Incoherent Scribblings

A Better World Through Blogging

Shortly after I started blogging last January, I met a fellow expatriate blogger here in Munich. I found her completely by chance because I just thought the name of her site sounded cool, “Raspberry World,” when I stumbled upon it via Blogger’s recently updated list. I had no idea she was in Munich when I clicked on that link the first time, but when I discovered she was, I sent her an email. We went out for “coffee” (OK, hot chocolate) a few days later and hit it off. From then on we met quite often and did fun things together until her husband got transferred back to the States in August.

Well, Susie is back in town this week! And tomorrow we are going to get together and have lunch and cruise town. I am so excited to see her! Shortly before she left, I discovered that she had cross stitched in the past and I encouraged her to start again. Together we are participating in some online cross stitching activities and tomorrow we will be visiting the stitching shops here, along with some standard shopping.

It never ceases to amaze me that I have “met” so many people through blogging. Sure, I have technically only met a few in person, but I feel like when and/or if I ever meet some of my regular reads we will have plenty to talk about and very little of those “awkward silences.”

For example, recently Vivi and Tracey set up The Great International Secret Blog Exchange. I didn’t participate in this round because I was already participating in something similar through a cross stitch board, but if they do a second round I definitely want to get involved.

And then, once again thanks to Vivi, I just learned about a proposed European English Language Book Exchange. I am very excited about this because though I am a librarian, I am not a book collector. There aren’t a lot of good opportunities to get rid of used books here and so if someone else would like something that I no longer want, I am happy to send it on to them. And of course, the major benefit is that I get something too! I really hope someone has Dean Koontz’s Whispers. I have wanted to read it for ages, but for some reason always forget when I order from amazon.de.

Since I am a housewife and have no job outside the home, sometimes life in a foreign country can get a little lonely. But through blogging I have discovered that I am NOT alone and that always makes things easier. Yes, I think it is true: It is without doubt “A Better World Through Blogging.”

Slip Me Some Skin!

It might appear that the blog has been quite the last few days. Well, I will grant you that I haven’t posted as such, but believe me, behind the scenes it has been very busy!

It all started over the weekend when I decided that I was ready for a new spring theme. After I developed and uploaded it I realized that I still very much liked my old theme.

Now while I enjoy the writing aspect of blogging, another one of my hobbies is web design and I like to use my blog to experiment with new issues that I come across. When I wrote my New Year’s Resolutions one of them was to “learn .php.” When I thought about it I decided I didn’t want to learn .php as such so much as I wanted to learn to “skin” my site. I have designed lots of skins during the short (14 months) life of my blog and up until now I usually just replace the old one with the new. I have an archived copy of a couple of those designs on my hard disk, but I would like to be able to switch between my skins at random. Enter the skinning!

And that is what I have been doing the last few days. The first change you may or may not notice is that all of my files now end in .php instead of .html. If you have linked to one of my entries anywhere, please update your link. (The old .html files are still there for now, but I can’t guarantee I won’t delete them if I need more disk space.)

Then following this tutorial, I uploaded three skins “Whoopsy Daisy!”, the new spring theme… it should be the default; “Pink Plain Jane”, a simple theme modified from the Movable Type Template “Sakura”; and “Blonde Bubbles,” the skin you have been seeing for the past few months.

Everything seemed to go well creating my PHP switcher and inserting the code into my index templates that tracks cookies (that’s how it remembers which skin you choose), but when I tested it, the skins weren’t switching.

I cursed, I reread the instructions, I cursed some more, I looked at some other tutorials and tried some of those ideas, I cursed some more, and then finally (many, many hours later) I found this suggestion on some obscure bulletin board and it worked! If it wouldn’t have been so late (approaching 2 am) I would have ran outside and screamed! I was SO fucking happy!

I made the final tweaks this morning and now my site is should be skinnable! I think I finally have the kinks worked out, but would love it if my readers would choose one the skins in the left-hand right-hand column (Sorry about the Blonde Moment… for some reason I always get the two mixed up!) and leave me a comment or drop me a gmail if you come across any bugs.

A Question of Time

Over the weekend I completed four hours of stitch time on “Snowdrop Fairy” for my RR. When I started working on it, I made myself a tentative goal that I would stitch on it two hours a day until I finished it. Well, of course other things got in the way and I haven’t had a chance to stitch since Sunday.

This morning when I pulled it out to start working on it, I again got distracted as I started thinking about how much time I spend stitching. I like the “two hours a day” goal, but I know that often I don’t stitch for days at a time and then once I do sit down I might stitch for a 4 or 5 hour stretch.

My rotation system is based on a loose 15-hour method and I notice that I usually change pieces about once every ten days. This makes me think that I must stitch about 15 hours in 10 days or 10.5 hours a week (7 days). Technically this averages out to 1.5 hours a day. Though I am not quite reaching my two hours a day goal, I am pretty close and so I guess it isn’t really beyond my reach. But I wonder about how I compare to the rest of you.

And this of course, brings me to today’s Stitching Blogger’s Question, which is:

On average, how many hours a week (7 days) do you think that you spend cross-stitching?

I look forward to reading your answers!