Knitting on Impulse

Macro!!

I know, I should really be telling you about all the yarn that went up today, and I will over the coming days because there are new colourways with really great stories behind them. But right now, I have to show off the very first collaboration between me and my brand new Precious:

I took a deep breath and went for the macro lens I know I want to work with for the long term instead of one I'd wish I could upgrade in a couple of years. It is a quantum leap in power and possibility and therefore both exciting and a wee bit intimidating. The stock standard 18-55mm was limited, but I'd been using it so long that it was like an extension of my brain - I knew exactly how to get what I wanted, exactly how the naked eye would translate to image. This... this is like getting fitted with bionic eyes and then tripping over the furniture trying to work out where you're at. Seriously cool and consciousness expanding, but a little disconcerting. 

PIP (Photos in Progress)

Readers have asked on occasion how I take my yarn photos, so I thought I'd snap a quick shot of the set-up.

 

Beer with lime wedges is optional, but it definitely helps, as product photography can be a long and tedious job. I have to admit that my set-up is pretty cheap and basic, but it serves the purpose. The white bin is from IKEA and does double duty for pre-soaking yarn.

Sunny summer days rock, with blazingly bright natural light diffused throughout the box. When I'm stuck indoors for rain or winter, I use Ott lights to supplement the meagre window offerings, though I really need to buy more lights for optimal effect.

As for the results of today's photo-shoot, they'll be uploaded to the site tomorrow (ie. Friday) morning.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

According to the garden centre pot tags, I was buying three matching tiger lilies, and they certainly looked it at the time. The middle one took an a worrying appearance once the buds appeared - as though some pesky bug had encased it in fuzz, but inexplicably decided to skip the adjacent plants. Then it bloomed, and the penny dropped.

 

It's extraordinarily lovely:

But nevertheless looks a little anemic and incongruous flanked by these:

I think it will have to move to the other side of the path for next season - the pale pink rose would be a far more congenial companion. 

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In other news, summer continues at a pace somewhere between heat-induced torpor and visitor-induced pandemonium. All very very good (except for the three weeks of sequential family flu that left me sleep deprived but otherwise astonishingly unscathed), but I've been a little absent online as a result. Nevertheless, there will be new yarn this week. Tomorrow or Friday - it depends when Rob finishes the skeining.

The Toad

We spotted this little guy hopping about the garden a couple of weeks ago, and feared he'd moved on.

 

He turned up today, soaking up rainwater in an old toolbox turned plaything, and there was great rejoicing. I have a love affair with amphibians that dates back to childhood, so a resident toad is the silver lining to a cold wet spring that turned 200 lovingly planted bulbs into soggy compost. 

I wonder though, would it be bad luck to dye knitting yarn after the fashion of a frog? Or would the toad designation be enough to protect ensuing projects from the jinx of repeated ripping....
 

Purple Iris Socks

Continuing my ongoing mission to knit a pair of plain socks in every repeatable colourway...

I envisioned socks for hiking boots in this case, with a long ribbed cuff to be neatly folded down.

These were knit in standard cuff-down fashion from 2/3 of a skein of Summit Sock in Purple Iris.

The colourway is completely at home in the dewy green grass, but the full glory of the golden overtones really shows up in full sun:

Like so:

  
 

I Made Yarn!

Thick, lumpy, and ridiculously overspun, it nevertheless represents a giant step off the cliff of perfectionism and out into the brave new world of abject beginnerhood.

On the one hand, the feeling of being so utterly inept with wool between my fingers is deeply unsettling, as I've become accustomed to a high degree of competence in a variety of fibre and textile skills. On the other hand, the same feeling is tremendously exciting, because it signifies new territory, neural pathways that aren't merely expanding the same old rut.

Fibre friend Rebecca was a wonderfully patient teacher at yesterday's market - fortuitously, her booth was directly across from mine (though I completely forgot to take pictures). If you are ever in Whistler on a Sunday, you must stop by the Diva's Niche tent.

