BEWARE: If you're visiting London art exhibitions today

BEWARE: If you're planning on coming to London today to see an art exhibition, you need to be aware that:

1. There is no service on the following tube lines (due to TFL tube technology update) until at least 3pm this afternoon: 
• Circle; 
• District; 
• Hammersmith & City; 
• Jubilee; 
• Metropolitan and 
• lots of tube stations are closed for various reasons
• however the Northern, Central and Elizabeth lines remain open all day and City Thameslink is always a good option
• This is the TFL Route Planner
2. There is a Pro Palestinian March from Hyde Park to the American Embassy which passes right next to Victoria Station.
3. There is an Armistice (today and tomorrow) Exclusion Zone around the Cenotaph and other key sites in and around Whitehall
4. There are going to be a lot of controls around Trafalgar Square which is designated as part of the "dispersal area"
5. Lots of controls around the Lord Mayor's Parade in the City of London
6. There is a very significant increase in police controls with a view to avoiding disturbances and keeping the peace

I'm not a fan of the Mail but they do seem to have the best map of what's going on in Central London

I find it absolutely amazing that so much disruption can be caused to ordinary people / residents / visitors and there is no one website which provides clear, transparent information to those trying to visit and/or move around London. 

PS APOLOGIES to subscribers on Mailerlite - this post should have been mailed to you at 9am this morning - but for some reason Mailerlite decided not to do so - and didn't send it at 10am either. I find the way Mailerlite plays up on occasion is making me want to look at alternative options. Such a pity Feedburner disappeared - so much more reliable

Follow.it falls at first hurdle re. Feedburner replacement

THIS IS NOW A BLOG POST OF TWO HALVES - LAST NIGHT AND THIS MORNING.
Last night I was very frustrated with follow.it which had promised a lot but not delivered as well as it promised. This morning we seem to be approaching something like normal and I'm not feeling so negative.

___________________________________

Last night - after much effort.....

I'm very sorry to all those who have tried Follow.It as a substitute for Feedburner. (i.e. this is an update on my previous post What next for Feedburner email subscriptions?)

This was my message to Follow-It after a very disappointing afternoon trying to get my RSS feed to be recognised in my Follow-It account.

This was AFTER I had paid for the Cool account.

Two more critical comments on another tweet got deleted..... but the person doing the deleting doesn't realise it doesn't delete from my side

Tweets are only deleted from one side - it's still there on my account

I'm NEVER impressed by people who don't pay attention to good customer service.

It now turns out that their response to signing up is neither automated nor very prompt - but might possibly respond to tweets.... ;) (Facebook does - so maybe they do too!)

In addition, in order to transfer more than 100 subscribers you have to PROVE you have them - by taking a photo / screenshot of your Feedburner Page AND contact them separately to get those subscribers brought over. 

But there's no way to indicate that when setting up the RSS feed.

I am, in part, trying to determine whether:

• the feed gets recognised when I publish this post - given I've signed up to subscribe via follow.it - but it does not recognise my blog - nor does it seem to go straight to my blog....
  
• whether to now transfer my subscribers given my growing doubts about follow-it for big accounts
  
• whether to abandon ship and go elsewhere. Mailer Lite and Mailchimp being possibilities - but they will cost more...

UPDATE: I'm feeling better about follow.it this morning. 

• Somebody got my feed set up and it's now on my dashboard. 
• The feed for this post was published - late. I always sign up to my own blogs - because that way I can check if the feed is working! This is what it looks like. It's supposed to arrive within 30 minutes of publication but this one took about 3.5 hours - which is not OK. I'll see what happens today. It might just be the new account bedding in
  

This is what arrived in my inbox late last night

• The statistics also showed up - and are OK - but I'm not getting anything like the detail I got with Feedburner - even with a paid account. I guess that's because follow.it can only count the emails via their set-up whereas Feedburner counted everything from whichever way people subscribed.
• The way it presents in the "read" side of my follow.it account also looks good. See below

 

 

Ponderings on the future

I'm still in pondering on what to do. I think I may run an A/B test and set up my Botanical Art and Artists blog - which has c1k subscribers - with another set-up and see if that works better.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to set up a Patreon account and start subscriptions all over again, but limited to those who pay a very nominal amount to get the blog posts.

