Technology

When there’s not enough time in the day

Martha
Technology

I keep making the joke that I need to live on a planet that has more hours in the day. Between my job, and keeping the house going, and taking care of myself and the pets, there are days when the time I have left to sew a few and far between. I try to always have something ready to hand sew if I’m not in a position to spend time at my machine, but there are days when I wish I could just throw it all out the window and just go sew.

Yes this is a Monday blog post which means I had a whole weekend which should mean I had time to sew but there were things to do and scheduled events and I find myself on Sunday night (really late, technically I guess it’s Monday morning) and I’m writing a post while I wait for some things at work to happen. That in itself is an exercise in waiting, but I need to be at my computer, not at my sewing machine.

I keep trying to figure out how to squeeze more time out of my day, how to be more organized, how to make all the ideas that are crammed in my head, and more seem to show up on a regular basis. I have gone through periods where my creativity was at rock bottom so I’m glad my brain is coming up with new ideas, I just don’t have any time to work them out. I’m not complaining. I’d much rather have a wealth of ideas and no time, than all the time and zero motivation. I’d just like to figure out how to find a spot somewhere in the middle.

What am I doing here??

Martha
productivity, Quilting, Technology

I think I’m having a bit of an existential crisis with my quilting business. I started this seriously back in 2004. I like to design patterns. I like to teach. I like to write. In this day and age, that means having a business, and having a website, and having a blog. Along with those items come a lot of nit picky details. Things like taxes, keeping up the website (I had a whole other post on that) and all of these things come at a cost. Literally. I find myself at a cross roads.

A year ago, I set a goal for myself to write on my blog daily, and here I am now, having hit 53 out of the last 55 weeks (I think, that’s a mental calculation, didn’t keep it on paper). As we get to 2020, I’m thinking about what I should tackle next and I think it’s time for a new website. I converted to WordPress about three years ago and boy have I learned a lot – which is code for boy have I done a lot of things wrong and I think it’s time for an overhaul. Because I didn’t fully understand WordPress when I moved over to this platform, I ended up with a website with a TON more features than what I really need. I will never use those features yet they are built in and I have to maintain them or the whole thing goes south. Doing a redesign will take time and money and I know will be worth it but there are days I’m really regretting moving away from Blogger as a platform. I remind myself that we can’t grow if we stay always in the same spot without trying anything new.

I really want to develop a site that lets me share my love of quilting and the things that I work on and design for myself. It doesn’t have to be complicated to accomplish that, and I’d like to be able to spend more time quilting and less time trying to keep my site going. If you look now, I think most of my secondary pages are broken, not sure why, and if you noticed there’s not a featured image on this post, it’s because Word Press has decided that I can’t upload new photos, so until I get that figured out, there won’t be any new images on the blog. Yet another thing that was working great and is now broken.

I’m curious to see where 2020 takes, but I know I will get there in style with a new website. Keep your eyes on this space, I should have something to announce in the February time frame.

this is the song that never ends….

Martha
Life, Technology

I learned early on, that laundry and dishes are two of the great lies of adulthood. No matter how hard you try, you are never done. You might get done for now, or done with this round, but no matter how hard you work, you will turn around and there will be a dirty cup sitting next to a dirty sock. That’s life.

I am coming to understand that anything technology is the same as laundry and dishes. I started this blog a while ago, and I thought once I got the website layout done, that it would just hum along happily but that’s not how it works. WordPress is constantly going through upgrades, and any upgrade, at any time, can break a part of your website or blog with no warning. Some things I’m able to figure out how to fix. My portrait on my blog is finally right side up after a very long time of being sideways for some users (not all, that would have been too simple). I’ve noticed that the links to my InstaGram photos breaks more often than anything else, and I can’t figure out if that’s down to WordPress or InstaGram making changes. Either way, it’s a very frustrating dirty sock to chase down. I’m almost to the point of just removing that widget and not having that link in place.

