Welcome to my blog about Home Arts Needlecraft Magazine! I "discovered" this publication about 2 years ago and fell in love with it to the extent that I had to start collecting issues as I ran across them. The magazine began publication with its September, 1909 premier issue, and continued through March, 1941. It has been interesting to follow the changes through the 30 plus years the magazine was published. It is a great source for needlework, fashion, recipes and short stories. Through my journey of sharing my issues online, I hope to discover a pattern of what was popular in different forms of needlecraft over the 3 decades. I hope you enjoy my blog as much as I am (so far!) enjoying posting articles and projects from the issues. Thanks for visiting!

Monday, October 29, 2012

One Small Step...

I'm making progress, at least on organizing my issues.  I got them all in order, culled out my duplicates (I will give them to my sister) and updated my list of issues that I have.  I also played around with starting a spreadsheet to list some of the basics, like price per issue, annual subscription price, number of pages in each issue, and editors/managers listed on the masthead.  Sometime between October, 1915 and January, 1917 (I have a big gap there), the magazine started using colored covers.  When they instutited the covers, they counted the cover as page one, which makes it easy to tell if a cover is missing from a particular issue.  That sure was considerate of them!  I'm also going through issues listing the different articles and their authors.  These will be classified by craft type (crochet, hardanger, etc).  For a time, there were also short stories included in each issue.  These will also be listed in the database.  I think the database will prove very interesting as far as following trends through the life of the magazine.  I'm also looking forward to posting some of the editorials.  It is very interesting to be reading about events being reported as they happened.

I'm still not sure how to put everything on the blog.  Start from my earliest issue and work forward?  One article per blog post? That method would take me close to a month to do each issue if I posted every day.  Wow, that could take a while!  The magazines are too large to scan, so I will have to photograph each page I decide to post.  Hopefully, some I will be able to break down in sections (like the fashion pages) and scan them.  But the covers will have to be photographed.  Don't be too critical of the photos!  I don't have a professional studio to work in. 

Anyhow, I got all my issues sorted (except for the 3 years' worth that I just bought this past weekend - they are in the mail!) and have stored them in my "new to me" antique music cabinet.  The shelves are the perfect size to fit the magazines!

If you know how to use a blog to it's fullest potential and wouldn't mind sharing your knowledge with me, please feel free to leave me input!  I want this blog to be fun AND user-friendly!  Thanks for joining me on my journey!

No comments:

Post a Comment