bts: at dragonfly fibers

Behind the Scenes again! I'm just going to warn you, many distracting yarn photos follow.  I was at Dragonfly Fibers studio in Maryland last month, for the loveliest of jobs, helping them set up a permanent photo studio at their workshop and business.

Kate and Nancye make stunning yarn which, distractingly, was everywhere in their headquarters. My head was swiveling around like an owl's the whole day oooh oooh ooooh.

Their yarn is  gorgeously dyed on beautiful bases, with brilliant and subtle colors.  So their photos need to be reliably lit and consistent, to share the goodness online. I love love love consulting jobs like this, where I can apply my little slice of nerdy-photo- knowhow with talented people.  It's mindboggling to look at all the parts to running a successful yarn business.

There's sourcing and ordering miles and miles of naked yarn--and then winding it into dye-able skeins. 

And of course the logistics of dyeing and drying  large quantities, and reproducing great colors time after time.  That blue with black in it, in the photo above this one,  just kills me. 

Then it all has to be patted and  twisted and tagged before it goes out into the world. Which seems like no big deal when you've just got ten skeins in a basket.  Scale that up to hundreds and hundreds of skeins...and there's a whole lotta twisting going on.

It's the organizational side that would kill me, personally. (That and choosing names for the yarns, which Kate has amongst her super powers). So many laundry baskets and storage bins ready to roll. Obvs prepping for Rhinebeck NY Sheep & Wool is going to require many many many bins.

Dragonfly Fibers doesn't have a retail shop at their studios but there is an area that is set up store-like, if you happen to be by on a studio visit. That's their colorway Beaches, which stopped me in my tracks.  Though I didn't bring those home with me, you'll be glad to know I didn't leave empty handed,. And I managed to control my chronic indecisiveness by choosing one skein and asking Kate to choose a second for me.  I'll share it in another post. Oh, ok... spoiler: my beauties are Low Tide and Poseidon, which tickles the mermaid in me no end.

A very very good version of  Christmas ? 

I swear this was just sitting around. Love love love love love.  We used their yarn in a couple of projects in our book , and I've since knit my favorite hat from Drop Dead Easy Knits, my Sidekick in their yarn.  Dragonfly Fibers yarn is stocked in many shops, and of course they sell online,  but if you happen to be at  festivals  this season...definitely stop by. 
PS. They are killing it with the new photo studio we set up, as seen on Instagram yesterday. When they launch a new website, prepare to be wowed!

an art piece for the Leonardo Challange

"Looking Up from the Bottom of the World" 8x8" mixed media

My piece for this year's Leonardo Challenge at the Eli Whitney Museum in New Haven. It's an annual fundraiser for the scholarship fund for this quirky, smart , innovative institution that celebrates creativity, design  and science.

Each year there's a tool or pricnciple selected, that Leonado Davinci used, and artists are asked to create and donate piece that speaks to it, uses it, or interprets it. This year, the item is a lens. Here's what the call for art said:
The Lens
The arc of a raindrop on a leaf magnifies its veins and our understanding of seeing.
Egyptian artisans mimicked the curve of eyes in glass to give their statues uncanny spirit. Assyrians in Nimrud may have used a rock crystal to concentrate the sun’s rays into a spot of fire. In the Middle Ages, the polymath Abas ibn Firnas crafted reading stones of glass. Refined lenses awakened the sciences, explorations and arts of the Renaissance.
You may have explored the ancient wonders of lenses amongst your grandmother’s treasures: a magic lantern, a stereoscope, opera glasses or a slide projector. Now there are Apps for those. We take and manipulate more pictures each day through the tiny lenses of phones than the entire pre-digital century captured. We alter the focus of eyes with surgery and their hues with contacts in designer colors. We may not now see the lenses through which we see everything.

Then there's a fabulous and delicious party and silent auction while all the work is hung on the museum walls, and you wander around amazed at how other peoples' minds work and make bids. (It's tonight April 28th  if you are local, hurry).

Obviously a photographer can donate a straight-up photo but I like to stretch myself a little and make sure it's a challenge. 
If I'd had another free afternoon, I was going to paint the outer sides of the box frame a deeper blue also, to mimic some of the blue windows I was taken with in Israel. Windows are the home's eye to outside...I had to use one of the glass evil eye beads I'd haggled over in a market there and I like to incorporate something with yarn or fiber every year...so I made the little amulet with yarn, teeny pompoms and a tassel.  I am particularly pleased with the tassel, I do hope someone compliments it.

