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.
The first of two posts today.
After struggling since Tuesday, with both laptops suddenly deciding I couldn’t publish blog posts from Windows LiveWriter to Blogger, which proved that this wasn’t a Windows 10 issue as I’d originally thought because the old laptop has Win7 on it, I spent some considerable time yesterday, searching for solutions online. Eventually, after reading numerous comments on a forum which contained quite a few useful links, I found a link to this blog, which had a quite excellent step-by-step tutorial on how to resolve this issue.
I am posting about this in some detail, in case there are others out there, tearing their hair in frustration and not knowing where to turn. I hope this post will help someone!
It turns out that recently, Goggle changed the way that people log into their Google accounts, from a one-step to a two-step process (for added security) and this made it incompatible with Windows LiveWriter, Microsoft’s excellent blog post composing software. Thousands of people around the world love this program, as I do, and were endlessly frustrated by the lack of action on both Google’s and Microsoft’s part to resolve the issue – both of the giants were busy blaming each other and sending frustrated customers from one to the other, while issuing airy promises that “action was being taken” and promises that it would be fixed “in a few months’ time,” none of which was any use to the users who required action NOW! There really isn’t an equivalent piece of software that measures up in any way with LiveWriter, and what there is, also experienced the same problem since Google changed its rules, leaving us with only one alternative, to compose our blog posts in Blogger itself. This part of Blogger, I have to say, is total rubbish. The formatting is all over the place, and what you get when you compose the post, is not what appears when you publish it. If you try composing in the LiveWriter html page, and copying and pasting the code into Blogger, none of the pictures are transferred across, and the formatting is again all over the place. Total nightmare.
People were demanding that either Google got its act together and provided us with a decent authoring program attached to Blogger, rendering LiveWriter unnecessary, or that Microsoft honoured its somewhat vague promise of some months ago to release LiveWriter as an open source program, so that the techies out there could get their hands on it and make sure that these problems never arose again – and give us an even better product. Neither of these scenarios looked set to happen any time soon, and we were all left in the lurch.
What I don’t understand is why this didn’t arise in my case much earlier than this, and the only thing I can think of is that starting with Windows 10, it brought it to the forefront, but that doesn’t explain why my old laptop, running Windows 7, also refused to upload blog posts last night.
Anyway, I followed the step-by-step instructions to set up the two-step log-in process introduced by Google, and then added a special password for LiveWriter, which is now permanently attached to it. After I’d done this fix, I tried uploading a test post, and IT WORKED!!
However, when this first happened, immediately after I set up my new laptop with Windows 10, I did some sort of fix – I can’t remember exactly what I did because I tried several things, but I think it was to allow Google to be less secure – something which flagged up a lot of messages from Google, so I set it back to its original state. After this, it wouldn’t work again.
Having read some of the comments following the step-by-step tutorial, where people found that the fix worked to start with, and then reverted to its non-working state again, I am not quite ready to put out the flags just yet. I am hoping this is a permanent fix, until Google decides to change its rules again in its characteristically arrogant and high-handed manner – I am pretty fed up with Google really, because they don’t listen to their users, and they are notorious for publicising our personal info, and they’ve also taken over far too much of the Internet for my liking – if your account goes down, there’s a load of stuff you can’t access until it’s sorted – for instance, Blogger and Youtube. If you try to get help on their so-called “support” pages all you get is multiple choice questions, and if your problem isn’t there, well, you just have to go jump in the lake for all they care. There is no way to contact a real person by email or by phone or whatever, and your only resort is to find some more sensible and generous people on the many forums out there, who have found out how to do things and are prepared to give us the benefit of their wisdom.
Rant over. Let’s hope the wretched thing stays working! I could do without the hassle.
If you want a good laugh at Shoshi’s expense, hop over to the Gutless Bag Lady blog (link at top of RH side bar) and see her glamorous new underwear lol! Now all she’s got to watch out for is that she doesn’t get knocked down by a bus.
I’ve got an exciting new project in progress, and as soon as I hear that it’s OK to do so, I shall be blogging about it.
Meantime, I have got my Zentangle kit out again, and have drawn a few more of the ATC-sized cards for my Zentangle album. I realise that I haven’t updated my Zentangles on my blog or on Flickr and I will need to go through them all to see exactly what is missing, but in the meantime here are some that I am pretty sure are not uploaded, and the ones I drew today.
Kringel was one that I discovered online today, and which I know is going to be a new favourite border tangle. There are lots of variations, and it’s pretty easy to draw too.
Another new favourite is “That C Thing” (I love the name!) which I also discovered today – it’s basically “C” shapes with wiggles on them, and circles to fill in, and the whole thing looks like a joyous bubbling sea, hence my art work! This is a fun tangle and dead easy to draw.
The final new one from today is another really fun one – “Kitty” – again, dead easy – I did this card in a matter of a few minutes. I know Zentangles are not strictly speaking supposed to be representational but I couldn’t resist this one! The others are all ones I did some months ago or even as long ago as last year. I shall be uploading them as individual images once I get organised, and you’ll be able to see them more clearly.
It’s definitely more than high time I got back to tangling. I should have been doing it throughout my cancer journey, for its calming benefits and the lovely feeling of “being in the zone” but somehow it’s taken a back seat lately. It’s definitely something I can do on the recliner with the laptop open beside me for looking up new designs, and eventually I’ll get a whole lot of new and useful material for my album.
I’m definitely feeling better today after my last chemo session – this time (treatment #5) I’ve definitely been worse affected than before, and still can’t shift the horrible sour taste in my mouth. My friend Shaz says that pear drops are good for that, but I told her that would be just replacing one horrible taste with another!! I hate the things! Anyway, apart from that, it’s been the same old effects only more so – devastating fatigue, generally feeling terribly unwell (although not nauseous thank goodness – the meds take care of that), peripheral neuropathy – and this time I noticed a loss of sensation in my feet – and not being able to keep awake. Dreadful brainfog too.
I am going to tell them all this when I see the oncologist on Thursday of next week, and they are always particularly interested in the neuropathy because if you don’t watch out, it can become permanent. I’ve been told we’ve got a bit of leeway as far as the chemo dosage is concerned and they can still reduce it a bit more, so I’m going to ask for that. The increased steroid dose this time seems to have made no difference at all, and with the cumulative effect of the chemo, I’ve definitely been worse this time. At least I’ve now got a clear week to get some things done, and there’s a pile of stuff awaiting my attention in the studio – and I can’t wait to get stuck in!! After this last session being so horrible, and knowing that I’ve still got 3 more to go, I’m beginning to feel pretty frustrated now, because in each cycle there’s really only one week when I feel well enough to do anything. I have to keep reminding myself not to say “still got 3 to go” but instead, “I’ve only got 3 more to go!” which sounds a lot more positive. Words are so powerful, aren’t they. Spoken aloud, they can change one’s whole attitude.
One great thing, Beatrice, our older cat, who seems very sensitive to my chemo and won’t normally come near me, has been all over me these past 2 or 3 days and can’t get enough of me! Very flattering, especially when my hubby’s in the room because those 2 are joined at the heart and she usually runs to him, given the choice! It’s nice to be back in her good graces again, but not sure how long it will last after next Friday when I have chemo #6.
I’ve been busy putting stuff on my new laptop, and this evening had an extremely frustrating evening where nothing seemed to go right. I tried posting my first blog post from the new laptop and it wouldn’t publish, saying it could not connect with the remote server. I tried everything I could think of, and then did a google search for the problem, which came up with several suggestions, none of which seemed to work, but eventually, after trying one of these, and also re-downloading the latest version of Windows LiveWriter (the blog writing software that I use), and then discovering by chance in one of Windows Edge’s (IE replacement with Win10) deeper menus that “use proxy server” was checked, I unchecked it, and suddenly all is well – so I’m not entirely sure what I did to put it right!
