Toesocks

The idea for Toesocks came to me in the summer of 2009. I was in the middle of a move, living in a tiny apartment with only my dad's laptop for entertainment. Before Toesocks, I ran a little site called Circle City Petz, but I had started it in fifth grade and was, quite frankly, tired of it. CCP was gracefully retired and I began to dream about a new website. I liked the name Toesocks not only because of its cute, kitschy quality, but because of my slightly ridiculous love for socks of all kinds. So, I thought and I planned, but nothing ever came of it because about two days later my dad's laptop crashed and I was without petz again.

Months passed again before I even thought about making a website. Finally, over Thanksgiving break, I was sick and bored and decided to put my spare time to good use. If this were a movie, we'd stop and have a montage with pump-it-up music and clips of me muttering swearwords under my breath and singing a song about HTML (♫ "< br> < br>, the youth of a nation~" ♫). On November 28, I finally registered my domain name with Webs.com, and Toesocks was born.

After many, many years with a free web host, I decided it was time to put on my big girl pants and buy a domain name of my own. Why cuddle-fish.net? Well, I do love me some cephalopods! Plus, I think it's a fun play on words, perfect for an aspiring zoologist, and it's not Petz-specific, which means if later on I want to host a professional website, I can do so with the same domain.

That brings us to where we are now, version seven of Toesocks: Scrapbook! I loved the molluscs in the previous layout, but it was a little dark and I was in the mood for something lighter. I started to come back into the PC in part because of the loss of our dog, Holly. I found comfort in the everlasting nature of petz, and I wanted to commemorate the special pets I've loved in my life. I didn't want it to be bleak, but rather a celebration of their lives and the impact they had on mine. Some of them have petz versions, but they all live forever in my memories. The backgrounds came from Subtle Patterns, Missesglass, and Sulyland. The vector elements are from sweetpoisonresources, gapystock, and noema13. Toesocks is made with a nine-year-old Macbook, GIMP, and a lot of patience.

Version 1, "Snow Day"
I was so proud of this layout! :) I made it with BlueVoda, and it was very different from anything I'd done before.

Version 2, "Beach Bum"
Sadly my screenshot of this layout was lost when Webs.com went down! It was very simple, with beachy graphics and a yellow and blue colorscheme.


Version 3, "Spring Breeze"
I mostly made this layout because v2 had been up for so long. It was pretty basic, but I liked how the navigation looked.


Version 4, "Sunny Day"
I loved this layout! It was a great colorscheme and had a nice nostalgic feel to it.


Version 5, "Color Craze"
I didn't care for this layout at all, and only put it up because I thought v4 had been up for too long. I replaced it very quickly.


Version 6, "Cuddle Fish"
My first layout on my own domain! I was super proud of this one. The banner showed a different mollusc every time the page loaded. Honestly the only reason I changed it was because I thought it was a little dark.

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