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crochetime

~ So many patterns, so much yarn, so little time: story of my hooky life.

crochetime

Tag Archives: Blogging

Voting still open for The National UK Blog Awards 2014

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#ukba14, Blogging

I’ve been looking at my diary this morning and I realise that it’s the fifteenth of January! We’re more than two weeks into 2014! That’s crazy! It seems like only yesterday that I kicked of Crochet For Kidneys Part II, yet our day of joining up the hexagons is only 22 days and 22 hours away. (Speaking of the 7th of February – I will give you all more information of our get together in Surrey once the venue is booked.)

The other thing I’m counting down to is the National UK Blog Awards. I told you about the blog awards and my nomination on 18 December. Public voting closes on 26 January, which means there is just over a week left for you to vote for my crochet blog – the only crochet blog nominated.

I’ve been getting more blog followers on bloglovin lately – hi guys!!! – so I thought I’d do a quick “remember to vote for me please” post in case my lovely new followers didn’t know about the blog awards. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink….

To vote, go to this link: http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/blog-entries/crochetime/. Press vote, fill out a quick form which includes your name and email address and in return, you will receive a free Blogging eBook – and I’ll have one more vote.  You can also click on the picture below, or to the right of my blog.

Vote NowI will be very, very, very grateful if would vote for crocheTime. Pretty please. Let’s get a crochet blog in the finals!!!!

The National UK Blog Awards 2014

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#ukba14, Blogging

Have you ever heard of the National UK Blog Awards? It’s the only Blog Awards recognising “a multitude of industry professional talent across the UK”. It’s a biggy and this blog is nominated in the Arts and Culture category!!!!!

The category includes blogs about photography, music, books, reading, art reviews, film, architecture and crafts. That’s a huge range of topics for one category so competition is stiff. If I counted correctly, it looks like there are 71 blogs entered for this category, but my blog is the only 100% crochet related blog. I’m proudly flying the flag bunting for yarn and crochet hooks.

Wouldn’t it be great if a crochet blog could make it to the finals? The only way for it to do so, is if the public vote for it, so I’m asking very nicely that you please vote for crocheTime. If not for me, do it for your love of crochet.

To vote, go to this link: http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/blog-entries/crochetime/, register with your email address and you’ll then be emailed confirmation of registration (check your spam folder if you don’t receive the email immediately) and then you can vote. In return, you will receive a free Blogging eBook – and I’ll have one more vote.  You can also click on the picture below, or to the right of my blog.

I’ve made it really easy for you to vote, and the lovely people at the National UK Blog Awards even give you something for free!

Vote NowI will be very, very, very grateful if would vote for crocheTime. Pretty please.

How to add social media icons to your WordPress blog

24 Friday May 2013

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Blogging

The blog title says it all doesn’t it? This post is a direct result of The List post, but with one small change. In stead of crocheting social media icons* I decided to go the easy route and just download them from a website. Job done!

It was Hannah, of Not Your Average Crochet, that actually inspired this. She has the cutest little social media icons on your blog! You can read her blog post about these cuties here. If you read the comments to that post, you’ll see my comment and her response: she got them by searching Google for “free social media icons”. I did the same, but I searched on Pinterest…. As you can image there were loads! So many choices! In the end I settled for these icons inspired by Pantone Fall 2012 colours.

Now the question, is how do I get the icons onto my blog? For that you can follow the very clear instructions by the Geek Fairy in this post. (It’s specifically for WordPress users, so sorry Blogger bloggers I don’t know how you guys get icons onto your blog.)

I followed the Geek Fairy instructions to the letter, yet my icons wouldn’t resize to a smaller than 100 x 100 size. I wanted mine to be about half the original size, so I typed in 50 x 50 in the Advanced settings fields as the fairy said I should, and I could see those dimensions in the text that I pasted into HTML Widget, yet it still showed up as the original size. Very strange indeed.

Thankfully I got around the problem by changing the image size in the Image Library (as opposed to changing the size in the draft post.) Here’s how I did it:

1. Go to the Media Library and find the social media icon. If you hover under PNG, the Edit field will appear. Click on Edit

Media Library

2. Once you’re in the Edit option for the image, click Edit Image:Media Library edit

3. Now you can scale the image:

Media Library scale

4.  Type in your desired size. I chose 50 x 50. Click on Scale:Media Library scale size

Save the change and do it for all your icons.

