Busy Bee.

Been working on 2 afghans on and off as well as a cross stitch and brainstorming another pattern for the "Fishin' Buddies" booklet. I'd like to say I have a good reason for not posting more regularly, but let's be honest with ourselves here.

I have been busy, work, family stuff, the garden, started bike commuting, still getting the house in order and so on, but if I can find the time to play Wheel of Fortune on Facebook, I can make time for the blog.

Liam is done with school now, so work should be starting back up at Tilghman Street, which means more work on Crochet Pages. The site for Tilghman Street needs to be much more interactive than Crochet Pages ever has and hopefully some of what I learn in the process of making that happen will transfer over to give you all the best look and feel we've ever had.

You all know that crochet is one of my favorite things, and while I may walk away from time to time to get other stuff taken care of, in the end I'm always back to my art. Especially the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart. I come from a long line of needlework types and I'm not about to let that drop off in favor of silly things like having a social life or planting a garden. ;-)

Studio: Reboot

So, no access to my art supplies is driving me crazy. That combined with the fact that I have things like Ink and Paint that can't remain in the basement much longer now that the weather is getting colder, has made us come to the decision that I really need to put my studio back together. What does that mean to you?

Well that means:

• new items in the store (which will hopefully move off of Etsy)
• updates to the website in a more timely fashion
• new patterns!
• a permanent move from tripod to Tilghman Street Studios (fewer, more targeted ads)
• possible addition of video to the how-to's instead of just pictures

I'm feeling pretty ambitious about all of this. I'm up in the middle of the night, wide awake from having badly overslept and evening nap, and my brain is going a mile a minute.

We'll need to the get the hubby's computer up and running to make up for the fact that I may be living on the laptop for a good portion of our vacation next week. We'll be getting our new washer and dryer before too much longer with also means that I can felt without having to run down 3 flights of stairs to the washing machine. (The hook-ups are in the basement right now and the studio is on the 3rd floor. The hook-ups are getting moved to the kitchen!)

Speaking of kitchen, I had one that usable, if not actually finished and I'm thinking about trying to custom dye some yarn. Maybe doing some tie-dyes and such.

That's it for now, I think I need to spend some serious time with my notepad and my sketch book. I'll keep posting as new things happen!

Studio Update (or Slacker!!!!!!!!!)

So, it's become pretty obvious that I work much better when I am actually working in my studio. The dining room table has become synonymous with screwing around on Facebook, while the studio remains a workspace.

That's not to say Facebook isn't great, I've hooked back up with a lot of old friends and I definitely have something to kill time when my insomnia is bad. Unfortunately, it's also been a great way for me to end up with no time left for anything important. Therefore, the official mission will be: more back into the studio, Slacker. Get something done for once.

Also, the cat was much happier when I was working in the studio. Anybody with a cat will understand why a happy cat is a good thing. If you don't own a cat, let me just say this: unhappy cats can be destructive, in all kinds of ways.

Since I brought the laptop back downstairs Crochet Pages has been badly neglected. My other Website, the parent site, Tilghman Street Studios has been completely neglected. Not good if I want to make these the source of my livelihood. Something's gotta give and it's not going to be my lifelong dream on becoming my own boss.

Little by Little

So, I've gotten a little bit of time to spend on the fixing of the title graphics. I've gotten through a pretty good portion of the site, but there's tons left yet.

On the plus side, it's given me a chance to realize that a lot of the older patterns have terrible pictures. Fuzzy, dim, you name it. The Chocolate Bunny looks like a blob, and some of the others aren't much better. To that end, I'm going to do the best I can to get a new digital camera (for those of you who don't remember, I got a really good, but used Nikon about a year ago - for free - and the battery pack promptly crapped out on me.) in the next couple weeks. I found one that looks like it will handle basic website photos and snap shots really well and it's only like $40.

Little by little, things are falling into place.

Next on the list is to get everything switched over to the new Project Wonderful-friendly layout. That will take some time, but once it's done, it'll look really good. Also, it will bring in a bit of money and hopefully get you all some useful links.

Once that's done, I'll have a pretty good idea of how to layout really sharp-looking, ad-friendly pages for Tilghman Street Studios. Which will make me very happy. I think that there will be things at Tilghman Street that you will like quite a bit.

Honestly, though, even if you don't find anything that you like, the Crochet Pages fans will be benefiting in several ways. I'll be in charge of the advertising, instead of Lycos. No more pop-up ads.

Liam and I will be handling the T-shirts - we'll be using a grassroots print-on-demand style production - which means that they'll be hand screen-printed.

Eventually, we will (hopefully) be handling the book printing also.

In the end, this will lead to a better, friendlier website, and better merchandise with lower shipping costs. And unless I'm way off - this should make everyone happier.

Glitches to be fixed shortly

I've noticed that there are some minor glitches with some of the pages I moved to Tilghman Street Studios. A couple of them are showing the Tilghman Street logo, instead of Crochet Pages. Unfortunately, I don't have the time anymore to fix them before I have to get ready for work today, but I do anticipate them being fixed in the next few days.

I'll post again when it's taken care of.

We're Moving!!

Crochet Pages is officially in the process of moving. I don't have things set up quite the way I'd like, but I'm happy enough with it to let it go. All of the old links still work for now, but the site is located at Tilghman Street Studios (http://www.tilghmanstreet.com/crochetpages) now.

Before much longer, I will be starting to pull the files from Tripod and replacing them with redirect scripts so that your old bookmarks will still work. The main site pages (Patterns, Links, etc) will remain up for somewhat longer than the others, but those too, will be changed over to redirect scripts eventually.

I want to make this as painless as possible for everyone, but by the end of September, I'd like to have everything except the main couple of pages stripped down to the redirects, and by the new year, the Homepage will be the only thing left on Tripod.

Also, Crochet Pages now has a brand spanking new email address: crochetpages@tilghmanstreet.com. Hooray!

This has been a long time coming and I'm really happy about it. I'm such a geek.

Tilghman Street Studios

It's official. I have finally registered for a domain name and hosting where I can control the ad content and placement. Age's Crochet Pages will be moving from Tripod and under the umbrella of Tilghman Street Studios.

Tilghman Street Studios is another project of mine and if I can figure out how to get if set up properly, Crochet Pages will be a subdomain of this project. As soon as I have the official URL, I'll be sure to post it.

It may be a bit before you see the pages at the new location, there's a lot about the new host that is completely different from what I'm used to working with. I'll keep you all posted.