bts: Minnesota 52

In early May, I bopped off to Minnesota for a wonderfully whimsical book project: Minnesota 52: 16 Knits Inspired by the Road.

Megan Williams & Cori Eichelberger, aka KnitCahoots, were self-publishing their first book project . They'd reached the "whoaa...this is really happening and we need a photographer stat...and whateverelsehappens on a photo shoot, too". Fortunately we share a friend and top notch tech editor, Ellen Silva, of The Twinset Podcast, who made the connection.

We had to stop and scout this location: a sheep quilt painted on the side of a barn in Zumbrota MN.

Cori & Megan's theme is their  friendship and the knit-related adventures they've  had traveling between their homes, 100 miles apart, along Minnesota Highway 52. They wanted playful, small town locations that matched up with the spirit of their story, and their colorful designs.

So there we were, cruising along Mn 52 seeking locations. That's Cori and Megan on the right,  pre-enacting the cover image we shot 24 hours later-with much smoother light, you'll notice--on the left.  Here's how it looks on the book:

 I knew they both love color--especially Cori--and I knew they had a joie de vivre ---joie de knit? that had to be communicated but without going overboard into the "gee aren't we kooky" kind of pictures that try too hard. It had to feel real.

A rare instance where the overused cupped hands mitten shot actually works! Minnesota stone FTW.

We shot in  some small towns, a park, and a farm. 

Because you can't do rural Minnesota and not have a farm. (I urge you to play that for the sound effects)

And the, on the day of the shoot, the magic started happening right away.  We told our models--all part time models and full time scientists-- the shoot would be playful. Jo showed up just after dawn in the Pine Island Cheese Co parking lot with...her unicycle! She's wearing the Snow Thank You Sweater, which is high on my Want to Knit list . Don't you love the shoulder construction and lace, with the striped sleeves? It's designed by Megan Williams.

Nancy, the lovely woman who let us invade her farm, offered us various props....including a gosling. And a rabbit. 

FYI: Minnesota girls are not afraid of gosling poop dripping down the wardrobe, and a big armful of bunny is a welcome addition. That's Jen in the Nice-capades Sweater

We had a blast. Everyone pitched in...the authors hauled scrims, Ellen the tech editor became my photo asst, the models smiled and posed and looked beautiful  in wool all day despite some spring heat, and helped on set when they weren't posing.

It was one of those days when all the pieces came together and made the shoot match the spirit of the book. It's full of colorful, clever and very wearable designs----I tell you, Minnesota knitters are a whole 'nother scene of knitter, and these two are all in. I learned about SQ's  (sweater quantities of yarn) and VKN's (Virtual Knit Nights) where groups of knitters log in online, via  google hang out , enjoying  weekly knitting nights with each person in their own home spread far and wide. The Knit Cahootsters introduced me to a whole slew of indie dyers I didn't know about, and led me to a fabulous shoe store Luya Shoes, in the most unlikely location of Zumbrota MN.  I learned that Subway makes chopped salads as well as sandwiches, Walleye Pike is still delicious when freshly cooked, and Minnesota Nice is as true as ever.

Loved working with these ladies! I'm sure we made quite a scene--a photo crew shooting models and wielding 6 foot reflectors isn't seen everyday in rural Minnesota.   Anyway..... that's getting off topic. You can see all the patterns on Ravelry. I'll be casting on at least one, as soon as I get my queue in order!

shepherds harvest weekend

 I was invited to judge the photo contest and teach at Shepherds Harvest 2012, held last month in Minnesota. I jumped at the chance.  I've been hearing about this annual wooly festival for years.

So there I was. I judged.  It was not easy. A thirteen year old named Rachel made this image. Talent!

 

Minnesota's a forcefield in the fiberarts world. Shepherds Harvest is a truly vibrant, lively festival with 5+ barns of vendors and an equal number full of livestock. You could learn saori weaving, dyeing, knitting techniques or how to breed colored fleeces and build a flock. Anyway, it was just a flawlessly wonderful two days, unless you count that the Scandanavian food truck ran out of lefse  before I had some. (Got my walleye chunks though, so no worries.)

I booksigned, alone for Craft Activism and Shear Spirit (missed you, Joan Tapper!) and with my Minnesota knit author posse from WearWithAll. Here I am with Scott Rohr and Mary Lou Egan. And that stole. (I want to steal that stole).

Here are Theresa Gaffey and Shelly Sheehan. Shelly's working on the stole in an alternative colorway. In front? Those are stole kits. I still want to steal the stole, but perhaps I should just knit one? Speaking of WearWithAll, did you see this review from Clara Parkes? And, this one over at Mason Dixon Knitting? :-)))

I taught a large and diverse group for the Photo Safari class .  Knitwear designers, alpaca farmers, a dude who's photo hobby matched up with my class while his wife and daughters' indulged their knitting  jones, an Adobe PhotoShop engineer, someone who mostly knit & crocheted in all white, some friends...and a bustling festival to explore. I hadn't calculated how our group of photographers in action would draw a crowd, who seemed convinced they'd found a celebrity at the festival beyond all the lenses. (does Prince knit? That would be the local celeb sighting I'd be all over). So, what did we shoot on safari? All kinds of backgrounds, above.

Sheep, of course. Isn't this one's fleece magnificent? I want a sweater in just those gradations.

My exhortations to get close and try unusual angles were heard!-Here's Ellen Silva photographing in the reenactors tent. She may have gone home with some spinning wheel burn marks on her forehead. But excellent images. All in the line of duty.

On Sunday,  I strolled the festival as a civilian with Ellen, who mostly stayed  upright. It was so much fun--first off, Ellen seems to know everyone in the upper midwest fiber world. And,  she's a decisive shopper, with great taste in yarn/fiber. That makes for a satisfying festival buddy right there.

One of my favorite booths, from Great Wool. Can't wait till Zoe is old enough for wooly tutus and felted fox ears. Also soft squishy Rambouillet yarn.

More felting! My friends Judy & Tom MacDowell from Misty Meadows Icelandics were there. I hadn't seen them since I invaded their farm with the photo shoot for Shear Spirit. Judy is a felting artist, and had a wall display of these narrow scarves, I think she called them centipedes. One came home with me.

I said I wouldn't buy yarn,  I do not need any yarn right now.  And I don't do souvenir yarn. At least not until Ellen introduced me to this very cool fundraiser. See these bags? They contain fluff from all the vendors, who donate handfuls of their fibers. A committee divides it into bags (or, sometimes layers them into fiber sandwiches),  

and a swat team of volunteer spinners turn each bag into a skein or two of yarn which is auctioned silently. All of the money goes to Heifer International.  So--do you get it? It's not shopping for yarn. It's supporting a good cause! (Yup, the cause clause).

  

I'm thinking new mittens for next winter,  I will be so happy knowing where the yarn came from.

And, a hat from this skein. I am slightly ashamed to admit I was bidding against the spinner who so beautifully spun the mix into a fat single, and plied it with a single laceweight strand of turquoise silk. I won't tell you how little I paid, even so.  As a non-spinner with a longing for handspun  , this is heaven.  So to sum up: Shepherds Harvest= good. Go if you can, next year.

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 Next post--I'm going to show knitting. It's been awhile , hasn't it?

the week ahead

I'm usually a live-in-the-moment type, but not this week. I'm looking ahead, and can you blame me?

 

Next weekend,  Shepherds Harvest in Lake Elmo MN ! I love me a sheep & wool fest, and I've been hearing about this one for ages. This is like a 3fer look forward. One I am honored to be the judge of the photo contest for this 15th year of the festival.   And Two I'll be teaching a Photo Safari class on Saturday  (still 3 or 4  seats left but you need to email the festival or try your luck at walk-in registration). We will be up to our eyeballs in good subjects. (They don't call me She Shoots Sheep Shots for nothin').  Also Three  I'm  book signing at 11 am on Saturday and at noon on Sunday. On each day I'll also go bother my Wear With All friends, who'll be selling and signing just after me on Saturday and just before on Sunday. Come by and say hi.

