I know this seems like a silly post but humor me, okay? A couple weeks ago I decided to move my other blog, The Well-Appointed Desk, from Tumblr to WordPress.

First, let me explain my rationale for moving the site. First, Tumblr stores all your content on their servers. So, if they ever changed their policies, went out of business or some other strategic move, I could theoretically lose all 1500+ posts. Second, the service can be a bit sketchy. Have you ever visited Tumblr to get a “service temporarily unavailable” message? Yeah, annoying. And finally, I wanted to have more control over the design and content of the overall site. For example, Tumblr’s search feature is terrible and I need to be able to look up old posts as well as provide a way for readers to look for posts that actually worked. So…

It doesn’t seem like it should be all that big of a deal to switch services, right? Wrong. First, I’m not a web guru. My experience with CSS and all the other facets of building a blog are rudimentary at best so I needed to find a template that got me at 75-85% of the way to where I wanted to be. I purchased a template from one of the myriad of online services (type in “WordPress templates” into your favorite search engine to get what I mean) and plopped down about $35 or so for a template. Then I needed to figure out how to export the content from Tumblr to WordPress while maintaining all links and photographs. Let’s just say that’s not as easy as it sounds. After several days and multiple attempts, I got all the posts moved and probably 75% of the images. Some, I’ve discovered, have come in enormous so my next challenge will be to go back through all 1500+ posts and try to remedy that. Cry….

Then there is a few features that are imbedded into Tumblr by default that I needed to recreate over on WordPress, specifically the queue for future and the auto-post to Twitter/Facebook. Thus far, I have had to manually schedule posts to queue which is a bit of a challenge since I often bulk post on the weekend and then trickle the content out throughout the week. I do this so there aren’t 40 posts on Monday and nothing the rest of the week and also because my day job often leaves me no time to generate posts during the day, and no energy to try to do posts every evening. Then the other hurdle was the ability to have the posts automagically publish a tweet and status update on Facebook for those who choose to follow The Well-Appointed Desk through their favorite media stream. I don’t auto-tweet to be an ass, but to provide a quick clue that a new post is available. I actually appreciate it when other sites I love do that so I wanted to provide the same courtesy. So far, finding a solution for auto-tweeting from within WordPress has proven to be an utter failure and I have tried a bevvy of plug-ins. None of which will play nicely with scheduled posts.I’ve ended up resorting to an online service called su.pr, a division of Stumble Upon which has the added bonus of shortening my URL, scheduling my tweet AND letting me know how many people actually click through to the site so that’s been very handy.

Finally, I wanted to be able to back-post to Tumblr for people who prefer to read The Well-Appointed Desk there. This was one instance where there was a plug-in that works fairly well called Tumblrize. I just have to make sure that the right Tumblr blog is selected when I save my posts and schedule them, otherwise the post gets sent to the wrong feed and the almost 1000 people following on Tumblr don’t get their daily post.

A week or so after picking a template, the vendor decided it would be a fine time to upgrade the template and that more or less ate my blog. SO…. it was back to the digital drawing board. In the end, I settled on a “vanilla template” that was pre-installed with WordPress and its met most of my criteria, most importantly, it has not made me cry in frustration. Yet.

In the end, moving a blog is a challenging, convoluted process and I can’t honestly say that I am happier on WordPress for The Well-Appointed Desk than I was with Tumblr. I just have fewer outages. If I had it to do all over again, would I move the site? I don’t really know. Its certainly resulted in more work for me which is making maintaining the blog more time-consuming. For something that I do “for fun” that’s not necessarily good news.

If anyone has tips for streamlining or improving my one-woman blogging factory, please leave a comment. I could clearly use all the help I can get.

I am also tremendously reliant on the queue feature to allow me to rapidly collect posts for the coming week without having to specifically assign times and dates for the posts to appear. Because my work schedule can get crazy, this is the only way I can stay on top of the blog regularly.

At present, I have almost 1000 followers on Tumblr which is quite impressive considering the first year I had about 10 followers for the whole year. So, I also want to make sure that the blog will continue to service those readers who prefer Tumblr to an RSS or visiting the site directly.

Any web developers, WordPress afficiandos or tech-heads with any advice for me? Keep in mind, I’m a pen nerd not a code nerd.

I love the color of the yarn I used for the Side Slip Cloche, Elsbeth Lavold Angora, but I think I only needed two skeins, not three. Note that I finally got my sunglasses back, and by back, I mean I bought a new pair of the same frames that were stolen back in November and had new prescription lenses in them. Still annoyed about that.

The Fresco Simply Slouchy was a quick easy knit and I used the gray Sugarbunny angora blend from KnitPicks. I added the vintage button/buckle pin to give it a little something extra.

That’s two down, four to go. I think the next I’ll tackle is the Meret.

(All pattern links lead to Ravelry. If you’re not a member, join today)

I created about a dozen panda Valentines as well as a handful of personal Valentines for family around the country and a mess of letters and postcards to friends old and new. I also got lots of wonderful letters and packages in return covered in beautiful art and lettering. Such inspiration!

It was a lot of fun and I don’t think I’ll slow down on letter-writing in March though it will be nice not to feel guilty if I don’t write every single day.

To celebrate my new P.O. Box, Bob of the legendary Skylab Letterpress printed new business cards and stationery for me. He also made some book plates to match. I chose the same vivid green and black I’ve used in the past. The stationery was printed on Cougar 80 lb text and the cards were printed on Neenah Classic Crest 160 lb cardstock in bright white and ivory as well.

The return address rubber stamp I’ve been using until I can get around to having him print some envelopes for me. I’m thinking deep green envelopes with silver return address. Opinions?

Portrait of Admiral Abelmeyer, originally uploaded by sugaroni.

I finally finished the Admiral’s scarf but he wanted to be more useful so I found him a messenger bag so that he could carry on his carrier pigeon duties. I think he looks quite dashing.

I got a wild hair to make my own Valentine’s this year. It is something I always say I’ll do and then I get tired, overworked or generally overwhelmed and it never gets done. This year, I decided I’d just do it. So I got out all my carving tools a couple weeks ago and set to work.

Once everything was carved, I hand printed each valentine on some Japanese paper Bob had squirreled away somewhere. Then I hand-stamped a little message on each card and stuck them in a bright red envelope (at a certain point, I ran out of bright red envelopes so some people got other colors).

Then I pulled out my long-neglected dip quill pen and some metallic inks and went all curlicue on the envelopes — some with more success than others but I gave it my best effort.

Since I assume everyone should have gotten their cards by now, I felt it safe to post it without ruining the surprise. I hope everyone who got one appreciated a little Valentine’s cheer. I had fun doing it.

After my utter failure with the January photo challenge, can I really be trusted to write 24 letters and/or postcards in the month of February? Or is it imperative, in my current frame of mind (thinking homicidal thoughts about my co-workers and bosses), to reach out to people I genuinely like and continue to foster those relationships?

I’m voting that, for the sake of my sanity, I need to carve out time each day to rest, write and connect with real people. My job has become so stressful and genuinely agonizing that I need a bright spot in the form of postal missives.

So, I’m in. I am committed to A Month of Letters. And it all starts today. Maybe you should check your mail box tomorrow…

I had postponed reading The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane Brocket for several years as I had been (as might be described in Jane Austen’s Persuasion) “persuaded” by an older, more well-read (at least when it came to the subject of domestic arts) friend that the book was haphazard and inaccurate. On a holiday whim, I added it to my Amazon wishlist in hopes of a secondhand copy to test my friend’s theory.

I’ve read about 50 pages so far and I feel vindicated to have overlooked the prejudices and given this book a chance.

Rather than attempting to be an all-encompassing history and cultural overview of all the facets of the “gentle arts”, this book is the perspective of one well-read, well-educated, modern woman and her passions for the “home arts” — i.e. baking, sewing, quilting, gardening and knitting and such.

I find it a hugely enjoyable book that I will both share and covet (look out secondhand bookshops, I will need additional copies because I am keeping my edition). I can already think of several people who would enjoy this book and intend to refer back to it regularly for ideas and inspiration. I have already jotted down lists of book recommendations, artists I would like to learn more about,  a few knitting projects and some recipes I’d like to try.

There’s been some major pigeon love here lately. First, The Admiral got himself a new scarf to help keep out the cold. Soon, I hope to make him a lovely cap to match, maybe with ear flaps. Do pigeons have ears?

The Admiral posed on top of his favorite book for his scarf portrait. Quite a good choice, don’t you think?

Then we received our first issue of Uppercase Magazine which featured not just a fabulous portrait of aWWII carrier pigeon on the cover but an article about letter writing socials featuring Ms. Superdilettante and a story about our favorite mother-daughter team, Tag Team Tompkins. And I haven’t even finished reading the whole issue so I’m sure I’ll find other gems as well. How lovely!

And finally, my ink samples from Goulet Pens arrived including my new favorite color, De Atramentis’ Pigeon Blue. I also got samples of J. Herbin Vert Olive, De Atramentis Christmas Silver Grey and Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses. I’m looking forward to composing many letters in these awesome colors. And I’ll definitely be buying a full bottle of Pigeon Blue because I love it! See the Charles Eames quote below which was done in the Pigeon Blue on crisp white paper.