Friday, May 24, 2013

What's the Verdict?

Bloggers - what's the verdict on replacing Google Reader? Is it bloglovin'? or do you recommend something else? I'm pretty sure it's time for me to make a decision, but I've had no time to devote to this issue...

Speaking of no time, my apologies. I'm not getting here very often which if you've followed me for any amount of time, you know I've been a fairly consistent bloggers except for vacations. I am endeavoring to get back to a regular schedule. (Spellcheck not working this morning. How many errors will I have before I finish here?)


Stitching upates:

Fenway Park canvas. Haven't gone back to the bricks. I really need to concentrate to get the compensation correct around the doors and ornamentation. What I have done is the first of the flags. And then I thought I had an inspired choice for the grass, but ugh. Kennan stitch is lovely and I will certainly be using it somewhere and soon. But my thread does not match my canvas close enough and that tiny bit of canvas peeking through made it all look wonky. Hubby said it looked like weeds, not grass. LOL


 
Byzantine to the rescue. I was looking for stitches on my phone app of Suzy's Portable Stitches which has tips and funny little bits of wisdom at the bottom of each page when one of them struck me. It was something about wasteful of time and energy it can be to search for the perfect stitch when you already have a perfectly good stitch to use. And thus I settled on Byzantine which covers all the canvas and looks good. 

It was also time to add just a tiny bit of sparkle. It's Silk Lame Braid on the flagpole in and in the lettering of the flag. I decided the flag background will remain silk, and not be sparkly. 
 
This canvas is a challenge piece for my guild so it needs to be done by March 2014. But in a fit, I am stating that it will be finished by the time the World Series ends in the fall. I am making small progress on a couple other challenge pieces, but nothing worth highlighting yet. 

And the Loudoun Sampler Guild mystery sampler continues. Here's my completed March band. Love how the designer of this part modified the queen stitch to create dogwood petals. I've got some interesting color choices going on as I don't have a real yellow or a pink or a purple in my color palette and decided not to add any at this point in time. My redbud is red which is so wrong. LOL
 
What I did have to add to my threads, were two solidly colored silks one in green and one in red to use for the blackwork in the parts that come next. My overdyed threads are just a touch too variable for my liking. If you're interested in seeing more of what we are doing, go to the Loudoun Sampler Guild blog and have a peek. Photos from the May meeting aren't there as I am typing this, but I expect that they will be soon. 

 



11 comments:

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Personally I like Feedly.com which just imports your Google Reader info and interacts with it nicely. They promise to work the same way after Google Reader goes away, too. It takes a few days to get used to but I prefer it to Google Reader now.

Jenn L in Chicago said...

I ended up with The Old Reader (www.theoldreader.com). Login with your Google account and you can tell it to automatically import your feeds so you don't have to bother with that takeout thing. I will admit that it's a little slower to pull some feeds that GReader was, and I've noticed that posts sometimes come out of order (I follow the Tumblrs of my daughter and her boyfriend via RSS - they know - and I sometimes see the responses before the original post). Also, I never did find a way to set GReader to show me the oldest post first, where that's a nice big button at the top of the feeds on TOR.

Margaret said...

Oh my gosh, I love the Sampler Guild piece! It's gorgeous! The Fenway Park piece is coming out well too. Love that stitch you're using for the grass. I saw a glimpse of Fenway when I was visiting DS in Boston!

Feedly. Skip Bloglovin' and go for Feedly. It's good.

Sharon said...

I switched to Feedly and love it. Set up was so simple - it will pull all your current feeds from Reader in a blink of an eye. Love the magazine format

Sharon said...

I switched to Feedly and love it. Set up was so simple - it will pull all your current feeds from Reader in a blink of an eye. Love the magazine format

Robin in Houston said...

I've tried both Bloglovin and Feedly. Currently my vote goes to Bloglovin. Feedly is not so friendly from my point of view. You can't create categories on an ipad which means working off both the ipad and desktop. The blog list showing the number of unread posts is VERY pale gray and hard to read. And then picky me, I don't like the choice of fonts for display. Bloglovin lists are much easier to read; blogs can be easily grouped and since it all lives on the web, there are no ipad vs desktop issues. This all could change but that's where I am today.

Sara Leigh said...

Not having heard of Bloglovin', I had to check it out. Importing the blogs I follow from Google Reader was seamless, and I like the way Bloglovin' looks much better than Reader. The only thing I noticed, which I need to investigate beyond your blog, was the inability to post a comment by just clicking on the comment button. I had to (on a Mac) do a Command Click (don't know what that is in Windows). Nothing horrible, but an annoying feature. It may just be with blogspot blogs. Which is why I need to do more investigation. It may also be a Mac vs. Windows thing, which will go against Bloglovin' for me. I'll try it for a while, since I know of no other alternatives. Do you?

MNStitcher said...

I am thinking I am going to use Netvibes. I tried Bloglovin and didn't like it. Netvibes seems to be ok although I am going to miss reader.

MNStitcher said...

I am going to be using Netvibes. Tried Bloglovin and didn't like it at all. I am going to miss reader.

katiem said...

I switched to The Old Reader and really like it. It works so similarly to GReader, that there really wasn't a learning curve.

Sara Leigh said...

Apparently, I'm not a fan of any of these, but Feedly or Bloglovin is going to be it. I think. Still haven't tried The Old Reader, but the title just makes me feel my age. Hahahahahahahaha.