But that's the end of the week. Right now I'm  picking up Brenda Dayne, of Cast On, and driving her to Kristin Nicholas'  farm in Western Massachusetts. Check out her fab North American tour, she might  near you soon-she is at Webs all this week and The Yarnery later this month.. Lucky!   Any Monday that includes talented knitter/designer/authors, yarn, a road trip and a SHEEP FARM stands to have a lot of promise. (Also Kristin lives near the best ice cream stand I've visited in ages, and that is no small thing.)

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

this is the sweater that never ends...

* 4 days left to enter  my coffee giveaway. 

That's 4 bags of coffee and a mug, what are you waiting for???!! *

At this rate I will permanently have this sweater for Wip It Wednesday. Even if I finish the 3 gajillion other wips around this joint. This one'll just keep turning up.

 

You last heard about me finishing off the sleeves so I'd have a nice new Cadence sweater to wear while booksigning and working on a photo shoot in wintery, snowy Minnesota. Done the first night there. I slipped it on. It fit !  Like a glove. 

 

 Cascade Eco Wool.: a desert island yarn if I ever I had one.

Problem #1 : I do not want a wooly sweater that fits like a second skin. Not hardly. I was aiming for an inch or so of positive ease. A live-in-this sweater with room to layer. I'd measured and swatched and got gauge and how could this have happened? (also how could I have not tried on a topdown raglan? ). Consider that I spent most of my trip with the wonderful knitters from The Yarnery, a group that surely has the wherewithall to stop me from this kind of crazy.  They offered aggressive blocking.  oh, never mind....I tore it out back up to the armpits. 

 

And acquired some new needles, the square sided ones.why not?

Problem # 2: I was surprised to find that though I'd gotten gauge on US 9 needles, I had somehow managed to knit the whole sweater on size 8's. 

And so, once again, in progress.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Here's a  future wip : My nephew said he'd like  "one of those hats with very long earflaps attached.  So long that they have pockets for hands."

My nephew is about 6 feet tall, so I guess we're talking truly long earflaps. Maybe this would work, with pockets.  More WIP WEDNESDAY posts linked here.

whirlwind weekend

Determined to stick with my format, I'm popping by to report that my last 4 days in Minneapolis have been flawless. If you don't count weather.

Malika, the makeup artist/stylist extraordinaire working her magic

I came to Minneapolis for a photo shoot, which took up 3 of 5 days, it was  one of those projects that didn't really feel like work, even though we were cranking the whole time. Love these clients. And my friend TwinSet Ellen made her photo assisting debut.

She is a woman of many talents--these are the props she procured when we rejected apples, bananas, oranges, pinecones, snowballs and coffee mugs as possible objets on a tabletop in a set up. 

I got to hang out at The Yarnery for a booksigning and some knitting on Thursday night, visited with in-laws and old friends, had some local beer, finished a sweater, unraveled most of a sweater. I can't talk about that now. Literally. I discovered whiskey in tea with honey and lemon is good, as well as good for laryngitis....

tip more than wip

It's more about travel in process today, Connecticut to Minnesota. A state so chill it's already below freezing. Wool weather !


view of some spectacular clouds, BigGuy by window not willing to skootch so I could get a better hispta for you
I almost finished the 2nd sleeve of my Cadence enroute , wedged as I was in the middle seat between some BigGuys on both flights (bad luck in tight seats).- so, if you happen to be stopping by the Craft Activism booksigning at The Yarnery in st paul tomorrow evening 6-8, you might see its debut.(I'd add links but posting fr the phone is limiting , sorry)
Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:W 51st St,Minneapolis,United States

fall ahead, caption contest, & lotsa links

Don't you love how Labor Day Weekend shakes your sheets into autumn with a crisp snap? Make  plans  now  or suddenly you're neck deep in pumpkin, cooking Thanksgiving dinner and wondering what happened to fall. First up for me: 

Photo Workshop Weekend in St Paul MN at The Yarnery September 25 &  26th
scroll down fr the Yarnery link, or click here for details

If you have a passion for photography,  join us for 2 days of hands-on digital camera workshop. Pixels, fiber, FO's..what more could you want?

 

This needs a good caption, doesn't it?  Contest below.

