September Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Stitching Lotus

This year I am showing my Just Nan 12 Days of Christmas blocks for the Smalls SAL and also my 30-a-day projects.  All smalls also by Just Nan.  It's a Nan-a-thon year!

Here is Block 9 of the 12 Days of Christmas:

And here is the full piece.  You can see that I have stitched a good chunk of Block 10 too.  I want to complete 10 in September so I can dedicate October to Hallowe'en stitching.

stitched on 32 count Vintage Grain linen

I finished Happy Bluebird at the beginning of the month, just need to get a charm and scrapbook it:

stitched on 32 count White evenweave

The next Small in line is Jump For Joy, which is now nearly finished too:

stitched on 32 count Antique White linen

The Donna Kooler Tinies have all been FFO'd and once my friend gives me permission I can show them on here.  Should be viewable for next month's Smalls Post.

My final Small is my new app - Tiny Decisons.  This is a free app where you type in a question and then give a selection of answers.  The app creates a wheel which you can spin to help you decide on a option.  For Dark October this year I am also doing Arbitary October where the wheel makes a random selection from your WIPs.  I have 5 Hallowe'en WIPs so I put each one in six times and then added Enchanted Alphabet once.  Each time a project comes up I will stitch on it for the day and then remove the option so they each get stitched on during the month.  If I complete a WIP then I remove all the remaining entries for it to give something else a chance.  Here's the wheel all set up ready to go:

Finally, Blogger has a new glitsch to delight and entertain us all.  Specially selected commenters can no longer comment on blogs where the comment field is embedded.  They can only comment on blogs where the comment field is a pop-up.

So if you like to get comments - go into your Dashboard and change your comment field to a Pop-up.  Chatter is restored!  Thanks to Brigitte for alerting me to this latest vagary of Blogger.

Finally a Solution to the Comment Notification Issues!

We received notification this afternoon that the problems have now been resolved.

As many of you are aware we have not been getting email notifications when comments are left on our blogs following the European GDPR changes.

In order to receive emails now there are a few simple steps to follow.

1. Go into your Dashboard.  Select your personal blog.

2. Click on Settings on the left hand side.

3. Click on Email and this screen will appear:

4. Delete your email address from the large box and click Save (orange box at the top right).

5. Retype your email address and click Save again.

6. You will shortly receive the following email:

7. Click Subscribe and wait for the emails to come pouring in!

8.  Repeat for every blog that you admin and want to receive email notifications.

I have heard there are issues with some hotmail addresses so maybe use your gmail address instead.  There may be unreported issues with Yahoo and aol too.  We shall see.

Please share widely so everyone knows we are back in business!

Comments have been turned off for this post as I will combine it with the previous one in the future.

Updated to add:

If this does not work, try this for step 5:


5. Click on "Choose from Contacts" and insert youremail address and click Save again.



Original Post:
Public Service Announcement:

For reasons known only to the Blogger Techies, we are no longer getting email notifications that comments have been made on our blogs.  It is assumed that this is connected with the new GDPR rules - i.e. Blogger will not share your email address with anyone without your express permission.

The work-around is to check comments on your Dashboard as they are listed there in date order.  If you post regularly this is more efficient than checking the blog itself.

I moderate comments which means I will not publish any comments until I have a chance to reply to them so there may be a delay in your comment appearing.

The easiest way to reply to a comment now is to copy and paste from the Dashboard into an email.  Assuming you already have the person's email in your address book.

I have disabled comments on this post.  I just wanted to share with you all ASAP.


Edit to add:

The work-around seems to be to comment yourself and tick the "notify me" button.  Then you get sent an email every time someone else comments.  BUT they all come from "no-reply" addresses so you still need to know the person's email to reply to them.  Also, if you moderate comments, you don't get the email until after you publish the comment!  We must be patient and wait for Blogger to fix this.

Edit to add:

Thea - Community Specialist said:

Hi all,

Thanks for stopping by.

We're currently tweaking our emailing system, but we expect it to be working again within the next week. Thank you for your patience - we look forward to getting it out soon!

Regards,

Thea

Posted on Google Forum on 30th May 2018

Any questions, please drop me an email.

It's Been a Challenging Week

But in a good way!  First I've been continuing with my Daily Art Challenge and then on the 5th the Olympic Challenges for the WIPocalypse and Stitch Maynia started.

I'll show all the Olympic stitching in my WIPocalypse Update later this month but for now, here's the daily art themes:

Day 7 - Pattern

Southwest Garden by Karen E. Dudzinski

Day 8 - Trees/Flowers

Bluebell Wood from Cross Stitch Collection

Day 9 - Reflection

Love by The Stitcherhood

Day 10 - In My Wardrobe

Celtic Christmas by Lavender & Lace

Day 11 - Red

Bande de Dragons by Dessins DHC

Day 12 - Water

Hear the Sea Call by The Stitcher's Hideaway

My main focus for the Marathon part of the WIPocalypse Olympics has been Gathering Honey by Jannlynn.  I have finally finished all the fiddly green leaves in the top left corner and now only have more fiddly leaves in the bottom right corner to face!

