Housekeeping...and Axe Murderers!

Today there is an Axe Murderer coming to visit. All the way from Canberra with her husband and a 14 yo son. They left early this morning to avoid the heat - when I rang at 0800 they were just coming up to Gundagai and The Dog On The Tuckerbox.

And instead of making beds, and doing dishes and knocking down spiderwebs I am deleting spam comments on my Gallery.

Thousands of them...
They were being added as I was deleting them. Faster than I was deleting them too which was frustrating!
I talked to Smellie 2 in Dublin - he is the Treasureful Son who hosts my website - he said "Oops, sorry, I set a spam filter up for (his wife) but I must have forgotten yours"... He is forgiven. Nothing to forgive, really - I should have done it myself.

So now all comments will be moderated for a little while. I also added an API Key - http://en.support.wordpress.com/api-keys/
If you have any sort of website you should add this. It does all sorts of things, including keepign stats etc, but specifically - for me - is a spam filter.

How good is it to read:

"Checked 585 comments. Found 0 spam comments."

Hooray!!

It is free, and although you need a Wordpress account you don't need a Wordpress blog.

While I am on housekeeping there are a couple of other things you could do for me. And for yourself, and for the rest of the world really!



Please activate your email address on your Blogspot profile. That way, when you leave a comment I can say thank you to you.
Otherwise, it looks like this:
noreply-comment@blogger.com
and that is no use to man or beast. Or me.

Thank you to Sheila aubirdwoman who is my blog helper on this.

Additionally, regularly check who your followers are.
I have had a couple of followers whose names have been obscure - sometimes just letters, or scary stupid - who are phishers. I have blocked them.

There are also some of my followers who don't have a photo.
It isn't at all difficult to add a pic. It doesn't have to be of yourself. You can put up a photo of a quilt, or your dog, whatever. It is really hard to remember who is who if ten of you look the same!

Also (another also!!!) check and see how many blogs you have. Seems that when you are just beginning here mistakes are made. It is easier to start another blog than to correct the mistakes.
Just make sure you have deleted your old, unused crappy blog.

Now I had better make beds for my visitors. The Axe Murder is an American quilter and her family. When they were living in Germany Smellie 3 stayed with them. Now they have recently moved to Canberra and this is their first big trek out of our nation's capital (a bloody good sheep station ruined...).

We have some excitement planned - apart from 40*C heat and spider web counting I mean.
Bendigo Swap Meet - the largest in Australia - is on the whole weekend with lots of wonderful treasures. We will be going on Sunday I think (hoping it has cooled down a fraz by then!) or the Daylesford Market.

The Restorer's Barn in Castlemaine which is always a magic place to visit.



And here is today's quilt.

The green and yellow front is my own design ("Mallee Windmills"), tho I later saw it being taught by someone who claimed it as their own design. Someone who had asked me how to make it. And who, when confronted, said "I didn't think you would mind".
Well I did actually.
I still do, actually.

Anyway, this was made in 1998 for my lovely friend Frank Ham for his 60th birthday. It is called "Dressed in Green and Gold" for Eric Bogle's wonderful anthem "Shelter". It is named with permission from Eric Bogle, and he even signed the quilt for me (Frank).
The reverse (the B side) took much longer to make! It is all lovely Aussie bright colours.

Here is "Shelter" - I reckon it should be our national anthem.