Because of all the problems I have had recently with photos disappearing from this blog, I have now started a new blog on Wordpress. You can find it here.
I shall continue to work on replacing the missing photos on this blog, and hope that they will be visible.
The new Wordpress blog is a work in progress. Please bear with me during this difficult interim period.
I am sorry that people are still unable to see my photos. I am in the process of moving my blog over to Wordpress, and I have reposted this post on there, and you can see it here, and comment there if you like.
This week, on and off, I’ve been working on the embroidered embellishments for my new felt slippers.
When I bought them, my first thought was that they were crying out for embellishment a la Shosh!
I began by cutting out some flowers and leaves by hand, from my large stash of felt pieces. You can see the little paper patterns I made, bottom left by the scissors.
I wanted to cut a lot of small circles, and searched online for the best method for this. Most people recommended using dies but I haven’t got any small circles and wondered if I could use my circle punches instead. Nobody recommended this and said it wouldn’t work! I know from past experience, trying to cut a piece of Tyvek with a punch once, that it jammed the punch. Thinking about it, though, I thought that if I sandwiched each piece of felt between two layers of freezer paper and ironed it, this might make it firm enough to punch out, and it worked! Some of the pieces were a bit fluffy but it was a simple job to trim that off with small scissors.
You can see that I’ve also got some baking parchment out, to protect the iron or ironing board, and also some kitchen foil. I used the latter to sharpen the punches after use.
A great success, wouldn’t you agree?
Finally, beginning the embroidery.
I made a few from a single layer of felt, and to embroider these, pinned them to a piece of medium weight interfacing which I trimmed off afterwards. For the multi-layered ones I didn’t bother with this.
I am having such fun doing these!
Health Update
This afternoon I have got my appointment with Mr. Daniels, the colorectal surgeon in Exeter, to whom I have been referred by Mr. Pullan, my surgeon at Torbay. I’ll let you know how I got on afterwards. He will decide whether I need further surgery to repair my parastomal hernia, and if so, what is the best way forward.
We are going over early so we can have lunch out together first. My hubby did a reccy of the hospital today while he was in Exeter, and knows where to drop me off for the closest access to the outpatient clinic, which is going to save a lot of time tomorrow.
Blog
As you know from my previous posts, I’ve been having a lot of problems recently with photos on my blog, and it’s just added to my general disillusion with Google. I’ve been on the forum where there has been a discussion going on over the problems Open Live Writer (the software I use for composing my blogs) has been having with Google. Google has changed something and OLW is no longer compatible unless you use a workaround to get photos to publish on your blog, which is a pain. The experts on this open source application have been working hard but realise that what Google has done has made it impossible to make OLW work as it used to. Several people on the forum were saying they were suspicious that eventually Google would pull he plug on Blogger altogether; some decided to move over to Wordpress, so I started to give this some thought myself.
In the past, I’ve always been put off because I didn’t like the look of Wordpress, and thought it was all too much work anyway, but having investigated it in more depth, I find that it is more customisable than I’d realised, and a far more professional platform with a lot more versatility. I have decided to go for the paid version (and managed to get a hefty discount from someone whose Youtube tutorials I have been following) and it’s not really too expensive. I also got a book on Amazon and am working my way through that. It’s taking a long time and I’m covering a lot of new ground and feeling my way with computing stuff I’ve never done before, but I’m getting there gradually.
I have heard that transferring all the content from a Blogger blog over to Wordpress doesn’t always work that well, so I’ve decided just to start the new blog, but to keep the old one up with links between the two. It’s a good opportunity to do some housekeeping anyway. I shall continue to work on replacing the missing photos on this current blog so that it is complete.
The new blog isn’t ready for use yet, but hopefully by next week I shall be on my new blog! I’m now quite excited about it, and once I’ve finished putting all this work into it, it should be a much smoother experience. Once I am using it, it will obviously continue to be a work in progress as I discover more refinements.
The more time I spend on this, the more I realise how clunky Blogger is, and I think I shall be glad in the end that I took courage in both hands and went for this!
I would be very interested to hear the experiences of anyone else reading this, who uses Wordpress – which version they use (.com or .org), and their experiences setting it up.
No kitty photos this week – they’ve been doing the usual stuff, sleeping, eating, and playing in the garden under my hubby’s watchful eye.
Here’s a kitty funny for you.
