I’m Crafty

Watershed

Posted by: fourpeass on: June 10, 2010

In: FO | knitting | WIP
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I’m not normally into shrugs or cropped cardigans but something about Amy Swenson’s design really caught my eye. It just looked like the perfect piece to throw over a sun dress or a plain white tank and jeans.

Pattern: Watershed by Amy Swenson

Yarn: Mission 1824 Wool

Notes: My last few projects have been hats, scarves and tiny baby sweaters so it was nice to knit an actual garment for myself. This was a fairly fast but interesting project to work on. The lace charts were easy to memorize and felt intuitive right at the beginning, making it a very portable project. I like that the border is knit along with the body instead of picked up and knit later on. I love interesting construction!

Mission 1824 is just an okay yarn. I chose it mainly for the color and it’s softness – which, made it a joy to knit with. The price is a little steep for the yardage you get and I can already tell this thing is going to pill like crazy. If I were to knit this again, I’d go with a wool/silk blend like Cascade Venezia.

I’m currently working on a little cardigan, Audrey in Unst, in Brooks Farm Solo Silk. This yarn is so beautiful and soft, I love the way it’s knitting up. The pattern is a bit boring to knit but I love the look of it so far:

I hope to update more after the wedding. I’ve been avoiding blogging about it because I want to keep the details a secret so my guests will be surprised. And I really haven’t done much non-wedding related crafting lately.

Photography for Knitters

Posted by: fourpeass on: January 26, 2010

In: knitting
2 Comments

This past weekend I took Gale’s “Photography for Knitters” workshop and it was great. I learned a lot especially about exposure, trying different backgrounds and how different photos look after you upload them to your blog. I wanted to upload a few photos untouched to showcase what I learned but as soon as I put them on flickr, they lost a lot of color. We didn’t get the chance to explore this much during the workshop but I noticed it immediately after I uploaded some photos. Check out the photos below:

The photo on the left is completely untouched but the color looks nothing like it did when it came out of my camera. I don’t think I noticed this before because I almost always upload my photos with the intention of editing them later in Picnik. The photo on the right looks almost identical to the original file on my computer but I boosted the color, contrast and over saturated it, like Gale suggested, before uploading it. Needless to say, I ended up editing the rest of the photos in this post.

EDIT 1/26: Now that I’m looking at these photos on my work computer, they look completely different which is a little disappointing. The photos I edited look over saturated but on my macbook they look fine. What do you see?

Up until this point, I hadn’t really considered backgrounds too much when shooting finished knits and yarn, I usually just try to find a good light source (which is also important, of course) and a plain surface. During out first hands on session we played around with different fabrics to create a background for small objects and yarn:

I never think to grab some fabric and throw yarn on top of it. Normally, I use my light box or clear off my kitchen table which, is the whitest surface in my apartment but this is way more interesting. Now I can finally use that fabric that I bought during my sewing phase. I also need to get my hands on my some black velvet:

It was fun to shoot just for the sake of shooting. Getting photos of my finished objects and yarn always stresses me out a bit because I focus on trying to get a good photo instead of having some fun with it. I’m looking forward to putting what I learned to use and getting a bit more creative with my knitting photography.

I took over 300 photos yesterday so I’m going to leave you with just a few that I like.

This is Rebecca’s Peaks Island Hood.

The hood of Becca’s Central Park Hoodie.

Drive by post

Posted by: fourpeass on: January 23, 2010

In: handspun | spinning | yarn
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Fresh off the wheel:

All Spun Up Falkland, 2 oz. ~98 yards, worsted weight

Three (four?) years in the making

Posted by: fourpeass on: January 21, 2010

In: FO | knitting
2 Comments

Three (or four) years ago, Conor said he wanted to learn how to knit. The next day we hopped on the T to Windsor Button, one of my favorite yarn stores in Boston, to buy some yarn and needles. I led Conor to a wall of Cascade 220 – a wonderful beginner yarn and a nice go-to yarn even when you’re way past the beginning stages.

Later that day, we sat down and I taught him the basics. I watched as he knit each stitch slowly and carefully. If he dropped a stitch or made a mistake, he’d pause and ask me to fix it. When I first learned to knit, I wouldn’t stop for anything. I was dropping, twisting and adding new stitches left and right. That explains why my first scarf looks like a mangled baby blanket and Conor’s is perfection.

Conor would work on the scarf every so often, knitting for a half hour then putting it down for a couple days, weeks, months, YEARS!! Three (or four) years later, Conor has a wonderful hand knit scarf: