Domestic Geek

As I was cruising around the web this evening, I came across the coolest cake creation: A Knitting Basket Cake. One day I'm going to have to take a cake decorating class and give something like that a try.

Here are some cool places I found or was shown this week - documenting them for future reference.

Celtic Cross Stitch has a cool pattern generator that will make a cross-stitch chart out of the type you enter in a neat Celtic font.

Someone on a message board I frequent pointed me to this Links page of all sorts of knitting and crochet links.

Ann the Gran is a site dedicated to machine embroidery. I was told this is a great starting point for my new hobby/career.

This blog advertising stuff is getting out of hand. I understand the need to make money. Really, I do. I was weak and put paid blog posts on here while I was unemployed and underemployed to get by. I'm really starting to wish I hadn't. When I move my blog, I won't be taking a lot of those posts. I'm tempted still to sign up for these new ad companies as they pop up to see if I can make any money and the rational side of me prevails and resists.

The fact is that now there is so much of it, that it's making my blog surfing less than enjoyable. There are some blogs with so many sidebar ads, paid blog posts/text links, google ads, etc. that their actual site never loads for me. As I'm roaming around, I'm finding I quickly move on if I see any sort of paid posts or badges for paid blogging sites. Fair? No, but it's what I find myself doing. It used to be safe to get around a lot of that by reading feeds, but even those are being infiltrated.

I think I'm just weary of the whole thing. It's like trying to watch a movie on network television...it is constant commercial interruptions interfering with the enjoyment of the content. I miss being able to read random blogs without links to drug rehab or payday loan sites. Part of me wishes the whole thing will fail, but I realize that probably won't happen. What I can do is pledge that when all my obligations are complete that I will no longer participate in it and just post whenever and whatever I feel like. If people come and visit me, great. If not, that's fine, too.

To my online friends that are doing paid blogging and the like, please don't take my disdain for this personally. I don't like any of you less just because you still have or want to do this for whatever reason. I just can't do it anymore.

Unless you live under a rock in the blogosphere, you know my friend Colleen and you know how she is quite the globe trotter (and not of the basketball variety, either). I'm so jealous of all of the wonderful places she gets to visit and her next destination is no exception. Since I know where she's going and am thus not eligible for her contest, I will offer you one of her clues. If you can guess where she's going on her vacation, you can win something cool!

The prizes:
1st Prize - a $50 Travelocity Gift Card, and a souvenir from her trip!
2nd Prize - a $25 Travelocity Gift Card, and a souvenir from her trip!
3rd, 4th, and 5th Prize - a souvenir from her trip!

So, let's get on with it —

Clue #14:
The name of this district in the town Colleen is visiting may cause you to want to STOP walking though it, but Sting & Roxanne know that "You don't have to sell your body to the night"!

(Thanks, Colleen, now I'm going to that song stuck in my head all day!)

In addition my my clue, you can find links to the previous thirteen clues over at Colleen's site. Think you know? Head over to her site and follow the directions to enter (meaning DO NOT LEAVE GUESSES IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS OR ANY OTHER SITE!).

Good luck, dear readers and safe journey, Colleen!

It is so not fair to have a dream that you're going on a vacation trip to Hawaii. You dream you're packing, you dream of your last day at work before you leave, you dream you're driving to the airport and WHAM! Alarm goes off, it's MONDAY morning and you have to get up to go to work. *grumble*