Edit: I am afraid I am still having problems with photos. No need to comment if you can’t see them. I am working on the problem and hopefully you will be able to see at least some of them. I can get them to appear, but they disappear again…
Share
I think I may have sorted the problem of my non-appearing photos – I had tried viewing my blog after logging out of my Google account and lo and behold, the photos were no longer visible to me along with everyone else, and since they were visible when I was logged in, I thought long and hard about that and wondered if it was a “share” issue on Google Photos. After making them “shared,” I logged out again and yes, they were visible to me. So please let me know if they are visible this week, and if they are, please scroll back to last week’s posts and you should be able to see the photos there as well.
As for all my disappearing photos since the demise of Google+, I am trying to work on two posts per day on average, and so far, working backwards, I have got back to June of last year, so it’s not going too badly.
Foot
Well, at least, footwear.
When we went shopping in Totnes last week I bought some gorgeous new felt slippers with really fun tops with felt balls on them.
They are quirky and fun and everybody says they are very “me”! My first thought was what fun it would be to embellish them! Having done my striped scarf with embroidered felt balls and other embellishments:
I thought I could do something similar with the slippers.
I have started cutting out some simple flower and leaf shapes from my large stash of felt.
Unlike with the scarf, I want the flowers and leaves to be flush with the surface of the slippers, rather than being 3-D. I am planning to do some wool embroidery on them and then stitch them to the slippers, and maybe add some embroidered stems, depending on how they look. The felt balls dangling from the tops of the slippers will have embroidery added to them.
Next time we go to Totnes I shall have to take the slippers back to the shop where I got them and show them what I’ve done!!
Mouth
Not so pleasant. I’d had the permanent filling put in my cracked wisdom tooth last Thursday and all was well, although it was a bit painful on and off when I bit down on it. My hubby said this was normal and he often got this for a few days after having had a filling (he has far more than I do so his is the voice of experience). It was pretty bad on Sunday and I was worried about it. Then at tea time on Sunday I thought part of another filling had broken off so my hubby rang on Monday and made an appointment for me for yesterday lunch time.
When I got there the dentist agreed with my hubby about teeth often being a bit sore for a few days afterwards, and then he looked at the other tooth and said the whole filling had come out! He fixed it then and there but it was a lot worse than the wisdom tooth one and the whole thing was pretty stressful. I had loads of local anaesthetic and my mouth didn’t come back to normal until tea time, and it’s been hurting since then, even though it didn’t hurt after the old filling came out. Hopefully it will settle down in a few days. I do hate going to the dentist and consider I’ve had more than my “fill” (sorreee) of it recently!
Our dentist is so lovely – he’s really friendly and knows what a wimp I am and always tries to put me at my ease (impossible) but we usually manage to have quite a laugh once the horrid part is done! He was very amused once when I told him I’d rather have 6 months of chemo than come and see him! Today he said everybody hated him and he had no friends because he was a dentist (which I don’t believe as he’s really nice and friendly!) and he said it was on a par with traffic wardens and tax inspectors. He then asked me, “What do you call 80 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” I hadn’t a clue. Answer: “A good start.” Lol!!! (I have to agree – they charged us an arm and a leg, and possibly a mouthful of teeth, to wind up Mum’s estate… and it took them over a year.)
Anyway, I hope I don’t have any more tooth problems from now on.
Hospital appointment next Wednesday
I am going to see Mr. Daniels, another colorectal surgeon, at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (RD&E) next week, having been referred by Mr. Pullan, my surgeon at Torbay. He wanted a second opinion on what he calls my “intractable” parastomal hernia, and depending on what Mr. Daniels has to say on the matter, I may need further surgery. I shall be very interested to hear his opinion about it.
Kitties
Lily and Ruby haven’t been doing anything spectacular recently apart from the usual sleeping, eating, the odd tiff, a fair bit of chasing each other around the house – thundering paws above our heads – whoever said cats were silent on their feet? We’ve always had elephants! They’ve been out most days and seem safe without constant supervision now my hubby has fixed the defences, but we don’t let them out unless he’s around, just in case. They have been moulting their winter coats and getting a few fur balls (fluffy Lily especially) and very, very demanding at feeding times!
No new photos recently so here’s one of their baby ones, just to remind you how dinky they were. 5 weeks old, the first time we saw them, the day we claimed them for our own. We got them at 9 weeks, and my goodness, it was hard having to wait those few weeks for them.
Ruby on the left of the picture, Lily on the right. (My hubby in the middle!) I can’t believe how tiny they were – they are really substantial now – great hulking girlies!
Finally, a cat funny for you.
Have a great week, everybody.
