I get an inordinate number of hits on my blog from people searching for “pins and needles foot” or “pins and needles leg.”  Even though this is meant to be a knitting and sewing focused blog, I feel a bit bad for misleading people into thinking they might find information on this condition here.

So, for that reason (and because I have nothing more interesting to write about), here is the Wikipedia page on pins and needles.  For those of you who arrive here after having suffered from this common malady, I hope you find it helpful!   And for the rest of you… go read it anyway - it’s kind of interesting!

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I’ve been having some serious site issues. I hadn’t looked at the blog since last week, and when I went to post on Monday morning, the entire blog was gone. Just not there anymore. In place of my blog was a lovely text message telling me to install WordPress. WTF!? I have no idea what the problem was, but I’m 99% sure it was a problem with my host’s WordPress installation. This is exactly what happened in October. So, bye bye crappy host!

After a bit of mucking around tonight, I’m all moved over to a new host. I lost a few comments in the transfer (note to self - back up once a week instead of once a month!), but otherwise all appears well. Hopefully. We shall see.

I also had my first unfortunate hotlinking episode today. I sent off a nice e-mail to the person who hotlinked to one of my images. I’m sure she didn’t mean to do it on purpose, but it’s annoying all the same. Just an FYI, in case anyone who reads this wants to use one of the images found on this site - please e-mail me for permission before you take the picture for your own use. All of the photos on this site were taken by me and I own the copyright to these images. I’m happy to let anyone use the images for non-commercial purposes, as long as you ask!

Update: Ah, my new host seems to have spam blocking software on my e-mail account that won’t let comments from my blog through to my e-mail.  A nice feature indeed, but hopefully I can change the sensitivity so that comments get through.  Sigh.

After rekindling my interest in sewing earlier this year, I began reading a few sewing blogs as well. HELLOmynameisHeather soon became one of my regular reads - she is such a creative person, and all the photos on her site are amazing. Well, turns out she’s created her very own line of fabrics. And, from the looks of the photos, they are gorgeous.

The fabrics make me want to sew a quilt, but I’m not sure that quilts are my thing. Sewing one would be great fun, I’m just worried that I wouldn’t use it in my bedroom. I’m just not sure quilts are my style. Hmmm…

Also soon to come from Heather (I hope!) are a super cute purse pattern and an apron pattern. The purse is similar in style to the Amy Butler Madison bag I made, but with cleaner lines and what appears to be a better top closure. And where was this apron pattern during the apron exchange? It would have been perfect!

Last week while I was getting my hair highlighted, I was browsing the latest “O” Magazine, and came across a link to Design Her Gals, a site where you can create a caricature of yourself (or a friend) and create your own customized stationery. And - they have free e-cards… cool!
Here’s a screen capture of an e-card that I created:

That looks just like me… well, it would if I was anorexic and didn’t have a nose! He he he!

Unfortunately there are no knitting accessories for the gals, but there are dozens of other fun things - like schnauzers!
Now, go and design your own gal! And leave me a comment if you post a picture on your blog… I’d love to see it!

Well, the title says it all. The computer is lucky to still be alive. I have spent the last 4 hours (at least) trying to figure out how to get WordPress to e-mail me comments. Apparently comment email notification no worky in WP 2.0.2. At least not for me. And others seem to be having similar problems.

So, what do we do around here when something doesn’t work? Why, we FIX it! After hours of staring at lines of code that I vaguely understand (and by “vauguely”, I mean only that I can pronounce a majority of words on the page), I thought I found a work around. Turns out that someone has developed a SMTP email plugin that will replace WordPress’s native e-mail function. Whee! A plugin! We know how to use those!

And… I installed the plugin. And, it doesn’t work. Aaaaarrrgghhhhh! Apparently it hasn’t been updated to work with 2.0.2 yet.

I’m at a complete loss on this one. Either I teach myself enough php to rewrite the plugin to work with this version of WP (yeah, that will happen), or I give up on comment notification until someone else comes up with a solution. I’m not liking my options so much.

This silly web site is seriously cutting into my knitting time. At times, the geek in me really enjoys playing with it and learning new things. But, when things start going wrong, the engineer in me wants to stay up until all hours of the night figuring out a way to fix it. And that is just not going to happen tonight, or probably ever.

To top it all off, my web host turns out to be not-so-great, and has been unavailable for quite a while this evening. I fear that my problems are on the host’s side of things, but I understand so little about what my problem is that I’m not even sure how to ask them about it without sounding like the idiot that I likely am. Sigh.

In sum: there will be no e-mail responses to comments just yet. I’m still glad I migrated from Blogger. I wish I had a clue about php, css, and all the other good stuff that goes into a web site, but I think I’m starting to catch on a bit (very very slowly).

Any WP users have problems with this? How did you fix it? [nevermind, see below]

Edited to add: Holy crap! I got the plugin working! SWEET! I ROCK! Well, not so much actually. I was an idiot the first time I installed the plugin, and installed the individual files in the plugin folder, rather than copying the entire plugin folder over. Doh! I guess it makes a difference in the directory structure.��

Hello, and welcome to On Pins & Needles! This site is a work in progress, so please let me know if you notice anything funky going on. Please be patient as I get everything up and running over here. Normally, I would not go live with a site that wasn’t quite complete, but rather than give up blogging for weeks while I get everything perfect, I figured phasing things in over here would be a reasonable solution.

Over the next week or two, I plan to add more features to the blog. For now, I’m just thrilled to be rid of Blogger, hopefully for good!

For those of you who subscribe using Bloglines or NewsGator, please update your subscriptions! My new feed can be found here.

And, if you’re easily amused, try clicking on some of the pictures in my previous posts. Neat, isn’t it? That’s the LightBox plug-in.