In knitting news- my car ride to Maryland and back last weekend mostly as a passenger, along with a long day as a ballot tender at my local primary polling place allowed me to crank out more than 2/3 of my Noncho. I was hoping the yarns would look less color-blocky and more ombre-ish by having the second yarn the same through all three...but I think you don't get ombre without doing the real ombre work blending of adjacent colors. These are more like tidy neighbors. Should be a FO soon. It's all flying by the seat of my pants but to be honest, I'm loving just cranking the stockinette with a teeny edging  this week. Hope your knitting is also bringing you joy!

my delightful lopi yarn source

If you're joining in the MasonDixon Knitting BangOut a Sweater KAL -aka the Stopover KAL  LopapeysaLooza--whatever you're calling it ---you'll love my yarn shopping tip.

Let me preface this.  1) the words "yarn shopping tip" do not roll easily off my fingertips and 2) I love my LYS.I always try to Shop Local. My local clubhouse , Knit New Haven*, does not carrry Lopi. Nor does the yarn shop at the other end of town, The Yarn Basket,  nor my 3rd closest, the artsy and fun to shop at Madison Wool.  So, last month, when I decided to satisfy  my colorwork jones described here with Mary Jane Mucklestone's Stopover, I hit the internet.

I'd seen this Frank Stella piece,  in Kay Gardiner Herself's IG feed in late November.  In an uncharacteristically decisive move, I declared it my Stopover colorway. Or as Kay calls it, my #Stellover.   (always with the great hashtags, that one)

Looking online I had  trouble finding just the right colors in any one shop. I landed on a new-to-me yarn source, Nordic Store and gleefully saw the LettLopi price set at $ 2.49 a skein. And not just some, but ALL the colors.
WHAT?  Lopi is a bargain even at full price (usually $4.50/skein) but this was cray-zeee. I grabbed my  four colors,  added a fifth because why not,  I go to the shipping and WHAT THEWHAT? The 4-7 day shipping price is $21.??? Almost equal to the price of the yarn?

So. Turns out I was online shopping in Rekjavik.  But - I had the exact hues I wanted, and more, and the price was the same- or less- than ordering in the US with shipping. I hit OK and BOOM 4 days later  I had my international mail with this inside .

Yup a video, because Icelandic wool by Icelandic mail gets the full Hollywood treatment.

And also because I hit the video button on my phone by mistake.

I'm going to consider myself a KAL member anyway, even if I already cast on. Without the CC on the bottom ribbing because that's not a good place for me to have a horizontal line. If you know what I mean. I'll have a good chunk of it knit while away this coming weekend- but I bet you'll still be done before me.

* At KNH they suggested subbing Quince Osprey. Different feel but nice option. I also considered Brown Sheep Lambs Pride, my old go-to for scandanavian style sweaters. But- a knitter wants what a knitter wants and in this case, it's the real Lopi and a package from Iceland.

november post 2: what's your sweater starting rule?

I loved reading the comments from yesterday's post regarding my scheming to knit the Holland sweater, while owning how slow my sweater-in-progress is going. To be fair, Mary Lou, who said I should make the new pattern but only after I finish the one at hand is so right. She knows the slo-mo project is a test knit I'm doing for her, for a book project we've been working on together....and she knows what happens once I get distracted. Trouble. It's a fabulous pattern, by the way, so I have no complaints.

Anyway, she didn't have to worry. I'm in the same camp as Michele/pdxKnitterati who said she has rules about cheating on her sweater underway (Ok she didn't put it that way, but you know that's what it is).  Until I read her comment, I didn't realize I have the same rule.  I'm fine with casting on a different kind of knit--I have a shawl, a scarf, a pair of socks, a blanket all in various stages of done--and various levels of challenging, if you know what I mean. Like, a scarf that needs me to count stitches and switch colors but a blanket that's super simple...but I'll only work on one sweater at a time. In fact I pretty much will only work on one of each kind of project at a time.
Am I alone? What are your personal  guidelines for starting projects? Isn't it funny how we make up rules for ourselves? (and, ummm, then break them?).

upcoming: say cheese!

In June, stones on Nash Island.
I may need to re-post this from time to-time, it's  a visualization of my mantra this summer: One stone at a time. Although Anne Lamott says it better.

Here it is mid-summer. Though there's mucho to blab about, instead I'm linking some upcoming classes/events/workshops.

