Swan Stitches is the home of a crafty person. I sew, I knit, I spin, and soon, I hope to be designing as well. I used to have a separate site for my sewing and a site for my knitting, and maintaining two websites is really just too much. What I needed to do was combine my interests, and Swan Stitches is born.

So… why the swans?

Like most things, I come across ideas and solutions by not looking for them. It was the same way for swans. There’s a myriad little connections to me personally, but one of the things I love most about swans is what they represent in cultures across the world. Most cultures see them as beings of the sun, although there are a few that prefer the moon. A swan led the chariot of Aphrodite. Zeus tranformed himself into a swan to seduce Leda. Germanic myths tell the tale of swan-women who shed their plumage and turn into beautiful women. More than the stories, I like the symbolism. Swans represent transformation, acceptance, intuition, sensitivity, grace, and healing. I think those terms describe the world of knitting, spinning, and sewing equally well. Thus, we have Swan Stitches.

Credit where credit is due…

A lot of thanks go out to various people — and none of them knew they were helping me!

First and foremost, every last one of you that uses Internet Explorer should be thanking this man. Without Nathan Rice and his wonderful information, I would have resorted to redirecting IE users to a page that told them to go get Firefox.

Secondly, I would never have made such a beautiful layout (in my humble opinion) without people at DeviantArt who are so good as to let other people use their photographs. I took full advantage of them, and here is where they get a little back. Stock images used for the layout came courtesy of phatpuppy and flynn-the-cat. The 404 image is courtesy of shazza-stock, and the stock brush from syang70. Many thanks!

And last but not least, everyone who has contributed to the codex and forums at WordPress.org, and the makers of WordPress themselves. I would never could have written the blog — just its theme.