There are some purple flowers and some red flowers to be added to this corner and theee rows of plain border, which I've made a start on.  I will also backstitch all of this corner before I move on to the bottom corner.

Here's the whole thing, you can see I did a little bit more of the backstitch in the bottom left garden, there are still a hundred French Knots to be added in that area.

stitched on 28 count evenweave

I've also been working away on Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles and I'm well over halfway now:

stitched on 32 count Autumnal Woodland by Crafty Kitten

*******************************

And now - a chat about blogging!  Most of us use Blogger because it's easy and it's free.  We have the little Followers button on our blogs so we can connect with the people who read our blog.  Since Blogger disabled their Reader people now use a variety of Readers to follow blogs (I personally use Feedly) which means they don't always click the Followers button.  I get notifications from Bloglovin that I have new followers there but they don't show on my blog counter.  So please, if you follow via Feedly, Bloglovin' or any other Reader - click to be a Follower too.  I have a little giveaway every time it ticks over a century so it's in your best interests LOL

Next - commenting.  We love comments, it's such a great way to connect with people and discover what people enjoy on your blog.  I personally try to reply to every comment via email.  But we have a couple of little problems here.  Number one is the "no-reply" commenter.  This may be a person who hasn't added an email to their profile or it may be a person who has gone over to Google Plus and their email hasn't linked.  If you are a "no-reply" person, email me so I can answer you.

Number two is political!  Blogger, Blogspot and Gmail are owned by Google.  Google want to take over the world and ensure we all use their products.  So certain email accounts (Yahoo and AOL) aren't accepted and while the comment appears on the blog the commenter may get a "failure" email and the blog author won't get an email notification.  One solution is for the commenter to email the blog author with the text of their comment, another is for the blog author to enable "moderate comments" so ones without email notifications are left unpublished until you go and look.  Then you can copy and paste the text and reply that way.  This is what I do.  Of course, the commenter can also use their Gmail account for blogging, which again is what I do.  I have AOL for boring real life stuff and Gmail for stitching stuff.

Number three - replying to comments.  I visit up to 50 blogs some evenings, leaving comments on many of them.  I do not have time to go back and visit again on the off chance the author has responded to my comment.  Neither do I want click the "send notifications" button and be drowned with several hundred emails telling me that Tom, Dick and Harry have also commented on that post.  If you are going to respond to my comment - email me! Or if it was a question other people might be interested in hearing the answer - respond in your next post.  Please.

Any questions on any of the above issues - please leave a comment or email me.

Glad to be of service!

Finally, thanks to everyone who has taken part in the Summer Linky Party so far.  You still have the weekend to join in if you wish.

Happy Birthday to Cucki!

Today is Cucki's Birthday.  If you've visited her Stitching Cove you already know her and love her.  If you've never been there before I whole-heartedly recommend it as a great way to brighten your day and make you smile with joy.

A quick request regarding blogs with Word Verifiers - I can't comment on these right now.  Blogger just won't accept what I type.  I had at least 10 attempts on one blog last night and gave up in frustration!  Please consider removing Word Verifiers if you have it or at least make sure it's visible on the first comment screen so I know not to bother typing a long comment then can't post it!  If you're concerned about Spam then remove the option for "Anonymous" to comment.  It mostly seems to be newer bloggers that still have Word Verifiers so maybe you're not aware of the difficulty!  I'd hate you to think I'm ignoring your blogs,

Holly, I especially loved your sweet peas!!  I call my boys that sometimes as a term of endearment.  An elderly lady heard me and said "What a lovely name for such a pretty little girl".  Actually he's got a normal name and he's a BOY!!  But I said it more politely than that LOL.

I've been stitching away on Around the World and if "Sweet Pea" hadn't been up until midnight last night I'd have finished Part 3.  Never mind.  That's what happens when they have a nap during the day.

May I just say, I hate Lazy Daisies!  Though they do work better in two strands than in one.  You can also really see the difference between a single strand for bs and a double.  The two shapes second and third from the left only have one strand whereas all the others have two.  I'll be going over those shapes again so they all have two strands.

I also received this anazing piece of fabric from Karen as a RAK.  Poor old dear can't see to stitch on 40count so she sent it to me!  Here's a picture of the fabric (colours as accurate as possible) and also the chart I'm planning to stitch on it.  What do you think?  I need a nice black thread a little thicker than one strand of DMC as I'll be stitching over 2 and I'm not sure if one strand will cover well enough.  Any recommendations gratefully received.  I don't mind spending a little more for this project.  Within reason.  Not £10 a skein!

There was a lovely little stitch counter in with the fabric too.  Do you think Karen's hinting I'll need one? LOL.

Finally, here's an update of the Mystery Stitch.  Any ideas?  All will be revealed next time as the words will be completed and it'll be obvious to everyone!

Blue for you, blog sharing and a Serendipitous find.

Not much actual stitching to show as I've been working on prizes and cards.  But here is a Blue Peter special:

I very successfully tea-dyed some fabric using fruit tea recently and had a look round the kitchen to see what else there was.  Not a fat lot in my kitchen TBH but there was some food dye in blue and red.  Hmmmm, blue food dye - that might work.  I dumped a bit (maybe a teaspoon?) into a bowl and popped a scrap of random white evenweave in there too.  Swirled it around, pulled it out, put it back and repeated every so often until 9pm then I left it until bedtime and put it on the kitchen roll to dry.

In the morning a nice pale blue colour, perfect for a snowflake.  And if I feel tired when I'm stitching I can just lick the fabric and get a blue-dye rush!  Have you ever seen a kid high on blue dye?  The large boy had a Thomas the Tank Engine cake one year - hyper hyper city!

I've mostly been stitching on A Dark Alphabet by A Company of Friends this week.  I've nearly finished "Q" which is fantastic, she's a Queen of the Night.  I love her and will post a pic soon.  I haven't got so much done during the day as the Small Boy has discovered the art of communicating his hunger via dragging Mummy into the kitchen and positioning her in front of the relevant cupboard for cereal, fruit or drink depending on his wants.

I have been mailing out my Giveaway prizes, two people haven't responded with addresses yet.  Blue Star Stitcher and Terri P but I think it may be a problem with AOL and Gmail as they're both on Gmail which seems to think AOL is spam.  I've got a new gmail address now so I'll try again.

I bit the bullet and subscribed to Cross Stitch Collection again.  They will be featuring the Joan Elliott Garden Fairies every other month this year so that would cost me 6 x £5.  Or I can subscribe for £11.39 a quarter and get 13 magazines.  The 7 without Joan's fairies may well have something equally nice or they may find themselves Ebayed or Giveawayed on here!  If you see anything you like the look of on my Mag Contents page in the forthcoming months let me know and I'll either send you mine or get another one.

As there isn't much stitching this post I thought I'd share two blogs.  The first is this one Whole World Biscornu.  It's in Russian, but we all speak a little Russian don't we?  If not then there's an English part to each post as well as the Translate button.  The project is to share biscornu themed by various different countries.  They are wonderful, I love the Great Britain one in blackwork and there's a cute one with cups of tea and Sherlock Holmeses round the edge.

The second one is christmas ornament sally earround  Oh no, wrong spacing - its christmas ornaments all year round!  Anyway, most months have a theme and you stitch and post something for that theme.  February is Christmas Trees.  Well, having found that ancient old UFO of a tree and then receiving a delightful little Prairie School tree from Kathy Ellen as a little bonus with my 12 Days of Christmas prize I couldn't ignore the message from the Stitching Gods.  I must join Christmas All Year Round!

The results of the Just Nan poll are in.  People are in two camps - the Enablers who say just one or two pieces before I buy Snow Flowers and the Stash Police who say I have to stitch the biggest one before I buy any more.  And then there was Ewa, Queen of the Enablers who said "None, break some rules!"

I hate posts without pictures!  So here's a random Chinese Dragon for the New Year.  Stitched way back when I used aida for large projects.  I've always liked the bamboo effect frame on this one and the metallic details too.  Neither of which can be seen in this photo!

I bought this chart years ago when I first started stitching (1993/4) and when I dug it out to credit the designer, it is by -

wait for it -

Serendipity Designs

How weird is that?

Finally, don't forget to sign up to be a Secret Stitching Sweetheart.  Plenty of time, I just need your photos of your stitched pics by 10th February please.  More details here.

Blogger fix for comments

Thanks to the wonderful Daffycat, there is a way you can allow your loyal followers to comment again:

"Change your comment form to the pop-up window type.

 

Go to:

Dashboard

Settings

Comments

Comment Form Placement

Choose POP-UP WINDOW
Save"

There are still lots of people I follow that I can't comment on, I'm not ignoring you, I just can't comment!

I've been stitching away on the Baby Swing and the Fairy this weekend.  I'll post pictures when Blogger allows me to.  I want to finish the chubby little legs on the baby tonight then start on the leaves.  The Fairy just needs her border and some metallics for the wand.  As soon as baby pops out I can add her name and details.

Reading wise we've just started the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern series.  We being the large boy and me.  The first one we're reading is Dragonsong about Menolly and how she found her firelizards and became a harper.  I know the first one should be Dragonflight and Lessa's story but I read Dragonsong first as a child so wanted to follow the pattern.  It was published when I was 11 so I was at least 3 years older than the large boy when I read it to myself.  It's lovely to read it aloud and remember meeting all the characters for the first time so many years ago!

Hope you're all enjoying the Bank Holiday long weekend, I understand it's a long one in America too so perfect for stitching!