Oh, Flickr.

You may have noticed that I’m missing pictures on this blog. A lot of pictures. Pretty much all the pictures from the last year. I noticed it last week when on Ravelry and saw that a lot of my project pictures were blank with  “Not Avaliable on Flickr” written across them. I go to my Flickr site and yes, all gone. Gone on this blog too. I’m still (after a week!!!) waiting for a reply from Flickr to see what happened, but from  my reading around, this is what I’ve come up with.

1. I began using Flickr through my iPhoto in about late 2011, which is when the gap in my pictures begins.

2. In switching to a new computer and generally cleaning out/organizing my pictures, I decided to delete the huge list of Flickr links down the side of my iPhoto bar. The thing is, I only use Flickr for blog/knitting/sewing stuff. I pretty much use Snapfish for all my personal stuff. So whenever I uploaded a photo to Flickr, it would be a few random shots. So three different photos all shot on April 13th would become three separate little icons on the sliding bar in iPhoto. Annoying and cluttered. And I figured if I deleted them it was just deleting them from iPhoto.

3. WRONG. According to many other complaints on the Flickr forums, it also took them off of Flickr. And it blows my mind that  for one, Flickr would let them sync it up this way and two, that there was no warning, such as “Hey, delete this and you’ll also delete your pictures from Flickr!!!” Because I can pretty much guarantee I never would have deleted them if I knew that the case.

So there you have it. A years worth of pictures gone. Could be worse…at least it is just crafting pictures. But it messes up most of my blog for the last year. And there is no way I have time to go back and rephotograph it all, and some just couldn’t be redone anyway. I’m just mad I never thought to backup my crafting photos. I backup family stuff like crazy. I guess I’ll back up these too now.

And there is the question…do I stay with Flickr? I’m not happy that it’s been a week and still no answer from them. And I’m not happy that they made it so easy to lose these pictures. Might there have been fine print? Sure, but how long ago might I have read it? Computers warn us all the time when we delete stuff. But not with this??

I hate having no pictures, so here’s a few to start fresh. Knittykid lost his first tooth, and we needed a tooth fairy pillow. The long, narrow design was his idea. “It’s more huggable that way.”

Of course Spinner needed a pocket pillow too. This is his “coughing pillow” to cough into, because he had a cough. Makes sense, right?

Also very huggable!

I would love to hear what you do about blog photos and photo storage. I’m still just fuming about this…….

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!