In my house, I have a bunch of WiFi enabled lightbulbs. At first, they were just amazing. I have scheduled routines and I no longer have a physical timer on every light that the cat used frequently as a back scratcher, thus changing the default time on the timer. I have noticed that after several upgrades, things aren’t so smooth anymore. The bridge that controls everything is now end-of-life so I will have to replace it, and my nightstand light in the bedroom has gone rogue – it just turns itself on and off at the beat of its own drummer, completely ignoring the programming that I set up. At this stage I’m almost ready to just start turning my lights on and off by myself. This does open me up to a lot more stubbed toes as in several rooms I have to walk into the room to get to a light to turn it on and the number of times I stub my toe on something or trip over something is startling.

I like technology, and I like using technology, but when it starts becoming dishes and laundry instead of magic, I get less and less impressed. If you will excuse me now, I have to go fight with my blog and InstaGram and try to find that other dirty sock. It never ends.

The Decision to go Digital

Martha
Technology

I am a sewer and knitter. I buy patterns. A lot of patterns – and those patterns have always been physical copies. Ok for clothing you pretty much need a physical pattern so you can cut out fabric. That’s one thing. But for quilts and knitting, does it really have to be a paper copy?

Since I’m packing to move, I’m finding out just how many patterns/books/leaflets/printouts I have. The volume is tremendous. I will never make all this stuff even if I were to live to be 100 years old. But still I have them and I get more. Most of the stuff I get online now has a digital download. I put the file on my computer and promptly print it out and put it in a 3 ring binder, even if I have no immediate plans to make that project. I have no idea why.

Used to be that hard drive space on a computer was expensive. I put a lot of stuff on floppy disks rather than keep it on a hard drive. (Side note, found a lot of those floppy disks when I was cleaning out. Even a couple of 8″ floppies. That takes me back a bit.) Not any more. The new laptop I got has a terabyte of storage. A TERABYTE. If I think about movies, that would hold 250 movies. If I think about average photos, that can hold 2 MILLION PHOTOS. And I’m still printing stuff out????

I am slowly changing things over in my world to digital. I don’t use the public cloud, but I have a couple of external hard drives, and back up my own files. All my music is now digital. My photos for the last 5 years are all digital. I’ve had an e-reader for about 10 years to free up bookshelf space. It is time to get my patterns into the digital age. Think of all the shelf space in the sewing room that will free up.

There are a couple of things that I will always keep. I have a great book with basic knitted sweater patterns in it. I’ll keep that. I have a few cookbooks that are fabulous reference books. I’ll keep those. I have all of Elly Sienkiewicz Applique books that are no longer in print and I will keep those. The rest of it however, will get converted to digital and stored that way. I need the shelf space for fabric.

Technology Update: there’s now a mailing list!

Martha
Technology

When the end of April rolls around, it will mark six months where I have had a blog post every Monday morning. I have been using a lot of the scheduling features in WordPress that automate the blog posts so I can write them ahead of time and have it all set to go, then on the appropriate Monday it publishes and also pushes out to my business FaceBook page.

I’m pretty tickled with this milestone. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and with the aid of these programs, I’m off and running. April’s content is almost done on 4/1, and I have started working on the topics for May. As with anything, some posts are better than others. I’ve had a couple that really resonate with people, but I want to be careful not to complain too much (I can easily fall into that trap) and I want there to be useful information in the blog too. It will be a challenge to come up with 52 interested topics, knowing that right on the heels of that, I need another 52 interesting topics that don’t overlap with the first 52 topics. Yea. No pressure at all.

Since I’m actually getting the hang of this, and am enjoying it enough that I want to keep going, I have thought about the people who might want to follow up on the blog but without having to either remember that it is Monday or have to have a facebook account to know when I’ve posted. The most convenient way to do that is to have an email signup, so everybody on the list gets an email when the blog is updated.

I could chose to make this really complicated. I thought about having a newsletter that I write every week, that includes the note that there’s a new blog post but oh good golly that’s another 52 topics a year that need to be distinct from the other 104 topics. You can see where this is going. I’m also not trying to sell you anything, I don’t need to give you a coupon or send you a huge email you have to read, all I want is a little something in your inbox that says hey it’s Monday maybe go check out the blog!

So that’s what I’ve done. If you look at my blog, in the sidebar, under the tiny biography and photo (which on the computer is sideways and I have no idea why I couldn’t have done that if I had set out to do something so baffling and I can’t fix it either) there is a newsletter sign up. I just ask for your first and last name and your email address. I don’t want your birthday, I don’t want your phone number, I’m not going to sell my vast list of 32 followers to anyone. Even if I get up to 38 followers, not going to sell my list. Signing up for this will get you the nice little email on Mondays telling you there’s a new post on the blog.

