The new Wood Trails logo

Due to a recent sprained ankle injury I've been laid up in the house healing so I've tried to be as productive as possible. One of those accomplishments was finally getting this blog opened since this is something that I've been wanting to do for years but just never found the time to get it going. Well thanks to my injured ankle that was finally done.

I like Blogspot but they really limit you on the templates for your blog, none of which best communicated who I am but they do give you a LOT of freedom in manipulating the HTML code so I began searching for the answers I needed. Creating and uploading the new logo was the easiest part since I love working with images on my photo editing software and Blogspot does make uploading such an image fairly easy.

The hard part was figuring out how to manipulate the HTML code to widen the posting area of the page from the dreadfully tiny strip that comes with their templates. I began with a Google search using something like "wider Blogspot pages" and after a morning of clicking on different folks solutions I finally got my page right where I wanted it. I can't explain exactly how I did it because at the time I didn't realize that this would be my next posting but it can be done if you have a morning for research and want it bad enough. I tried several things that didn't work then after more research I realized that I had one of Blogspots more complex templates called something like "Rounded 4" which required changing a LOT of HTML coding.

Finally I found the "look" that I feel personalizes my page to more accurately reflect who I am and I'm now quite pleased and I hope y'all like it too. If you too are a risk taker (and I sure am) and want to mess around with manipulating a more personal look for your own page then I highly recommend using Blogspots template backup feature before you start so that if anything goes wrong you can easily get back to where you were.
I thought that you'd like to see the original picture that I used for the woodspirit in the logo. I carved it about a year ago from a fine seasoned chunk of sassafras. You can tell that it's sassafras from that nice reddish colored bark and when green, that sweet ginger like smell. This chunk of wood stands about 13" high and 4-1/2" diameter. Like all woodspirits, this one was also a lot of fun to carve!