If you're a pinner, then you've probably had this experience. If not, you've been lucky. Because at some point, this is going to happen to you, too. It's becoming a big problem on Pinterest--just like it is on the whole rest of the Internet.

You've got a board full of cool pins. Crafting pins, let's say. And now you have some extra pocket money and a free morning to spend at the craft store. It's time to sit down with your pins and decide on something to make.

Oo! There's that really cool little up-cycled eyeglass case turned sewing kit you pinned just last week. You click on the photo and navigate to the website in search of the step-by-step instructions and a list of materials. 

At least, you think that's what you're doing. Instead, you get this:

Yes, it's the dreaded blocked pin. This is what you see when you clink on a spammy link on Pinterest. Usually, you will only see this message when you're particularly excited about making whatever the thing was that you pinned.

Why does this happen? Well, spammers long ago figured out that they can hijack perfectly useful pins by simply replacing the original link's URL with their own. So they steal someone else's photo of a really cool looking craft or a yummy recipe, they attach their own spammy link to it and then they count on a lot of people pinning it without first checking out the link. That way, the link gets propagated all over Pinterest, and when all of us innocent pinners finally get around to checking it out it either goes somewhere horrifying or we get the above error message.

Now, when you have this experience you probably just grieve a little and then move on to something else, thinking that pin is lost to your forever. Well, I've got good news--in most cases you can figure out where that link ought to take you.

Fortunately for all of us, spammers are neither smart enough nor talented enough to create their own enticing images to attach to their crappy links, so they almost always steal the images from perfectly legitimate websites. And that means with a little sleuthing, you can pretty easily fix your pin so it goes to the right place. Here's how:

So this is the pin I had on one of my boards that turned up the above error message:

Doesn't that look yummy? That's what I thought, too. So I was kind of bummed when it turned out to be a spammy link. But alas! All I had to do to find the actual source of this image was this:

Right click on the image and "save as." Put it somewhere on your hard drive where you'll be able to easily find it.

Now go to Google Images at images.google.com. Click on the little camera icon in the search box.

Now choose "upload an image, " then click "browse."

Almost done. Navigate to wherever you saved that original image, and follow the on-screen instructions to upload it. Here's what you'll get:

There will probably be a few potential hits in your search results, and not all of them will be correct. But if this image exists somewhere else on the internet Google should be able to find it. In this case, the correct link was the second one in the search results.

Now all that's left to do is re-pin, and then delete that old pin from your board so that other pinners will have the correct link. If you only ever pin stuff you find on Pinterest, here's a short explanation of how to pin from a website:

Lots of websites and blogs already have a little "Pin it" icon. Just click on that. If they don't (I couldn't find one on this particular blog), you can use your browser's "pin it" button (you have to download and install it--Pinterest has a help page that will tell you how). Click on that button and follow the on-screen instructions to pin the correct link.

Then go back to that spammy pin and click on that little pencil icon in the top right corner:

 

Now click on "delete pin" in the bottom left corner. Done!

Don't neglect that last couple of critical steps! It is important that we purge all those spammy links from our beloved Pinterest. Think of it like picking up litter from the street--you're just making Pinterest a more beautiful place. And isn't that what we all want?

My kids bug me everyday with this question:

"Mom! How many more days until Halloween?"

You know, kids, that's just way too much math. But yes, my kids look forward to Halloween almost as much as they look forward to Christmas. Maybe even more. And we have a Christmas advent calendar, so ....

I decided to make them a Halloween one, based on a Christmas advent calendar tutorial I found on Pinterest. I know, so much for that whole "crafting my library" thing. I'm thinking of changing my tagline to "crafting my pins, 10 minutes at a time ..."

I spent literally a couple of hours on this calendar, and I think it turned out really cute:

What I love most about it is that it uses dollar store supplies. The cookie sheet came from The Dollar Store and so did the flat-backed glass marbles. Then all I had to buy was some Halloween scrapbooking paper and magnets. I already had some Mod Podge.

The steps are simple:

1. Cut the numbers out of your scrapbook paper and paste each one onto a black square. Tack the numbers to the cookie sheet (I used two Halloween designs on either end of the calendar to make the numbers even out).
2. Mod Podge over the whole thing. I used two coats.
3. Meanwhile, cut little Halloween characters/phrases/scenes out of the scrapbook paper. For this part you'd obviously want to choose paper that has pictures on it about the size of the glass marbles. 
4. Mod Podge the cutouts to the back of the marbles, then let dry.
5. Glue the magnets to the back of the marbles. I just used Tacky Glue for this.
6. Drill holes at the top of the cookie sheet so you can hang it up. Done!

