Crafting Along
Hey friends! How are you? Things are good here. I'm back to update you on all those pictures from the last post! We'll talk about them post-by-post instead of one big collective! So much good stuff is happening lately. I've really been working hard on the behind-the-scenes of Chicken Librarian. I'll have a lot more information about that soon. Other than working on business plans and moving forward with that, I've been making and baking! Tis the season I guess. But I do have to admit, all the crafting and baking are for me!
Let's do a quick run down. First. Bread! I have been making bread machine focaccia. I made it twice (I use the dough cycle on the machine, then finish it by hand). The dough has been great but the bread itself has puffed up. It's not flat like it should be. I made it twice and it did that both times. Years ago I used to make the exact same recipe in the bread machine and it was fine. I'm not sure what happened. The bread was good so there's that. I also made a white loaf of bread from scratch, no bread machine! I was looking through my cookbooks and found two Moosewood cookbooks (the Original and this one. How cute is the name?!?!) that I haven't cracked open in a very long time (I own three and I use the third one a lot more). So in an effort to use the cookbooks that I have I picked out some recipes. I made a butternut squash-mushroom soup (yum!) and that loaf of bread that you see above. The one loaf turned out beautifully (the other loaf just needed a little extra rise time but I got impatient). They are both equally as yummy.
My classes for 2020 are winding down. I have two classes left. One for Port Jervis Free Library (Holiday Cards) and one more for Chester Public Library (Sourdough Starter). I also finished up all my 'Chicken Librarian Makes' classes for the year. I ended with Grapevine Wreaths and Homemade Lotion Bars (you can still register for it!). Speaking of classes and such, all my thank you cards have been mailed! Now I'm just waiting for my Holiday Cards to arrive so I can get those out the door. We've had issues with one of the major post offices in PA being very, very slow. Lost mail, etc. It's been extremely frustrating. So the holiday cards have been lost for several weeks but have been found and will hopefully be arriving soon.
And just because I could, I taught myself how to embroider! I took a class a few years ago but then didn't pick up another stitch until now. I don't know why I had a hankering to learn, but I did. So I did. I searched the internets for an easy beginners pattern and stumbled upon Cozy Blue. She gives you good instructions on the various stitches and how to get started. I started with the "Joy" pattern and finished it within a few hours. Then I moved on to the "deck the halls" pattern. I started the deck the halls stitch on some linen that I thought was too thin so I changed to some muslin. I was using tracing paper to transfer the stitch onto my fabric (I used Aida cloth for the Joy stitch and it worked beautifully). So when I went to transfer onto the muslin, it was too thick. So I just did the 'tape it to a window and transfer using a fabric marker' technique. And that was perfect. So I started that stitch. I haven't done too much more to it, for no reason other than I get distracted easily.
That's most of the making I've been doing lately, other than making my Christmas village and decorating for the holidays. I have a whole separate post on that (hopefully in the next couple of days). I have a lot to catch you up on. One other thing that I've been doing some behind the scenes work (and if you visited my Facebook page lately you kind of already know). Anyway, I've been working on lots of things behind the scenes--mostly my business plan and marketing plan that I mentioned above. But one part of the marketing plan is search engine optimization. What the heck is that? Well. I guess it's how you get listed in internet searches (specifically Google) and Google does not like pictures that load slowly. So you're supposed to be able to resize and compress your photos to be smaller and load faster. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to do that and get the pictures to not be tiny. Or if I do resize them using the Wordpress editing feature, they are pixelated when I put the pics into a grid (like I've been doing). So I spent some time, a lot of time, trying to figure it out only to be frustrated and say the heck with it. In fact, I started this post a few days ago and just couldn't muster up the energy to finish it, it was so frustrating.
So what did I do? Welllll. I asked around about how others handle their photos. And then I cornered Daenel on one of her Facebook posts. And she said that she doesn't bother with it. And that's all I needed to hear! I was going down a rabbit hole that I just couldn't pull myself out of. I mean, I really need to streamline my photo editing process and have plans on how to do that but it involves learning a new to me editing system and I just don't think I have the time or resources to learn how to resize and all that jazz. So if I don't get higher up in the search results or if people bounce on out of my website because of slow loading photos, I guess that will just have to be. But what I did learn and can easily fix is to name my photos and describe them using the alternative text feature. Easy peasy. Can do.
So. This brings me to the end of this update. I think I've learned that blogging isn't for the faint of heart. There's so much to know. So much to learn. And I'm still working a lot behind the scenes to move to the next steps with Chicken Librarian. It's slow going but I feel good about it. And for that I'm grateful.
'til next time
-k
xoxo