We’ve been experiencing major technical difficulties!

My sweetest dears, I must extend an absolutely gigantic apology to you all for quite literally falling off the face of the earth for the last few days. As I mentioned in my post on Friday night, we’d been having some internet connection trouble that day. At the time I was inclined to chalk it up to poor weather affecting our line, but by the time the issue hadn’t resolved itself the next morning, we knew that something was up and gave our internet provider a couple of phone calls. However, nothing showed up amiss on their end of things, squarely indicating the problem was on our side. Knowing that, my husband quickly tracked down and diagnosed the issue: our wireless router had given up the ghost completely out of the blue, leaving us without the ability to connect to the internet!

Though The Mister has his work computer, our home set-up is my only lifeline to the internet, and with it gone I had no way to explain to you guys what was going on (aka, why I’d suddenly gone MIA). Fortunately the replacement router (it's a different brand than the old one) that we ordered arrived by express courier this afternoon and my husband hooked it up immediately after work. Everything appears to be working splendidly with the new wireless router, and I’m hopeful that it will remain fully operational for a long time to come!


{Had we not gotten a new router by the end of this week, I ready to give serious consideration to posting blog updates via carrier pigeon! :-D Jokes aside, I’m both thrilled and greatly relieved to have our internet back up and working again! Vintage photo via Arcane du Fresne.}


I really wasn’t expecting to take another break anytime soon from blogging (let alone from the entire web!), and this impromptu hiatus really caught me off guard. Still, no sense in fretting over what’s said and done now! As things stand tonight, I have every intention of writing and posting the first edition of “Vintage Fashionista Friday” tomorrow, and blogging as per usual in the coming weeks.

I realize this post is a bit short, but as soon as we were connected to the internet again, I knew that I had to make my very first act (seriously, I haven’t even started to sift through the 500+ new emails that my inbox says have accumulated since last Friday) had to be to write and touch base with all of you.

Again, I’m very sorry for suddenly vanishing, it goes against my nature so much and I really hope that it doesn’t happen again anytime soon (or better yet, ever!). I’ve missed each and every one of your immensely, and truly hope that life has been beautiful on your side over the past few days as we've kicked off the month of March.

Trying very hard to find the right balance (but I could really use your help)

{Vintage photo via cessnal152towser’s Flickr stream.}

Last night I could not sleep. I tossed and turned (thankfully my husband is a fairly sound sleeper and didn’t hear my stirrings), repeatedly got out of bed only to lay back down moments later. Such an occurrence is by no means entirely uncommon for me, but there are times when something is weighing heavily enough one one’s mind to the point of robbing them of slumber, that it is best to seek advice from those near and dear you. I sincerely value each of your opinions and friendships, and want to talk bluntly to you all about something that has been eating away at me for quite some time now, in the hopes that you could help me out with it.

A recent conversation with a very dear friend (and fellow blogger/photographer) of mine in which I spoke candidly about certain elements relating to my health helped to give me the courage I needed to turn to my readers for their impute on this matter. (Once the flood gates have opened, as they say...)

I’ll spare you the details (trust me, you want to be spared), but in short I am not in a good state of health. I have not been since I was 18 years old (I’m 25.5 now), as that was the age at which I developed almost all of the chronic illnesses that I now have (more recently however, one cropped up about three years ago). I’m not, truly thankfully, dying or facing a massive medical crisis at this moment, so please do not think that I was leading this post in that direction.

One of the by-products of some of my conditions (I have about a dozen different major, chronic illnesses and a small number of lesser, but still chronic, problems) is that they greatly impede on the amount of time I’m able to spend on the computer each day.

On what I’d dub a “fantastic day”, I’m able to devote about 1.5 hours to being at my computer (many days this number is smaller, very occasionally it’s slightly higher). Due largely to one of my conditions in particular, I’m forced to break my computer usage time up into approximately two to ten minute intervals throughout the day. While I wish I could spend hours on my laptop daily, doing so is not possible at this point in my life and I have come to terms with this. I’m grateful for the time that I do have on the computer and try to use it as wisely as I can.

However, it is virtually impossible for me to stay on top of everything I need (let alone “want”) to get done online, because my computer time is so greatly limited. Between emails, writing blog posts, administering and maintaining a website (that I founded in 2004) for people who share one of my conditions, devoting time to my photography, doing research, and a trove of other online activities (which, believe me, I’ve already greatly scaled back over the last few years), I continually feel as though I’m falling further and further behind on almost everything I need to do online and on my desktop (e.g. writing blog posts).

Over the past couple of days I took an earnest stab at trying to catch up on the wonderful comments that have been left for me during the last two weeks here on Chronically Vintage, however I wasn’t able to visit all of your blogs. This bothers me so, so much (I honestly get stomach pains just thinking that I’ve not been able to come visit all those who took the time out of their day to visit my site and share their awesome thoughts with me), yet sometimes in life one has to admit defeat. In this case, I’ve been whopped by the sheer volume of comments I’ve received lately.

As I say that, please know that from the bottom of my soul, I am massively appreciative of each of those comments. I cannot stress enough how much I treasure your visits and the wonderful words you leave beneath my humble posts.

And so in lies the predicament. As many of you know, staying up-to-date with your comments (by which I mean visiting and commenting on the sites of those who stop by your blog) can just about become a full time job – or at the very least, take upwards of several hours a day. I have to be perfectly honest, it is beyond my physical ability at this point in time to spend multiple hours a day on the computer (on any activity, be it writing posts, visiting blogs or otherwise), and so I’m left racked with guilt now because I haven’t been able to catch up with all of your comments.

Up until this point, about 98% of the time I have managed to catch-up sooner or later on your comments, but this time I simply cannot. I’m truly sorry. I fully understand (and am not upset in the least) if some of my readers opt to no longer comment if I’m not able to comment on their sites. Please know that I will always give it my “fighting best” when it comes to staying abreast with your comments, but that sometimes doing so isn’t possible for me.

I need your advice. I will always permit comments on my posts, and I love hearing from you all, but I do not know how to approach the fact that sometimes I’m simply not able to keep up with your comments. What do you suggest I do?

As my readers, will some of you be hurt if, from time to time, I’m not able to comment as frequently on your posts as you may on mine? How to I determine what a good balance of time spent on replying to comments is? Perhaps is there something I can do to make up for not being able visit you on certain days?

Am I, as I know my very level headed husband would likely say, worrying about this perceived issue too much? Please, I implore you, tell me how you would handle this situation if you were in my shoes? (Yes, I do see the irony in asking for comments.)

With every fiber of my being, thank you for reading this post and for your impute, sweet friends.

Following up on two hairstyling product questions

A few days ago I posted about the fact that my brand new, never before used set of hot rollers was acting oddly. Upon plugging it in for the first time, it began to smell quite noticeably and even emitted a tiny whiff of smoke! Apprehensive to continue heating up the set, I turned it off immediately and consulted my deeply knowledgeable readership about hot to proceed instead. Many of you offer up terrific ideas and help (including finding a contact number for the company for me), which I greatly appreciate.

I took all of your suggestions to heart and, armed with our fire extinguisher – lest the worst should happen, I tried heating up my hot roller set again (in a less draft prone part of my apartment, in case the smoke had actually been a puff of steam the first time around), and while I didn’t see in any smoke, after just a couple minutes a harsh chemical scent became instantly noticeable. I turned the set off and decided right then and there that’s its going back.

The odour that was produced just doesn’t seem normal to me, it almost smells like the rollers themselves are burning, though when I touched one, it hadn’t even gotten very warm yet (the instructions said to heat up the set for ten minutes, it was plugged in for all of about two). Yes indeed, the hot rollers are getting tucked back in their box and returned to Shoppers the very next time I need to head over there. Hopefully the next set of hot rollers I try out with work like sans any such issues!

Delving a bit further back, in September I wrote about my perpetually ongoing quest to find plastic and/or entirely nickel free bobby pins (as I’m immensely allergic to nickel). Then as with this past week, I was touched deeply to receive a slew of very helpful suggestions and ideas as to where to look for such a product (which oddly, does not seem to be mass marketed these days).

At least two of my wonderful readers provided me with eBay links to packages of plastic bobby pins (one vintage, one modern) that were listed at the time, and I’m thrilled to report that I was able to bring one of them home. (The other auction had ended before I got to it and my messages to the seller, to see if they possibly had other packages, went unanswered.)

The package of plastic bobby pins I got from eBay hails from the 1950s and contains a handful of pink plastic bobby pins that are a bit shorter and wider than the usual metal varieties. These points don’t detract from their effectiveness in the least though, and I’m happy to say they work like a charm.


{The eBay auction photo for the first set of vintage plastic bobby pins that I won there after turning to you guys for help. I love both them – and the delightfully cute backing they came on – so very much. Huge thanks for helping me find these!}

Through my own ongoing search I’ve also found another pack on eBay, which I just won a few days ago (they haven't arrived yet). These plastic hair grips are vintage as well, though they appear to be black and a little longer than the pink ones. They weren’t the cheapest things ever, but as with the other plastic vintage bobby pins I already have, I figure if I treat them with kid gloves, they should last me quite a while.

However, bobby pins by their very nature are rarely the longest lasting of items, so I’m going to keep searching eBay, etsy and elsewhere frequently for other packages (modern or vintage) of plastic grips. Having found some now though, I can’t begin to tell you how much happier my sensitive skin is! Finally I can put up my hair and not have the knowledge looming in the back of my mind that I’m going to develop a rash (contact dermatitis, to be exact). I have a number of “challenges” when it comes to styling my hair (insanely sensitive skin that makes using almost any hairstyling product impossible, my nickel allergy, super fine/thin hair, etc), but being able to banish one of them from my mind is a huge relief.

Thank you again so very much to all those who helped me in my search to find plastic bobby pins and to those who provided your very useful impute about the hot roller set. You’re all the best, and I love knowing that if and when future hair related quandaries pop up, I can turn to you!

Wishing you each a marvelous weekend – and many happy hair days of your own!

Issues with the (old) feed for Chronically Vintage (please read)

While I’m absolutely thrilled that Chronically Vintage now has its own independent domain (url) name, I’m afraid that what I had initially said in my post on the topic on Thursday, isn’t 100% accurate. Due to a known Blogger bug, existing subscribers of this blog’s feed (what I mean is by “existing subscribers” is those people who had subscribed when the url here was a Blogspot one) have ceased to receive the feeds of those articles that have been published since Chronically Vintage switched from a Blogger url to its own independent domain name (www.chronicallyvintage.com).


{It definitely looks like Blogger has got its wires crossed when it comes to providing ongoing feed support for those who port their Blogger blogs to their own domain names. Beautiful photo via Ekler’s Flickr stream.}

Though both my husband (the tech expert at our casa) and I are rushing around the web looking for a fix to this feed issue, I have the sinking feeling that it will take Blogger’s intervention via a universal fix to remedy this problem.

As such – and I truly apologize for even asking this – if you were an existing feed subscriber, I would be so grateful if you could please subscribe again to this site’s feed. When you do so you will receive a backlog of old feeds in your reader (so apparently it has no problem doing that, oddly enough) and will of course receive all of the feeds for new posts as they appear.

As well, even if it’s not my fault, I feel like I should apologize to those who are clicking through on the old domain and being meet with a message that informs you that the url has changed and in turn asks if you want to be redirected. This too is a Blogger bug, which I’ve found an article from just two days ago about here.

The good news though is that switching from a Blogger domain name to my own URL has not affected any of the content on this site, so you can visit or revisit older posts any time.

Again, I’m sincerely sorry about this problem. I believed in good faith that (logically!) Blogger would carry on providing my subscribers with the same feed as it always has because I’m still using Blogger platform. It’s a shame this isn’t the case though. If you have any questions about this matter, please don’t hesitate to ask them in the comment section or you can contact me via the email address in the side bar.

Thank you so much everyone for your understanding and for re-subscribing to this site’s feed. I appreciate it greatly!