Hey all,
Over the last few weeks I have noticed a few comments from volunteers who are concerned that the photos of their quilt or laundry bag has not made it into the blog for a particular week. If a few of you are wondering where your photos are then it stands to reason that there are probably others wondering too.
There are a number of reasons why this might happen.
Firstly, I do not publish the Friday night Weekly Dispatches myself any more thankfully. I have two wonderful volunteers who help me out with that. I have to send them all the photos to use and hopefully, I don't have any technical problems. Usually all goes smoothly but occasionally I will forget to send a few photos and they get accidentally missed. Not intentional but human error. I have also had a couple of awful days where emails have refused to send and I don't know until it is too late.
Also, sometimes I send the photos early on Thursday as that is the only time I have to send them so any photos received after that won't be included til the following week.
If the quilt or bag is distinctive, and if I think there is a good chance that the recipient or his loved ones will spot it on the blog, I will also hold it over for a week, or three, until I am fairly confident that the items have been received OR until I feel that the recipient is less likely to assume it is theirs. I would hate the surprise to be spoilt by them seeing the item on the blog in advance of the parcel arriving.
I have a system in place to attempt to ensure that no photos get left off indefinitely, instead of for a week or two, but occasionally the system falls down.
Finally sometimes it is just human error. When I receive an email with photos of a quilt or bag that has been sent off there are several things I need to do.
1. I need to mark the item as sent.
2. I need to email the recipient to let them know their item is on its way
3. I need to save the photo to the AHQ USB of large resolution photos
4. I need to shrink the photo down and save it to the file of photos that will be used for the blog each week.
5. I need to reply to the volunteer to let them know I got their email etc. Lots of people will be able to tell you that this step is often omitted unintentionally.
At any point in this process the door bell can ring (it does often as I have things being picked up and dropped off here all the time). The phone rings often too. Don't even get me started if it is a sewing day here when the email comes in. I can be interrupted unavoidably and repeatedly and it can be so easy to miss a step.
So, please, if you don't see your photo published on the blog the week you expect to, just email me and check with me. Whatever the reason, it is an easy fix and I am always happy to have people check on this or that if they see an error or omission. I will be more than happy to rectify the problem once I am aware of it.
Whatever you do, please don't take the omissions personally. I don't leave photos of either quilts or bags off deliberately and am always happy to have the error of my ways gently pointed out so that I can fix them. I am really proud of the awesome work you are all doing and want to show every single one of them off to the readers of this blog and Facebook page.
Till next time... keep spreading the word and happy stitching!
Jan-Maree xx
