A Traveling Rug

My brainstorm to repurpose the 10 year old Jill Draper yarn, as reported in my last post,  for a new sweater for NY Sheep & Wool  as part of the Rhinebeck Sweaters for Good came together fabulously when I emailed Jill and discovered only two options for a contrast color: dust (shown, when it arrived) or polar white. I went with Dust,  above. It's a  hard-to-pin-down neautral; slightly pink/lavendar/grey, sort of like lint.  Both the main color and the contrast color are now odd murky shades and I am loving them together!

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The last couple of weeks have been full of travel and activity, and the yarn came along for the rides.  First it went with me  on my annual camping trip with Zoe. We started camping together when she was 8 and we found a small tent in the basement during the pandemic. No one else in the family was game for camping that year so just the two of us headed to the woods in Vermont.  And we kept returning there. Now it's an annual tradition. This year, though, we went to Lake Damariscotta in Maine. 

We upgraded the tent quite a bit this year. 

 

And I cast on by the campfire. No notes! 

 

A bougie lobster roll at a shack near Boothbay. No notes on this either! It's Shannon Unshelled , we've been there before and if you're in that area you won't regret eating there. 

 

 Some years we do mostly nature activities and lots of campfire cooking. Some years we head out and adventure around the area, eat out, explore towns and either way, we love it. This year we went to Popham Beach, another Maine fave of ours. When the tide is out you can walkwaaaay out to  sand bars.

The colors are weird, right? The main color reminds me of a copper penny with green patina. Except fuzzy. I am super happy with my Rug so far. 

A day or or two after I came back from Maine I went to Montana for a photo shoot. It needs it's own post--amazing adventures, sheep, yarn, everything and knitting progress too, as the yarn came along. A sweater on size 9 US needles isfun, I forgot how fast it goes!

  

And since this is Unraveled  (a day late) I'll share  my reading. I am halfway through Kin by Tayari Jones and recommend it. No notes again! This is quite the 10:10:10 post. 

 

The other book I read...not so enthusiastic about it!  On the camping trip drive I listened to the book  96 Miles by JL Esplin,. Zoe had been avoiding it as her assigned summer reading  for school:  it's YA survivalist vaguely dystopian suspense... meh. Neither of us loved it but it got the job done.  Survivalists and dystopian novels for any level reader are not my jam!  I guess I'd say it's Ok roadtrip listening. 

Sweater for Good Unraveled

 Today we have some Unravel for real! A failed sweater from 2017 ish was returned to yarn balls, 1200+ yards of chunky weight yarn.

It's got a lot of variation in it and is sort of copper/chestnut/green brown/warm shades.....

Have you heard about Sweaters for Good, the initiative of the Hudson Valley Textile Project that asked knitters coming to Rhinebeck for NY Sheep and Wool to commit to knitting their "Rhinebeck Sweater"  out of yarn with roots in NY State and/or the Northeast US.  The word went out about this last year at the festival and has been bubbling along just below the surface all year. It's a lovely idea to support local fiber  farms, wool producers, dyers and mills. And really the point is not about making a new sweater in order to attend the festival- the point is celebrating local yarn, which is itself the point of sheep and wool festivals in the first place.

All of which is to say I took the pledge and now the clock is ticking! IAlthough I have plenty of great local yarn, none seems to be in a sweater quantity unless I want multicolored stripes.   I saw Kay's post on Modern Daily Knitting about her Sweater for Good considering  Rug, I remembered that this sweater has been in my queue forever, would be a quick knit (chunky yarn ftw) and I had a failed sweater knit in Jill Draper Makes Stuff yarn,at exactly the right weight and vibe, and it is about as local to Rhinebeck as one can get!

 That's what it looked like knit up, pre unraveling the failed pullover.  Color more accurate here than at top.

Anyway, a quick check with Jill Draper for a skein of CC for the Rug yoke found me discovering she'd discontinued this yarn  (Middlefield, its' a wool alpaca blend) but had a skein left that could work for me.. It's one the way.  I am kind of excited to cast on. Let's ignore the fact that it has been pretty warm at the annual Rhinebeck sheep festival in recent years so knitting this may be more of an act of faith than a fashion statement in October! 

 

READING: Kin by Tayari Jones.  Wonderful characters, enjoying and recommend so far! It's a good follow up from Whistler by Ann Patchett .  I am not the only one feeling this way: these two authors are speaking together (!!) at the  National Book Festival in DC next weekend , wish I could attend! (aug 22nd) .

 

Folded crane covered wall!At a health center  I was photographing at for a client earlier this week.

Finish in'26 continues

 

KNITTING: Next up in the Finish It in '26  project parade is my Piilo sweater. One sleeve done this past week, one underway. It's a very blocky fit and I think I'm going to love it. Especially that collar. Yarn is Kelbourne Scout and like all of their yarns it is pretty great. (Seriously have you tried Kelbourne Perennial?)

 

While looking for a flat box yesterdayI found this, which may just be next up. I'm trying to remember when I labeled it and put it on top of a cabinet in my office. 10+years ago? 15?  (OMG I see it well underway on Ellen Bloom's blog while I was visiting LA...in 2010.)  As promised it is done and just needs ends finishing...ETC.  I wasn't sure  at first what ETC meant... 

 

It's really lovely airy bouclé mohair from Be Sweet, a South African yarn company, now out of business. It was a kit for a diagonal shawl, I quickly got bored of the even wide stripes and improvised. When I took it out of the box I remembered several things about it...

 

• It is very large as in at least 9 feet , and it'll grow more when blocked.  I'm likely to wear it as a big squished scarf-y piece so all good there. 

• It is very sherbert colored, this I do recall as a problem! Back then I'd regretted the colorway choice.  At first I thought that's how it ended up done but not finished. At the time my hair was dark and these weren't "my" colors.  Now that my hair is silver, I like to wear these colors a lot more. 

Holes! from dropped stitches! That was the ETC and the real reason I put this in a box and ignored it.  It all came back to me.  I'd dropped a few stitches in the curly boucleé in several places. You know what didn't come back to me? Yarn in all the colors. I just have these two! Any suggestions ? I am considering embroidering a daisy or asterisk wherever there's a hole.

 

READING :I am warming up to Katabasis.  It has nothing to do with the peonies, I just wanted to show them off. 

 

More Unraveled Wednesday posts linked over at As Kat Knits!

CHECKING IN!

Ignore the long absence. Sometime last February this blog turned....20?!  Despite pointing my energies at other channels/commitments/activities, I miss blogging.It's good to write a little. I can draw a line from my 2005 awkward hop into the blogging world to truly wonderful present life connections. It's nothing short of amazing. So...here's what I am up to...

 PHOTO BOOTH AT A WOOLEN AFFAIR OCT 16-17TH

 Last March I had a photo booth at Nash Yarn Fest--it was a total blast. When Catherine Clark, who puts on A Woolen Affair, the yarn and music fest the day before  NY Sheep & Wool Festival (aka Rhinebeck) asked me to bring it to her event, I didn't hesitate .  Maybe I'll see you there? Come say hi ! 

If you want a photo session sign up in advance-- I'll only take a few walkups and I suspect it's going to get crazy (in a good way, chaos plus happy).  I'm planning to be back at Nash Yarn Fest in April 2026, too.

Speaking of Modern Daily Knitting  (Nash Yarn Fest's hostesses with the mostesses), I am thrilled to be teaching a MDK VIRTUAL PHOTO CLASS  for Ann & Kay.  It's rolling around soon- November 7th- and seriously, it is going to be a good one.  Info (and sometimes a large picture of me) at the links.

Of course I am still knitting and making stuff! Above is my so-called Rhinebeck sweater.  As in vaguely aimed at finishing it before next week Friday, accent on vague. This morning I upended a mug of black coffee into my knitting bag .  It's drying from a quick bath rather than being worked on. It's a Piilo sweater, it'll be cropped and not  gathered in at the bottom hem and maybe not fully long sleeved. I'm finding I like stripes a lot this year, what about you? I'm not print person for clothing normally. 

(The yarn is Kelbourne Woolens Scout,  I recommend it) 

 

Still here! Or..somewhere!

I'm still here and this blog is too!

Fast link to places I am teaching photo for makers coming up SOON maybe you'll join me???

Columbus OHIO 4/27/24 and Chicago IL 5/4/24

 

 Here's a little behind the scenes from a Berroco photo shoot we did in late fall.  It's a really wonderful fresh crochet collection, the theme was Summer Festival wear --and it being way beyond the summer festival season IRL, we created this kitschy set .  And yes I want her boots!

 We purposefully lit it to be as bright and pop as the astro turf and fake backdrop. I really love the collection.

Wait till you see the next season of collections  we shot for Berroco that will be out soon for the Fall 24. All shot  on location in amazing places, fab moels and styling and such good designs and yarns.

Some fun trends: more and more good crochet design made with good yarns. And more and more shades of yellow greens! And more attention paid to yarn sources and sustainability.

These three are from a photo shoot for the Hudson Valley Textile Project, showing off member products. 

I'm even finding myself drawn to a bright almost not-quite  yellow green!  What colors are you falling for lately?

