the perils of facebook

I suppose it is inevitable that when you start connecting with people that you haven't seen in a long time, something like this is going to happen.

Yeah. That's a picture of my sister and I, circa 1989, sent by a relative on facebook. I'm the one with the Shirley Temple perm. Good grief.

eye candy Friday: tiltshift is really fun

Tiltshift is a technique you can apply to a photo that blurs parts of it and leaves other parts in focus. The result is a picture of an actual object that looks like it's really a miniature, which is why I've often read the line "It's all nicey nicey in Toytown" associated with these pictures.

You can learn more and see way better examples than my pictures at the Tiltshift group on flickr.

And you can try it here - it's fun and kind of addicting.

knitting!!

Despite the evidence of the past few months, there is still knitting going on at my house. And it is not all cupcakes. Anymore.

I knit a LOT of cupcakes, and ipod cozies, and cowls leading up to the craft fair in June. And I like knitting like that - small, satisfying projects - but it got a bit wearing. And now that I've got a new job starting in August (Did I mention that I found one? I'll give details in another post.), I'm not going to knit like that again. I just won't have time. I have re-opened my etsy shop, but just for a little while, until what I have is gone.

Once I was able to knit for myself again, I ignored anything that had been on the needles previously and hit Ravelry HARD looking for interesting patterns. I decided I may want to try my hand at a lace shawl. No, I've never worn a shawl in my whole life, but I don't see what that's got to do with it. I really want to make Laminaria, with this lovely bit of stash. It's a little, well, intimidating, so I did a little bit of practice:

This is the Go Fly a Kite shawl, in miniature. I had a teeny skein of baby alpaca from a local alpaca farm, and I figured I would try a triangular shawl, stopping whenever I ran out of yarn. I didn't quite stop the pattern soon enough to do the whole border (which was going to be really pretty, I could just tell), but I like how it came out anyway.

It's not particularly practical. The best way I could figure to wear it was around my neck, which looks a little Wild West to me. But, again, that's completely beside the point of knitting lace. The vibe I get from lace knitting is: impractical, but fascinating and lovely bordering on magical.

Also, it is IMPOSSIBLE to stop taking pictures of a lace project.

I did pick up my long-neglected Bubble pullover once I had gotten the shiny-new-project thing out of my system. (What, did you think I was going to start the bigger lace shawl at that point? Entirely too consistent.) It's decidedly less interesting than lace. It is an unphotogenic blue blob, growing slowly, slowly.

Which explains why I couldn't stay completely faithful to it. I have good excuse, though: charity knitting. The Slater Mill Knitting Guild is making the Great American Afghan, with different members doing different squares. My square was called Play Yard:

Those BOBBLES, oh. my. god. But the rest of it was very fun to do. :)

Now I just need to figure out what to bring camping in a couple of weeks . . . sigh, I missed selfish knitting!

project spectrum - east

The second theme in this year's Project Spectrum was east. East was associated with spring, and the color was yellow. Why am I using the past tense? Because we are well into the third theme, south (it started at the beginning of July). Nonetheless, I do have some pictures to show, and I figure better late than never (what an appropriate title for this blog that would be).

I did not knit anything yellow during the east theme, but I did make a point of photographing yellow when it crossed my path.

Okay, this last one wasn't during the east theme (it's sunny; that's a dead giveaway!), but it's really cute. And Jane's wearing a yellow shirt, so I'm counting it.

For south, the dominant color is red, the material is metal, and the element is fire. Again, I think I'll be contributing mainly photography, as I don't really knit much with red. I'm looking forward to campfire pictures next month!

terrible, horrible, etc., etc.

Yesterday:

• I burned my toast, spectacularly. So spectacularly that Sam went to camp and told his friends about the flaming toast, and J went to work and told his friends about the flaming toast, and everybody had a good laugh at my expense.

• The toilet broke.

• In the car on the way to work, I spilled coffee on my pants.

• I had the life scared out of me at midnight by a ginormous moth in the bathroom, not once but twice. That sucker put up a fight, I tell you.

• Jane wet the bed and ended up sleeping with J and me. For a very small person, she takes up a lot of space.

Today's got to be better, right?