Now my kids don't have to ask me half a million times a day to figure out how many days there are until Candy Overload. They can just go count. And no, I don't ever remember what the answer was from the day before, so it's not like it's just a matter of simple subtraction. :P

One of my favorite craftsy blogs (http://www.luvinthemommyhood.com/) recently posed a question that I felt compelled to answer:

What's in your knitting bag?

Hmm, good question. I haven't looked in there in a couple of months. So I dumped it out and here's what I found. (I was going to take a photo, but read on and you'll know why.)

• One case for interchangable knitting needles
• A piece of cardboard shaped like my foot (for making socks)
• A case containing three sets of circular needles
• A pattern book for making bags
• One finished knitted bag
• One unfinished knitted bag and 7 small balls of yarn to go with it
• One skein of green yarn
• One "knit-chek"
• One set of #7 double pointed needles
• A reusable grocery bag
• Half a set of #10 double pointed needles
• One blue colored pencil
• One #10 straight needle (where the heck is the other one?)
• A tube of Blistex
• Two M&Ms
• One skittle (I'm pretty sure my kids were responsible for the candy, because I would never willfully leave uneaten chocolate anywhere, least of all my knitting bag)
• One black gel pen
• One purple paint marker
• A note with a phone number on it
• One spool of black quilting thread
• A skein of fun fur
• One stitch holder
• Several yarn labels
• A quilt block template
• A scrapbooking tag my six year old wrote her name on
• A small battery powered light
• A magnet from Real Simple with a bunch of advice about storing produce
• A small screwdriver
• A hair tie
• One piece of pink Lego

Conclusion? I need to clean out my bag.

At last, at last, I finally finished Henry's dinosaur quilt. I actually did the quilting ages ago but it's such an enormous thing that I procrastinated the heck out of finishing the binding. Poor kid was always asking me when he could have his quilt.

Once again I had a hard time coming up with a decent photo so I just did the old stand-by folded quilt picture. Here it is:

 

This one is sort of OK, if you'll excuse my ugly brown carpet:

This is by far the biggest quilt I've ever made, in fact it very nearly covers my queen mattress though it stops just short of being a true queen size. It's really more of an oversized full. And I quilted the whole thing on my short-necked little Brother! Honestly though I don't think I'd ever try to make a quilt this size again, not until I get a machine with a longer neck. This was easy quilting--just straight up and down lines; I can't imagine trying to free-motion something this size.

Anyway yay, done. On to the next project ...

A couple of months ago one of the websites I sometimes get stuff from (I can't even remember which one now) had this great deal on a little bag kit. It was ridiculously cheap, like less than 10 bucks though I also can't remember the exact amount. Anyway I ordered it and then discovered why it was so cheap--because it was a kit without a pattern. If I wanted the pattern, I would have to order it for another $8. And of course it couldn't be downloaded, either, I'd have to order a paper copy.

So anyway, I shelved it and then got it out a couple of weeks ago and wondered if I could figure out how to make the bag from the picture on the front of the kit. Now, that's something I've never done before because I kind of suck at doing stuff like that. But I didn't want to buy the pattern, either. Not because I'm cheap but because I felt like I'd been a little cheated. In my defense, I would have paid extra to get the pattern with the bag if I'd known in advance that the pattern wasn't included. I would have even paid extra to download it. But getting a paper copy seemed like too much trouble for a <$10 bag.

So I mangled it together and it actually looks pretty good. The only thing I didn't really do right is sew on the stupid handle, because I couldn't figure out how to do that with the zipper complicating everything. That's way, way too much geometry for me.

Here's how it looks, not bad for an amateur eh?

Guess what, I've taken on a new project!

Yes, that's right. Because I have so much extra time in my life for all this stuff, haha.

Anyway I was at my neighbor's place last week when he opened his garage to reveal this gorgeous albeit neglected thing sitting there all covered with dust:

"Wow!" I said. "That is a cool old sewing machine!"

"Actually I've been looking for a new home for it," he said. "You want it?"

Heck yeah I wanted it. And now it's sitting in my garage, just waiting for me to start work restoring it. Except of course I really have no idea how. My dream, though, is to fix it up and use it to make a quilt to give to my wonderful neighbor in thanks for such an awesome gift.

