Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Slow, Sluggish, Stagnating

That's kind of how I feel. Summer is a great time for getting lots of things done, except, apparently not tatting or tatting books. I've done nothing at all on the snowflake book for over a month. It has been mostly too hot to work in my office for anything other than the immediately necessary jobs. Then there have been "issues". Irritating things like computers not working properly. Frustrating things that have required my attention elsewhere. Annoying things like necessary power outages for some necessary re-wiring. Creative things like not liking the whole "tone" of the book so far. Drastic things like the possible re-formatting of the entire book.

Here's a minor issue. I was doodling and this snowflake appeared. On the first one I neglected to join one of the clunies to the central motif so I just tied it on after the fact so that I could see what it should look like. Then I thought I might include it in the book too. I re-did it in colour using a variegated Valdani thread matched with a solid burgundy that looked like a good pairing in the evening light.
In the cold light of day it seems a bit off to me. Or maybe it's me that's off. I started it again in white and on the first cluny the thread broke. I contemplated just attaching more thread and continuing, but opted instead to do it right and start over. The second time it waited until the 8th cluny before it broke. If it's going to be included in the book I need it done in white. which I can't do because for the first time in my life I'm all out of white thread.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Changing domains

We are slowly but surely changing over to our new domain and the GageChek domain is about to be removed. That means that anyone who has bookmarked the old address with the tatting demos and tips and the link to the tatted headpiece that I did are about to disappear.

My old web page used to be http://www.gagechek.com/slb but it's new address is:

http://www.rsbriggs.com/slb

Clicking on the link will take you to the new page which is exactly like the old one. If you haven't visited the page you might want to take a look through it. There are pictures of the tatting I did for my wedding veil, useful information in the tatting Tips including a page on How to Read a Pattern which you are free to use for teaching purposes, and of course there are a variety of how to demos. Even if you have seen the page before, clicking on the link will help to register the new address with the search engines so that new tatters can find the demos.


The new address also included the information on FilePick which is the software my sweet hubby wrote to help keep track of patterns and other things. I found that when I had created a lot of drawings, it became hard to find the one that I wanted. If you make one heart it's easy to find, but if you've made a dozen over the course of several years, it may be harder to locate the one you want and it sure is tedious opening up one pattern after another trying to locate the right one.

FilePick will let you list the pattern or the PDF file or the CAD file and link the name to a picture. It doesn't have to be a picture of the diagram, it can be a picture of the finished product. It sure is a lot easier to scroll through thumbnails of things to find just the right one.

If you have a minute, I'd appreciate it if you clicked on the 2 links above. It will help to establish the new addresses in the search engines so that people can find us again.