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
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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.
32 comments:
I agree with number three in your list - it's so much more personal to reply by email.
I agree with all your points, but especially number three. I will often leave comments or questions on blogs but never get an answer back because they reply on the blog post. Which is why I always reply to comments by email. I really wish their was a feature with blogger that notifies a user if someone replies back to their comment directly. That way the owner of the blog can also have a trace of the answer they gave readers.
So many beautiful projects!Gathering Honey is gorgeous!
About blogging.....YES. ;)
I look at Gathering Honey and cannot help but remember the way Jacquie finished hers in like, what, a day or two? ha! I don't know how?
Thanks for the wonderful reminder - Google and the World of Blogging. You always seem to have such a variety of projects going. Wondering if there is anything you really do not like to stitch?
First of all, lovely stitching. I wish that blogger would make it so a follower has to include an email. You made very good points on this.
I love the posts where you show projects when I wasn't blogging. So much variety and beauty. My fav in this post is the Sea Call.
The information on blogging is so useful specially to newbies. I'm a no reply commenter as I prefer it that way. I appreciate bloggers like you who reply to each comment even to no reply blogger like me.
I usually don't reply to each comment on my blog however I always answer questions.I will keep the tip of answering to questions in next blog post in mind.
My way of appreciating someone's comment on my blog is by commenting on their blog...haha
All very good points but when you have your email up and immediately become victim to spam email, I will continue to leave my email off my blog and be a no reply blogger. I try to answer or comment on comments on my next post. Nice variety of projects you have going there. Ghostly Mandala is my favorite.
Awesome stitching and progress Jo. I'm a computer dummy but do agree with you.
Linda
I'm guilty of not doing number three. I usually only click the "notification" if it's something I think will start a dialog, but I should get better about it ;)
Crud, I never even thought about #3... I try to respond to all comments that are more substantial than a quick "nice work!" but it never occured to me that probably no one is going to come back and see my reply to their comment! Gah!
Loving the art challenge posts. I love the buttons on the hear the sea call, it's a lovely design. GM is growing well. I'm always surprised by how much progress you've made each time you show it. GH is beautiful. So many subtle colour changes.
I agree with you on the blog issue. I love to be able to reply to people and have some great email conversations.
I'm enjoying your art themes and getting to see some of your work that is new to me.
GH is looking lovely but I'm sorry you have to go from fiddly bits to fiddly bits. The leaves look terrific though.
I keep trying to count your ghosts and see how many new ones you've added for each new post.
Great progress, my favourite has to be Ghostly Mandala. Your choice of fabric for it is perfect :)
Ghostly Mandala is really coming along well. Plus I love the garden in Gathering Honey.
Great post, my dear, lovely to see your gorgeous stitching, as always and you always have such a great handle on the changes in the blogging world.
I totally agree with your blogging philosophy :). Love all of your projects too :)
Beautiful stitching Jo! I really like the fabric you chose for Ghostly Mandala it will look amazing when it is finished.
Nice to see the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head over blogger. I HAAAAAAAAAATE the comment system here. Way back in the newb days of online journals, LiveJournal had nested comments (and their subsequent emails) figured out perfectly and it's a hard standard to find elsewhere. It was a sad, sad day when they sold out. For blogger, I feel like I'm forcefully eavesdropping when getting everyone else's replies via the "notify me" box so I make a temporary bookmark where I know the owner replies directly to the comment. It's hard to keep track of who does what when you read zillions of blogs, though. And it's definitely a drain on our already meager bandwidth cap having to reload (usually large, image heavy) blogs and I'm not particularly interested in having half my computer space taken up via image caches. I was considering going to fully moderated (I picked the week option) but ugh that's just another step I'd have to do that shouldn't! be! necessary!
I also hate the way the dashboard "works" (hint: it doesn't). I use a separate reader specifically to avoid it since random blogs sometimes just don't show up for weeks for whatever magical, mysterious reason. Very frustrating. Of course, by using a different reader, I sometimes fail at not clicking the follow button as well. :<
/politely puts soapbox back where she found it. Get it together, Google!
Your stitching looks lovely for your Daily Challenge, WIP, and Olympic doings! Just the thought of trying to keep up and keep it all straight frazzles my hair (it doesn't need more, thank you). But gosh, what a fabulous red dress you have in your wardrobe! :D Are the seashells on Hear the Sea Call real? Or just nifty buttons?
Your projects are so beautiful!! I have been wishing to reply to all my comments but then I fall short of time and whatever time is left, I spend it in commenting than replying. I like reading replies to my comments even if it is just a thank you. I know you are very busy with your work, kids , SALs and regular blogging. I will suggest don't reply to me if that saves few minutes for you unless there is a query or you feel my thoughts moved you positively or negatively. I have known you for quite sometime now and I don't need any formality between us :)
Love your projects, especially Ghostly Mandala. Thanks for the comments about blogging. I am still such a novice (idiot) with respect to this form of communication. I never would have thought about most of that, especially #3. Thanks for opening my eyes and providing some guidelines.
Gorgeous finishing! I'm really loving Gathering Honey. So pretty! :D
Love your stitching updates... ghostly mandala is looking amazing on that fabric :o) Gathering Honey is looking gorgeous... 100 french knots sounds like fun!!
There never seems to be an easy way to deal with blogger and comments... Hugs xx
Lovely stitching Jo, the ghosties are growing very quickly.
I just use my blogger dashboard to keep up, it seems to work for me. I must agree with you about people responding to posts within the post thread, there is no way I'm organised enough to remember where I commented and then remember to go back and check for replies.
Fantastic photos to match the themes. Love your WIPs. They are sure growing!
Love all your comments about the blogging world. So true. Google could make it easier on us but I'm sure they don't care.
I love all your stitching, Jo! I don't know how you do it all - stitching and all those comments too!
I agree with you, if people don't reply to me by email I can't remember where I've commented to go back and look for a reply, and "the moment of friendship, that could have been" is lost! Although another problem is when I've commented on blog's that are not Blogger blogs and they can't comment on my blog as they don't have Google accounts.
Barbara xx
Lovely pictures for the art challenge, and lovely stitching progress as well. I have to say, I think I like that corner better than center on Gathering Honey :D
I agree with you on the blogging stuff...I use emails to reply to comments as well (I got that from you actually!) and knowing people actually will read my responses makes it so much better - even if my blog might look a bit rude with no comments answered under the posts! :D
Wow I love Gathering Honey. My mouth slammed into the desk when I read 100 French knots... :O
Thank you for the tip on the comment situ. I will have to start using my gmail account. Thanks stunner
xo Alicia
Beautiful stitching on your Art challenge. I'm in awe of your Celtic Christmas. I don't even have enough time to redo my blog page (looks so plain) so I don't regularly check on email too (ooops! lazy) but I do like reading blog posts and commenting. Yours is a must read:)
Hi Jo!
I am trying to figure out how to follow your blog...could you tell me? Thanks!
Beautiful projects that you show here for the Art challenge. Gathering Honey is such a great project and I love it since I saw it for the first time on your blog or on Jacqui's. Gorgeous to see what you stitched in the past.
I agree with you on all the points you mention. I never go back to a person's blog post I commented on to see if there is an answer to my comment. That would be too time consuming. And I once tried and pushed the "send notifications" button and was inundated by notifications about other readers' comments. Not very useful indeed, lol.
Lovely stitching Jo, and agree with you on the blogger issues, especially #3. I try to reply to all comments on my blog and have made some good friends and had interesting discussions that way.
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