Website Musings

Thank you to everyone who had kind words about my website's imminent demise.  I tried to get the word out here and on various Yahoo and Facebook groups.  I ran out of available time that day before I got to Intatters, but Grace was kind enough to put up a notice there, thank you.  All these postings led to more replies than I could answer individually, but there were two predominant themes:

1.  Why don't you just use Blogger? Indeed, I will do that short term, but someone who knows more about it warns that I would run into memory space restrictions eventually.  I already have a Blogger page for patterns (see the link near the top of the screen) that I will start adding to.  But my Keep-and-Share free account only allows 20 files, so that's already a limit I could easily reach.

2.  It should be easy to backup your site files and upload somewhere else.  Well, easier said than done.  This was a template style website, sort of like Blogger, but far less user friendly.  I have backed up all of my own HTML code, but I don't have code for the templates.  One the other hand, I really didn't like their layouts anyway.  Many of my pages weren't especially easy on the eye or the printer, partly due to the layout templates and partly due to my lack of fluency in HTML.  (I'm hoping for a what-you-see-is-what-you-get page editor with the new site instead of writing in HTML.) If I'm going to have to do all this over, I want to do it better this time, so it's not going to happen quickly.  I was actually already planning to do this, but didn't anticipate losing the old website before launching the proposed new one.

A few of you have suggested various web hosting companies by name, but do you have your own website with them that I can look at?  Trying to absorb and compare all the information on their advertising sites is a bit overwhelming.  I'd rather hear about your personal experience.

Quilt Block and Antique Pattern Library

Here is my last Palmetto Quilt Block (unless I get some more from Georgia).  Here are the pattern sources:  The pink flower on the left is another from Jan Stawasz's Tatted Treasures.  The large medallion with rick-rack is a vintage pattern from the February 1927 edition of Needlecraft magagzine.  I got the pattern from Georgia's site here.  The small white rick-rack flower is from the book Vintage Tatting & Crochet Book 1, edited by Barbara Foster of Handy Hands.   The larger white flower I just whipped up to fit in.

You've probably gathered by now that I love vintage patterns.  One of the best sources, besides Georgia's Tatting Archive, is the Antique Pattern Library.  Clicking on their name there will take you to their home page and you can branch out to see patterns for embroidery, knitting, crochet and lots more crafts. Or click here for a list of their tatting publications.  I have downloaded quite a few of them.  You will see many that say "to scan" or "to edit" and those are in progress and coming soon.  My mouth is watering over some of those.  They have a Yahoo Group too.  The Library is run by a non-profit organization and they could use your help.  Here is a recent message from them: 

"Our finances are not in perfect health, to say the least, but thanks to the recent upswing in donations, we're improving a bit, THANK YOU! To keep our non-profit status, we need not just money, we need money from the public. The way it was explained to me, one third of our income has to be from small donations. So even if someone donates a million dollars, this will not save our non-profit status.

Therefore, we have agreed on the following:

*** ANY (small, less than 200 USD) financial donation you, anyone,
*** sends to New Media Arts either by Paypal, cheque, or whatever
*** to support the Antique Pattern Library or another project
*** will be matched TWICE by our board members
*** (until we are broke, of course)."

A two-for-one match makes even a small contribution like mine significant. Please consider helping them out so they can continue to provide this fine service for all us needlecrafters.

Get Your Free Patterns Now

Dear Friends, ATT is erasing my web page http://www.home.bellsouth.net/p/pwp-tatsamore (and all the other old Bellsouth personal websites) on December 4, and there is nothing I can do about it.  I plan to get myself a new website and restore all the content, but I do not know how long that will take.  I encourage you to go now and print any patterns or tutorials you want a copy of.  Please remember this is copyrighted material for your own use and do not reprint or repost without my express permission.

This personal website was part of my internet service package when we signed on with Bellsouth.  When ATT absorbed Bellsouth, they were bound to keep those websites, but not indefinitely it now appears.  I am disappointed, but not surprised, since I got the impression when I had difficulties last summer, that  they were maintaining those sites with only the least grudging effort they could manage.  I am irate though, that they did not have the decency to notify me about this.  I only accidentally found out when I visited my site on a whim, something I don't do often if I'm not working on it, and found the notice on a pop-up there.

I've been raised to do comparison shopping before making a big purchase.  Jane likes Freeservers. Does anyone else have a website provider they have personal experience with to recommend?  I require low cost, ease of use, and no advertising on the pages.

I was already planning to shop for a new website where I would have more control over page layout and the ability to make the patterns more printer friendly, but on my own time, not right away, aargh.

Back to happier posting soon, I hope.

Another Palmetto Quilt Block

I mentioned last time that Georgia is planning 2 quilts for Palmetto next year.  The quilt block I showed you last time was for the flower quilt, and this one is for the teapot quilt.

The teapot is my own pattern, and the curlicues are inspired by the Flower & Vine pattern Ruth Perry/Rozella Linden shared with the online class, that I mentioned in the previous post.  I'm trying to decide if this block is finished.  I had originally planned to add more to it, but now I think more stuff will make it look too crowded.

It looks a little lopsided, I hope that was just the way I put it on the scanner.

Quilts & Flowers

Georgia is organizing another fundraising quilt (or two!) for next year's Palmetto event.  At this year's convention, she handed out quilt blocks to be decorated and sent back to her.  She may still have some blocks left, you can ask her.

I adopted a problem block where one wedge of fabric did not extent all the way to the edge.  I solved that by sewing ribbon over the gap. I added another stripe of ribbon and a ribbon flower to tie the look together.

You may have seen on other blogs, such as Tatting Fool's, that Jan Stawasz's Tatted Treasures includes lots of flowers.  I used those for the 2 white flowers and the rose colored one, so I'm counting those toward my 25 motif challenge, when I get around to counting them up.  The pink edging from the left came from a book, but I can't remember which one, sigh.  The rose and green trellis-y bit came from a pattern from her new book that Rosella Linden shared with the On-line Class.

Coming soon, I found the doily I lost, so you'll see that once I've got it blocked, some more quilt squares, and a knitted shawl from yarn I hand spun with roving I got from Karey.

Angel with Star

Here's another one for the Challenge.  This is "Angel with Star" from A Host of Angels by Christel Weidmann.  Each pattern is written in shorthand notation and has a diagram.  Also, there are comments tell what to do for both shuttle and needle tatting.  There is a large Madonna angel that I would like to work someday.