an apology for my absence from commenting on your blog

Yes, I was absent from the blogging world from the beginning of March until about the middle of April. This was mostly due to my interest in family history. I spent so much time researching on the computer that I didn’t have any more time to read blogs or write posts for my own blog.

When I returned to the blogosphere, I tried to catch up with people’s blogs; I really did. I’ve just had a really busy weekend and am trying to catch on posts written since last Thursday. Because of the large number of blogs I have been following, four days away from reading blogs means 73 blogs to catch up with – and some of those bloggers posted more than once in four days.

But, here’s the rub. Our internet provider has taken on more customers in our area than they can comfortably service, resulting in slower and slower internet downloading time for us. In effect, they have 87 people on a 45 seater bus! This slow download time means that our brand-new modem gets frustrated and tries to reconnect (or something like that) which just makes the situation worse. Our speed is so slow that SIL noted that we had slightly better speeds than dial-up!

We have contacted our ISP and they have finally admitted (after two years of trying to get answers) the problem. But they assure us that it will all be resolved on 4 June! After that assurance (about a month ago) the speed got slower and slower. We live only 400m from the exchange and should have excellent service but we have anything but!

Let me give you an example: I tried to open a video on the online art course WM gave me for my birthday. I tried in the middle of the day when most of the people in the neighbourhood are at work or school. It took me 45 minutes to buffer 8 minutes of a 16 minute video, and when I tried to watch the video, Jane sounded like she had the worst stammer in the world. In fact, it took eighteen seconds for her to say two one-syllable words!

But what does this have to do with you and your blogs, dear readers? Well, my internet connection is so slow I can’t use my Blogger Reading List properly so I have to open my browser and type the name of your blog. Then I go off and play a game of “Free Cell” while I wait for your blog to download to my computer. Heaven help me if I want to leave a comment and you a use Blogger and have word verification – it take about two minutes form the time I click “post comment” to the time I can read those dreaded verifications! If you are still using verification, please consider turning it off. Blogger is quite good at catching spam comments (it hasn’t missed any of mine yet) and you can always use comment moderation to make sure you only get comments worth reading.

Anyway, back to the point: It has taken me half an hour to catch up on two blogs this morning and I can’t do this for another seventy-one blogs: who has that kind of time to spend on the internet?

WM and I have done what we should have done a long time ago: we have changed providers. However this may take up to three weeks. In the meantime, our current provider must have found out that we are jumping ship, our speeds are slower than ever!

My apologies to you all. When I move into the 21st century I will just pick up where you are; there's no way I can catch up with all those missed posts. See you on your blog then!

Burp cloths

Firstly, I want to thank all those who left compliments for my burp cloths on my recent post.

But, I have an enormous apology to make - five in fact - to the authors of those patterns. I have just re-read my post and realised that I had omitted to acknowledge the source of the patterns. I have done so on my Ravelry project page but not here and it was very wrong of me.

The duck burp cloth is Quacking Up by Elaine Fitzpatrick. There is a pattern for a matching bib too.
The aeroplane cloth is Airplane, Free by Susan Mrenna
The horse cloth is giddy-up by Amy-lynne Mitchell
The "B" cloth is Knitted "B" dishcloth by Rhonda White
The musical cloth is Knitted Musical Notes by Rhonda White

My apologies to all these designers who make their patterns available free on Ravelry. I should have acknowledged you on the original post and have edited it to reflect your ownership of the pattern.

Winter of Textured Knits KAL final round up Act 1

Dear readers of this blog and members of WoTK in particular

Thanks for your patience. We have upgraded our plan and hopefully will never run out of plan before we run out of month! It didn't help that I also ran out of blogging steam somewhere back in late June!

Thank you for your emails of love and support; I really appreciated them more than I can ever express in mere words!

So, here, for your viewing pleasure, are the final entries of the Winter of Textured Knits KAL.

Up in sunny Queensland, Rell [who also lost her blogging drive for a while] has knitted this. A gorgeous colour and lovely cables. Well done Rell. The finished product is shown on her 9 September post [which I can't link to; sorry Rell].


This is not knitted, it is woven, but I couldn't resist showing you. It's made from plastic shopping bags and the final result is in this post.
Apart from weaving and quilting and renovating, Delighted Hands has had some time to knit and produced these in August. Check here for the full picture.
This was started during the KAL. Here's the finished item - how could I not show it?



Knitter Sue has knitted this. It's a Christmas present - how well organised is that? There were so many interesting textures, it was hard to crop the photo. Go here to see the finished object.

Then there was this. Aren't those buttons cute? To see the lovely Isabel wearing this, go here.




These items seem to have become very popular and Sue has two to show you here, another here and one more here.

apology

To all members of the pseudo-KAL "Winter of Textured Knitting"

Please accept my apologies for being a 'non-present' host. I have good reasons for not having blogged in six weeks - reasons that I'd rather not share publicly. Let's just say that when I took a break from work for the winter vacation, I needed a break from blogging too.

The longer the break, the harder it was to get back into it. I'm sure you know how it is - any task [even those we enjoy] left undone, seems insurmountable and more procrastination follows [well, that's how it is for me anyway].

So, coming back has been difficult because I felt I owed you an explanation. Ultimately, though, I've realised that all I really need to do is what I did at the start - apologise; then hope that you will forgive me.

To those who contacted me by email during the past few weeks - thank you; your kindness and caring mean a great deal to me, more than you'll ever know.

As for "Winter of Textured Knitting", I will do a round up for July and August at the end of the month, which is also the end of the KAL.

Lace weight erratumand a very sincere apology

I have a huge public apology to make to Sally. In my post of three days ago, I said that up until last weekend I had owned no lace weight. That was untrue but a genuine oversight.

I've been reading Sally's blog from her first post and earlier this year, I won one of two blogiversary prizes [the other went overseas] - part of which was a ball of lace weight silk. I didn't ever published the photo of my prize [very remiss of me] because at the time I won it we were having a lot of wet weather and I couldn’t get WM to take a photo. Then I got my own camera and took photos - but still didn't blog about it. Oh, Sally, I'm so very sorry.

So here, dear readers [I hope Sally's still one of them] is my fabulous prize from Sally. Firstly, the cute little case in which the goodies came [of which I'm sure I took a photo but can't seem to find one]. Inside, there was a lovely card with knitting and a cup of tea [my favourite beverage most of the time]. Then something that made me smile - a pompom maker; what else from someone who calls her blog 'PomPom'? There was a delicious Terry’s chocolate orange [not knitting but what every knitter needs - sweet treats] and finally, a ball of hand-dyed 2ply silk from Mollydale Knits [of Armidale NSW]. The smaller photo is a truer colour on my monitor.

So dear Sally, I'm really sorry - how could I have overlooked this largess. The bag really does sit on the right end of my desk [I'm left handed] - open so I can see the contents. Occasionally I even handle the yarn and think about what it might become. I did offer it to DD for her wedding stole but she wants something in ivory. A thousand apologies, my friend, please forgive my oversight.