Deb crocheted and sent this sweet little tomato hat for the baby. I received it some time ago, but hadn’t yet had time to share it due to my tech woes as well as all of my mommy duties. :-) Now that I’m beginning to catch up, I wanted to shout out a thank you to Deb!

I don’t know that I was actually in a groove before. But I’m starting to have bits and pieces of time I can call my own and I’m feeling creative again. Yesterday was the first time I’ve actually picked up a hook and crocheted in a long, long time. For some reason I seemed to be almost avoiding it. Maybe the snippets of time I have are so small that I felt overwhelmed at the thought of starting a project.

But as I started catching up (a little bit) with the fiber blog world, I saw Drew’s request for squares for Heartmade Blessings and I thought, “A granny square. That’s small. I can do that.” So I grabbed a skein of acrylic from my stash and started stitching.

Have I mentioned I’m totally, utterly, completely addicted to making granny squares? I could do it all day. Really. I love the rhythm and uniformity of it.

Just having a hook in hand has helped me start hatching some designs from ideas that have been incubating in my head for a while. I’m still spending most of my time with the baby, but getting the creative wheels turning again feels good.

I’ve been tagged by Kim, the creative soul behind the fab Crochet me.

4 jobs I’ve had in my life:
* grocery store cashier (paid my way through college)
* frame shop assistant (to feed my romance of being an artist)
* teaching assistant (dendrology lab instructor)
* mom (best job I ever had)

4 movies I can watch over and over:
I’m not much of a movie-watcher (I always lament the loss of two hours) but I can come up with one…
* The Godfather

4 TV shows I love to watch:
I haven’t owned a TV in 10 years, but if I did…
* M*A*S*H
* Doctor Who
* Monty Python’s Flying Circus
* I Love Lucy

4 places I have lived:
* Maryland
* North Carolina

4 places I have been on holiday:
* Anguilla
* London
* Maine
* Virginia

4 of my favorite dishes:
* fried eggs, over easy
* softshell crabs
* pesto pasta
* roasted chicken

4 websites I visit daily:
* CNN
* Comics.com
* Google
* m-w.com

4 places I would rather be right now:
I’m pretty darn happy right where I am, but I’ll humor the question…
* on our screened-in porch, ceiling fan whirring, gin and tonic in hand
* in our dining room, enjoying a good meal with good company
* napping
* crocheting

4 fiber-bloggers I am tagging:
I’m gonna depart from meme etiquette and ask… wanna be it? If you want to do this one but it hasn’t yet come your way, consider yourself tagged!

As I was saying, here are the details. Boring if you are here to read about crochet, exciting if you want to make the move to WordPress.

Why I’m Leaving Blogger

No matter how I word this part, it sounds like I’m complaining. I swear, truly I’m not. I’m actually glad my Blogger woes forced me to jump ship and swim on over to WordPress. Luckily WP has a nice little rescue boat. Anyway…

I’ve been with Blogger since February of 2004. It served me well for a long time, but three months ago (the beginning of December 2005) it was suddenly and inexplicably impossible to publish to my site from Blogger. Publishing kept hanging, usually at zero percent, but sometimes 20%, 66% or some such point, and eventually I received the dreaded error, 001 java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out. Long story short: there was nothing I nor my web host could do about it and it’s impossible to get in touch with Blogger even if you have a real problem that can only be solved on the Blogger end of things.

I’d say I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for a fix, but I was. Until I was blue. I published a few posts through excruciating workarounds and one by pure luck. I could say it was the last straw that I missed posting on both my blogiversary (Feb 20th) and Crochetville‘s birthday (Feb 16th), but that’s not really true. I’ve been so busy with the baby that they passed and I didn’t even notice.

Installing WordPress

This was one of the things I’d been dreading, but turned out to be extremely easy. I downloaded WP 2.0.1 and did the Famous 5-Minute Install. Although it took me a little longer than that, I was shocked that it was over so quickly. Who knew?

WordPress Themes

Theme, template, design, layout, whatever you want to call it, this was another thing I was dreading. It was easy enough for me to whip up a simple template for my Blogger blog but a WP theme is much more involved. I was able to find a theme I like well enough and tweak it (thanks for the push, Julie!) for my needs. It still doesn’t quite feel like me in here, but I’m adjusting.

Importing Blogger Posts

Again, very easy. You do this through the WordPress control panel, and pretty much all the work is done for you. Do back up your Blogger template and print out your Blogger settings (as instructed), just in case. I believe this also imports Blogger comments if you are using them, but I was using Haloscan comments, so I can’t speak from personal experience.

Importing Haloscan Comments

This was the difficult part. WordPress itself does not yet have a utility to import comments from Haloscan. Justin wrote two php scripts to import haloscan comments into WordPress, but they were for WP 1.5.x and it don’t entirely work in WP 2.0.x. The first script, insert-blogger-post-ids.php doesn’t work because the Blogger import process is entirely different in WP 2.0.x than in WP 1.5.x. However, if you can find a way to insert the Blogger post IDs (say, manually) into each of the posts you imported through WordPress, the second script, import-haloscan.php, does work. The only glitch is that your posts will display “0 comments” even though the comments are there. This is rectified the next time someone comments on that post; then the correct number of comments will be displayed. It’s like the database needs a little kick to wake up and see that there are comments there.

That’s All, Folks!

Yay! Now my little blog is proudly powered by WordPress and I was able to bring all my stuff with me. After all, I am a pack rat.

The grass really is greener at WordPress. Really. This tomato–at first reluctantly, then joyfully–has joined the throngs fleeing Blogger. I held out hope for far too long, but ultimately Blogger gave me no choice. I’m glad I finally made the move. (Thank you to those of you who helped push!) Strangely, somehow I feel a bit more grown up now. Boring technical details will follow in a subsequent post for those who are eager to run barefoot in this green, green grass.