I am also thinking along the lines of getting everybody to subscribe again - because I've absolutely no idea how many never open their emails and I'm not keen on paying for subscriptions from people who never open their email!

However do not fear - I have downloaded all current subscribers as a csv file - and will be keeping that safe until such time as I decide where subscriptions or going....

At the moment I've not pulled any hair out but getting close.....

There again maybe I shall go and take another look at Substack which manages to create a much better impression with me and has both free and paid options for followers.

(NOTE: All this within the context that I'm now listed for surgery and am expecting that my ankle fusion operation will take place in the Autumn and I'll then have very limited movement on one leg only for at least three months followed by not a lot more mobility for some months after that - followed by a shoulder replacement - when I'll be doing everything with one hand. So exhibition reviewing is going to be minimal for some time... I'm thinking of switching to art book reviews and getting the art material and tips and techniques websites finished!)

What next for Feedburner email subscriptions?

On April 14, 2021, Google announced that Feedburner would be losing its email subscription service. Which means that my regular email to those who have subscribed with the latest blog post title and the first 200 characters of the blog post will be no more....

If you’d like to continue using email subscriptions after the June transition, we recommend downloading email subscriber data so that you can migrate your subscribers to a new email subscription service. This data will also be available for download after the transition.

I'm absolutely sure I'm not the only regular Blogger and Feedburner user wondering what to do about a replacement.

[Note: Apparently Google intends to remove all non-core functionality and make it maintenance only - which conflicts with what they're saying re. the removal of the email subscriptions - because that's the only reason I used it - that and the fact it's free!]

Feedburner email subscriptions stop in July 2021

Switching to an alternative for Feedburner email subscriptions

What I want to do is migrate to a Feedburner alternative which

• Provides me with a free service (like Feedburner)
• Allows me to import all existing validated emails from Feedburner
• Allows a subscription for RSS Feed to email subscription option (i.e. replace what I've got at present)
• Works with all existing RSS services (like Feedburner) - for those who like to read blogs in Feedreaders (like Blogger's Reading List)
  
• Gives me some basic statistics. (I have other services which provide me with in-depth stats. All Feedburner tells me is how many subscribers opened the emails).
  

I'm still trying to work out what to do about the imminent (in July) demise of the Feedburner email to all those who have subscrived to date. 

I've actually got so many subscribers that it very definitely makes some alternatives rather expensive - and I'm running a blog NOT a business!

Some Issues

 

Email marketing is targeting ecommerce not blogger

Most of the email subscription marketing options are set up to provide an "occasional newsletter / marketing via email" facility for those who have websites and want to communicate with their followers from time to time

i.e. they're set up for ecommerce operations and not for bloggers

You know when you're dealing with one of these when:

• EITHER there's a limit on 
• the number of subscribers
• the number of feeds
• the number of emails you can send in a month
• OR you have to pay a charge - - which can mount up - to enable you to carry on as at present.

Another thing - not everybody opens their email

Why should I pay for people who do not open their emails?

As we well know, people are apt to sign up for email subscriptions - and then don't bother validating them and/or reading the emails. I certainly do NOT want to pay for a service which is charging me for those who have subscribed but do not bother to open their emails.

For me this is all the more reason to find a good quality basic service - or a very cheap one.

One more thing - migrate or sign up again?

I could migrate all current subscribers - BUT..... there's a bit of me which would quite like to get people to sign up all over again. That way I will know what the number of 'real subscribers" are.

Or maybe I should just use Twitter more to signal new posts

I already announce everyone via my FB Page....

