Resolutions

Yes, it is that time again... Resolutions for the new year. Did you make any for 2009? Do you plan to make any for 2010?

I went back and looked at my New Year's Eve entry from 2008. Funny, I don't remember making a resolution about exercise. However, I did conquer knitting lace with my Northern Lights Shawl:


I started an adult-size sweater for me, a February Lady, but it was slow going... I'm almost done with the yoke.

In 2010 I plan to learn to spin yarn on a wheel, relax a bit with my son's schooling, use my camera more, and finish that February Lady.

My biggest resolution for 2010 is to be more conscious of the ingredients in the products we buy. I plan to stop buying anything that contains high fructose corn syrup, MSG or MSG components, or anything I cannot pronounce. We've been slowly working our way up to this throughout the year, but I still find myself grabbing something like hamburger buns because I'm too lazy to make them, only to find their full of modified something-or-other, or have HFCS. For us, this doesn't apply to just food, but any consumable product like shampoo, soap, or cleaning supplies (harder to know because they don't list ingredients). I get a great deal of satisfaction in making things myself, and I feel better about knowing what is going into or being applied to be bodies of my loved ones. I'm sure I'll be sharing some of the recipes or tricks I discover along the way.

Thank you for visiting my blog over the past year. If you enjoyed a particular entry, please share it with a like-minded friend. I hope you all had a wonderful 2009 and wish you all the best in 2010. See you next year!

52 craft challenge #21 Booga Bag

I have a group of internet friends that I do a monthly knit-along or crochet-along with. Our project for May was the Booga Bag. I decided to modify mine because as the pattern was written, the finished bag is about 4 x 7 x 8 and this just seemed too small for me. So, I made it bigger. I used Plymouth Boku in color "4", which is purple, green, and orange, and just a gorgeous colorway. I had a big problem with this yarn; 4 out of the six skeins had knots. Two of the skeins even had multiple knots. For a 50 gram skein, that is just WAY to many.

Now that it is done, I still LOVE the colors, but I've decided that I like the look of this bag as originally written, taller than it is wide... mine was much wider than it was tall. I just kept knitting until I ran out of yarn, and I bought 6 skeins.

The photo really doesn't do the bag justice... the colors are much more rich. I was having lighting issues when I took it.

My First Handspun

I can spin yarn! Well, sorta. I decided to give a drop spindle a whirl (pun intended) and really enjoyed my first attempt. Sure the yarn looks like sheep vomit, but it can only get better. The fiber is Corriedale wool.

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: