I’m eager to get there. This is the first major dyeing event for me this year and poking around my stuff is making me very happy. I’m also making a list of what I have to take to Lillies, and oh I suppose it’s past time to get started on planning that adventure. Then home and right into the Girl Scout demo with, you know it, MORE DYEING!
Here’s to dyeing! I spent the evening working on my class for Saturday’s event, Lamb to Loom. I took curtains down to pop their linen-y selves into a tannin mordant, along with my dye dress. I weighed things and figured out how much of the madder root I needed for my dye dress and a wool length of cloth. That amount was weighed out, rinsed, and set to soak in distilled water. I measured out the indigo I need for the dress and the linen curtains. It’s kinda cool if cheating but with the pre-processed indigo I don’t need to set the pot up ahead of time.
There are still eight gallons of distilled water in my car, and some of the table, and my chair. The pots and the trunk packed with equipment will go into the car tomorrow, as will my alumed fabrics. I have to tannin the linen as well as soak it in alum but the wool only needs the alum mordanting. Of course I had to watch Supernatural’s season end. Very nice.
I also worked on the website for the new business, did some emailing with community people about some projects, and played around with a new-to-me mind mapping software. I’ve an idea of how to divide up all my blogging between my three blogs without having overlap and muddying things.
I have to pack tomorrow so maybe I should go throw clothes into the washer, huh?
And then to bed.
Hi! How are you? I’m good. Busy doing exciting stuff! Like becoming a manager of a WordPress Meetup. Yup, I signed up to organize a local meetup and if you like WordPress and are local to Rochester, MN, you can join me. There are others throughout the world, though, if you aren’t. The Rochester WordPress Meetup is brand-new, just plunked down the money today, and the rules aren’t pulled together any more than a meeting place, date or time. But that will happen.
This is part of some changes in how I spend my off-time. Busy, busy! Two big projects going on right now, one being getting ready for a summer of teaching dye classes as part of the historical reenactment group I belong to. I think there is going to be lots of blue in my future. I’ll post pictures.
The second is figuring out all the bits and pieces of a business plan…there are lots of people doing web design. What I can do better than the next guy, marketing to my strengths. I’ll happily help anyone or any business with their website, tailored to their needs, but I have a special place in my heart for people who want a website that helps them stay connected to family, that becomes a place that is your own, holds your stories and your pictures and looks like you did the decorating. I know…FaceBook does all of that and more. It’s just that it’s a commercial site, and who knows what you are losing in privacy, or who you will run into there. A personal blog can be a safer place for families.
A business blog is a safer place for a business, too, and I’ll get into that in another post.
Other aspects of my new business are these: I’m also good at training people to use all the various bits that make up the internet and social media, and I excel at organizing fun stuff that make people happy; I’m developing a promotions angle in this business plan, too. More things like Giving Bunnies go AMOK as well as Ag Tours similar to the Harvest Tours that Deb Brown of Debworks has organized, and other community promotions. Oh! And community gardens for Oronoco.
I used the community gardens as a project for the Adventure Learning class I just completed. It was fun AND gave me reason to pull all this research together into one place. Want to hear a funny story? I was sorta poking around with files this weekend and…deleted that blog. Oops! I got it restored, just need to replace the sidebar items and so mostly I just got a good story out of it. But I kinda panicked as I’m not sure I have a grade on the project yet.
The business is named HomeGrown Technologies, Inc. The paperwork is in for that as well, and I’ve started the website and all the other plans and lists are keeping me up nights. Cause all that I listed above? I really want to do it all at once.
But I’m not doing this all at once! Sheesh. I would be tired, and confused. For tonight, it’s enough that I got done what I have done and that I invite you to become part of my meetup group. If you like and use WordPress, and want to hang out and share with others who use a great content management system, well…Yeah! See you online, over there on the meetup site!
Regarding Bees and Being Strong
We start with a small action and plant it in the barren soil of a despairing world. There is no one to save us, but us. That’s the whole point of existence. We are the help, the sanity, and the goodness, we’ve been waiting for. Scary, I know, but true. Let our cry for understanding not be “Why?” but instead, “What?” What can I do? What would help? And do it. Let that be your prayer and your meditation: asking “what?” and then answering with nothing less than your life.
The fire of indignation over recent events in Boston melted the icy retreat of fear and sadness inside me. My questioning as to “what” I am to do about the bees in my own backyard has led me to an improbable but delightful answer: brewing a homeopathic tea to feed and strengthen the bees.
I can’t say anything any better than this post can, just encouraging you to read it. I’m in some life-changing processes here, sorry I’m so quiet.
Not a complete list! And just the Urls – I’m doing this while something else is doing its thing in the background and now I gotta get back to it. Does anyone have this list already created and pretty? Oh, and yes I’ll be investigating other WordCamp slide decks that might be out there.
Just grabbing some of the links and saving them before I clean up HootSuite and get rid of that stream:
http://www.slideshare.net/joedolson/accessibility-wordpress-developing-for-the-whole-world
http://www.slideshare.net/peterchester/2013-wp-performance
https://tadpole.cc/blog/slides-from-andys-presentation-at-wordcamp-minneapolis/
http://danielespinoza.me/wordcamp-minneapolis-selling-premium-wordpress-plugins/
http://freshmuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tools1.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/travistotz/a-designers-approach-to-customizing-themes
This was my first WordCamp . The energy grabbed me and cranked open my head so I stuffed it, and my notebook, as full as I can. On the drive home I had a chance to reflect on takeaways from this weekend, trying to capture them here.