We'll be taking a field trip to a historic farmstead on the Saturday afternoon of the workshop. I'm thrilled to have that setting for teaching about shooting FO's on real people, for showing how you can work with different  light situations,  on a porch, in open sun, in shade, and also have all the textures & colors and props to use as backgrounds. And, sheep. Not promising any will have mad modeling skillz. This cutie was from the photo workshop weekend at Juniper Moon Farm, click here to see some of the workshop in action. The class is half full so go guilt a friend or loved one into coming along and call The Yarnery to sign up. *

Caption contest/ book & yarn giveaway

Leave  a comment on this post with a caption for the photo above, and you're entered to win a copy of the book Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, Twenty Patterns and Miles of Yarn, or  yarn.

Mention the contest and link to this post  from your blog your Facebook or Twitter,  and you get an extra entry for each mention.  Deadline for captions is September 10th.

Two  winners: one drawn randomly, to win the book. The second, for the best caption, gets 3 skeins of Brown Sheep Lambs Pride yarn (appropriate, no?)

* the Twin Cities are a terrific place to visit for a weekend, if you're not from the area.  And you can't do better than The Yarnery folks as hosts, they're the ones who serenaded  the Yarn Harlot and Mason Dixon Knitting Ann & Kay. Talent and senses of humor, plus they can knit like nobody's business. btw, those are links to posts with YouTubes of the Yarnery Singers in action, you really should view them.

driveby posting

* yes, you are one of Those People

...who have a knit blog with no knitting? Unh-uh, not me.

A Gaia Shoulder Hug was supposedly my vacation knitting in Minnesota. I barely touched it there. We were too busy doing fun Twin Cities stuff.

That bridge by the Walker Sculpture garden, the aviary at the zoo, the Mill City Museum Ruins......

I can't remember a vacation trip during which I knit less since my guys were toddlers. When I did knit, it was just the right project: engaging while placing the eyelet rows at color changes, and mindless in its stockinette-i-ness. Working on it yesterday at a neighborhood brunch, I incited my friend Peggy to run over to the LYS and start four of them for gifts right away.

Carol's porch by noon yesterday , iPhone cam view

She blames me, I blame the Mimosas and an exciting storm current while swimming.

The Sage Remedy Top , finished a while ago. My gauge relaxed seriously since swatching, I modified wildly on the fly, and it's not-so-flattering . If you are considering knitting it, avert your eyes, go look at all the successful versions on Ravelry . Worse than the fit : the shoulders. I seamed them inside out. I knew it wasn't going to be fab on me by then, so I left them that way. Sometimes I amaze myself with my low standards acceptance of All Things Awry.

Clinging to the very selvedges of the NaKniSweMoDo, I cast on for a 7th sweater. This is Jo Sharp SilkRoad Tweed DK, a yarn I've been wanting to knit with since spending an afternoon with Norma last November. You'll need to scroll down the linked post.

* this post's title was a fortune cookie the 15 yo son got while out on the town in Mpls. The older son's read : "You have that horny & desperate look. It suits you, work it. " We've been teasing him ever since. Nice parents, huh?!
older son Iphone cam view, Uptown Mpls.

oh, shoot!

One of the fabulous students from my Photo Workshops for Knitters at The Yarnery in St Paul MN, last week. In action, stalking the sidelight on an EZ baby sweater, Grand Ave, Friday evening. I think everyone learned new things and had a good time. I know I did. A full report on The Yarnery blog. Here and here and here and here is more evidence, I hardly had to bribe them much at all ......

A moment Thursday: we were blocking the sidewalk, admiring and shooting a perfect little rim of light dancing on the edge of a handknit striped chicken. An eyeless blue and green handknit chicken, mind you.(See it here on her blog) A woman with a camera walked by and photographed us clucking & clicking away. I'm not sure what she thought of the scene, which was completely normal for knitters, but maybe just a bit nutty otherwise...and so wonderful.

Many thanks to Mary Lou and her associates in crime knitterly goodness at The Yarnery for hosting me. You can check out Mary Lou's coverage of the event over at her Flickr page, she was documenting and trying to participate at the same time, that's just plain challenging. If you're going to Sock Summit be sure to stop by and see Shelley and Mary Lou there vending. I got me a few skeins for a new sweater , it's an irresistible shop. But Ill save that for another post.
Minnesota Zoo, Friday afternoon visit