Spring Dragon

Posted on June 5, 2005 | 1 comment

Another WIP to show off. This is Spring Dragon, by Patricia Allison (image links to larger pic). I bought this design in October 2003, not long after my birthday. I hadn’t really discovered online fabric sources at that stage, and fabric options in Australia are much more limited. Finally, I found a nice piece of Quaker cloth (now my favourite fabric) in Rue Green which looked right, and started stitching on December 11th. I stitched most of what you see here in a few weeks (there is actually a little more done than this). Then I stopped.

I don’t know why exactly, and I certainly don’t count this as a UFO. I think what happened is I grew tired of never having anything finished, and decided to spend 2004 finishing small items (mostly Christmas ornaments). Since then, I’ve also managed to start a bunch of other large designs, and somehow, Spring Dragon always gets pushed to the end of the line. Could be something to do with that high lustre blending filament – yuck! My love for this design was recently rekindled, when I found Patricia Allison’s blog, where she is documenting the transformation of this design into a detailed drawing. Just beautiful :love: So expect to see some more progress on this once this semester’s exams are over (June 20, la la la!)

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Posted in Counted Stitchwork, In Progress

Does your mother know?

Posted on June 4, 2005 | Comments Off on Does your mother know?

It’s late, it’s late. My brain is fried from studying. Tonight’s review topic? The motivation and methods of hackers. Seems kind of appropriate, given the ezBoard woes.

So let me tell you about a WordPress plugin I won’t be installing. Does your mother know allows bloggers to designate certain posts private, and block them from certain visitor IP addresses. So if you know your mother is reading your blog and you want to keep something from her, you designate it private, with <!--private-->, and add her IP to your list.

Hmmm…this could lead to an interesting issue. What if your mother visits Great-Aunt Maisie, and wants to show her your blog (yes Great-Aunt Maisie is connected to the Internet, why do you ask? Well, let’s just assume, ok?!) Suddenly, Mum is confronted with all these posts you’ve been ‘hiding’ from her, because Great-Aunt Maisie’s IP address is not in your block list. “My little girl did what? And with who…? Oh my eyes, my eyes!”

Why write about something you don’t want people to see? Blogs are public by nature. At the very least, if you must, you can password protect bits you don’t want viewed. But still… why bother. If it’s private, keep it private. Personally, I’ve learned that lesson, via unwanted visitors to my diary as a teenager. And heck… in 20 years time, I don’t want to dig up my blog via the Wayback Machine and find anything I’ve written that embarrasses me! So if you’re looking for that stuff… it’s not going to be here!

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Posted in Blog Blather

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Bake Away the ezBoard Blues

Posted on June 2, 2005 | 3 comments

This post is dedicated to all the ezBoard readers who are feeling out of touch. I thought of you today as I baked biscuits with my son (that would be ‘cookies’ to most of you!) I thought of you because:

a) when I opened the drawer where my baking paper is kept, I saw all the bits and pieces sitting neatly in zip-lock baggies, and
b) when I reached for the dessicated coconut, it was nicely labelled with a black-on-clear PTouch label.

Both of these organizational wonders are a direct result of me hanging out in the stitching boards… so thankyou… I think ๐Ÿ˜• Anyway, the ANZAC biscuits came out great, so if you’re looking for something to do while your favourite board is still chewing up and spitting out your posts, may I suggest:

  • Ingredients
    • 1 cup plain flour
    • 1 cup rolled oats
    • 3/4 cup desiccated coconut
    • 1 cup brown sugar
    • 125g butter
    • 2 tbsp golden syrup
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 3 tbsp boiling water
  • Method
    • Combine sifted flour, oats, coconut and sugar in a bowl. Melt butter and Golden Syrup in a saucepan over low heat. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water, then add to the butter and Golden Syrup. Stir this into oats mixture mix well. Spoon tablespoons of mix onto a tray lined with baking paper. Leave plenty of space to allow for spreading. Bake at 150C for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Not as good as Tim Tams, I grant you, but fabulous anyway. Still in search of something to do? Go check out Browse Happy. Then go stitch :giggle:

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Posted in Baking

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Happy in my new home

Posted on June 1, 2005 | 5 comments

Here I am, finally, settling into my new home… stitched.bymel.com. Should be staying here, I hope. RSS feeds working now, due to much fixing up by OtherHalf last night.

Other changes – I installed plugins BAStats and Links Page, both by Owen Winkler. BAStats lets me see who you are ๐Ÿ˜‰ , and Links Page is a nifty little script allowing links to be filtered by category – I’ve popped it into the Blogroll static page, and shifted my blogroll off the main page for now. I also shifted my stash Wishlist over here from the tinroofmedia domain – so now Mum will know where to find it ๐Ÿ˜†

On another stitching note, all the ezBoards are having major problems, and I can’t post replies to any of the threads about the new Mirabilia right now. But aside from the pretty extreme wings (she’s supposed to fly with those? ๐Ÿ˜ฏ ), I like her. I’d probably modify the wings a bit – maybe just that top green part would work?