One. I don’t know as much as I want to know and I know as much as I needed to know to get my two sites up. Lots of stuff to do ASAP and then more to be done as I can. I was going to prioritize my list before I wrote up this blog post, which is one of the benefits of paper notes (plus I don’t type as fast as I can make a cryptic note on paper). That did not get done; went for a walk first, and did some tree-trimming. Yeah, Nature!
Two. There are some incredibly generous people out there. The cost of this event was only $20 a day to me, and so the costs were mostly underwritten by the sponsors. I know that many of the Cities attendees and people in the business knew who most of the businesses were, because I asked. Myself, I’m going to take time to look them all up later. I am extremely grateful.
The venue sites were good and the volunteers were awesome. Loved the volunteer-energy, very comforting for this new person to this event.
Three. It doesn’t matter if your website is not perfect. It does not matter if you don’t know all the latest stuff in design, or that you are using weird colors together. As long as your choices work for you, it’s OK. People may not praise you but nor are they going to wrestle you to the ground and sit on you until you change your website to meet some industry standard. (what standards? I think it’s evolving. Or maybe I’ve just not found them yet…) They don’t have time or brain-space to worry about you and unless you ask for help, no one is going to bother you. At the same time, the more you interact with the wordpress.org forums and meetups and WordCamps and other pieces of the WP community, the more you will learn, the more people you meet and the more use you can be both to yourself and to the community. That’s key: this is a community that wants to bring out the best in itself. Rinse and repeat.
Oh heck, I want the notes to be here. I’ll do paper notes and update this blog with the biggy ideas.
I am in my iPad, though, and this venue does not have table or desk space for us. Desk or table space is necessary for a tech conference,in my opinion.
And oops. This was not supposed to publish quite yet. So check back.
Two of BuddyPress’s developers came from Wisconsin. It’s a damn good idea. Builds a community piece to the social layers of WordPress.
Ok, the rest of this is going to either be things I do not know, or things I want to remember to review.
All of the things shared in your community belongs to you.
I can customize the profiles with other fields to share information important to the community. Like chicken website could allow room for people to share the breeds they own.
Lisa is showing how this is like FaceBook.
Checkout WP multi site blogging, multi site blogging.
Ok, sorry, I am posting this and going back to paper…nowhere to write side notes on this thing! Sorry, I’ll post an update later.
Hi! It’s been awhile; I’ve been concentrating on homework and I’m pleased to say that’s gone well. And now I’m about to get outside, finally, to start working on my garden. I would love to have beans in the ground pretty soon! And cucumbers and I’d like to try my own kale, something I’ve not ever grown. Then Van and I walked around the place on Friday, deciding that yes, we are going to yank out these bushes and yes the fence is coming all the way down and sure, cut down that tree but be careful.
Poplar trees have a short life span.
Anyway, I went yesterday to the local WordCamp. WordPress is the platform this blog is built upon and when someone mentioned this to me, I was happy to give this weekend over to it. The WordPress Community does have lots more to go to, if you are interested.
It is a workshop for the designers and coders and the people who build the various websites. Not that I was unwelcome, as an end user. And not that I don’t dabble in the designing and coding side of things, but mostly I’ve worked within the child themes. So I learned so much, it was amazing and wonderful.
I’m going back today to the BuddyCamp, the community platform that can be strapped to a WordPress site to give me forums, private messaging between members, things like that. This will be pretty exciting – I’ve just started trying to work with one on the Oronoco Gardens site and spent hours trying to figure out how to add a captcha. Finally gave up on that one and the next one I tried was perfect. heh.
Other takeaways from this weekend is the need to get involved in the local WordPress community…if there is one. May have to create that, too! We don’t have a local meetup in SE Minnesota; may attend the one in the Cities a few times first.
Well, I’ve got to get moving! I may be live-blogging today, capturing my notes there so as to share the experience. Laters!
This is just in the idea phase but I want to kinda throw it out on the Internet and see what my community has to say about it. I am thinking about having spontaneous brown-bag lunch meet ups out and about the area. I would send an announcement out via my communities, go pick up a dozen cupcakes, and leave work in time to get where ever we are having lunch. Conversation would be supported by whatever the theme is, like ‘dogs’ or ‘local weekend vacations I loved.’ And I will get to meet new people and just get away for a bit.
It should be easy enough to make up a sign so people can find me. And there maybe should be balloons. And a wire stand.
But mostly the cupcakes to share out. I think I’d call it something like “Spontaneous Lunch, with cupcakes!”
Things to consider…is it safe? Um…out in public areas. Anyone that came by and got verbally abusive can either calm down when asked or I will call 911. I am not promising anyone anything and if they don’t have fun, they can leave. Unfollow me.
What is it for? Just doing a random bit to make the world better.
How often? Once a month? Randomly? Not sure yet.
Why only a dozen cupcakes? Gotta start somewhere, right?
Anyway, I am wondering what people think. Thanks for your comments!
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