18 and counting: Not Over Yet!

 

I am still alive and kicking and having fun and making things and traveling...and working A LOT!

 This was from a Berroco photo shoot on a farm. The horizon is never where I want it so I stand on my trusty step ladder.

 

Here's the Honeycomb Scarf I have been knitting off and on most of winter. It's a gem of a process knit. When I started, I figured I'd whip right through it.........I'm about 75% done now and a couple of weeks ago I took a good hard look and realized it doesn't look exactly like the samples in the pattern. Whatever I am doing wrong, I'm consistent so at this point, that's how it is!

 

I've been traveling a lot! Some  trips for fun and some for work. Above was all FUN: we went to the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver. This was at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, which is what it sounds like plus walkways in the tree canopy, just on the edge of the city in North Vancouver. 10/10 recommend.   I am normally not a fan of heights and walkways over sheer drops but it was so astoundingly beautiful I couldn't be bothered to freak out. 

Some of that trip became a Knitters Weekend: Olympic Peninsula on Modern Daily Knitting.

This was a photo shoot for Madeline Tosh yarn, I love the styling on this. If you wonder whether I am constantly ohhing and ahhhing and saying "oh oh I want to knit this" while I am working for this client , the answer is YES. 

I am glad to be back for this rare post, let me know if you saw this! This blog celebrated its 18th birthday in February, the least I can do is say hi.

This week: teaching Chicago in person!

As much as I enjoyed teaching virtually these past two years, I am thrilled I'll be in front of a room of living breathing people teaching iPhonography in just a few days  in Chicago!

 

If you'll be at H+H Americas, the trade show for handmade business  please join me !

THURSDAY JUNE 23,  9:45-11:15 am     Smartphone/IPhone Photo Confidence 

FRIDAY  JUNE 24,  9:45-11:15 am  10 +  Tips for Product Photography

These will be fun, helpful, talks filled with actionable tips and time for Q&A.  Not to mention so many images to look at!

And then if you're in the area, visiting or a local,  I am so excited to be teaching hands-on Fabulous Phone Photography for Knitters and Makers                                      SATURDAY JUNE 25, at STRING THEORY YARN COMPANY                            Chicago (Glen Ellyn)    9:30-Noon

If you're thinking about this one , don't wait too long, there were just a couple seats left when I checked in on Friday! I have wanted to visit this shop for ages, having met Janet Avila, the owner at past events and long admired her mission, attitude, events and style.  Oh, and yarn selections! Going to be some new projects cast on here, I can pretty much promise that.

 

3 things on thursday: good things

 with photos, of course!

1) It's lamb season ! and the sheep and wool festivals are getting underway!  I'm going to swing by the tiny  Connecticut Sheep Wool & Fiber Fest this Saturday. It's just a one day event, and  makes my She Shoots Sheep Shots soul so happy.

The photo is from a quick visit last month to my LSF (Local Sheep Farm), Olympia Farm . Love that the little trio posed for me like that!  If you have a local farm that welcomes visitors, I highly recommend making it a stop from time to time. I'm going to be popping in again soon cause cheesemaking season just started. As if I need a reason beyond lambs and local wool.....

2) A long overdue new website is underway.  I am my own worst editor.  It's a truth that's led to many months years delay on this project.  I have help. It is pretty amazing to have a completely different set of eyes culling my work . I am super proud of myself for letting go of attachments to  the images and let them just be seen.  The website is still in process. Reveal soon!  This image is Fine Lines by Lori Versaci , pattern includes longer version.

3) Work has been bustling, including a big corporate project. For every day out photographing there are at least two solid days of desk work at my computer....which means lots of book listening while I edit. A recent favorite : The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton.  Fun, great characters, includes serious issues from various points of view, from the 70's and in the present --the kind of book that you think about the characters a couple of weeks later and wonder how they are doing. And then remember....wait, they are fictional ...Does that happen to you, too? I always feel that's the sign of a good writer.  

Here are some other 3 on Thursday posts

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/f37e7d0bf6a9416aa2ea723a841733c4

Brite Stripes Scarf Kit= happy knitting

 

 I may have made my favorite scarf photo ever! This was the last frame shot from the photo shoot for The Yarnery,  Brite Stripes Kit, in October.   The scarf feels so exuberant  that I wanted to see if we could catch that vibe.

The kits released yesterday .  I am thrilled ot share these, shot on a handball court in Brooklyn. I kind of love the location as a street studio setting. And I lovvvvve these models, Martine McKinney and Ariana McLean.  