Oh, and a very final thing. For those nice people posting comments (thank you btw ๐Ÿ˜ณ ), you should know that you only have to be ‘moderated’ just the once. Once you’ve had one comment OK’d, subsequent comments should go through without a hassle ๐Ÿ™‚

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Yes, this is a stitching blog!

Posted on May 31, 2005 | 6 comments

And to prove it, here’s a glimpse of my current favourite WIP… which is somewhat like a parent saying they have a favourite child (although in my case, the latter would be less contentious ๐Ÿ™‚ ) At any rate, this lovely, albeit headless, mermaid is Mirabilia’s “Waiting For Ships”. No beads attached yet, but I’m nearing the end of the regular stitching. Part of the reason she is so special to me is because she is the first piece I’ve stitched on one of my own hand-dyes. Also, I think she goes very nicely with the Ocadia blog theme I’m currently featuring ๐Ÿ™‚ Image links to a closer look.

And just in case you thought I was done singing the praises of WordPress… wrong ๐Ÿ˜† This post illustrates the use of categories. Categories filter the posts by topic. Select the Stitching category to see only stitching-related chatter. Further, select the Works in progress, or Finished sub-categories, to see only those posts. (Though there are no HD’s yet – perhaps I’ll post some retrospective finishes in the near future).

6 Comments

Posted in Blog Blather, Counted Stitchwork, In Progress

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Tinker tinker

Posted on May 30, 2005 | 1 comment

I’ve set the blog up now for ‘pretty permalinks’. That makes the permanent links for posts look more human-friendly. Course, I’m moving everything to my new domain as soon as I can, so the current permalinks aren’t terribly perma just yet!

I’ve also added the default Calendar into the sidebar. It wasn’t playing nice with positioning, but I’ve made it sit properly for now. Not sure I’m going to keep it, but it’s kind of a nice feature.

I’ve also installed three more plugins:

Acronym Replacer, from Joel Bennett
adds a predefined acronym tag to a number of terms. Which means that when I type WIP, I don’t need to explain it for my non-stitching readers, and when I type PHP, I don’t need to explain it for non-geeky readers. Just hold your mouse over the underlined words to see an explanation. Just in case you’re wondering, no, this plugin doesn’t come standard with stitching terms… I added those:lol:
Theme Switcher, by Ryan Boren
Actually, this one I added, then disabled. It’s kind of cool, allows readers to view my blog in the installed theme of their choice, but a) I only have one theme other than the Classic or Default installed so far, and b) I am a control freak, and want readers to look at the blog my way:lol:
Countdown, by Owen Winkler
Counts down the days until my very important dates – currently located under the calendar. So childish!

Lastly but not leastly, I know my feeds (RSS/Atom) are not working. It’s something to do with my sub-domain, I’m trying to figure out what. At any rate, that is something which will be fixed once I move this over to the new domain.

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And for my first plugin…

Posted on May 29, 2005 | Comments Off on And for my first plugin…

I gots da smilies, yay, yay yay:giggle:

So I was a WordPress convert before I even decided for sure I was going to do this blog thing. I ummed and ahhed about having a Blogger blog for months, as that’s where most of the cross-stitching blogs seem to be. The big appeal to me here though, as I was saying, is the CSS, and the tinkering with the nuts and bolts of the thing. Not so much the blog itself. When I read a little bit about WordPress, the decision was made. The install was super-simple, and took less than 10 minutes, even for me!

WordPress is a PHP application, so if I get the inclination, I can tinker with a whole lot more than just the style. But better… there’s a whole lot of people already doing just that, and making their code available as plugins and hacks. Hence, courtesy of Alex King, insta-smilies in my posts and comments (go see:wink:). Colour me happy!

My current theme and smilies are by the talented Becca Wei at Beccary. You can find the smilies here, and download the Ocadia theme from here.

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Geek Luddite seeks Blog

Posted on May 28, 2005 | Comments Off on Geek Luddite seeks Blog

The Journey of one Million Stitches begins with a single X. With apologies to Confucius, of course. I merely seek to explain my blog-title of choice.

Egads! That ‘B’ word. Wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to do it. I’m somewhat of a luddite, really, for an aspiring geek! It’s a introvert thing. I’m happy to be all over the Web and all its greatness, in blissful anonymity, but when it comes to putting any of my Self out there, I hesitate. But finally the allure of CSS drew me in (Templates… beautiful lovely templates!) Oh, and the blog crowd (ok, ok, blogosphere) got so big that I can hide in here now without drawing attention to myself!

So here I am. Don’t expect much for a while. Exams beckon (which is of course why I’ve developed a new time-waster in the first place!)

Oh, and the Million Stitches thing? I wish. Haven’t had so much time as to do one Hundred Stitches lately, sadly. I live in hope.

Author’s Note: the original name of this blog, referenced by this post, was ‘Million Stitches’. It has (obviously) since been changed.

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Posted in Blog Blather