She sits in a camel-coloured v-neck shirt with an animal print scarf hanging around her neck, an outfit evoking a simple nod to her awareness of current fashion trends.
“Two years ago,” says Ottawa style and design blogger Katharine Cornfield, “I honestly didn’t understand the power of the Internet. I didn’t know how empowering the tools were that were out there.”
While sipping orange pekoe tea in a tea lounge in Ottawa’s Byward Market, Cornfield explains that it was not until she attended a conference at which she heard a presentation by social media expert Mitch Joel that she embraced the Internet.
“He blew my mind. In terms of influences, this was like a watershed for me. He said ‘The future is now. It’s not about age, it’s about attitude.’ ”
Cornfield, who describes her résumé as a “dog’s breakfast,” worked in government for 14 years before going to design school and starting her own business.
In 2008, Cornfield made it her New Year’s resolution to join Facebook, and later the same year she started Girl About O-Town, a blog in which she writes about culture, fashion and design in Ottawa.
“It was about learning and stretching my comfort zone. I needed something that was mine, that I had some creative control over,” says Cornfield, who is now also on Twitter.
Before starting her blog, Cornfield says she took six months to think about the design and concept.
“Some people just sign into Blogger, and five minutes later they get started,” says Cornfield, who instead prides herself in putting a lot of thought into the content she posts.
“I want to make sure that I know where I’m going, with a strong vision.”
Girlaboutotown.com gets around 6,000-7,000 hits per month, and traffic to the site is going up, according to the blogger.
Cornfield also attends Algonquin College as a part-time student in the Residential Décor program. She recently launched a new interior design and real estate business with her partner, Malcolm Gibb.
“It’s hard to balance the blog, school, parenting, starting a business, and keeping my house so that neighbours can open the front door and come in without having to push things aside,” she admits.
Nevertheless, Cornfield says she thinks of her blog as a business itself.
“Sometimes I take too long in between posts, sometimes I think I should do more, like generating revenue or finding advertisers, but it’s not a priority. People like it, and that’s enough for me.”
Cornfield says that writing her blog has been a great learning experience, and has forced her to go to events that she wouldn’t normally attend.
“It has been a great way to shift networks,” says Cornfield, who worked on Parliament Hill as a political advisor for eight years, and later in the public service before concluding a 14-year career in government.
“I knew people in government, but I didn’t know anybody else. Now I know that there is a whole parallel universe of people in Ottawa that don’t work for the government,” she chuckles.
Cornfield says writing does not come naturally to her.
“Words do not flow from me. Ideas do, so I’ve cut back on my posts to once or twice a week. I’m embarrassed to say that it takes me a day to write a post. I get writer’s block every time.”
Cornfield is the first to admit that what she writes is not journalism, but is instead a very personal writing style.
“I don’t have to be objective, so I can write about my own perspective,” says Cornfield, who writes about people and things that impress her.
“I write about things that I think I’m the first person to discover. Because I’ve lived in Ottawa my whole life, I see what is new. I like to be the first, but not in a competitive way,” she explains.
But this creative mind is making a name for herself in Ottawa’s blogging, home design and fashion communities, and she shows no signs of slowing down.