Last week I was home sick with a bit of a stomach bug. Henry made sure to take good care of me and give me lots of snuggles. Please excuse the craptastic photos as I was using PhotoBooth on my Macbook. Also, no comments on how craptastic I look… it was a sick day afterall.

All this talk at Northern Voice and during the “Writing and Editing for the Web” course I just finished has me itching to work on the backend of the blog. I’m trying out some new things and updating some things that I’ve been neglecting. I also have some questions that perhaps other bloggers can help answer.

Uploaded Images and Photos on Flickr

I have gone back in all my uploaded photos (here on the blog) till October of last year and altered the titles and alt text. I’ve been naughty and haven’t been keeping that up to date. But as suggested by Alexandre in the SEO session at Northern Voice: start using good practices immediately and they will start to come naturally.

I’ve been adding photos to my Flickr and have removed almost all photos from my Facebook. I bought Flickr Pro in February and I am loving it. I’ll still be posting photos on the blog but now, I’ll try to link to the appropriate Flickr album for more photos when it isn’t necessary in a blog post.

Speaking of Facebook, I also deleted all my videos and will make sure to keep my YouTube channel up-to-date. However, most of the videos I upload to YouTube get embedded here. Which leads us to our next topic…. plugins.

WordPress Plugins

I am using Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin right now, but I just downloaded the Apture plugin to make these cute little icons in front of my links. But Apture also has an embed function, so do I need to keep Viper? Also, if I uninstall Viper, will it break my current embeds (mostly YouTube).

I already love how AddThis Social Bookmarking plugin works. I also recently activated the All in One SEO plugin and I’m exploring that more too. I’ve also been making sure to add tags to all my posts. This how-to video from WordPressTV that was suggested by kmore on Twitter has been a big help for doing all this tag updating.

Do you have any plugin suggestions that are vital to your blog well-being?

Improving my Workflow

I am interested in exploring Evernote to keep track of things. I already really like my “To Do” list on my iTouch and I use my iCal religiously. I’m interested in how Evernote can be integrated into my workflow. (And maybe it will make me less dorky at conferences when I whip out my pad of paper and favourite pen).

What a Yarn!

There’s one love that we all share: yarn. Blog about a particular yarn you have used in the past or own in your stash, or perhaps one that you covet from afar. If it is a yarn you have used you could show the project that you used it for, perhaps writing a mini ‘review’. Perhaps, instead, you pine for the feel of the almost mythical qiviut? You could explore and research the raw material and manufacturing process if you were feeling investigative.

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Revisit a past FO (finished object):

Bring the fortune and life of a past finished project up to the present. Document the current state and use of an object you have knitted or crocheted, whether it is the hat your sister wears to school almost every day, or a pair of socks you wore until they were full of hole. Or maybe that jumper that your did just didn’t like that much…

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Yarnpiggy posted about Knit & Crochet Blog Week 2010 last week sometime and piqued my interest. Eskimimi Knits is hosting the first inaugural Knit & Crochet Blog Week to celebrate fibre bloggers and talk about our shared passion. There are discussion topics for each day, as well as a “wild card” if you aren’t particularly inspired by the daily topic.

So, onto the first topic!

Starting Out: How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? Was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?

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