Still no news on my car – I spoke to the mechanic while I was sitting at the train station on the way to work yesterday, and they’re still waiting on the new clutch pedal to arrive. Apparently there was a cock-up at wherever they get their parts from … so still no idea when it will be fixed. I still don’t have my airline tickets booked for Perth yet until I at least know what the bill is going to be. By hook or by crook I’ll get myself to Perth for the class, as otherwise it’ll be such a waste of time and money, but I guess there’s only so much money in the bank, and if it reaches my limits then I’ll have no choice … at this stage, though, I’m still being hopeful.
One of the problems in Perth, though, is that the friend I’m staying with has now moved, and lives out in Merriwa near South Geraldton, and the public transport options for getting to where the class is being held is appalling. On Saturday alone the trip will take me (according to the Transperth trip planner) 2.51 hours … departing at 5.55am I would arrive at 8.46am, and the journey will have taken me on two trains, two buses, and included a walking distance of approx 2034 metres … bloody hell, I’m exhausted even just thinking about it! And I daren’t even look at the Sunday schedules, as they’re usually worse. So I’ve opted to hire a car instead, as even driving it will take me 1 1/4 hours according to the driving maps (and seeing as I’ll be on my own trying to follow the map, I’d better add on an extra 1/2 hour just in case) … of course that means an extra $120 expense without petrol costs, so one of the reasons I’m being cautious about booking my airline ticket yet until I know what money I’ve got leftover to play with. Oh well, I’ve still got about 70 hours before the class starts … no need to panic! 😉
Anyway, on to the latest SBQ … Today’s SBQ was suggested by Heather and is:
“How do you decide which stitching blogs are worth repeat and/or regular viewings? Are there certain things you look for in particular? Are there things you wish there were more of? Less of? Is your blog a good example of what you like to read?”
As for deciding which blogs are worth repeat/regular viewing – piccies for me are probably first and foremost … I love to see stitching WIP’s and finishes, and piccies of stash bought – it’s definitely true to say a visually appealing blog makes me more likely to come back for more. Then of course there has to be a good writing style to accompany the piccies – I like to read a mix of stitching stuff, with enough personal info that lets you get a glimpse into the blogger’s personal life and a feel for who you are as a person. First and foremost it is the stitching content, though, that will grab me. I suppose my own blog is a sort of example – I usually have a mix, although there hasn’t been too much in the way of stitching of late hmmm.
I have to say that it’s quite funny to have this question now, as it’s something I’ve been pondering myself over the last few weeks. To be brutally honest I’m finding blogging to be a bit of a chore at the moment … I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m finding it difficult to both write my own blog and read other blogs at the moment, and wondering whether I need to take a small mini-break for a while. One of the problems is that I have so many blogs on my reading list if I don’t check them daily the unread feeds just snowball out of control – even though I’ve been trying to read a few over the last week since my return from Sydney (and since Mum’s gone home), I still have over 500 unread feeds, and that starts to weigh on me a little bit, and makes it feel like a chore. But then again I don’t want to “mark all feeds as read” as I don’t like missing out on anything … it’s a catch-22 haha. But the SBQ has made me consolidate my thoughts a wee bit, and I know a couple of blogging friends have been doing the same thing, in that I think I need to cull my reading list slightly. There are some blogs I’ve been reading for a while that no longer, or rarely, have stitching content so I don’t get as much enjoyment from them as I used to. It’s a difficult decision to make, as I don’t want to hurt any feelings in removing blogs from my blogroll, but I have to be aware there are only so many hours in a day, and there’s no point doing things out of a sense of duty if you no longer derive pleasure from the task. What I’ll likely do instead is retain a list of all these blogs and make a once-a-month visit instead of trying to keep up-to-date with everyone together.