 

Possible contenders

Below I tell you about my favourite option(s) to date 

There's also a summary of some Feedburner Email Subscription Alternatives - plus a link to a post which includes a very useful tabulation to help you decide.

After 17 million pageviews!!!

I missed the moment this week when the counter ticked over and Making A Mark got its 17 millionth page view

 

17 million pageviews means that this art blog - Making A Mark - which I started on 13th December 2005 (see below), and then went public, after 4 "try out" posts, in January 2006 -  is now averaging over a million pageviews a year.

My very first blog post on Tuesday 13th December 2005

 

It's also been repeatedly recognised as one of the best art blogs around. That might be partly due to the fact it's one of the few which have kept going for the last 15 years!  So much content has moved to other media channels - especially if they are picture oriented with very little text. It's almost as if blogging has died - and yet it remains popular with a lot of readers.

Suffice to say, I still enjoy writing and doing rather more in-depth pieces which won't fit in a tweet or an Instagram post or whatever.

While I write fewer posts (I stopped my habit of regularly writing one blog post a day a while back), I'm still keen to keep the blog going even though it's now a teenager.

However, I am thinking of whether I want to change it and, if so, how.....

Tomorrow - I'm writing about a possible successor to Feedburner

One change I have to make is deal with the upcoming major changes to Feedburner - which I use for email subscriptions

Given the imminent demise of the Feedburner email service in July 2021, tomorrow I'm going to be writing about WHAT NEXT? for those 

• who are currently Feedburner EMAIL subscribers
• fellow bloggers also using Feedburner for their email subscriptions.

I think I've found a viable option which won't break the bank and has a viable free option.....

Feedburner: Techcrunch and transferring my feeds

This post is about:

• the transfer of your Feedburner feeds to your Google account before they shut down at the end of February
• criticisms of the Feedburner service by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch

Last one first!

Techcrunch lambasts Google and Feedburner

Google acquired Feedburner on June 1, 2007 for $100M in Cash. Last Thursday, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch made some very serious criticisms of Feedburner - see Feedburner Needs To Get It Together. In 2008, Arrington was identified by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world so it pays to listen to what he has to say!

In essence his criticism is that Google is treating Feedburner as a vehicle for distributing its ads and is just not demonstrating any interest in proving a decent service for all the various web 2.0 activities which rely on feeds. He says:

• complaints about Feedburner continue
• the service is becoming unreliable
• Feedburner problems plague website owners far more than they should
• Google has taken far too long since acquisition to absorb Feedburner and sort it out
• Distribution of blog content has slowed down - a killer in the 'breaking news' business
• Google are far more focused on providing a blog for their AdSense ads than they are in providing a blog which supports Feedburner and addressing questions of performance. The "Burning Questions" Feedburner blog was closed down on 23rd December 2008. (If Michael had looked a little harder he would have noticed a 7 month gap with no posts at all!)

they have to focus on the quality of the service, too, or the ecosystem won’t work. The message they’re sending to everyone is that the service doesn’t deserve a blog, just the advertising they bolt onto it. Imagine if they did the same thing with search.
Feedburner Needs To Get It Together

• Google Groups posts known issues and workarounds for Feedburner
• and yet broken stats and implementation problems associated with the transfer of feeds are sitting around for days and not being resolved.

Now I'd take that as a sign that competition can only be just around the corner. Of course he could just have been really upset that his Feedburner stats figure for TechCrunch read zero rather than 1.7 million.

Transfer of Feedburner Feeds

Google started transferring the feed files recently and having sorted most of the people with adsense accounts they're now moving on to the likes of me (and you!).

Note we all MUST transfer by the end of February. The most important bit of this message is you don't have an option. You need to get your feedburner feeds transferred to a Google account before the end of February.

I transferred mine yesterday - and the transfer of feeds for multiple blogs took about 30 seconds.

There was a warning that your subscriber numbers can go a little bit haywire to start with. My subscriber numbers are fine - but my reach numbers have bombed and gone to zero. However like a lot of other people I did watch my subscriber numbers go haywire temporarily last week on the old feedburner site!

Note that you lose your the stats for site items - you will therefore now need Google Analytics for that. (see Making A Mark Guide - Installing Google Analytics on your Blog which is listed on the website page for Making A Mark Publications.)

You will no longer be able to sign in to feedburner.com. From now on, you may now view and manage your feeds by visiting: http://feedburner.google.com
Your old FeedBurner feeds (at feeds.feedburner.com) will automatically redirect traffic to their new addresses on the feeds2.feedburner.com domain. All of your feeds have been moved into your Google Account, along with your traffic stats. If you see “0” for the most recent day, don’t panic! It may take up to a week for a feed’s full dose of stats to appear in your Google Account.

You can also find the link to Feedburner in your Google Account "My Account" page. If you have any questions, please visit their Transfer FAQ.

When you've got your feeds transferred and start wondering about the new chart it pays to read Los colores bonitos, or how I learned to stop worrying and compare multiple feed metrics from the new blog which explains what the green and blue lines are in the chart.

UPDATE (after comments) If you find feeds confusing try reading my Subscriptions 101 guide and see if that helps
Links:

• A Making A Mark Guide: Subscriptions 101 (Feedburner) (August 2008)

Feedburner doesn't know what time it is

I'm getting very fed up with Feedburner not knowing what time of day Greenwich Mean Time is. It constantly gets it an hour wrong - which means that my emails to subscribers readers are not going out at the right time.

Hence the provocative title of this post - because they certainly are NOT reading all the posts by people in their Google Feedburner Group who've been making this same point for some time. In fact support for Feedburner has become completely shambolic since Feedburner was acquired by Google

The time issue is very frustrating when you live in London and sit virtually on top of the Prime Meridian!

Nearly Sitting on Zero
coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Let me give you an example. This blog is usually set up so that the feed delivers in the 3.00-5.00pm GMT time slot as is the Watermarks blog that I'm involved with. However, neither deliver in the right time slot:

• Making A Mark delivers at 2.00pm
• Watermarks delivers after 5.00pm GMT.

Note to Feedburner - GMT operates in Winter; British Summer Time operates in summer. Try using the world clock!

I'm sure there's space for another company who offers a feed management service - it would be nice to have one which works properly.

Feedburner FAILS to deliver to email subscribers

Feedburner is behaving in a completely bizarre way at the moment:

• On some days it does not NOT send my blog posts to email subscribers on the day they're written
• Instead, it delays them and then sends them to you several days later! For example, I've only just received those written on 30th - The little book of drawing - and 31st October - Urban Sketchers officially starts tomorrow.
• Just in case you didn't notice the later delivery, it then keeps sending some of late ones them to you - again and again - as it did with The colour of weather and time which was posted on the 9th October, but didn't turn up in my inbox until last Saturday and then again yesterday!) I'm rather hoping we don't get the same repeat delivery with the two posts from the end of October.

If this has happened to any of you please add a comment below.
I'm writing this so that the hundreds of readers who subscribe to this blog via Feedburner email know that I am just as puzzled and as irritated by the behaviour of the email feed as I'm sure some of you are.

I have a hunch it might be connected to posting from the same computer and the same ISP on more than one blog on the same day. Which, if I'm correct, is a major boo-boo on the part of Feedburner.

Aberrations have always happened from time to time and hopefully the people at Feedburner will get their act together pretty soon. I've found in the past that posting about it on my blog after the mistakes start to stack up tends to achieve a better 'fix' than writing to the Feedburner team. They used to be great..........until they got taken over by Google! (Dear Feedburner - I will keep posting about this until it stops happening!).

It's quite difficult to keep up with mishaps and malfunctions relating to Feedburner - especially as they seem to happen more and more. The Feedburner blog Burning Questions (Hah!) - burned out and stopped dead in its tracks back in May this year. Instead you're supposed to pick your way through all the threads in the Feedburner Google Help group to find out what the current status is. It has a known problems and current workarounds link - it's just not up to date!!!

Bad. As in not good customer service.

...and the answer is, if I dig deep, that I'm not alone. I've found threads from other bloggers who use feedburner for their email feed and they are also reporting that the feed for feedreaders is working fine but the feed for email subscribers is having a major problem.

Tip: If you're not already doing so, can I recommend that you get an alert to when this sort of thing happens by subscribing to your own blog through the feed options offered on your site. That way you know what sort of experience your readers are getting and whether the feed is being delivered on time.

My normal post for today will follow shortly...........

27th July 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

At some point today or tomorrow, the 300,000th visitor to this blog should arrive. I'd give whoever it is a prize if I could identify you but sadly that's not possible. Instead I'd like to say thank you to all those people who have visited my blog in the last two and half years and ask you all to participate with me in a mutual whoop for this blog making a mark on the blogging world! Whooooooooooooop!

I'd also like to shake you all by the hands as you're speeding up my stats! There's a very pronounced explonential curve to visitor numbers:

• the first 100,000 arrived June 2007 - and took 18 months
• the next 100,000 arrived by February 2008 - and took 9 months
• and this last 100,000 has taken just 6 months!!!

When I unpack the cumulative total and look at the data on unique visitors for each quarter since 1 January 2006, you can see that the apparently smooth line actually has a few ups and downs along the way.

There are some pronounced seasonal changes to blogging visitors and for anybody wondering where everybody has gone - we're in the middle of one of the holiday dips right now!

I think I've often commented on how I really only start to take a new blog seriously after it is 3 months old. Blogging on a regular basis and getting to 3 months old is a really major feat. I've never sat down to investigate the numbers but I think 70-80% (if not more fall by the wayside in those first 3 months) and quite a lot more only manage to post to their blogs on a very sporadic basis. It's a big change in life style and way of doing things and I was very definitely hooked in that first 3 months.

Getting to 300,000 visitors or 3 years old are a couple of other major benchmarks in a blogger's world. I reach 3 years of blogging in December this year but I'd like at this point to congratulate all of you who were already blogging before I turned up - and who are still blogging on a regular basis. You were my inspiration when I started and provided the impetus for me to keep going.

For everybody who'd like to know the secret of getting from 3 months old to 3 years old I've included a tip in my 'and finally......' section today.

Art Blogs

• Congrats to France Belleville on the 2nd birthday of Wagonized - see Two years. France's Doodles are like anybody else's full on drawings! Her talent for making very ordinary objects look interesting is phenomenal. I love her contribution to Andrea Joseph's Moly (#12) - Homage to Andrea Joseph - as part of an International Moleskine Exchange. Also take a peek at France's ladies on card (as in old cars for those unfamiliar with this blog) in her Etsy shop.
• Andrea Joseph (Andrea Joseph's sketchblog) started it with all this talk about drawing bugs now. I very much like Andrea's approach to telling people 7 unusual things about herself - which she started doing last year with this post - chasing dreams across the fields in the shadow of the sun. (Hands up Paul Weller fans!) See more of Andrea's wonderful drawings on Flickr.
  
• Vivienne Blackburn (Paintings, Prints and Stuff) has the dreaded first page in a new sketchbook experience this week
• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) last month had a blog post about Making Room for her art - otherwise known as needing to make room before you can start.
• Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) has been posting about the sketching she did on her break in "Sketching As a Language"
• Anne Hevener (The Pastel Journal Blog, editor of Pastel Journal) blogged about pastel artist Cindy House who enjoys Painting, By the Book - audio books that is. Does anybody else do this?
  
• Irene Brady (Nature Journaling) has been documenting her recent field trip earlier this month - sketching the wildlife, plants and flowers in Costa Rica. Start with Back from Costa Rica with journal! (23.07.08) and work towards today.
  