I am delighted with the new laptop so far. It came with Win8, and as soon as I started setting it all up, I was asked if I wanted to upgrade to Win10, which I did, but didn’t need the installation file I’d saved on a memory stick from Microsoft for the free upgrade, because it all happened seamlessly as part of the set-up process, and I never even had to encounter the dreaded Win8 for even a second! I can’t tell a lot of difference between 10 and 7, except for a slight change in the start menu, and a cleaner, crisper looking interface which I really like. It seems to function in the same way (mostly!) and so far all my software is working OK without any hitches. It should run a lot more efficiently, and certainly, with the added power onboard, this laptop is staying remarkably cool and I don’t think I shall need the laptop cooler mat. It’s also very quiet, even when the fan is running.
When I first got going, I was aware that there was a pre-installed free subscription to a paid-for anti-virus program which came with HP, so I didn’t bother to install my free AVG anti-virus which I’ve used very satisfactorily for several years now. As soon as I got on the Internet, weird web pages started appearing without my say so, and I started getting some unusual pop-ups in my notification area, and before I knew it, I was absolutely swamped with malware, and spent many hours wrestling with this – as soon as I got rid of any of it, more started appearing! I felt as if I was under a sustained attack by locusts, or wrestling with a very large and bad-tempered octopus, until I thought “Blow this for a lark” and bunged AVG on asap, and after that I was able to purge the system of most of the rubbish, and with a bit of online help, delve deeper into Firefox and my control panel and uninstall the rest. Some of the Internet settings seem to have been upset – whether by this or because of some default settings (which gave rise to my Blogger problems this evening) I don’t know, but I think I’ve got it all sorted out at last! A slightly rocky journey, but we’re on the way now.
Rather than just dumping all my data onto the new laptop’s hard drive, I’m taking this opportunity for some serious spring (late summer?) cleaning and getting rid of a lot of old rubbish, converting a lot of photos from png format to jpg (which reduces the size to less than half) and organising my now considerable collection of photos and videos into a more rational system (there really wasn’t much of a system before!) so that I can actually find things now! It’s a long job and I’ve so far only scratched the surface, but this is an ongoing job that I can cope with when I’m dealing with chemo effects, once the most devastating stage is behind me in each cycle.
It’s a fun new toy, and is running a LOT faster than the old laptop which really is on its last legs now, with various bits of hardware starting to fail (e.g. the DVD drive). It’s many years old now, and was 2nd hand when I got it, so high time for a replacement. It’s still working, so I’ll probably keep it on as a spare, and for storage – unusually it has 2 hard drives and each is about 300 GB so some useful space there – one can never have enough HD space in my opinion! If I do decide to ditch it in the future, I shall extract the HDs and put them in caddies to use as external USB drives.
The new laptop has a 1TB hybrid SSD (split between a conventional spinning HD and the new Solid State HD) and 12 GB RAM so it’s working a lot faster than the old one. Considering that I spend a large portion of each day on the recliner, on the laptop, which is my lifeline to the world as a virtually house-bound person, think this is a good investment that should keep me going for a good number of years!
A few days ago I made some more of the pairs of wings with a heart from the mould I made from the metal embellishment I got from Ebay. Nice steampunk look! The first one I made had only one, or possibly two, coats of the Dylusions paint on the heart, and this paint is very fluid and I realised it needed further coats.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been adding another coat of paint each time I was passing – they now have 3 coats and are well covered and nice and red, and a final coat of acrylic gloss varnish just on the hearts, and they are looking much better.
The wings actually look more gold than this in real life – it’s strange how poor the camera is in picking up shiny or glittery surfaces. I am pleased with how the hearts have turned out. The wings were just coloured with gold gilding wax (Treasure Gold) over black gesso.
I finished them off by giving the backs a final touching-up coat of black gesso to cover up any bits of red or gold that had crept round the back, and they look nice and neat now.