On that same theme, I’m also in the middle of rearranging my blogroll into folders – allocated as “daily”, then Monday to Sunday … we all have our favourite blogs (for whatever reason, be it that we’ve been reading them the longest, have made closer friendships with the blogger, or just that they’re so incredibly inspirational), so I thought of putting those top 10-15 blogs in my ‘daily’ folder … then I’ll divide the remaining blogs into days of the week, at least that way I can catch up on blogs once a week when I’m having a busy week, rather than having hundreds and hundreds to plough through – if I’m having a good week, I can read two days worth together. I’ve been pondering this for quite a while now … and it’s harder and harder finding the time to keep on top of things as more new and wonderful blogs become known to me. It also means I’m finding it more and more difficult to find time to comment on blogs, and that disappoints me because that’s the greatest part of blogging – giving and receiving support.
Anyway, I want to apologise in advance for anyone who gets removed from my blogroll when I start whittling it down – it’s certainly nothing personal, I just have to rationalise my online blogging time and try to make this enjoyable again. Phew, that’s almost a relief saying it out loud and committing myself to actually doing something about it …
Actually, another thing I was thinking about the other day as well has just popped into my head … and while I’m on the theme of ‘blogs’ it’s probably a good time to bring up the question …
I use Newsgator for my blog reading, and just go into the blog itself when I want to make a comment. A few of you have your blog settings to just show ‘partial’ feeds, so in my news reader I only get to see the first three lines of text, then I have to click on each post heading to read the full post … this really slows down proceedings as well, and I have to admit when I’m trying to catch up, I’ll leave those blogs until last because it’s so much slower to read – I was just wondering why some of you have your settings like that? Anyway, that was just something that was running through my head … I have to admit I hadn’t even thought about my own settings, except I put my own blog into my feeds to see how it looks.
And I’ll leave it there for the day … there’s way too much thinking going on by this blog reader at the moment, and it’s hurting my brain 😉
Feather Stitching 
I think bloggers go for a partial feed because the really don’t see the difference. I know a partial feed is better for me IF it is a tech blog. I don’t own a PC (Mac is my religion) and don’t care about things that are PC only. So a partial feed on something like Engadget or TWiT is fine for me. But I agree that for a personal feed (I feel all the stitching blogs I read are personal), I want to see it all.
I use Google Reader. I see a headline on my blog, click a link to see the full text and picture feed, but often go directly to the blog if I want to see the whole thing (sidebars and all).
I so totally understand what you’re saying about lack of time to visit, read, and comment on blogs on a regular basis. There are so many wonderful blogs out there, but it just isn’t feasible to keep adding more blogs to my list for regular visits. And it’s so hard to decide which one’s should be removed. I have to say though, that it sounds like you have overwhelmed yourself with blogs and I don’t blame you in the least for making the list smaller.
I hope your car doesn’t cost too much to get fixed and that you have a wonderful weekend away! 🙂
I have been mulling a lot of the same thoughts re. blogging around in my head for the last couple of months, actually, so I know where you’re coming from. If I answered that SBQ, I would have to say my blog is not one that I would read, right now! I think it’s only because I’m not doing enough stitching/crafting though.
Partial feeds do annoy me, too. I think some people use them because they have AdSense or similar on their blog, and don’t get any income from those if you don’t visit the actual site. I know there was a bit of a hullabaloo among the craft-bloggers a while back when many went to partial feeds to stop content theft via RSS (long story). I certainly would prefer all feeds to be complete.
Sorry about your car… if it makes you feel any better, mine spent the Easter weekend in parts, too!
There does seem to be many of us going through blog revamping/reprioritization lately. This has been rumbling through my brain too. I made a start in Newsgator by separating my favorite stitching blogs into one folder, then dividing up the rest into alphabetic groupings so that I can choose an entire folder and have the all the postings to scroll through at once. Of course, I still have to click on the blog to post a comment, but it saves me some time. I’ve also then been commenting a little less, which makes me sad. And then I’ve culled some of the blogs that just didn’t relate to me. And I’ve also added some new folder categories for various crafters’ blogs that I’ve found to be highly inspirational with the mental proviso that it’s a quick read, drink in the lovely photos, then dump.
Do what you need to do in order to keep your chin above water!
I stopped using blogroll after I find myself with 3000posts to read. Now I have them on my blog (and many more to add). And each day (whenever I am free) I’ll go down the list and read…sometimes I get side-tracked when I landed on other stitcher’s site. I go down their own list.
Hope everything goes well for you….:hugs: