Sunday 10 July 2011

This is the new style

... of my blogging life. Gone are the days of a post every 2 days. Ah, I never treasured wireless internet as much as I should have while I still had it!

I'm not livng out in the boons, working with a mobile internet stick since there is no affordable faster version here. The next village is supposed to get glassfibre cables maybe this year...

So as I read pages of books while waiting for a quilting blog to load, my patience for uploading my own pictures wears thin. (can someone tell me if using google reader means that all the latest posts of blogs I choose show up in one place, rather than having to load each individual blog with the many photos that come with it (including from old posts which I've already read)... I'd really like to catch up in my blog reading, but right now, it's just not doable! Help!)

On top of the internet handicap, I've just not been quilting as much. The area around here is beautiful, so I spend more time outside than I used to. Maybe that'll drive me to handquilting ;) I did some applique today, out in the sunshine.

I only did that because I had to sew some really weird curved shapes together that I couldn't do by machine, and the reason I had to do that in the first place was to finish this small quilt top:

It's made from two UFOs, my Sunset on Water convergence experiment and my Drunkard's Path experiment. For some reason, this quilt made me think of planets while I was working on it, so it's my Solar System quilt now :) The drunkard's path blocks measure 5.5" finished, making this about 38" square.

There are 4 odd blocks in this quilt top, e.g. the 3rd block to the right and also the 3rd block up from the bottom left corner in the outside row. I was 4 drunkard path blocks short and had used all my fabric, but I still had 12 of the cut out pieces from making the drunkard's path blocks, so I picked the 3 neighbouring fabrics to my 'gap blocks' and cut the pieces up and sewed them back together to make a 6" square. The fabric was *just* enough! No room for mistakes there!

I think this will be a good small starter project to get me going on quilting again. But either way, the days of frequent blogging are over until the internet speeds up around here...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Christine. I am researching the reader thing. I'm not forgetting you at all.
a great blog. must have taken ages.
N

Ida from Central PA said...

Google Reader allows you to group your blogs -- I have 'quilting' 'crafts' 'embroidery' 'food' .. you get the idea.

They have an option to show 'only updated'. This is really nice because it only shows the 'new' posts.

You can also 'star' posts, and then later read/look at only those you have starred. I use this as my 'inspiration' section.

Crispy said...

Hi Christine!! I've missed you. I hear ya on the slow dial up thing. On your dashboard, scroll down to the bottom of the Reader List section and click on View in Google Reader, when it comes up save it to favorites. Clicking on the blog name is the fastest way of reading however you can't comment. To bring up a blog, so you can comment, you click on the arrow to the far right. To avoid having to wait for the blog to load to comment, you might want to just send an e-mail. Let me know if you have any questions :0)

Crispy - Sorry for the long comment LOL.

Crispy said...

Oh I forgot to say, if you read a blog and then close Google Reader or refresh it, that blog's current post will no longer be listed. I think you can star it so it will stay.

Crispy

Anne at Film and Thread said...

Oh, what a stunning quilt top and so good to hear from you!

I use Google Reader for all the blogs I read. On your Google home page, you can put a Google Reader widget that is kind of like a news feed. It will show all the new entries from the blogs and you can read them inside Google Reader. They load MUCH faster than going to a blog because it isn't having to load the header, sidebars, etc. It just will show the new post that someone has made. If you want to comment, you then have to click over to their blog, but with your slow internet you might not do that as much. Let me know if you need any help with how to set it up.

klofgren62 said...

I send sympathy -- it was a nightmare to try to use the computer before fiber optics came to our area. It has been boring without your blog. Hope you find a way to both read and post at lightening speed soon.