Here’s the first one I made, with the angel wings from the moulds I made from the very thin metal ones I have.
You can see that the red heart looks a bit duller. It is much improved with more paint and a coat of shiny varnish.
This is a very nice embellishment and I’m glad I made the mould because I can now make as many as I want, and another advantage is that they are a fraction of the weight of the original, which is solid brass.
These were all photographed on my second sheet of A3 faux leather which I kept for photographic backgrounds. Although I made a mistake and painted it with gel medium to give it a semi-gloss finish and it came out rather milky, this doesn’t seem to show too much on the photos so I can still use it. The other faux leather sheet is being used as a masterboard and is being cut up for other projects and already it is quite diminished in size!
The Big Reveal of my mystery projects is just around the corner! Not long to wait now, if you can contain your impatience for a few more days! I’ve been working hard at them and I am well on top of them.
Less than a week to my next chemo – this 3 weeks is flying by at an alarming rate, but at least the time is going quickly and it will soon be October when my chemo comes to an end, and will hopefully signal a fresh start, and a cancer-free life. Spare a thought for all those who do not have such a positive outcome to look forward to on their cancer journey. I count my blessings daily.
Cookies
Is anybody else getting as profoundly irritated as I am with the recent change regarding cookies? Every blog and website that one visits has the cookie warning which obscures the top of the page and you have to click on it to get rid of it – and it appears again if you visit another page on the same blog. I am getting so fed up with this!!! I wish there was a way to click once on some sort of blanket agreement that you accept the use of cookies so that you don’t have to keep doing it again and again and again ad nauseam… it’s driving me NUTS.
To find out what WOYWW is all about, click on the logo in my sidebar which will take you to our hostess Julia’s blog, where you can follow the steps to join in the nosiest blog hop on the web.
I am delighted to be able to share with you that I now have art stuff in my ARTHaven! Not a lot, I grant you, but progress is being made!
This will be my main work area. So far all that’s in it is my brand new Stickles carousel and my craft spinner that I bought for my Ink Dusters. In the Really Useful Boxes to the side are all my distress inks and re-inkers, glitters, distress stains, flower soft… you name it! I shall find a good way to display and use these.
Over on the other side of the room is my embryonic textile art area. So far I’ve just stacked up some boxes on the shelves – these contain embroidery fabrics, equipment and threads, interfacing, crochet, etc. I haven’t decided where everything will be stored yet, and I expect it will change and remain fairly fluid until I’ve worked in there for a while and know what works.
My sewing machine in its new home:
and I’m thrilled to discover how well my larger-sized Really Useful Boxes fit in the tall unit left behind in the house by the previous owner:
I am mega-excited to have unpacked my gel mediums and gesso etc. in the mixed media area, which will extend beyond the doorway onto a table which will stand between the doorway and the new sink once it’s in.
Only a few more finishing touches on the construction of the room before it’s finally finished – installing the unit with the sink, fitting some deep shelves for storing large flat things, and the fitting of the Venetian blind in a week or two. Watch this space for further developments!
Thanks to everyone for their good wishes re my recently diagnosed ulcerative colitis. I have now been on the medication for a week, and am happy to report that I noticed an improvement in my symptoms almost immediately, despite being told I shouldn’t look for any change for 2-4 weeks. As you can imagine, it’s making a huge difference to my life.
We have now got a confirmed date for our move – Monday 16th September. Mum’s stuff is arriving this Friday so I’ll have my work cut out, trying to sort it all out before our own move, and there’s still loads to do here as well…
I am sorry it took so long to reply to everyone last week – I was having major problems posting comments on certain blogs. Asking around (thanks to anyone who responded), it seems that it may have been caused by a browser conflict – Firefox has just done a major upgrade of itself and half the features don’t seem to be working – why they don’t check the compatibility of their software with their own add-ons and get rid of the bugs before foisting a new version on us, is beyond me… Anyway, I managed in the end, using Chrome. I shall stick with Chrome until Firefox have untwisted their knickers.
This is a cry for help – I am hoping that if someone has experienced similar problems to mine, that they will be able to help me!!
Since Wednesday, I have been having problems with commenting on Blogger blogs. Under the comment window it says “Select Profile” and whatever I select, if I then click “Publish,” my comment disappears, never to be seen again. Going back to the top of the particular blog, it says “Sign in” at the top, but when I click this, it takes me to my dashboard which states that I am already signed in.
If I try to preview my comment before posting it, I am told that it is not possible to post an empty comment, despite there being text in the comment box.
It is not happening on all Blogger blogs, but a good few; on the ones where it is working, my profile shows at the bottom and there is no problem.
This is becoming extremely frustrating, and I can find nothing in Blogger help which answers the problem (not that I ever find Blogger “help” much help at the best of times…)
Can anybody help, please? Pleeease….. this is driving me nuts. I have lots of lovely comments from people to which I would like to reply, not to mention all the wonderful blogs I am visiting where I would love to post a comment.
I don’t think I have done anything different with my computer lately, except the usual Windows updates. I have tried clearing my Firefox cache, but with no result. If anyone has any helpful (and easy to understand) suggestions, I’d be most grateful, and in the meantime, if anyone is wondering why I haven’t responded to their comments, this is the reason.
Next Saturday there is a craft exhibition/sale at our church, and I have booked a large table to display my work, and hopefully sell some pieces, and also to do a series of demonstrations during the day, of things which should be fun to watch. This time my display will feature my zentangle art, of course, and this will also be my final demo of the day. I am preparing some outline drawings ready to fill with pattern and colour on the day.
I am also demonstrating backgrounds with resist and stencilling, using a variety of techniques (nice and messy), and paper flower making. I have cut two different flower shapes from plain white card in readiness for this, and the demo will include colouring these pieces with Distress Stains, hand embossing them, and assembling them with the hot glue gun.
On the suggestion of several of my friends recently, I decided to get some coasters made of my zentangle designs. I now have two sets of approximately 3-in square designs, so I have had two different sets of coasters made, at one of the online photographic companies that also do mugs and things
Design Set One can be seen here, and Set Two here.
Here are the two sets of coasters.
I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t come boxed – for the price they were, and the quality, I think they should have. It’s annoying because I had to spend quite a long time (which I don’t have much of before the craft show on Saturday) making boxes for them.
The box base was easy. I simply cut a 6-inch square of black card, scored it in an inch from each edge, snipped a wedge out of each corner, and glued it up using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive (aka Lucy’s Glue lol! – Thank you Lucy, for recommending the best wet glue on the market in my opinion). This made a 4-inch square box for the 3 1/2 in square coasters. However, the lid was a different matter. The first one I made was too big. Eventually I got it right, and I’ve created two svg files in Inkscape, which are now uploaded to my Skydrive – one for the lid itself, and the other for the lid lining.
Both lid and lining have an aperture measuring 3 inches square. The lid has semi-circular pieces cut out either side for ease of opening. To make the lid, after cutting both pieces on Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, I cut a square of acetate measuring 3 1/2 inches and glued this with Lucy’s Glue onto the lid lining. I then glued this onto the lid itself, accurately aligning the two apertures and sandwiching the acetate between the two pieces. I then scored the lid, exactly following the outline of the liner, and folded up the sides as snugly as I possibly could against the liner, and cut wedges in the corners, and assembled as for the base.
The final touch for the box was to add a printed label, and a small insert in the bottom of the box with a short explanation about zentangle.
Here are the coasters in their boxes.
The other day I also made a set of two dozen small (A6 sized) cards featuring the same twelve designs as the coasters. They also have a leaflet in the back, giving some information about zentangle. Here they are, bagged up and ready for sale.