Once you are happy with the size, insert these images into a draft post as the Geek Fairy says you should and follow her instructions for adding the links.

That’s it. You may not even need to change the size in the Image Library. Maybe my WordPress theme is just dodgy, or I was doing something wrong. Who knows. Either way, it really is very easy to add social media icons to your WordPress widget sidebar. It’s so much neater too, don’t you think?

*I you want to crochet social media icons, you can use the patterns I found on the tugboatyarning website here and here. The same principals would apply as described above: Photograph the crocheted icons, upload them to the image library, change the size, use them in a draft blog post, add the links and past the text of the draft post into a text widget for your sidebar.

How to do Google reverse image search

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Blogging

In yesterday’s blog post about the Photography for bloggers session at Blogfest 2012, I told you about Google image reverse image search. Today I’ll be explaining it further, with the help of screenshots and the third image in my Identity Crisis blanket blog post.

Each photo in a blog post has it’s own URL. You find the URL by clicking on the photo. It will open in a new window and have /*name of photo*.jpg at the end:

Right click and copy that URL.

Now go to Google Images:

Click on the camera icon. It will expand to look like this:

Paste the photo URL into the search bar and hit Search:

Et voila.  My photo appears in 124 other places on the Internet.

I hope you find this useful.

If you see that a photo from your blog has been used for the cover of a book, contact the publishers and sue the living daylights out of them. Use the payout from your copyright infringement case for lots and lots of yarn. You could even quit your day job.

You can thank me later.

Breakout session at Blogfest 2012: Blog Beautiful

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

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Tags

Blogging

This session was a bit of a snooze fest for me. I totally got it wrong with this one. The title had me thinking it would be about how to make your blog beautiful. I obviously didn’t pay much attention to the description of the session in the Blogfest programme, as it turned out to be all about fashion and beauty. As in, blogging about fashion and beauty products. Whoops.

Ten minutes in I realised that I had to either get out of the room or change my attitude. As I was stuck in the middle of a row I decided to change my attitude and see if I could learn something.

I did. Only four bullet points worth, but it’s something:

  • Interact with your blog readers and ask them what they want to see more of in your blog.
  • Use affiliate advertising and skimlinks to generate advertising on your blog.*
  • Avril Keys of schoolgatestyle had to reach the 10,000 page views per month before brands noticed her blog.
  • When your stats reach the above point, you can consider approaching brands to ask whether they would be interested in collaborating with you.

I also didn’t know what these are.  Here is a link to skimlinks, and here is a link to Google’s affiliate network and this sums it up:

Google Affiliate Network is a free programme that makes it easy for website publishers to connect with quality advertisers and get rewarded for driving              conversions.

I think more investigation is needed, but it sounds enriching.

Breakout session at Blogfest 2012: Getting published

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Blogging, Mumsnet

20121111-180507.jpg

I was very hopeful going in to this panel that I would come out with a plan of sorts for how to, maybe, one day, have a book on the shelves of Waterstones. Author, Natasja King.

Opening question by the Chair, Geraldine Bedell and the dream was shattered. She asked Louise France (contributing Editor of the Times magazine) whether she looks at blogs to find columnists. Her answer? No, people approach her. And for her to consider them the idea should be sharp, with a “finely honed angle”.

Felicity Rubenstein (of literary agency Lutyens and Rubinstein) answered that she has just recently taken on her first client based on a blog. However, I got the impression that blogs don’t necessarily, or easily, lead to book deals or column spaces. That being said there is a difference between publishing a book, writing a column for a newspaper, and doing a piece for a magazine. Felicity also said that cookery and craft blogs are generally easier to translate from blog to book, so there is hope if you want to get published.

According to Felicity your writing does need to be “finely honed” as opposed to a the “stream of consciousness” style that bloggers use.

Neil Sinclair’s (author of Commando Dad) tip to getting published was to “Believe in yourself and believe in your idea”. He went so far as to describe how he had pictured his book in his hand. The feel of it , the look, the texture, everything. He had the image in his head and made it come into reality.

As a parting point, we have to remember that even if you do get a book deal, that does not necessarily lead to huge amount of sales. In Geraldine’s own words “What makes a bestseller is word of mouth”.

