Amazing what a little bit of sun can do

especially after the rain.  Remember in a previous post I was a tad excited that Spring was coming.  After that posting we had some more light rain and in between beautiful sunny days.  Now look at my garden.

 Colour popping out of every little corner.  Ah Spring, love it, but not the pollen!

  

 

Two beautiful books

Last week I went to the Wyndham Quilters (in Werribee, Vic) Quilt-In.  A great day with friends Jenni, Judy, Wendy.  Corliss Searcy from Threadbear in Castlemaine was the speaker and she bought along some of her fabulous antique quilts from her family's collection.  Such eye candy, unfortunately my camera wasn't working very well and the photos didn't come out.

Corliss also had her 'shop' there and of course I had to explore!  I purchased these two absolutely fabulous books -

This first one 'A Schoolgirl's Work' is a collection of embroidery samplers worked by (of course) school girls spanning the years from 1710 to 1841 and the girls' ages are from 7 - 19 years.  A stunning book if you like antique stitcheries and samplers, together with a little bit of history about the girls.

The second book 'When the Cold Wind Blows' is a collection of beautiful applique quilts.  The authors show two variations of each quilt.

Both of these books were written and produced by Barb Adams and Alma Allen of Blackbird Designs and are beautifully presented and printed.  Wonderful treasures to have in one's library.

Slowly, but getting there

Well, as you can see I'm slowly getting the blog back to normal.  It is a slow process as I need to look at each post and fix one at a time.  The longest part of the process is searching and finding the correct photo.  Unfortunately in some cases a few photos were downloaded directly from my camera and I have no way of retrieving these photos. 

I was told about a great free site - 'Recuva' to download - this program searches your hard drive for any files/photos that you have deleted.  It searches all drives on your computer and it can take a while for this to happen - but oh boy! it recovers any file/photo/site that you may have looked at (even those that you hadn't actually saved).  When finished searching it came up with over 7,000 images, and I didn't click on ALL, just images.  Imagine if I clicked 'all' that would mean each and every file/site/page etc I have looked at since I've had the computer!!!!!  A tad scary.  At the time it got me thinking - this is a free download, what do the authorities (ie police etc) have to use when checking a criminal's or suspect's computer!!  Nowhere to hide these days.

Hopefully by the end of the week I will have recovered most of my pictures - those that I can't, I will edit the posting to reflect no available photo, or delete altogether.

Then I can get back to posting in the proper manner. Till then, take care and enjoy life.

Joy V

Not Happy Jan!!!

Have just received an email telling me that unfortunately, my photos can't be retrieved.  Not happy!!!

Apparently, when using Picasa to store one's photos, if you do a clean-up like I did recently and deleted some photos that I thought I wouldn't need any more, because (a) they weren't relevant; and (b) I had them on my blog anyway.  Well, deleting them from Picasa also deletes them from your blog!!!  I have just sent a rather 'not-so-nice' email back to say there is no warning about this on either Picasa or Blogger and I just may consider changing my blog across to WordPress or taking out a domain name myself. 

Another thing I found out was that with the new smart phones - if you have them integrated with your computer, ie a gmail address etc; then all your photos on your blog can appear on your phone.  This also happened to me and as they took up a lot of space on my phone, I deleted these also, about the same time as the clean-up.  A big NO. NO.  This will also delete them from your applications, such as your blog etc. That is two ways you can have a problem with your blog, AND again no warnings.

The upshot of all of this, is that I now have to go and delete all those nasty black blobs on my blog and try and find the photos and repost them.  Unfortunately some can't be replaced, but luckily the latest postings I can retrieve as I have them backed-up on an external drive.  This is going to be a loooooong saga, but hopefully by doing a few each day it wont be too long.  There will be some very old posts that wont have photos anymore, but unfortunately I will just have to edit them and take out any reference to a photo.

Time to have a glass of red and chill out a bit I think before I tackle this rather large undertaking.

Be aware dear readers, what you delete from your computer....

What a disaster!!!!

As you have noticed if reading my blog, yesterday something disastrous happened - ALL my photos have disappeared and been replaced with that horrible black thingy-ma--jig!  I have sent an urgent message to Blogger to find out how to reinstate them.  Not sure how long it will take for them to look at it and advise me what to do.  Just hope there is something that can be done.

Please be patient while I try and get this fixed.  I'm trying not to tear my hair out in the meantime!

Thanks,
...Joy

New Block of the Week

Barbara Brackman has done it again!  Another Block of the Week has started - on 1 September 2012 and will go for 49 weeks.

How many of you followed her Civil War BOW?  I did, but unfortunately didn't keep up with making the blocks although I have saved them all on the computer!  Another 'to do' quilt on my never ending list.

This BOW she has called 'Grandmother's Choice' and will be relating stories of the Suffragettes and Women's Rights in those early years.  Barbara has started another blog for you to follow and get the patterns.  I have put it in my Blog List on the right or you can click on any of the links in this posting.  This is one project I really really want to do.  I feel very strongly about the rights of women and the abuse some suffer in other countries (and here in the 'civilised' society as well - mostly within their family units).

Not sure how I want to make this one.  Do I use the colours of the Suffragette movement, purple (for dignity), green (for hope) and white (purity);  (if I can find enough reproduction fabrics in these colours, it might be the way to go).  I have always wanted to make a red and white quilt, (which by the way was the English women's colours);  will I chose this option?  Australia's Women's Right Movement chose the colours green, gold and white - another good option.  I could just go with scrappy and use my civil war and reproduction fabrics that I have.  But to honour these women I feel I should use their colours.

Decisions, decisions.  Which way would you go?  When I have made my decision I will let you know.