 

The yarn is pretty fabulous as well--it's knit in solid colors of Snefnug and a skein of self striping Lang Cloud yarn.  It's bulky gauge knitting  although very light and airy. I am crazy about the Snefnug because the colors, I mean take a look. And also that name, it sounds like a funny sneeze. It means snowflake in Danish.

 This is a candidate for another Treat Yo'self project--and I say that as someone who feels the urge to knit a long scarf pretty much NEVER.  It would fly.

3 Things About the Knits: past present future

 Not necessarily in that order

1) Pressed Flowers shawl by Savory Knitting Amy Christoffers. This mosaic design is so satisfying to knit.  I am loving it.  I'd heard that after the first repeat of the body chart I'd have it memorized and it'd just flow. As I cast on and messed up the first few repeats and then did that again and again, I highly doubted it.  Then, as my friend Linda, the yarn whisperer owner of Knit New Haven told me "something happens and you crack the genetic code ". She was right. (She almost  always is on many matters, not just knitting.)  No more chart peeks needed. Although I look forward to finishing this and wearing it...I'm going to be a little sad when it's done. One for the process knitter list.

I cast on for it during a family trip to Minnesota this summer.

Seeing prairie flowers in a naturalized section of bison range in  Minneopa State Park got me going on this colorway for the shawl. I am nothing if not concrete in my inspiration sources.

Then back home I got distracted by other projects and I went on (another) hat bender in the fall.  It's a seasonal addiction I guess. Keep your pumpkin spice lattes, I have hats.....

2)I had to try a couple of Striped Marl Hats from Modern  Daily Knitting Field Guide 19 .  My sister requested, specifically, a pink and brown hat. I figured, sure why not, if that's what she wants --even though I wasn't holding out much hope for that color combo when I started it.

Turns out she had a whole vision for it! Isn't this great styling? Success. 

Six or seven hats later, I impulse ordered a Plied Yarns kit to make a scrappy Trail Point Hat .

I ordered a few extra bobbins too, because a) I love that bobbins are an option and b) I love the colors and c) I love this yarn company and their dyed in Baltimore /spun in New Hampshire yarn.

 

It's a fingering weight knit,  also a super quick knit. The shape has a retro vibe.  It reminds me of ski hats that were de rigeur when I was in middle school. This one's getting a lot of 2022 head time !

 

 One of my pandemic-acquired habits is doing "treat yo'self" online shopping. And I'm not mad about it. Until 2020, I only made carefully considered  aka overthought purchases online. I can be annoyingly indecisive about retail. I mean, I draw out the decision a few beats too long, annoying others as well as myself. That indecisive! 

Not a problem any longer . This was a good one! Def more Plied Yarns projects ahead. I'm thinking a colorwork sweater like Roost or  a Shift Cowl. (am I the last to knit that one? or are you with me on the no-rush-I'll-get toit-somedaylist)

 

Bobbins. They're irresistible.
 

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: knits I am looking at

I invite you to follow my hashtag above over on Instagram, please!  I had a lightbulb go off over there last month.  (you are going to say...ummmDUH..in your best middle school voice).

1)  Westminster Shawl by Toby Roxane Barna, from her book Design Doubles. That's Toby herself, modeling. We started planning this photo shoot in 2015, shot it in 2017 and it just came out!  (the book pairs sweater and shawl designs that use the same motifs or stitch patterns but in different ways). This one is knit in bulky yarn--I'd wear it as a scarf.

I spend a majority of my work hours photographing, planning/prepping/proposing to photograph (or post production editing ) handmade knits. or related subjects.  I'm immersed in knits and images and yarns I am dying to show you but can't till they are released, months or even years later.

 2) Legwarmers in Berroco Millifiori Big. These were shot in spring 2017.  At the time, all I wanted to think about was the end of winter! But this week? So fresh and YES! 

I realized I should just post what is newly released, or whatever calls to me seasonally or by mood or style.  More often than not  I love revisiting the photographs separate from the context of the work day we shot it in. .
3) and here's my 3rd thing in knit photos: more legwarmers! I adore these bootcut shaped ones from Jill Draper Makes Stuff new collection Here. It's all in her wonderful Kingston yarn, photographed in her hometown of Kingston NY. This was shot in a combination bar & bookstore (seriously why do I not live near one???)

I'm not making the blog a priority these days  but I'm not giving up--just showing up when I can. Meanwhile I hope you'll say hi on Instagram or wherever you find me.

* I'm going to be a sheep peep helping my friend Anne Lahners at her Olympia Farm booth at the NE Fiber Festival of New England  in Massachusetts this weekend on Saturday Nov 3 (it continue son Sunday Nov 4) . Please swing by and say hi if you attend!  I am looking forward to it like crazy.