I have no idea what this green stuff is, as I picked up a small sample years and years ago, but I suspect it deserves much better. A starter order of undyed fibre is in the mail, and having taken the plunge, I now need to go back through all the wonderful suggestions I've received and explore some other choices.

As for dyeing fibre for the store, that will happen when I feel like I know what I'm doing. Not necessarily expert spinning ability, but I need to feel confident that I know what the highest quality fibre feels and looks like... and have a plan to achieve it. After that... I'm really excited about the possibilities. I can imagine many of my favorite colourways reaching new heights of subtlety and clarity - the berries of Beary Surprise, for example.

I Write Like....

Addendum:

Sigh. Never mind. I knew it wasn't a serious analysis, but I thought it was at least one of those marginally functional and amusing meme gimmicks. However, as Making Light points out (via astute reader moiraeknittoo), it is a little more pernicious than that. The algorithm (if there indeed is an algorithm, as opposed to a random number generator) apparently isn't even making a rudimentary attempt to sort language features, since a random collection of letters is assigned to the style of James Joyce. It appears to be nothing more than a lazy instrument of flattery to lure the unwary into parting with their money.

As dumb as I feel for writing about it, I will point out that there was a fairly compelling (though likely unintended) result that lured me into thinking there was some sort of actual algorithm at work: The samples of my own writing which I considered to be bland and second rate were all categorized as Dan Brown. Ahem. If all the comparisons had been flattering, I might have been more suspicious....

Have you seen the I Write Like site? I discovered it making the rounds of Twitter, and while I'm sure there are biases in the selection process, I found it both amusing and instructive.

Here's what happened when I entered samples from a number of my own blog posts:

When I'm writing about hope and beauty, taking time to craft each turn of phrase for melodic flow, to choose words for precise meaning and nuance, to revise and prune and edit and proofread, I come out as James Joyce or H.G. Wells.

When I dash off a quick and functional note about prosaic stuff like holidays and plans and purchases, or a whiney rant about domestic woe and frustration: Dan Brown.

The more thoughtfully edited posts wherein I work through angst and neurosis: David Foster Wallace.

Although I suspect the algorithm was designed with an intrinsic marketing agenda, it was still a potent reminder to me that the form and quality of the words I put out into the world.... matters.

What about you - did you discover any patterns or insights?

(By the way, this blog entry is apparently channelling H.P. Lovecraft. Go figure.)

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Eye Candy Friday: Botanical / Mechanical

Above - a bit of the enormous mechanism pulling the Peak to Peak gondola around the station and back out across the valley. Below - freshly blooming tiger lily from the garden.

PS. The new River and Rock yarn is now up - details in the newsletter.

River and Rock Socks

 Here's the original inspiration:

  

But the river has changed since I took that photo... as glacier-fed creeks will do.

The big rocks have tumbled downstream in the spring melt and what's left is baking in the sun, so I got a little closer to the water.

and a little closer...

and closer still...

there - that's a good spot for wooly knee socks on a hot summer's day:

Someone else doesn't mind the water now, either:

The socks?

Were knit-to-fit, cuff down, from 2 skeins of Blissful Sock in River and Rock. There's about 85 gms leftover between the two skeins, which should be enough for a second, standard length pair. I'm loving the knee sock format, though I suspect I'll love it considerably more come fall. 

Coincidentally, there's a batch of River and Rock in several different yarns going up tomorrow.

I'm finally back in the saddle, thanks to the magic of getting up many hours earlier than everyone else. The organizational break got involuntarily extended thanks to back-to-back bouts of kid flu - where there's a vomiting kid, there's invariably a bleary-eyed mother swapping out the buckets and dispensing comfort and cool cloths in the wee hours. Fingers crossed, the grown-ups seem to have given that a miss, but it certainly stole ten good days of summer. 16 of 69: I believe that's where we're at now. Still plenty of time for fun.

8/69: Backlit

Even the humblest bedding plant may aspire to glory when transillumined by the late day sun.