The flip side to all of this is Melanie Clegg (blogging as Madam Guillotine) who is self publishing and making shed loads of money out of. She did however say that she is thinking about, and liking the idea of, holding a hard copy book in her hand and seeing it on a shelf in Waterstones so she may go down the traditional publishing route. Please see her comment on this blogpost. I think I may have gotten things a bit wrong….

When it comes to being published, I think of it in the same way as Commando Dad.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. –  Albert Einstein

See your book, feel your book and in the mean time, keep on hooking.

Breakout sessions at Blogfest 2012: Photography for bloggers

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Blogging, Instagram, Mumsnet, photography

This session was definitely my favourite. It was practical, funny, to the point, had visual aids and led by two very creative knowledgeable people: Carrie and Darren of Digital Bungalow.

20121111-180523.jpg

I took notes which I will retype (make legible) in bullet form for you.

20121111-180456.jpg

  • Use natural light. Sunlight can sometimes be too bright, so tone it down by putting white paper over your windows to filter the light.
  • Try to keep clutter in photos to a minimum. Darren calls it photographic vomit. Clean up the vomit and the item you’re photographing will stand out more.
  • Follow the rule of thirds. When you photograph people or animals their eyes should be in focus and in one third of the shot, or along one of the lines. In landscape shots keep the horizon on the top or the bottom line. Here’s a link to more info on the Rule of Thirds for photography: http://www.silverlight.co.uk/tutorials/compose_expose/thirds.html
  • Change your perspective. Take a photo from above, standing on a chair. Or kneel down and take it from below.
  • Add character to the photo with items or scenery in the background, but keep that out of focus, so that the only focus is on whatever you’re photographing. The shot will be busier, but as long as the background is out of focus, it works.
  • Take your time to clean up and tidy. If you’ve crocheted something don’t be tempted to immediately take the photo right there on the couch among all the yarn ends, coffee cup, toys, last night’s dinner plate. The crochet will still be there once you’ve tidied up.
  • Take your time to think about the photo before snapping away.
  • Rename your photos so that Google will pick it up in their images search. 324523.jpg Won’t be picked up, but blue crochet beanie.jpg will.
  • Make your pictures the same width as the text column in WordPress, that way the photo will fill the column and you won’t get weird text wrapping problems (something I chose not to do in today’s post.)

Using a camera phone is absolutely fine for blog photos. Just remember the following:

  • Switch on the Grid function on your iPhone. Those grids, are the lines for the rule of thirds.
  • Keep your camera steady by tucking in your arms. Hold your phone in your palm like a camera and use the volume buttons as shutter buttons.
  • Follow the sniper’s rule: breath out before taking the shot. It will keep the camera steady.
  • Instagram is not to be used for blogs. It distorts the colours. Darren calls it The Curse of Instagram. (Needless to say, I don’t necessarily agree with this. Obviously when I’m photographing something I crocheted I want to show you the true colour so I won’t use Instagram for that, but for other things like Alpacas on a farm or a beautiful building I will post with Instagram photos).

20121111-180516.jpg

The last very useful tip was to use Google Images reverse image search to see where else on the Internet your image appears. You click on your photo within a published post and copy that link. The go to Google Images, click on the little camera to right of the long white bar. It will expand the bar and then you paste the link and hit Enter.

I tested this with a photo from my Identity Crisis blanket post, and found 9 pages with links to Pinterest and a few other blogs where that photo appears! It’s magic.

I would also like to add a little something that I find very usefull for blog photos: www.picmonkey.com. It’s a web based, free for most of the stuff, photo editing tool. Brilliant! Give it a go.

 

Connections made at Blogfest

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Blogging

Blogfest 2012 was outstanding. Honestly it was.

For me, what made it great, was the people I met and chats I had between break-out sessions or over a coffee/Innocent smoothie/champagne – not so much the Keynote panels or break-out sessions themselves.

It happened about four times throughout the day that the Universe would make bloggers collide with such happy coincidence, I just knew I was at the right place at the right place.

It all kicked off after registration, getting the first coffee & pastries of the day. A lady came up to me and asked if I had made the Dusky crochet top I was wearing. I couldn’t believe that anyone would pay much attention to what I was wearing, let alone notice it was crocheted! I answered yes and we started chatting. Standing behind her was someone else sort of listening in on what I was saying (me, hands waving, eyebrows raised, passionately babbling on about my obsession) but not taking part in the conversation. I saw Lady In The Background* a couple of times again but we never spoke.

Coffee, handbag and programme in hand I went to find a place to sit.  Seating was in high demand throughout the day so it wasn’t long before someone took up a seat next to me. We started chatting and she introduced herself as Lynda of Kids in the Garden. Whilst chatting I contacted Helen of www.loveknitting.com. We had spoken on email earlier in the month so I knew she and her friend Lucy would be at Blogfest and we had arranged to meet over coffee & pastries. In walks Helen and Lucy and we are introduced for the first time. Hugs were appropriate.

Whilst Helen and Lucy did their registration-coffee-cloakroom thing, I told Lynda how Helen and I had met: Helen saw the squares yarn bomb at the station, she Googled it and found my blog. The rest is history.  Lynda then, ever so casually, commented that a friend had tweeted her a picture of a park bench yarn bomb. “I did a bench as well”. “Where is your bench?” “Thames Ditton.” “That’s where my friend saw the bench!” I was blown away. Honestly. Out of all the people at Blogfest (I’d say about 300) I met Lynda, who by the way lives only about 4 miles from me, and she had seen my yarn bomb! How amazing is that?

Some time during the How to get published break-out panel and morning break (this time Innocent smoothie and mini cupcake in hand) Lynda mentioned to me that she would like to know how to go about self publishing. I recalled having read on Stitch This that she had self published a book. She was at Blogfest and she’s a friend of Dilly (who I had also by now met in person and in fact was seated in front of Lynda, Lucy, Helen and I at the Keynote Panel).

The most serendipitous thing happened after the Blog Beautiful break-out session. I was standing in a corner chatting to another blogger whom I had met during the lunch buffet.

Whilst talking to her, I noticed that Lady In The Background from this morning was pointing, literally pointing, me out to someone in a bright orange coat. Orange Coat Lady walked over to us and Lady In The Background disappeared from view. Turns out, Orange Coat Lady is a freelance journalist for Prima magazine doing a piece on craft bloggers and Lady In The Background had told her about my crochet blog! As the journalist was talking to me, all I could think was “OMG, Prima magazine. I have to find Lady In The Background to thank her”. It actually took me a while to work out that I had never spoken to Lady In The Background. Only on the train home last night did I remember that she just overheard my conversation. My mind boggles. Honestly it does.

During the champagne & cheese board reception at the end of the event, Dilly and Sophie (of Stitch This) came over to chat with me. This was the first time I had seen Sophie. We hit it off immediately and when Lynda joined us later, I asked Sophie to show us the book. This was such a helpful encouter for Lynda and I – in fact more helpful than the whole How to Get published session. Sophie explained she had used Blurp for her book and that’s it. As easy as that!

In my mind Blogfest was a success solely due to the lovely people there. The bloggers. The venue, the food, the organisors, the goody bag, the experts were obviously great as well, but I’m talking on a personal level. We seem to be such a lovely bunch of people. Everyone was nervous beforehand but that’s what made it work because we all felt the same. I tried to be friendly to a stranger because that’s what I would like a stranger to do for me and look how it worked out for me! With a smile, a “no, the seat isn’t taken” or “what lovely cupcakes!” we all connected.

 

*I looked around for her all day but didn’t see her again. She was wearing a bohemian, arty, flowing outfit and had blonde / light brown short curly hair. She also asked a question at the Photography for bloggers session. If you know who she is, please let me know as I would love to thank her.

A good blogger needs an efficacious poultice for the aching brow

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My ramblings

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Blogging

Between these two books (the top one because sometimes The Mother Tongue is just too strong and the bottom one because I’m bored with using “nice”, “amazing” and that kickback from the 80’s, “cool”)

and tomorrow’s Mumsnet Blogfest 2012 I’m bound to become a recherché blogger with superlative writing prowess.

Could you discern that I have already perused my newly acquired copy of Roget’s?

P.S. The title of this blogpost is a reference to the New York Times magazine description of Roget’s Thesaurus. Bear in mind the Thesaurus was first printed in 1852.

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