Cashmere Aromatherapy Pillow

Today I came across a great tutorial for making your very own aromatherapy pillow.  I've done something similar in the past with a knotted sock filled with rice, but this seems so much more luxurious and is right up my alley because it uses a recycled sweater!  You can find the tutorial over at The Magic Onions.

Photo Studio

I'm an aspiring photographer, a newbie, an amateur at best, particularly when it comes to still life and portraits. I prefer landscapes and nature, as evidenced by my "portfolio."

I enjoy photographing my yarn as well as my finished knits and other craft projects, but my lighting is always bad. I forget to take them when the light is best or just snap the photo to get it over with and always feel like I could have done better.

In an attempt to improve my skills and give myself the tools to learn more about indoor photography, I decided to build myself a mini studio/light box. It is definitely not for portraiture, but smaller objects like skeins of yarn. It still needs some work, but for about $10 worth of materials it is a good start. I built a 2 x 2 x 2 cube with 20 feet of 1/2" PVC, 4 3-way joints, and 4 90-degree elbows.

I opted not to have a complete cube, with pipe on all four sides of the bottom, so I could use poster board or similar materials for the bottom if I wished without the cardboard bowing and with less pipe to worry about being exposed.

For today's purposes, I used a king-sized white bed sheet that I already had, and draped it over the cube, tucking it around the pipe as best I could.

Eventually, I plan to buy heavier cotton fabric and make custom panels that attach with velcro around the pipe. This would help with the problem of the wrinkles you can see all over my sheet and allow me to use different colors if I want.

I borrowed some lighting from my parents, but they are basically just simple shop lights you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's with daylight spectrum bulbs. The ones I used were 65 watts each, but I'll probably go up to 100 watts when I replace them. The hardest part of this whole process was finding something to attach the lights to that was close enough and stable enough, which is why I want brighter bulbs.

Here are some examples of my first attempts at studio lighting. I did have to adjust the tint on these, as I apparently had my white balance set wrong, but otherwise, they are unedited.
Mickey:

Hand-knit mitten:

"Lavendar Gatherer" Santon from southern France:

My Handmade Swift

Thanks to some help from Cliff, based on these instructions, I made my own yarn swift. Swifts have gotten very expensive and when I saw the instructions I knew it was something I could do myself and for little money. For the base, I used some scrap oak wood flooring my mom had in her garage. The remainder of the supplies cost less than $10. I already had all of the necessary tools in my garage, with the exception of a wood chisel. The only thing I wish I had in my garage that would've made this project much easier is a bench vice. I managed without it, but if I ever do a project like this again, I will be buying one.

The only problem I had was that the directions state to cut a 1" notch in the center of each piece for the arms. What I forgot at the time is that dimensional lumber is not a true 1" and therefore, my notches were too big and my arms did not fit together snugly. Cliff came up with this modification, using a scrap of paneling I had removed from my family room.


In all, I found this to be an easy project for someone who is comfortable with basic power tools (i.e. a drill) The chop saw made cutting the legs much easier, but could've been done just as easily with a hand saw.

Great Weekend!

This was a great weekend. I finished my first sock! It is a bit pointy at the toe, but it fits. Hopefully, I can learn how to fix the toe issue for the second sock, which I have to get started on right away or I'll lose interest.


This weekend, Ethan was at his dad's. Saturday was a beautiful day, so Cliff & I went hiking. We hiked up Sugarloaf Mountain, only about a mile each way, but it was just steep enough that we got a good workout. Here's a photo Cliff took of me at the top:


After our hike up Sugarloaf, we decided to drive to Deming. Apparently Ed had oysters. When we got there, Ed was nowhere to be found, but I did get to meet Cliff's aunt and uncle and see where he grew up. Now, when Cliff said his uncle grew blueberries... I thought he meant he had a couple bushes in his garden but no, he grows them commercially. There were acres and acres of blueberry bushes! We walked down to the river, and I got a couple of photos of Mt. Baker. On our return from the river, we picked mushrooms! I've never picked wild mushrooms (Morels) before but Cliff apparently used to pick them with his mom. They are at his house, waiting to be cooked up.