I have also got some plastic coasters on order, that you put your own photos in. I am intending to make these up with more of the same, and sell these individually as a cheaper option, as they are not as nice as the cork-backed ones.
As you know, last week I had problems with Blogger not showing my comments awaiting moderation. This turned out to be due to a conflict with the latest Firefox upgrade, and for a couple of days I had to deal with them in Internet Explorer (which I don’t usually use). It’s all working properly again in Firefox now, thank goodness, but I’ve got a great backlog of comments still awaiting moderation – I like to deal with each one individually and visit the person’s blog to reply, and this takes quite a time, particularly as Blogger is up to its usual tricks of taking ages to load the blogs, and often timing out. If your comment has not yet appeared on my blog, or you haven’t heard from me, please be patient – I am gradually getting through them all, and you are certainly not forgotten! One of my greatest joys is reading all the lovely comments my fabulous Blogland friends send me – I can’t tell you how uplifting and encouraging your wonderful words always are, so please keep them coming! It means so much to me.
This couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as I’m terribly busy this week, trying to prepare for the craft show, and I’m pulling out all the stops to keep on top of everything, and I don’t want to crash health-wise… I shall probably be very exhausted next week when it’s all over, and again, those of you lovely people who have kindly agreed to swap ATCs with me, I would ask you for your patience as I try and deal with it all! It may take some time.
Thank you so much for your understanding!
Just to let everyone know, I’m experiencing problems with Blogger (again…….) and I can’t view my unmoderated comments. I know there are lots there, because I saw them on Wednesday, and managed to follow up on some of them, and publish them, but I left the rest till I had time later, only to find that all the comments (published, unmoderated and spam) were no longer visible in the Blogger folder. They were visible on my other laptop and I intended to work on that to access them, but got too busy, and this morning, I find that they are not visible on there any more, either.
I have contacted Blogger 4 times now about this, and also posted a query on the Blogger forum hoping for some help, but so far absolutely no response. Someone on the Black Cat Cutters forum says she’s experiencing the same problems at the moment.
So I am sorry I can’t respond to any of you at the moment. I am hoping for a speedy resolution of this problem (some hope, where Blogger is involved) but meantime, please feel free to go on posting comments because they are all in there – somewhere!
Ed: One of the members of the Black Cat Cutter forum has come up with the solution – the latest upgrade to Firefox is causing the problem, and accessing the blog through IE makes the comments visible again! Thank you Stuart!! Let’s hope Blogger and Firefox resolve this problem between them. There must be many others who use both Blogger and Firefox, and this isn’t a satisfactory state of affairs.
So – off to follow up on all my lovely comments, and sorry for the delay, folks!
At last I’ve got my blog background how I want it (till I change my mind lol!) – to get rid of the dark layer over the background, all I did was change the template from “Picture Window” to “Simple.” I’m not sure why they put that dark layer over that particular template – it certainly had me scratching my head, if not tearing my hair.
Anyway, I think I’m happy with it now – we’ll have to see how it goes, and whether I get any negative feedback – or should I say constructive criticism?
Thank you to everyone who has helped me with this, in particular Rachel and Wendy.
I hope all my followers and visitors enjoy my blog’s new look. Thanks for your patience while it was in a state of flux.
Thanks to my friends Wendy and Rachel, I have now been able to get my newly designed blog background and header to work. It’s still a work in progress and I apologise if some of the headings aren’t yet that easy to read – for some reason the background is coming out much darker than my original design – it’s as if a dark semi-transparent layer comes down over it immediately after you open the blog. Hopefully we will iron out this small difficulty and you will soon see it as it should be.
The header consists of a montage of photos (from left to right) of some knitting I did ages ago (now awaiting unravelling and knitting up again) – Kaffe Fasset style in yellows and purples. I love that tunic top, but unfortunately it is now too small for me, but one day it will be knitted again in all its former glory!
In the middle is a snippet of an interesting rock formation at the Bullring in Oban.
