovered from his wife’s tragic accident by wandering the streets of New York and drawing. Gregory’s website has become an adjunct of sorts to his book, and has even inspired a Yahoo Group in which participants discuss drawing and even engage in weekly challenges. For a while, a lot of the members were using Flickr to upload their drawings, but when the folks behind Flickr began enforcing a photos-only policy, people found themselves without a home for their artwork. Soon thereafter, my mom asked me if I could help her work out a solution, and it didn’t take long to realize that that solution was a Movable Type site of her very own!

The funny thing about all of this is that it doesn’t feel like it’s been all that long since she turned to me in the car and said, “OK, now tell me all about this internet thing.” We quickly found our way to a local Chinese restaurant, and I spent the better part of the next two hours explaining the web, email, and the general mechanisms that make the internet function. (Of course, sitting down and doing the math, I just realized that that was in either 1995 or 1996 — so about a decade ago!) Over the intervening years, she’s come to understand a ton about the online world, but when I started this site back in 1999, there isn’t a chance in hell I’d have guessed that she would eventually embrace the medium. How far things have come!