Why Pinterest Condensate?

While there are many reasons this blog exists, the final impetus that got me onto Blogger to make it was the urge to condense collections of craft-related Pinterest pins down to their essence to increase the likelihood that I would actually be able to make use of the wisdom contained therein.

While I am perfectly willing to read blog posts once to see what they offer, I don't have much urge to re-read a half-dozen blog posts at the same time on one topic that overlap significantly in their advice just to find the nuggets of insight that each one contains, especially right in the middle of a project that would make that advice relevant. Flow is delicate, and not generally amenable to shifting from making something to lengthy internet reading. That tends to lead to lost afternoons, rather than finished objects. So, I condense them down to their essence, in a form that is likely to be useful, rather than theoretical.

I have actually been doing this for quite a while, but I have discovered that while I love Evernote for keeping track of projects and ideas, I don't care for its format for this purpose, and the relevant Notes have languished for lack of attention. The blog itself works as a great storage setup for these, and having them mixed in with posts and articles I didn't feel the need to cut down (on my Pinterest boards) makes it very likely that I will actually see them when they are relevant, rather than only when I am sorting through my Notes to filter out the cruft.
I adore Pinterest. I love their algorithm, which does a great job of showing me things I actually am interested in based on my previous behavior. I love how pretty the boards are. I love being able to sort things out into as many or as few boards as I feel are appropriate for the content. I love how easy it is to find everything as long as I keep each board trim. And so on.

I do not, however, love that it is missing some key features of a real pinboard. I can't pin anything that doesn't have a picture- no putting notes or concepts up without attaching them to or turning them into a graphic. Which also means I can't pin my own notes or summaries of articles/posts when I keep seeing the same concept over and over, which is one thing a real pinboard is awesome for.

Since I love using Pinterest other than this limitation, I decided to just figure out a way to make my own content easier to pin. Since it had to have a picture, and I couldn't fit a whole lot into a Pin description, I needed a way to connect a significant amount of writing to a picture. I poked at various ways of doing that, from Evernote to Google Drive, but when it comes down to it, those are designed for limited sharing; they break if you try to pin them. Blogging, on the other hand, is entirely meant to be shared far and wide.

Thus, we have the Pinterest Condensate series. A way to combine efficiency of delivery with the power of online pinboards. Awesome.