• I noticed in this week's letter from Robert Genn (Painters Key's - clickbacks) - The clock tower of Lucca had a new link to his daughter's new blog The Little Lined Notebook. Sara Genn creates art, plays music and takes photographs and is currently in Italy - as is her Dad - and has some great photos of Italy.
  

i haven't actually seen my dad in about six months. and so, like no time has passed, we pick up where we left off, fighting for air time on the only three subjects: art, painting, writing. once in a while we drift over to dogs and vegetables.
Sarah Genn

• Two sketching posts from me this week on Travels with a Sketchbook in....... I had dinner with my godchild Liz at Carluccio's - 12 West Smithfield and today I've posted a sketch of The Rother Valley from Great Dixter - done while eating lunch last Friday in the field which serves as the car park at Great Dixter. More about this fabulous garden tomorrow on my other blog

Carluccio's, 12 West Smithfield
12" x 16", coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Artists

• This is an interview with Henry Moore's only child Mary Moore about The Moore legacy. It's an interesting comment on the problems of an artist becoming wealthy in their own lifetime. There will be a new exhibition in the Autumn of previously unseen work 'Henry Moore: Ideas for Sculpture', Hauser & Wirth, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1, 15 Oct-14 November. Meanwhile Moore in America can be seen at the The New York Botanical Garden until October - and images of the exhibition can be seen by clicking the link.
• Jonathan Jones (The Guardian - Jonathan Jones) wrote yesterday about the art collectors who are defying critics in 'I know what I like' - which includes comments on Jack Vettriano, Beryl Cook and Rolf Harris.
• The Washington Post has an interesting article last week about a Master Swindler - who produced Vermeeers
  

Art Business & Marketing

• I had a long post yesterday - Selling art - online art websites, tracking marketing data and a new survey for artists! - which is attracting some very interesting comments.
• ...and another long post earlier tin the week about Visual artists and Copyright in the Knowledge Economy which is about the recent Green Paper from the European Commission.
  
• Yesterday's contains an ANNOUNCEMENT about a survey on this blog - it's my very first! So far 14 people have found it in the side column - just below 'How do people rate this blog (the Blogged widget) and just above me 'About Me'. The question posed is What's the MAIN way you sell your art?
• Robert Genn (Painters Keys) has written recently about Dealer relations
  
• The elder Oakley children have decided to start marketing the work of their Mum - Julie Oakley (Julie's Pictures and A Family Portrait) - and have created a new blog The Oakley Gallery for the purpose. I gather this is going to reduce the need for student loans and add 'part-time art dealer' to their CVs! :) I wonder how many other children out there have an entrepreneurial position in relation to the artwork of their parent(s).
  
• Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air) has been trying a different approach on Facebook - see Facebook Fans

My new test involves Facebook’s “Fan” pages. Just as you can “friend” an individual, you can “fan” a brand or person you like
Ed Terpening

Art Competitions

• Emily Gravett has won the Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK's most prestigious award for illustration for the second time. Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears goes through a selection of its timid hero's anxieties, before he realises that even humans can be cowardy custard! The Guardian has a slideshow of images from the book. Check out her website too.
  
• Jonathan Jones (The Guardian - Jonathan Jones blog) has pledged to keep quiet! Well after my comment last week, he's now written about About The 2009 Turner prize and my vow of silence!

Art Education and Workshops

• The Sedona Centre in Sedona, Arizona has a faculty blog - A Painting A Day. Two artists featured on the blog are Michael Chesley Johnson - Michael Chesley Johnson - Rocks & Rockweed - and Carol Marine - Carol Marine - Codependent. To be honest, I think this blog needs a bit more thought and input if it is to be effective as a marketing vehicle. I find the title odd as it doesn't fit with the frequency of posting and I can't understand why they are pulling in blog posts from various teachers at the Centre (good as they are) - without links to their blogs in the posts(!). Why can't the faculty be blogging about their activities at the centre and what students are getting up to. What's your view?
• Meanwhile Carol Marine (Carol Marine's a Painting A Day) is doing workshops in canada - Family Matters" & Canada Workshop and More Canada workshop photos - is having trouble with her e-mail and her blog feed! Yet again, Carol demonstrates that a fast way of selling work is to do it front of your students in a workshop!
  
