To start off the month of February, I can’t help but have something about hearts. With a name like HeartStrings for my business, you should not be surprised that Valentine’s Day is a favorite holiday this month. In fact, I take the liberty of celebrating all month long. 🙂
Just for fun, I created a simple online puzzle using a detail stitch photo taken of the Cascading Hearts Faroese Shawl. Â Want to play? Click the picture below to start the puzzle and see if you can beat the best time in putting the pieces back together again!
I hate it when I do stupid things. I should have known better, but I wasn’t paying attention like I should have. Â My mistake was in using this wool lace piece atop my walnut wood grand piano that I periodically polish with lemon oil. Unfortunately, one one occasion, I must have missed thoroughly wiping down a small area of the piano’s cover. After returning the lace to adorn the top of the piano, the acidity in the oil treatment eventually caused the wool damage you see here.
Wool damage - Oh no! what happened?
This wool damage happened years ago, and fortunately I learned my lesson and I’ve not repeated the mistake. The reason I am bringing it up now is, as you can see, I still have to tackle repairing this lace. Of course, the damage has not gotten worse because once I removed the contact with the acid source, things are ok. I am so careful to use acid-free papers for my published patterns, archival methods for storing my knitted models, etc., so I definitely know better. Bad me!
p.s. You might have thought this was insect damage (e.g. moths or carpet beetles). If you ever experience similar damage (and I hope you don’t), do check that the way you are using or storing your fibers are not such they are in contact with something that could harm the fibers. It would be a shame for you to assume it is insect damage, treat for that, and then just return to continuing to have the problem for other reasons.
Have you noticed that I have blogged daily for the past 30 days? (actually 31 counting today) It is part of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge led by Cricket Walker.
This challenge was the motivation I needed to make a commitment of posting to my blog regularly. I’ve learned a lot along the way. It’s been fun to do research, plan the photography, etc. I appreciate you stopping by to peek into my life and musings, and I’ve enjoyed hearing from people who have taken time to leave comments, too. In fact, I am having so much fun, rather than winding down, I think I am just now winding up!
One of the things I am finding helpful for keeping organized and motivated is the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin by Stresslimit and Zack Grossbart.
Wordpress Editorial Calendar
This calendar is now my command center for managing posts on my blog. After installing and activating the plugin, the calendar is accessible directly from within the WordPress Dashboard under the Posts section. The user interface is intuitive and well-designed, thus working with me rather than against me. The calendar automatically picks up posts that have already been published. New posts can be entered for any future date. Sometimes I just enter a quick working idea as a title placeholder for a date. When I actually start working on the post, I can spiffy up the title, or even drag and drop that post to another date.
I first heard about the Editorial Calendar from Glennete Goodbread, another member of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. You can check out her blog article here.
Even though I’ve learned a lot, it has made me realize how much more I want to learn and do with my blog. I have set up a test environment to play around with a new template. And maybe some other new features I can bring to my blog for you to enjoy in the future. So please subscribe or come back to visit each day for “taking time to smell the roses”.
p.s. A shout-out to all my fellow Blogging Challenge friends who have been blogging along with me these past 30 days. Here’s to all of us to keep going! Thanks for your support and encouragement.
Last spring I planted a few seeds I had been holding onto for 8 years. I had collected them from a fellow fiber-friend on the other side of the state. Jean – are you listening in? All I remember was that I was attracted to these flowers she had growing along her fence and that she was happy to share some seeds. I am sure she told me the plant name, but of course I didn’t write it down at the time.
Viney Flowers - What are they?
So with just 3 of these plants along my back fence, I had a glorious fence-ful of viney flowers that I enjoyed through the summer and into the late fall. They even served as a nice back-drop to the preliminary photographs I took of the “Half-note Symphony” shawl.
Half-note Symphony Shawl
But I still do not know the name of this flower/plant. Do you?
p.s. If this flower is looking somewhat familiar to you, but you need a larger photo to look at, try this. But beware that it is a 3.8 MB file and could take a while to download depending on your connection speed.
The votes are in for the “What Kind of Project Are You?” survey. Hot off the tally sheet, here are the results. As a reminder, you can see the just-for-fun project definitions that were posted earlier this month. For easy reference while taking the survey, the definitions were also included within the survey itself.
Survey Results - What Kind of Project Are You? (click to enlarge)
This graph shows the relative number of project personas reported by 307 survey respondents. I intentionally asked that only one project persona be chosen, which even for me was very difficult. This survey was just intended to be a fun exercise to reflect on our passion and motivation(s) for knitting.
As you can see, The Gifter took the lead, with The Long Distance Runner and The Day Dreamer coming in as close second places.
By the way, if you are a stickler for details, you likely will see that the percentages and response counts on the enlarged graph do not quite add up to 100%. That is because about 4 people just left comments. They probably just couldn’t decide on one answer!
Thank you so much for everyone’s participation. It was fun for me, and I hope it was for you, too.
p.s. There were also a few comments that were posted with the original survey announcement on this blog. You are welcome to add any additional comments there or here, especially if you missed the official survey.
Related Images:
Behind the scenes with Jackie E-S and life at the HeartStrings FiberArts studio.