I’m pondering the idea of perhaps making a quarterly newsletter (so that’s only 4 more emails a year) to list out class and lecture schedules but that’s a little ways out in the future, right now the plan is just for the Monday reminder. So if you’d like to come along on this little journey with me, go ahead to the side bar and sign up for the newsletter. I’ll treat you right, share a little information and hopefully give you something nice in your inbox on a Monday morning!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Martha
Technology

I have been an avid photographer since I was a kid. I used to help my dad lug his camera equipment all over the place, and as soon as I was old enough, I had my own little Kodak Brownie camera. I still have two prints framed in my living room that I took with that little camera.

Over the years, I have always taken my camera along no matter where I go. Camera, along with tons of film, trying to capture on film the memories and experiences. About 15 years ago I made the transition to digital, and in many ways I had to relearn everything I knew about taking photos. In the beginning, digital could not hold a candle to film photography, especially if you wanted anything larger than a 3×5″ print. It has been interesting to see the evolution of the technology. One big difference is that I had to get a new camera every time things got better. With film, I’m still using the camera I bought in 1987, I just changed film over the years. With digital, the electronics in the camera are doing most of the work, so upgrade means new equipment.

This past year has seen a huge shift in my photography, using the camera on my phone. We all take our phones everywhere and that means we have a camera with us at all times. On one hand, this has resulted in a lot of interesting social behavior, recordings of social events and a multitude of cat videos. I shall refrain from further comment on that subject. On the other hand, I am starting to look at the ability to document my activities with my iPhone camera instead of a separate camera.

One of the goals I had for this blog was to make sure that most of the photos were my own work, but I do not plan to drag a big digital SLR around with me all the time. I am taking my photos with my iPhone exclusively. Even on my last vacation, I took all my photos with my iPhone. It was nice to not have to carry around a separate camera bag. I even purchased a set of macro lenses that I can clip onto the phone, which were moderately successful. I think there needs to be a lot more experimentation before I feel proficient with them.

I am still a film girl at heart. I understand it well enough that I can manipulate the camera settings to get exactly the type of shot I want. Digital, however, gives the ability for immediate feedback. I can tell right after I take the photo if I captured what I wanted or if I need to take another shot. Digital also merges seamlessly with digital media such as my blog, I can transfer photos from my phone to my iPad using air drop and upload them all in a few minutes.

My next goal is to work on taking photos to support some of the tutorials I want to write. Being digital (instead of print) means I can use as many photos as it takes to cover the technique well, without worrying about the cost of color photo printing or the number of pages that are involved. No more trying to convey everything in only 3 photos – the sky is the limit! I don’t think I will ever get to where I have pictures without writing, words are too important, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, my content is about to really take a jump!

Spontaneity: Scheduling posts vs writing in the moment

Martha
Life, Technology

Two years ago I attended a conference for sewing professionals, which included multiple sessions on managing social media content. Talk about an eye opening event! I had no idea that content could be planned and managed ahead of time. Here all this time I thought people who had blogs were writing in the actual moment and posting at the time when their post was dated on their blog. I am sure that some do, but after that conference I started looking at my blog with new eyes.

I have kept a journal since high school, and my blog tended to follow more of a journal model. Writing has always been in the moment for me, based on things that are happening in my life at that time. I enjoy doing that, and I enjoy sharing my experiences in that manner, but when life gets busy, it gets really tricky trying to make sure I have the time set aside to write and post as things happen and on a regular basis. I would submit the dearth of posts on this blog as evidence of how well this was working…

I have decided to try a different approach this year and schedule posts ahead of time, planning what I am going to write about. I am planning to work about one month at a time. Posts will drop on Monday mornings at 07:00 central time. I am starting a running list of possible topics to use for my post. I can still be spontaneous – I can always change the schedule of a post or I can drop in an extra post in a week if something really grabs me. In this plan, I will write posts in a clump and schedule them to drop over the month.

I have always been a creature of habit and I know my life runs more smoothly when I plan ahead. If I want something to be a success, I map out a plan and a timeline and then work towards the completion. I learned how to do this very effectively at work, and I am now applying this process to things at home. I have gotten to the point where I meet my sewing deadlines this way, so it is just logical to apply this same approach to keeping my blog active and regularly updated. I would love to be one of those people who just wakes up and wonders where the world will take them today, but I am not. I need to be ok with that. I am just wired differently than those people. Somewhere along the line, I equated creativity with spontaneity: if I was not spontaneous, then I was not being creative. I’ve decided they are different things. I can be creative but go about it in a different manner. I can be open to changes along the way but still start out with a plan to get me to my deliverable.

So here’s to planned creativity. Map and agenda in hand, let’s see where it leads me.

Tied to the past: a 1700 year old sock

Martha
Quilting, Technology

The other day while perusing interesting articles online, I ran across this photo from the British Museum of a 1700 year old sock from Egypt. Yes, 1700 year old knitted sock for a child. The left foot apparently, found in a trash midden if I understand the article correctly. This puts us smack in the Roman occupation of Egypt and they were knitting socks.

I have always felt that my sewing hobby tied me back to women through the ages. Before metal needles, women and men were using bone needles to join things into useful items. I knew knitting had been around for a long time but this was a 1700 year old sock. Someone had decided that a child needed a pair of socks and that the socks should be interesting enough to have different colored stripes in them. They took the time to knit a left sock so presumably there is a right sock somewhere in the universe. On a side note, I think this destroys the myth that dryers eat socks, because they didn’t have dryers 1700 years ago, yet only the left sock was found in the trash pile, making me think that it was tossed when they could no longer find the right sock. Let that sink in for a minute. The chase for the missing sock has been going on a lot longer than any of us realized.

Anyway, back to my original thread (yes, pun intended). I enjoy my needlework hobbies very much. They let me create things that are both beautiful and useful at the same time, but they also give me a very tangible tie back to previous generations of women, using their needles (both sewing and knitting) to bring beauty to every day items. That thread just goes back farther than I realized in knitting.

Thus ends the Instagram Account Hokey Pokey

Martha
Technology

You remember the Hokey Pokey. You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, etc. etc. Well I have been trying to figure out what to do with my Instagram accounts. Part of it was just figuring out Instagram, the rest was trying to figure out what I want to have for my social media presence. Needless to say there have been a whole handful of attempts and starts at attempts and ultimately I figured out that multiple accounts is not for me. So I have disabled the newer business type account @pinwheelprodns, and I’ve changed the handle on my main account to @pinwheelprodnsquilts and I’m going to leave it like that. I promise. I know everybody is tired.

I’m sure at this point everybody is confused by the “shake it all about” aspect of the Hokey Pokey but things should settle down now. The blog and website are live, I’ve settled on a single IG account, time to move forward and get busy SEWING!!

Slow and Steady Wins the Day

Martha
Quilting, Technology

It’s both an old British saying, and the name of Tula Pink’s latest fabric line. She has mentioned that part of the name refers to working steadily towards a goal, and that steady work will get you to the finish line eventually.

If you have been reading through the blog, you have seen a HUGE theme about starting over, moving forward, all those ways of saying that I want to work on this and I want to make it a success. I have also posted how I am working on patterns again, and I’m remaking some of them in more modern fabric. That being said – I’ve finished a new sample of Fat Quarter Fabulous using Slow and Steady. I’m realizing this is more than just making another sample, this is a tangible expression of this reboot. I could not have picked a better fabric line for this new sample! I’m both getting my technical content updated as well as updating my samples. Next up is to get it quilted and get a photo of it in all its glory.

The website/blog is now on line and ready to go. I will continue to update as I add more content and get more photos but the core of it is in place, and I couldn’t be happier. I also dug in and created my logo in Adobe Illustrator. I overcame a huge learning curve there thanks to online tutorial videos, and I’m pleased with it. I was able to keep the hand-drawn aspects of my original logo, while converting it to a format that can go on a number of things. Color me happy as I check another thing off my list.

I will keep looking at that quilt when I get discouraged, or confused or tired. Slow and Steady Wins the Day. I will figure all this out. I will create new patterns, and I will continue to do that which I love so very much.

Download the pattern for free here!

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