Drum Roll Please . . .

For Emily.

In April 2007, within a few days of my starting this blog, Emily posted a comment.  She’s English, was living in Birmingham and I subsequently discovered she was coming out to Sydney for a year with her partner, Clare.  So in 2008 we met and that was the beginning of a great friendship with a terrific couple of women.

Emily and Clare returned to England at the beginning of 2009 but we met up when I visited Bristol later that year.  Quite coincidentally, good friends in Bristol know Emily’s family and they are near-neighbours, so we all got together.  Then this year I went back when my mother died and it was wonderful having Emily at the end of the phone, and she and Clare also travelled a fair way to see me one day. 

So it’s great that she posted the 2000th comment on my blog (AND the 2001st – she was catching up after having been away).  Your gift will be on its way to you in the next couple of weeks, Em.

And the other prize?  That’s for the person who’s posted the most comments here and, strangely Meg, it’s not my sister, who came in second (you’ll have to lift your game, Judith). Emily is 3rd, incidentally.

The prize goes to Lynne whose first comment was my 17th and who has been around ever since.   She’s another knitting friend I made through the blog but have also met in “real life” a number of times. 

I started this blog for all sorts of reasons but making friends wasn’t one of them.  I now think it was one of my better decisions as I have a number of ‘flesh and blood’ friends (as opposed to Facebook-type friends) that I wouldn’t have met if Pompom hadn’t existed. 

Thanks to all of you but particularly to Emily and Lynne (and Judith, of course, who also posted the 1999th comment).