On the right is my first piece of hand-made paper made from recycled paper towels (kitchen roll), distress inks, DIY glimmer mist and gilding flakes.
The butterfly is an image I had on my computer, and the flowers are photos I took of several hibiscus flowers I made last year according to Penny Duncan’s cut file of the hibiscus flower – I extracted them from the background and they are now useful as digital elements in my projects.
I did the design of the whole blog background in a combination of Serif CraftArtist Platinum and Serif PhotoPlus, and the faux embroidered border along the bottom of the header was an element from CraftArtist. The montages were done by using different blending modes and transparency settings.
The main body of the blog consists of photographs I took last year of some ancient parish records dating back to the 1600s, from which I have created some vintage backgrounds. You can see some of them on this project – the book-style card I made for my mother’s 90th birthday last year.
Top left is a photo I took of some honeycomb, with a bee on it, and underneath this, and on the right as well, are some photos of a wonderful old cracked pot I photographed years ago when I got my first digital camera.
At the bottom on the left is a photograph of a beautiful wall that I photographed at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire when we were on holiday there several years ago.
I have also made a texture overlay of this.
Bottom right (but not really visible, I’m afraid, as it seems to be a bit cut off!) is a photo of a glorious Norfolk split flint wall. (I also made a texture overlay of this one.)
I love taking photos of walls, tiles, textures…
On both sides, I have added to the montage some of my recent digital backgrounds created from a still-life painting in oils.
Unfortunately, while the dark layer is still over the background, these are not visible.
I think this new blog background expresses far better the sort of person I am than the previous one, which I chose when I first started my blog. The new background incorporates my love of colour and texture, and photographing such things, and also some of the creativity I enjoy. It’s been a long hard slog to get it up and running, and hopefully over the next few days we’ll iron out the final niggles and you’ll see it in all its glory!
My blog is looking HORRIBLE at the moment. I’ve been thinking for ages how fed up I was getting with the old background – I’ve had it since I first started, and it’s feeling pretty tired these days, and really doesn’t express who I am, so I decided to revamp it. I’ve designed a nice background in Serif CraftArtist Platinum, using my own photos, including some pictures of my own work.
Some time ago my friend Wendy sent me some instructions how to change the background, and I have been trying since last night, absolutely without success – the picture is coming out much too small, and if I try and change the size of my blog and the columns in the layout editor, nothing will fit.
I’m at the hair tearing stage now, and have emailed Wendy for some urgent help – and if I can’t sort this out, it will either go on looking quite ’orrible, or I’ll have to resort to another pre-made one, which I really don’t want to do.
So my apologies everyone for allowing such an eyesore to appear in my name in Blogland!! Hopefully it won’t be for too long.
Today I've been trying, without success, to set up separate pages on my blog, to separate out the various subjects, to make it easier to browse. While I managed to do this initially, I ran into trouble when I tried to transfer the posts from their original place into the new pages. I managed to copy my first "Views from Shoshi's Settee" into a page of the same name, but of course it had today's date on it, when in fact I originally posted it back in May.
I decided to delete the page and start again. The problem is, the page has disappeared, but the copy of the post has not! It is now sitting in today's date, and I can't get rid of it. I have tried clicking on the edit button, and am informed that the post "does not exist." So I think I'm stuck with it!
I must say I'm pretty fed up with Blogger. Once I'd got it set up it hasn't been too bad, just posting away with no problems, but I had awful problems initially, setting up a new background, and had to have help (bless you Renee!) with that. Every time I try to do something new, to make it work better for me, it proves either very difficult or impossible. The whole system is totally un-user-friendly and I don't find the "help" very helpful either! A lot of knowledge is assumed.
If any of my lovely followers have any tips as to how I can get rid of this copy post I've created, I'd be very glad. Also any clear instructions as to how to transfer old posts into new pages without losing their original dates would be much appreciated too!
Grrrr. Waste of an afternoon messing about with this, and I'm no further forward - in fact it's worse.
