3 things about needing color!

I don't know about you but even with the frigheningly mild winter we've been having here on the Connecticut shoreline, I am craving color and light.  Three thoughts on this.

1) Images that looked too bright and colorful last summer look fabulous this week! I was pulling some images for a presentation and revisited this Nash Island sheep.  This image that I'd rejected as not quite right when I shot it suddenly is my new favorite sheep photo (for the moment.). 

 2) Colorful projects are irresistible.  On a whim I knit a hat to include in a gift box for some tiny cousins. I fell in love with this Urth yarn when I popped into Knit New Haven. I wanted something bright and cheery and soft and self striping.With no color decisions needed.

Except as I started knitting,  it was screaming Christmas Elf to me. It's just a little hat and all the stripes were shades of red/green. So I ended up cutting out a large chunk of the yarn until the colors shifted to something that said Cheerful Kid in Spring.  This yarn is pretty fabulous, btw-- and the company plants a tree for every skein sold, which you gotta love.

This is the colorway of the yarn thought I thought I bought, as sort of modeled in the shop sample by my favorite stripe-enabler 8 year old. I may have grabbed the wrong colorway.  Or the hand dyeing went greener in my skein. It's all good!

And there is more than enough yarn for a definitely-not-christmas hat for Zoe . The pattern is On the C Train, it's one-one rib.  As a thrower it's usually an annoying  stitch for me to sustain. I've been knitting two handed on those coins all winter and realized I could whip through the ribbed hat if I held the yarn in my left hand and knit it combination style.  So it's been a fun little distraction and I'm on the combination ribbing team from here on in. 

 If the one-one ribbing looks good to you too here's another one , the Basic Chic Ribbed Beanie which I would have knit, had I recalled that I'd bought the pattern and had it waiting for me in my Library!  Advantage it's already graded for different size heads, while the pattern I knit had to be sized down. Not brain surgery but...sometimes it's nice to know someone else did the figuring for you, y'know?

 3) A fabulous shawl to work in whatever colors bring you some late winter joy is Marblehead.  I shot this for Berroco in the fall and fell for it. At the time I was thinking muted greys  -- it's a great design to play with color and still have something light and flowy thanks to the stitch. The yarn is UltraWool Fine , which is really lovely yarn  and will not break the bank. Now of course I want it in color, color, color.

Closer look at the stitch and our model's smile. Do you like seeing this model? She's Betsy,  a real person, who works as a yarn rep, a flight attendant....and coaches a cross-country track team. And sh'es a grandma!   I adored working with her. If you like seeing women with silver hair and some laugh lines modeling,  drop an email to Berroco and let them know you approve of seeing models such as Betsy. It surprised me to learn that  yarn companies and magazines and book publishers often hear blazingly nasty and mean comments about models , but rarely receive positive feedback. And, they take it to heart! 
Ok, done with my PSA.

What kind of color are you looking at this week ? And what form is it taking?

3 things I'm done with

1) The Jane Jacobs Shawl. I started knitting this design by Kirsten Kapur not too long after it appeared in the book  I Knit New York .  When I photographed the book I was so taken with this design. Kirsten took a technique I always thought of as fusty - mosaic knitting- and made it totally modern  cool. I completed knitting it a few months ago but put it aside  to gift my sister Lulu on her special birthday this week. Out it came to have ends woven in, blocked and delivered.

Happily she loved it (it really is so her). I caught her as she was leaving town so we'll have to do a modeled shot someday.  The yarn is Backyard Fiberworks . The winters shades in it just kill me. Not that you'll be examining it that closely, but on the offchance that you do, I'll confess I went a little rogue on it. I ran out of some colors and changed the section proportions. I will be back to do more riffs on this pattern, I am sure!

2) The United Technologies Corp. Engineer Week Project-- remember that sad tale of the sexist dude  (need to scroll down to item 3 in that linked post to read it) last month who tried to mess with my photo shoot? I'm really happy with how it all turned out, and I especially love this group shot. If you click on the  UTC link above and look at the slide show of individual portraits you'll spy some in front of the propeller that we moved without an all male muscle team.

3) Ok mini rant here, I am done with hearing the word curate , or curated, used about every single dang thing.  It's such a precious way of saying you put some items together. Curating a meal? Nope.  Curating an art collection--well, OK.  One needs special knowledge, and discernment.  My annoyance softened--just slightly--when I looked up the dictionary definition to make sure I wasn't off base.  I read an interesting piece about how the word curate gained a new meaning in the last decade or so, as digital information became part of everyday life. So, the word curate was used as an opposite to aggregate. To aggregate information is to just suck it all into one place, while to curate it indicated information was selectively gathered into one location. 

What word drives you nuts from overuse or misuse or preciousness?  I have quite a few  but I'll tamp the rest down for now and spare you. Although this list has curate and a few others I'd hit as well.

Ok that's all from me, posting as Ms Cranky McCrankpants this week! I know it's not Thursday but I had to get these three things out !

3 things I'm thinking on

1- THE COINS Oh, the coins. My knitting brain has been taken over. I adore knitting sweaters in winter yet I'm compelled to keep coining ever  onward.

Putting this scarf aside for a sweater might mean the coins rest unfinished till next winter... and I don’t want that!! I am falling short of my stripe-a-day plan but I figure I can block it to a longer length so I need less stripes in total, or so I have convinced myself.


2 - VALEDICTIONS  You know, your signoff at the end of an email. I'm focusing on the lameness of my options, specifically for  a work related email. Although I'm friendly with many of my clients, XO seems a little too... I dunno. Like I might dot my i with a happy face.

"Sincerely sounds cold, "Best" is vague (though I use it a lot). “Cheers!” is my standard but perhaps overly chipper. I brought this topic  up with two writers I photographed recently for author shots. They admitted they are similarly befuddled, so at least there's that comfort.  One told me she defaults to "Thanks"  ... and the other goes for “warmly”. It reminded me of a photographer I used to exchange notes with who signed off with " Camels and cocktails".  I always pictured him in a 1950's safari field jacket in an expat bar in  North Africa.  When I shared this with one of the writers, she signed her next  email “ Lattes and llamas"  Which isn't so bad. What do you use????
 
3-BREAK SHOT

I just finished listening to this and was surprised by how moved I was. I am not a super fan so I wasn't expecting how it touched me.   I mean, I grew up with his music, and some of his songs take me straight back to significant moments and many feel so personal. To hear him recount his life to age 21, when his album Sweet Baby James released, with the self-actualized hindsight he brings to it....I'm not sure how to sum it up. His story is pretty amazing,  just give it an ear.  Best 1.5 hours of listening I've spent in a long time. 

3 things I’m liking

Ok,that I’m  loving.

1-The new Berroco Yarn booklets arrived! I photographed them in September, and enough time  has passed that they look fantastic and fresh and of course I love seeing how the creative team chose to use what we shot together  on the photoshoot. I am so proud of these! The online versions of the books look good but the printed booklets are gorgeous. .

And there are some pretty fabulous new patterns and yarns. I’m going to single three out next week I think !

(Um, wait.... can you single three? )

2) a Blogger mobile app that seems to work? I’m trying it out right now! It has been a challenging week schedule-wise here,  so I’m thrilled that I might have found a way to make a quick post from my phone. I’ve tried  do mobile posts in the past and found it...clunky and awful.

   3)  Adult Ed Microsoft Excel! Go ahead and laugh but I am authentically excited to finally learn alllll about how this application works and tricks to making my spreadsheets behave themselves. I love a good spreadsheet but my self-taught Excel skills were making me crazy! In just the first class earlier tonight, I already solved a problem that had been plaguing me for years.