Minor Blog Trouble

How do you follow your favourite blogs? Do you use Bloglovin'? Click a bookmark in your browser? Or are you signed up to receive every new post by email? Or maybe you don't follow any blogs at all?

After publishing my last post, I received a comment saying that the email sign-up on my blog didn't work. So I went off to investigate!
Who knew that behind that simple gadget that you add to your Blogger blog in two clicks, lies so much detail?! Well, maybe everyone knows, but I definitely didn't!! And looking into the problem (with some help and support from a forum) I found to my surprise that there were no "followers by email" signed up to my blog at all...

I could do with some sunshine... and my blog posts have to have an image!

I know that my mum followed my blog by email, and I believe some of her friends did, too. I have no idea how many readers follow-by-email though. I never knew until now that you could even see how many there are. I do know now that they have all gone!

I followed my own blog, too, so that I could see how it looks when a post comes by email. And I haven't received my latest post by email, though I did receive the previous one. Something went very wrong between those two posts, and I don't know how or why. I am not sure if it is even possible to find out how or why. I definitely don't want to spend the time trying.

I also have no idea how to retrieve the followers-by-email that have disappeared. If I'm honest, I love my blog, and I love for people to be following it, reading it, and enjoying it especially. But I am not hung up on how many followers I have. I will tell mum to sign up again though...

If you come across this post (you probably haven't had an email about it!), and you would like to follow the blog by getting a message in your inbox when a post is published, please do sign up. I have changed the look of the sign up, so that you click the text - see on the side bar "Follow by Email" - rather than enter your email address in a box, but it goes to the same service from Blogger. When you click the text you are taken to the page where you can enter your email, and "prove you're not a robot". Then you will get an email to confirm you actually want to sign up. Click the link in that email, and you're all set. Then next time I write a post you will receive a message by email so you don't have to miss anything from me.

With thanks to Dots who pointed out the gadget wasn't working! And for being the first to sign up once it was working again!

And now, back to sewing of course!

Sandra

Pantone Colour of the Year 2017 is green

 - A post about colour, specifically green, followed by technical steps how to use Pantone's (digital) colour codes -

Anyone who even slightly knows me, should realise that I am not a follower of fashion at all.

I find it hard to buy clothes for myself, because I like my clothes to suit me whether they are in fashion or not. I am judging clothes as much by style and colour, as by shape. Read: I like my comfort. Don't get me wrong, I do like to look nice, but when the current fashion is for high heels, I will not buy shoes. If fashion dictates squint inducing prints, I am buying plain shirts. And when shops are full of items in yuk yellow, or bad brown, I will search further. Maybe I am just fussy!

However, when it comes to fabric for quilts, it is a completely different matter! 

Deep COLOURS, prints large and small, soft LOW VALUE, and gentle accents, I like them ALL!!

 Though maybe not all in the same project...

With the start of 2017, I came across Pantone's new "Colour of the Year", which is a soft green called

GREENERY

Now, I have not used green very often in my quilting work - although for a while now I have a soft spot for a yellowy lime green which goes with almost anything... And I have enough green fabrics lying around to make a quilt or two, so I am making plans...
I think the 2017 Pantone colour is quite an easy one to work with. Soft, gentle, though still colourful enough.

I am thinking a low contrast quilt with greys...
Or a high contrast one using deep purples or blues...
A monochrome with only greens and white...

Plenty of ideas!

And while I am pondering what quilt to make with my green fabrics, I should show you two pouches I recently made, which actually were... (mostly) green! A bit brighter than Greenery, but not that far off...

For this last pouch I experimented with some scraps of Bosal in R-Form which Cathy Ewbank kindly sent to me to try out. I have to order some for myself now...

Colour codes for digital use

- read on if you want to know how you can use Pantone's colour codes digitally. I won't blame you if you want to skip it! -

If you would like to use "Greenery" in your digital quilt designs (I use EQ7, but I'm sure it can be used elsewhere), or colour the text in your blog posts (like I did above), read on. I found it is actually quite easy.
I found this method when I followed a link in the recent EQ7 Do you EQ newsletter, leading me to this BLOG POST. It shows how to find the RGB colour recipe for Greenery on the Pantone website, and how to use it to add that exact colour to your EQ7 colouring palette.

