Why I learned to watermark and blur.

If you are solely interested in knitting and yoga, you might want to skip today's post. Don't worry I'll be back to spinning fiber or blocking baby blankets next time.

We live in a time of Pinterest. I use it to create idea boards so I can find that one website that had that pattern that I'll never find again without keeping a ton of tabs open. This is a fabulous thing. I also use it to gather ideas from the aether: blanket ideas, baby knits, shawls, wonderful crocheted Doctor Who toys, and how others have stashed their yarn so that you can see what's there. Good stuff, people.

And if everyone pinned ethically, making sure the pin leads to the creator of the content, then there would be no reason for this post. But people, especially those who don't have an online presence, tend to get lazy. It's so easy to see something cool and repin without checking to make sure that the pin actually leads to the right place. (I've been known to fall into this trap myself.)

What's the right place? Well it breaks down like this: if a pin from a blog goes viral it can cause a spike in traffic. That's nice since the more people reading what you are typing away into the internet void the less it seems like a void. Also if you are blogging for a living, and need people to read your content in order to make any money off of ads, you want a lot of traffic. The problem is the middle man, and people pinning from aggregators (sites that pull a lot of information into one place but add no content of their own). In the internet world traffic is currency, so if you pull from a site that doesn't create the content, you haven't given any currency to the creator of the content.


The way to ensure that people know who took that cool picture, or where to find the best icing recipe on the planet, is to watermark your photos. Like so:

See there's the name of the website at the bottom. Kinda cool, huh?

I've been using photobucket as my online storage space and photo editing spot. I'd like to get something fancier in the future*, but this works for now. This watermarking thing isn't rocket science, there's an "add text" button. I'd just never played with it before, and now you know why I did.

I've also learned how to blur photos. This is great to know if you want to create teaser photos to get people interested in the reveal of your latest project that you are planning on posting about next time.

Blurry on purpose. Rare, I know.

Next time: Pictures of that blanket I was going on about a while ago.

*I'm looking at you Adobe Photoshop that I can't quite justify buying.

Daydream, meet Reality.

I wrote about the designing class I took a few weeks ago, but the result didn’t feel right so I didn’t post it. I’ve thought it over since, so I’ve taken another stab at it.

I had high hopes for the Designing for Beginners class. I’d just taken the dyeing class and I felt I was moving forward in my quest for fiber mastery. One of the many things I’ve daydreamed* about being is a knitwear designer. It blends my love of creating with my love of yarn – and I'd get paid for it. Best of all possible worlds, right? So, when I saw that there was a beginning designer class, I jumped at the chance to take it. And then I hit the wall formed when daydream meets the real world.

I thought I was going to a technical class. I’d thought I’d be learning about how to choose a collar on a sweater or recommendations for stitch patterns that are the most flattering for pear shaped women. I thought it would be about helping me on my way to figuring out designs that worked. Perhaps we’d get suggestions to keep us from accidentally designing a sack with sleeves and calling it a sweater. That was not the class I took.

The class I attended was much more business focused. We covered the importance of technical editors. We talked about creating and submitting proposals to yarn companies. We learned a whole bunch about the online world of publishing and tips and tricks to get our designs noticed. All these things are important to know. And I am certain the knowledge and guidance that Elizabeth, from Dark Matter Knits, imparted will be invaluable. But I’ve got one crochet accessory pattern and part of a blanket pattern worked out. I’m not there yet.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I didn’t enjoy the class. I did. The cross pollination of ideas was inspiring, and the look behind the scenes was informative. But I feel like there’s this chasm between where I am now and being a professional designer. I’m working on building a bridge to cross it; I’m taking classes, learning more about fiber and the fabric it creates, and collecting ideas for patterns. The class pointed out how far I’ve got to go. I’m not as far along as I thought I was.


*I’ve also daydreamed about becoming a professional model, or actress. I know better than to think too hard about making those a reality. Being the height I am, never mind my weight, makes the first idea an impossibility, and the second highly unlikely.

Learning how to blog

Blogging has been a learning experience. I follow more blogs since I’ve started blogging myself, and I found an interesting link on one of them. In the Friday finds of Epbot Jen* linked to SEO for Non-Dicks.** The post is mostly for people who are way more into webpage design than I am. My focus is knitting and yoga, but it’s good to learn tips on how to talk to more people about knitting and yoga.
The main points I learned from the post are I need to be aware of anchor-text, and you can always use more content as long as it is good. I knew I needed to keep writing. Before Skywestern Crooked turned me on to Google Reader, if there wasn’t something new on a blog twice a week I’d forget about it. Google Reader has changed that for me, I have a list of the blogs I read and it tells me whenever there’s a new one. Still, if it’s been a month since the last post, I wonder if the author has found something else to do with her time.

The real eye-opener for me was anchor-text; those are the words that turn blue that link to somewhere. I’ve often seen the link be “here” or “this”. Like you can find my blog here. And according to SEO for Non-Dicks, and the very dry Google SEO Starter Guide, anchor-text is supposed to describe what it is linking to. It makes it easier for search engines but, more importantly, it makes it easier for a reader to decide if they want to click. I’ve tried to do that, but sometimes I get carried away. I once linked every word of a sentence to a different post. It made sense at the time, but it might put people off because they don’t know where they are going to be taken.

I know this post is not pretty, and it might be a little dry, but I wanted to share with anyone who is thinking about their next blog post. And I haven’t meta-blogged in a while, so now you know what’s going on behind the scenes. Also, I need to learn how to use DH’s camera to get better pictures. But that’s a different post.***


* I don’t know Jen but, from all the geek love on her blog, she seems pretty cool. She is also funny; you should check out her other blog Cake Wrecks.

** SEO for anyone who doesn’t know, and that included me until I followed Jen’s link, is Search Engine Optimization.

***Apologies to Mr. Brown.

Meta-blogging

There’s been a change in the way I’ve been blogging. At first I was hesitant about what I posted. I wanted to make sure I had carefully chosen every word. I wanted this blog to be fun to read, and have interesting insights into my creative process. More recently, I’ve been focused on documenting rather than on writing. The blog has become a record of my progress, no longer an end in and of itself. I quickly sketch the gist of what I’m feeling and thinking while I’m playing with fluff and yarn, but the excitement about posting has diminished. Now, it’s more about tossing some pictures with a few words just to have something there. I’m no longer satisfied with that.

I need to find the middle path. I won’t post often if I obsess about every word, but I won’t be happy about what I’m posting if I don’t take the time to craft it. I guess I need to be mindful of what I am writing. Find a point before I blather away. So what’s the point of this? Last night, as I was putting the finishing touches on a post, I realized I’d posted the same thing twice in a row. It was over a week ago and I hadn't noticed. If I’m not reading this, why should anyone else?

Ah well, at least I’ve noticed now. I’ve fixed it and I’ll be more aware of what I post in the future. And if I’m the only one to read this, that wouldn’t be so bad, as long as I get the practice I need from it. Documenting my progress as a writer, fibernista and yogini is kind of what I intended from the start.