See you in 2010!
First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.
This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!
Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.
Can't wait to read your posts!
~ daisy
A while back M. and I did some experimentation with yarn dying with kool-aid. I tell you what, if you are wanting to kick a kool-aid habit, dying yarn with it should do it for you. It's kind of creepy how well it dyes the yarn. Kind of makes you wonder what it does to our insides. We started off with Knit Picks Bare Merino Wool Fingering weight yarn.
We did a couple of skeins of just solid. One with pink lemonade kool-aid for M. and one with black cherry kool-aid for me.
Then we branched out into multi-colored yarns. We tried two, three, and four colors:
I got the idea of hanging the yarn into the quart jars of kool-aid from a tutorial on the web. I thought the yarn above the jars would absorb the color, but it didn't, so I ended up with sections of undyed yarn in the multi-colored skeins. Here is the finished yarn from the first dying. It's hanging to dry outside on our patio.
I like the white sections in some of the color combos, but not all of them. Also, some of them turned out a little brighter/more pastel than I wanted, so I overdyed a few skeins a couple of weeks ago.
The skein on the left was originally dyed with orange and black cherry and then I overdyed it with a mixture of both orange and black cherry. The skein in the middle was originally dyed with tropical punch, grape, and lemonade and then overdyed with blue raspberry. The skein on the right was dyed with black cherry and then overdyed with grape. I'm pleased with how the over dyed skeins have come out. I have one more skein that I might overdye, but I haven't gotten it done yet.
I've started knitting with one of our dyed yarns. M. requested a pair of socks out of the pink lemonade dyed skein. This was specifically her skein.
This was the first skein that we dyed and I sort of messed it up, but it ended up being a happy accident. I had the kool-aid too concentrated and not enough water in the bowl to fully emerse the yarn, which meant that the color wasn't evenly distributed and there were some paler and even white spots. I was really upset with myself for messing up M.'s yarn, but it actually turned out really neat.
Just based on the kool-aid experience, I don't think I'll ever become a serious yarn dyer. It was a fun experiment, but not anything that I would want to do too much of. Plus there are so many fabulous indy dyed yarns out there for sale, that I'm not lacking for yarn!
This has already been a crazy fall and it's going to get crazier as it goes on. On the school/career front, I have started collecting data for my dissertation. This has eaten up a huge chunk of my time and has created a constant stream of things that I need to do each day. I should be done by the end of this week and I'll be relieved when it's over. I will then move directly into doing job interviews. We do everything way in advance in the accounting field, so I'll be interviewing for faculty positions that will start next fall. I've done one already and have more over the coming weeks. These interviews are all day affairs with research and sometimes teaching presentations and two days of travel to get there and then home again, so they are both fun and exhausting. Plus sometime in there I have to analyze the dissertation data and get it written up.
On to a more fun topic... knitting! I have finished up a number of projects that I haven't had time to blog about, so I'll just give quick details and pictures on each. The first up is the Wisp.
Over the summer, just about everyone my LYS made this out of the pattern yarn (Rowan Kidsilk Haze) and I just didn't like it. I think I just don't like that yarn because at some point someone made one out of malabrigo lace and I just loved it. After several false starts on other patterns with my Azul Profundo Malabrigo lace weight, I decided to jump on the Wisp band wagon. I knitted this on size 8 needles. I used the square circular needles which were kind of neat to knit with. The malabrigo is smaller gauged than the kidsilk haze, so it ended up a lot narrower, which was ok with me since what I really wanted was a scarf. I did 24 pattern repeats to get enough length on it.
The second project that I finished up was a pair of crazy, striped socks:
I made these out of two colorways of Noro Silk Garden Sock. One colorway was #252 and I lost the yarn band on the other colorway, so I'm not sure what it was. I think it was the same colorway that I made my very first scarf and hat out of. I used a basic sock pattern with just 12 rows of ribbing at the top and then the rest stockinette stitch. I alternated the colorways every 4 rounds on leg and foot of the sock and every 2 rows on the heel. I did the entire heel turn and toe in the non-#252 colorway. These turned out great. They are extremely warm and dense though, so I haven't gotten to wear them yet. I look forward to wearing them on some dreary day this winter when my dissertation and job search has me stressed and depressed, because really how can one not be happy when wearing crazy striped socks.
The next project was a quick little hat. I joined a Halloween Vampire swap on Ravelry. It's been fun. It's kind of like secret santa except that it's for Halloween and it's supposed to have a vampire theme. My spoilee for the swap appears to be a big Twilight fan, so I knitted her on of the patterns that were designed to replicate the hat that Bella wore in the movie on the beach at La Push.
I actually didn't care for the hat in the movie, but I've decided it's just the way the actress is wearing it. I had M. model the hat it looks adorable on her. I think I'm going to knit her one now. The hat knits up fast, but it's a killer on the hands. It's moss stitch, knitted in bulky yarn on size 7 needles.
The final project that I've finished up is what I have dubbed my "Vampire Scarf":
This is actually the Montego Bay Scarf pattern. I love this pattern and tried to knit it out of a different yarn a while back, but that yarn just wasn't right for this pattern. This time, I've knitted it in the much coveted Wollmeise Sockenwolle 100% Superwash yarn in the Rosenrot colorway. I call this my vampire scarf because I started knitting it only while watching True Blood this summer and then finished up while watching the Twilight movie and The Vampire Diaries. I love the scarf. I think my favorite part is the fringe, which is the only modification I made. The fringe was supposed to be braided with five strands folded double and I didn't like how thick the braids were, so I made them with three strands folded over.
M. and I did some kool-aid dying of yarn a while back and I overdyed some of it just recently, but I'm going to put those pictures in another post.
The Amazon Conduit will be working again on October 15, 2009. Thank you to everyone for your patience.
Have a great weekend,
daisy, Team Vox