-  Fiber College in Searsport Maine, September 9-13. The only thing that makes the end of summer bearable is looking forward to this creative gathering on beautiful Penobscot Bay. As in past years, I am collaborating with Beverly Army Williams to teach two new classes that combine photography and writing for your creative business (and creative life...not limited to those with businesses).  We are doing  Making Your Social Media Twinkle (yes..twinkle) on Friday, and Selling your Products Online, on Saturday. I am also teaching Photo Editing class, Sunday morning, which will leave you able to optimize and all around make your photos fanatastic-and no Photo Shop needed.  Class descriptions and registration info here.  Fiber College is an unusual, artful, affordable and always inspiring. Maine is stunning in September, by the way. Join us. 

- Say Cheese: A Foodie & Photo Workshop Day--  new & different and truly delicious, this one. I am teaming up with longtime friend and food professional Arline Conigliaro in Lawrenceville NJ to offer two sessions of this artisanal cheese-making, nibbling, wood fired personal pizza crafting and phone photography day...details here. 
 If you know any food bloggers or folks who  like to photograph beautiful food before eating it- and post the results online--pass this on!
Two sessions_ Sunday August 9 and Monday August 10 . Bring friends! 

iphone photo love

I am amazed how much I use my phonecam, when I am not officially on a job. It's so freeing.  If you follow me on Instagram (and if you don't , why not? oh comeon.  I'm galezucker) you'd maybe have seen these two images this week.  With a couple of phone apps, I can make photoediting/processing changes that, not so long ago, took hours of photoshop.  I am not exaggerating here.

Also not so long ago, a knitter jokingly said "You know, you should  teach a  phonecam Photo for Knitters class because I am too lazy to use my real camera" and we all laughed.  At the time, the cameras weren't so good, the controls weren't there. But now? Absolutely.  Is it the same as shooting with a DSLR ? Nope. But can you make images you'll love,  that capture your life and your craft and your world? And can enliven your FB and fill your Ravelry projects page ? Oh yes.

Which is why I am thrilled to be teach SmartPhone Masterpieces at The YarnSpot in Wheaton/ Silver Spring Maryland next weekend.  Saturday morning, November 22, 10:30-1:30. I am also thrilled that Sivia Harding is teaching there too next weekend, so I get to meet her. Join us! It's going to be fun. I guarantee you'll learn some new tricks.

Isn't the world a grand and colorful place? You probably won't be surprised to learn my standard reply to the question "what's the best camera? "  is : the one you have on you.

what's going on: itchin' to be stitchin'

aka WIP Wednesday Three knitting projects come to mind as well underway/ high on my enjoyment list. But today? We shall not look at them . We shall look at these:

50/50 silk /cotton, hand dyed in the jar technique and some Perle cotton. It's like embroidery thread, but better.  I never knew it existed till July. That's another WIP story.

The utmost in impulse project. I was in the best new little fabric/maker/handmade supplies shop ever- Clementine in Rockland Maine, with a group of Fiber College teacher friends. Someone said she wanted to play with dyeing this fabric. We egged each other on.  The next thing you know boom boom boom, each of us is out the door with yardage to  dye/ overydye. 

As expected, the silk took the dye but the cotton barely did, and the technique allows you to intentionally create splotches and color shifts--at least that's what I was aiming for. The fabric started as greyish/taupe. I wanted to stay on just this side of tie-dye, if you know what I mean

I was thrilled with how they turned out. Each will be a scarf,  splitting it in half lengthwise, hand sewing a nice felled seam in the middle. So do-able, so simple. Then I thought... sashiko! The running stitch rows I've been Pinning like crazy.  Crazy because I do not need to make this a bigger project. Plus,  I am not known for straight lines, I am a naturally veer-off-course kinda gal. But I can just see it,  I can't resist, and this summer I realized how much I enjoy the handstitching. (that;s another WIP story). I couldn't settle on one color for each scarf, I had to go with two and three...and then I returned home to reality and limited time.  Happily, taking this out to shoot and show you made me realize, it's not that big a deal, and I can't wait to get my hands going on them agan. This may be a FO Friday sooner than I thought. 

A couple more impulse items that came home with me from Maine that week. Can.not.resist. little smooth stones. 

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Are you showing WIP Wednesday? Leave a link in my comments!

 

giveaway! A Gathering of Stitches photo workshops & books

Hiya ! Enter between now and May15 May 22nd by leaving a comment on A Gathering of Stitches, saying what image of mine you like from sometime on this blog. Details at that link, and below.

Some people have had trouble leaving comment son the Gathering of Stitches blog. If that happens to you, leave a comment below, and you're entered. (and sorry!).

The backstory:  an out-of-the-blue email from a Samantha Lindgren arrived. She told me about her wonderful making space for stitchers & crafters in Portland, Maine. That sentence right there? has several of my favorite words in it, including the location.  Her space, A Gathering of Stitches,  was on my radar. Some of my favorite chums were teaching there - Mary Jane Mucklestone's Eeeeks! Steeeks! class come to mind- and block printing on fabric, and indigo, and of course it is my fondest dream to have a space like hers in my own community.

Anyhoo, Samantha was wondering if I'd be interested in a photo weekend, and oh by the way, did I remember her, with a different last name, she had been my photo editor, I used to shoot for her, for Forbes and People magazines. whaaaaat? We were both tickled to reconnect in the world of handmade.  

I know you've seen this before. I never tire of it.

So we put together classes that I've never offered before, and lined'em up so that you could take one, two or all three. Whatever floats your boat, so to speak (see that? Portland's a harbor city? I'm so lyrical).  

 Here's what they are, but click thru to get the full description and register from A Gathering of Stitches website.
• Photography for Handcrafters - Saturday June 28 9:30-4:30 (with a lunch break)
A full day to demo camera techniques, do hands-on shooting, explore photo editing and then have a critique of what we all shot .

•Photo Editing for Handcrafters - Sunday June 29   9:30-12:30
A tiny bit of shooting but mostly, you'll do lots of photo editing, using a simple user-friendly online software (not Photoshop) to make your images really stand up and crow. If you've ever wondered why your images lack the ooomph you thought they would have when you shot them, this is where you will learn the tweaks that make a good image look fabulous. Taught in non-jargon language, to boot!

•Make iPhone Masterpieces of Your Handcraft (and everything else, too) Sun June 29 1:30-4:30
Title says it all, right? Any smartphone welcome. This is going to be super fun. Because the best camera is the one you have on you, and we always have our little phones along.

Spread the word, too, OK?  If Portland Maine (easy peasy drive from anywhere n the Northeast, and has an airport right in town. Well worth a visit)) isn't within your June realm, there are giveaway books too. Check the link.

bigass granny square #2

alt title: it takes one to make one. Just kidding! You can make one, too. You should* !

How bigass, you ask? Approximately 5 feet square (60 inches x 60 inches), no idea how much yarn I used--it's mostly leftover partial skeins, you know how those accumulate. Along the way working on it I purchased three skeins when running low on orange and a certain shade of green, or else it looked like it 'd get muddy.

A gift to my sister Marla McLean, for a special birthday . She'd admired my last bigass granny square blanket and asked if I'd make her one...so it wasn't a total surprise...but then again it was...

 

since she didn't know that I really was working on it, or colors. Actually, I don't plan the color. Spontaneity, she is my middle name. More like: flying by the seat of my pants, she is my MO.  I started with the idea of using warm colors, pinks, purples and reds for the double crochets, and cooler  greens, blues and grays for the smaller single crochets. Until I was staring at some Josef Albers *** color studies in the YUAG , pondering the edge when a color, like , say, blue, shifts from warm to cool or vice versa..so I played with that a little.. Also, with only a couple exceptions, I chose colors that I had enough yardage to get fully around the square.

 

This isn't the traditional granny square, in which groups of three double crochets are offset from row to row, so there's a diagonal aspect. It's a version** I prefer, alternating rows of double crochet in groups of three , and single crochets with chain 3 between. If you don't speak crochet,that means the little tiles of color line up in rows below each other, instead of offset from row to row.

 

I'm especially happy with the scalloped edging--that's a new one for me. I had a large ball of Cascade Eco in aqua left over from this hat.  It makes a good ending, more fun than the plain single crochet rounds on BigAss Granny # 1.

I used an H crochet hook. Or four. Kept losing them! One disappeared in the house, just zzzzip, gone. The second ? When Kirsten Kapur picked me up to drive to Maine for Fiber College last month, we hadn't even pulled out of the parking lot  before I fumbled my hook.  It disappeared into mysterious nothingness under the seat. We had to stop at my LYS before we got on the highway. (she acquired some delish yarn so not all that tragic, really) Less than 24 hours later, that hook rolled between two planks of a boardwalk and was gone forever. Thankfully, a vendor at the Fiber College event sold me a nice wooden one, still in my possession.

Most of the yarns are 100% wool, or wool/alpaca blends. Berroco Ultra Alpaca, Cascade 220 and Brown Sheep Lambs Pride are all well represented.  By the way? Marla loves it. 

I totally enjoyed this project--it's a good switchup from knitting, especially if you're working on an attention-requiring project, like a sweater with shaping or a lace shawl. It's so simple-you don't need special skills to start a granny square.  Easy stuff.  All that and the satisfying mmm of using up leftover yarns from other projects--like visiting old friends. Or single skeins of stash, if you are of that persuasion. I may just need to do another. Of some sort. Checkout my Pinterest board when granny squares take over the world  if you don't think I'm serious......

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* Ongoing appreciation for crochet queen Ellen Bloom's insistence that I sit down and make me a granny square  when I was photographing her for CraftActivism. What a gift she gave me!

** in Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks she calls it the Chocolate Box, you may see instructions elsewhere..but it's worth owning the book, it's an amazing resource 

*** whoa, check out that link to an app based on Albers color studies, and looking at your own designs compared to them. so. cool.

depends on how you look at it

Funny how having so much to show and tell can block you up just as much as having a scarcity, isn't it ?  OK then, 5 minute post to share some color. Because I have been all about the color & light lately.

Carrots in Maine, while at Fiber College in early September. Backlit. So lovely.

 Directly lit. So, ummm, happy to see me? That's Kirsten Kapur (Through the Loops) behind them.

 

Being part of Fiber College is a joy, with days of almost constant motion--yet somehow this is what I love and remember it for --the early morning coffee and peace along Penobscot Bay outside our cottage.

Of course I've been knitting. And crocheting. And ripping out and re-knitting. And planning more knits. And more ripping out. And then re-knitting.....this Big Ass Granny Square ™ right here?  Larger and done. More about it soon.

 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

ps I'm teaching at Rhinebeck! That's right at the NY Sheep & Wool festival in just a couple weeks. Photo Safari. We'll wander the festival like a pack of photo hooligans*, shooting sheep and all manner of FO's.  Also, more teaching, at VogueKnitting Live, in January. Info here.

*Just kidding no hooliganism. But it'll be lively.

green on the brain

If it's possible to be less than 0% Irish, that's me. St Patrick's Day doesn't have any heritage resonance but OHMYGOD it's the right time of year to be seeing green. So sick of dull winter skies and leafless trees.
 
Any glimpse of green is a joy. 

Smooth segue warning...Two of my favorite knitter friends, the talented designers Mary Lou Egan and Theresa Gaffey , are leading a knitter's trip to Ireland later this year. Plenty of green glimpses guaranteed.  Check out the itinerary. To die for. They are part of the team that brought you the book  Wear With All. This is going to be an amazing experience for the small group touring with them. Don't wait too long to sign up.This adorable sweater and tunic is one of Mary Lou's patterns from the book. Theresa is responsible for the breathtaking stole that's been flying off of needles at my LYS.

Lately the FB posts from my friends in California and Arkansas just slay me. They're sitting outside having drinks !  And gardening! I, on the other hand, am doing an outdoor photo shoot tomorrow, on a day with a high of 37 degrees--and grateful the snow/freezing rain predicted should hold  off till nightfall. Glad we're shooting sweaters.

the circle game

I left that bleak last post up a long time, didn't I? How about some color?
I've had potholder envy, ever since photos like this one, and this one  from Potholder Swaps  Adrian/Hello Yarn and Maryse masterminded. I declared I'd jump in this year (you should! Still time!). I figured it'd use up some blue cotton yarn leftovers, from Craft Activism projects. I hate to let leftover skeins hang around unloved. But as soon as I started crocheting, I felt I needed more colors to make it work...and crochet gobbles yarn like nobody's business, surely I would run out before completing 3 double-sided potholders? Two skeins of Seedling later, I was good to go. Except you know what? I forgot what I don't like: crocheting cotton. crafting deadlines. making things you can't wear. I don't know why but that is the truth. Another truth? I need to enjoy the process, no matter how much I want that product. So you might say, I wasn't a happy hooker.
I was forcing myself to stay on task when (dingdingding) I was alerted to a knitting urgency: Zoe needs a new sweater! She's traveling to Peru to meet her other side of the family for the first time. It'll be Fall there and..ohmygod how will anyone know we love her if she doesn't have a brand new handknit sweater on her back???

the blanket and Zoe a few months back

I'd been saving the leftover yarn from the Zoe baby blanket. Have I mentioned that I hate to let leftover skeins bits go unloved? My plan was to make a striped hoodie to go with the blanket. A plan that would have been perfect had I followed it when she wore a size 12 mos sweater...but now? Now I quickly realized I am running out of leftovers, just a few stripes in. You guessed it, I bought 2 more skeins to round out the stripes. I started with the leftover & discontinued Cleckheaton and needed more superwash-. My LYS came to the rescue with Dalegarn Falk that matches up  and is also 100%wool and washing machine friendly. End score: 1 potholder almost done, most likely staying here.Striped sweater underway, likely to fly way south next week, on this cutie.. Some leftovers used up. 4 new skeins here, destined to have leftovers. Circle of life.