But you can use this method elsewhere, too! And with ALL the many colours in the Pantone website!

* How to find the colour codes for "Greenery":

1. go to the Pantone website
2. click on FIND A PANTONE COLOUR
3. enter Greenery in "ENTER A PANTONE COLOR NAME OR NUMBER" and <SUBMIT>
4. click on the colour chip you want to use (if you want to limit yourself to colours that are printed on cotton, limit yourself to ones with a code TCX)
5. you have found the RGB and HEX/HTML codes for Greenery!
See below how to use them...

*How to find the colour codes for ANY Pantone colour:

1. go to the Pantone website
2. click on FIND A PANTONE COLOUR
3. click on a colour close to the one you want in "SELECT YOUR COLOR" and <SUBMIT>
4. click on the colour chip you want to use (if you want to limit yourself to colours that are printed on cotton, limit yourself to ones with a code TCX)
5. you have found the RGB and HEX/HTML codes for your colour!
See below how to use them...

*how to add the colour to your EQ7 palette:

- see the EQ7 BLOG POST using the RGB code

*how to change text colour in Blogger:

To make it easy to change the colour of your text without too much HTML knowledge:
6. select the text you want to change the colour of
7. change the colour to any other than black (click on the fat underlined A at the top bar, and choose any colour)
8. click on HTML
9. find your word (type CTRL-F and type in your word if you have trouble finding it)
10. just before your word you will see

<span style="color: #xxxxx;">

where xxxxx is the HTML code for the current colour of your text (it will not really be xxxxx).
11. change #xxxxx to the HEX/HTML code of the colour you have chosen - #88B04B for greenery (you can select and COPY - PASTE from the Pantone page)
12. switch back to Compose in Blogger, and there you have it!

Now quickly back to sewing, of course! Keep making your world a colourful place!

Sandra

Just Curious

As well as trying to keep this little blog going, I love to read other people's blogs! There are so many lovely things to read, patterns to find, tips to absorb you could spent whole days reading blogs (I don't think anyone could have enough time to read it all, though). Now, I read my favourite blogs through Bloglovin' which kindly lists any new posts that I haven't read yet. If I want to comment on any post I also need to be logged into my email, which is a gmail account. And since a while that only works properly if I do that by logging into (or opening) Blogger as opposed to logging into gmail alone. This all works fine for me.

It has an unexpected side-effect though. Every time I open my Blogger account I see this little graph right below the name of my blog. And while that usually gives a rather flat line and gets ignored, sometimes it spikes unexpectedly and that makes me sit up a bit straighter. Like a few days ago:

Blogger stats today, showing the spike of a few days ago

On that day, I had not published a new post for more than 6 weeks (my previous post was only published hours later). A new post sometimes causes a spike of interest, be it usually small (after all, this is only a little blog, and I have never actively worked at getting more readers or followers). This time the interest could not have been caused by a recent post.

Now I do know strange things happen on the internet, artificially changing statistics. But I have not otherwise noticed anything odd or suspicious. No spam, no hacking, no strange website coming up in the list of traffic sources.

I like to think there may have been someone(s) looking at my blog. Browsing the pages, looking around a lot. Sitting at their screen, clicking and clicking. And apparently, finding it very interesting. It makes me curious about my readers, and such an unusual reader in particular. What makes you find this blog? What makes you click and click and click, maybe browsing several pages?  And even for my followers (I do have a few), what makes you coming back, again and again?

While it feels enough for me at the moment to just write for myself in this blog, it is nice to know that now and then someone (apart from my mum, hoi Mam!), somewhere actually reads this blog. And I know that it can be a bit much to comment on every blog you're reading, I don't mind at all. After all, many people have not enough hours in the day to even read all the blogs they find interesting. However, if you find my blog really, really interesting it would actually be nice to hear that in some way. Just to satisfy my curiosity, you understand. I usually even reply to comments or emails, though never if you let me know you don't want me to.
 

Sandra