Cancelled Crafster.com account

I just sent an email to the Moderator's of Craftster.com.  I cancelled my account.

Yesterday I submitted a very limited post on the sub-category for crochet works.  To paraphrase, it said "look at my blog to see my latest work.Tell me what you think."  I chose to post this way due to the multi-step process that a user has to follow to post a photo on this forum.  Well, with in a few minutes, I got an email from a moderator saying that my post was being put on HOLD, saying that I 'appeared' that I was trying to increase the traffic to my blog. My post would remain on HOLD until I addressed this issue.  So, today, I re-posted in the same sub-category, using two photos (the same as posted here) and a very cursory paragraph relating to my Catherine Wheel Variation and a link to my blog (which was the same link that is part of my signature that is at the bottom of every post I submit to Craftster).   Again, with in a few minutes I rec'd another message from a moderator telling me that I should only post a link that directly links to the referenced work. 

After looking at the post, I noticed that a moderator had edited my post, editing the link so that it would go directly to my Catherine Wheel variation afghan.

I then noticed that the latest (at the time) comment  had four links in the user's signature.  The four links were to the user's patterns site, the user's Etsy account, the user's Revelry account, and a link to the user's web page.  Two of these link are sites that the user SELL their work

I felt that this was hypocritical of the forum to allow these types of links and yet be so concerned that my link, to my blog, was seen as an attempt to get traffic to my blog.  I feel that there are too many alternatives on the internet to have to deal with this.  So, most of my comments will be on Crochetville.com and here on my blog.

Catherine Wheel and Spokes

I first saw the Catherine Wheel pattern on mikeyssmail site on YouTube a few years ago.  This guy has some great instructional videos posted, even if some of the crochet terms he uses drives me nuts !  Mikey has instructional videos posted for two variations of the Catherine Wheel: the first is made of double crochets, and the second is made of treble crochets (Mikey calls this a Jumbo Catherine Wheel).

My version is the Jumbo Catherine Wheel, but I usually put a twist on almost every pattern I make. This version has two variations.  Only 1/3 of the rows follow the pattern.  The other 2/3 of the rows are "airy" versions, what I call "spokes".  I was concerned that the finished piece would be very dense, so the 'airy' wheels were created to combat that.

The other variation is that each row takes a 90 degree turn about half way through.  I came up with the turns to break up the monotony of row after row after row of the wheels.  With this technique the variations are literally endless.

I used four colors of Red Heart Super Saver that I frogged from afghans I made a few years ago.  I used a G/6 aluminum needle.  The finished piece is about 4' x 6', but I'm considering putting a border of single crochets to "frame" it.