With the help of some of the great people on the QuiltingBoard, I was finally able to identify this machine as an early model 15, manufactured in Germany. Sadly that's about all the info I can get about it, because the factory in Germany (and all its records) were destroyed by the Russian army during World War II. So cool as this machine is, I'm afraid many of its details will remain a mystery.

Do you know how to restore an old sewing machine? I'd love some tips!

Warning: Rant.

Many years ago, before kids, I scrapbooked. My MO was like this: I would go down to the scrapbooking store and spend hours leafing through all the different papers and embellishments and stickers and I would spend a bunch of money and then go home and spend three or four hours making one two-page spread. How I got anything done at all is beyond me. I guess you have a lot of extra time when you don't have kids.

I used post-bound albums, which I hated. They were fiddly and the pages always buckled instead of lying flat. I considered D-ring albums, but two-page spreads looked awful in those albums because of the huge gap between them. I figured I was just stuck with post-bound.

Anyway then I moved here to Rough and Ready and learned that one of my neighbors was a Creative Memories consultant. And she hosted weekly crops! Which was awesome for me because it meant new friends and some me-time and that I would always have one morning carved out every week for scrapbooking.

At first, I didn't love Creative Memories. I liked the fancy papers and Creative Memories had no fancy papers. You just stuck your pictures right on the page, maybe after rounding the corners or something, and then you put a few stickers on and a fancy border. I thought the pages were kind of boring. But I really liked the strap-hinge albums. They always lay flat and there was no gap between the pages. And I really liked getting together with friends and neighbors to crop.

Then Creative Memories did come out with the fancy papers, and all the stickers and ribbon and paper flowers to go with it. And the best part about it: all the stuff matched. No more scouring the scrapbooking store in search of papers, or spending hours trying to decide how to make a page look nice. It was all right there in that one package.

Now I didn't just love the albums, I loved everything about Creative Memories. I became a consultant, though I rarely ever sold any of the Creative Memories products. I just bought the stuff for myself. After that I almost never went to one of those scrapbooking stores. I was happy on my little Creative Memories cloud.

Now if you are also a Creative Memories fan, you know where I'm going with this. A few weeks ago, my beloved Creative Memories stabbed me in the heart, with the same very long knife they used to stab all their fans in the heart. Creative Memories will no longer be making albums, pages, page protectors or really anything good. Instead they will be focusing on their digital line, which I have little or no interest in (on the rare occasions that I do make photo books I use Snapfish or Shutterfly and then only during one of their very discounted promotions). They will also still be making their "Fast to Fabulous" albums, which I also have no interest in. I don't want my book dictating how many photos I get to put in my album, or how many per page or what orientation they should be, and I also really don't want my books to look exactly like everyone else's books.

And then to add insult to injury, we'll only be able to buy pages and protectors until the end of this month. Why does this suck? Because every time Creative Memories came out with a coverset I liked, I would by it, but I wouldn't buy the pages and protectors to go along with it. Because the coversets were always "while supplies last," but the pages and protectors were forever.

Or so I thought.

I have 14 empty Creative Memories albums on my shelf. I like to put about 35 pages in each book, which is about two packs and 1/3. That's about 33 packs of pages and 33 packs of protectors. I'm going to have to max out a credit card to afford to complete all those albums. But if I don't, all those albums become useless. I could sell them on eBay, but I love the strap hinge format and selling those albums means that's one more post-bound album I have to buy instead. I really want to use all my CM albums because I love them.

What could Creative Memories have done differently? I don't know. Some people think they never should have started making the fancy papers, because that's what did them in. But though I would have still used their albums I doubt I would have become so devoted to them if they didn't have those papers. Maybe I'm unusual though.

And I don't know what the courts are making them do--because this is all bankruptcy related--but I think giving us three or four months to order those pages instead of less than a month would have been a kindness. Personally, I can't afford Creative Memories' bankruptcy. :(

Now I know that this is about the collapse of a company and not really about those of us who were once devoted to that company. But Creative Memories needs to give us a parting gesture of thanks from the deck of their sinking ship. Because we all loved them, supported them, told all our friends about them, and spent probably too much money on their products. The least they could do is sell their patent on those albums to some other company. Because I've been searching the web for a comparable, widely available (in many colors) strap-hinge album and I'm not finding much. And I really don't want to go back to post-bound.