• Dan at Empty Easel has taken on some contributing writers and one of these has done an article about Producing a Community Art Event? Here’s A Last Minute Checklist

Art Exhibitions

• Shirley (Paper and Threads) has been to see JMW Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Shirley and I went to see a Turner exhibition at Tate Britain and then we had fun being Turner in the section of the Tate devoted to his drawing and painting processes (see Dining and sketching at the Tate Britain Restaurant) - so it was especially nice to see her sketches of Turners!
  
• If you want to see Picasso's Guernica in future, you'll have to go the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The Guardian reported this week that Global touring takes its toll on Picasso picture. Much of the damage occurred when the mural was rolled up with each transfer.
• Impressionism and Scotland opened last Saturday and continues until 12th October at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Art Materials and Supplies

Swimming against the tide
8" x 10", coloured pencils on Saunders waterford HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• My post about The art of economising - on art materials has turned out to be very popular - and lots of you made excellent suggestions to add on to my checklist of ways to spend less as people tighten their belts in the face of what now seems like an inevitable recession. I recommend checking the comments.
  
• Laura Frankstone (Laurelines) has been showing us her watercolour brush pens and the tests she's done in Watercolor brush pens for fun and profit
• For those Seeking Shade or in need of More Umbrella Advice get on over to Richard McKinley's Pastel Pointers Blog. The advice is relevant to all plein air painters whichever medium you work in.
• Casey Klahn (Pastel) has been making Big Stick Pastels - Home Made

Book reviews

• My post on Friday was about Alfred Heaton Cooper and The English Lakes and my review of the book which contains 75 paintings by Alfred Heaton Cooper. Several of use were diverted into a small rapture about the Heaton Cooper Art Gallery and shop in Grasmere! For those who love the Lakes do take a look at the prints of paintings by Alfred and his son William - links are in the post. Much better than photos or postcards!
  

Colour

• I posted about Symbolic Colour
• and Hopeeternal (Meanderings along the narrow way) highlighted a post written last year about The Language of Colour (from Carnevale - M R Lovric)
• while James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has posted about colour in Bleaching and Glare.

Websites & blogging

• I apologise for the haphazaed service this week to all of you who receive this blog each morning via a Feedburner email subscription. For some reason, Feedburner has chosen to drop all the Feedburner e-mail subscriptions from the total (top right) TWICE plus has sent new posts out late. I think Feedburner needs to buck its ideas up! The curse of google acquisition strikes again.............
  
• Can I recommend subscribing to your own blog using the subscription facilities you offer. That way you can spot when something goes wrong.
  

and finally.......

The secret of remaining a blogger once you've become a blogger is to remember you need to take a break every once in a while! If you don't the result is blogging burnout - not a pleasant sight or experience!

I try to schedule a week off every once in a while. However this summer I'm going to try something a little bit different. For the next 5 weeks (until the beginning of September) I'm officially putting myself on a "go slow" so I can do other things including getting out and about a bit more now that the weather has improved.

That means I'll still be blogging......but not so often. It'll be more like every other day or every 3 days. It's like having a fortnight's holiday - but spread out. However I suspect I might end up with a great big long list of draft posts............

Some of the posts might just refer you to a blog on my Travel Sketchbook blog where I'll be recording days out - starting today with another trip to Great Dixter which we did on Friday. I'm pleased to say that walking around gardens is just right for those of use who need to exercise dodgy feet.

The Rother Valley from Dixter
8" x 10", pencil and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell