Lee Does Stuff

A few photography tips, with and without a light box…

I put together this basic photography tips photo presentation about a year ago to share with Craftstylish bloggers, and put it up on flickr so anyone could check it out, but now that there is a lightbox-along happening in the craft community, I thought it would be a good idea to share these few tips here for anyone interested! For more info about this light box making fun, check out Heather’s post on Croq Zine (with links to multiple tutorials), and also check out Heather’s photo tips for craft bloggers!

So, first of all, I built my light box using this tutorial on Strobist, using a cardboard box, a piece of white poster board, recycled white tissue paper, and packing tape. The main thing I did that the tutorial didn’t do was to cover the outside of all the tissue paper with a layer of packing tape to make it more durable – it doesn’t affect the function of the light box, and it prevents the tissue from tearing:

I normally use the light box just with natural sunlight through the window – I am lucky to have a nice camera and an awesome lens with a huge aperture (f/1.4) which means my camera lets in a ton more light than most point-and-shoots, or DSLRs with standard kit lenses. I may do a post in the future that gets more into shooting stuff, like aperture (any interest?)… I’m just telling you this now so you know that I have an advantage with my camera that you may not have, so you may need to rely more heavily on artificial light with your light box. Here are a few examples of photos I’ve taken in my box using sunlight through the window:

Now for artificial light… When the sun isn’t an option, set up a light or multiple lights around the box – just be sure to set your camera’s white balance accordingly, and do whatever editing is necessary. By placing a light at the side of the box like this, you’ll get harsh results (not good!):

So if you are using a light box with just one artificial light (mine is a super bright desk lamp from Ikea), placing it on top will give you better results:

Another option – you can add some foil to reflect the light on the side to give the affect of having another, more subtle light to the right:

I don’t have any examples for you, but using multiple lights coming at different angles is a good idea with a light box – or, using the sunlight that you do have, and filling in with some extra artificial light to make it bright enough (just be careful with white balance if using 2 different light sources – you’ll probably need some major editing).

I have some tips for shooting without a light box, too… that photo above was taken next to a window with bright sunlight, plus a secret prop:

(I learned this foil reflector idea from Jared Flood – check out his work for some really great photography using natural light and cheap tricks like this one.) If the same yarn is shot next to the same window, with the same bright sunlight and no foil reflector, this is what you get:

See how the right side is totally dark? If you have a good spot below a window, so the light is coming from above and isn’t too harsh, it can be excellent… this photo was taken on my desk, with no box or extra lights, just the window, and the camera pointing directly down at the subject:

So these were just a few tips… let me know if you want me to turn this kind of thing into a regular subject – I love to talk photography, but don’t want to bore you! Also, comment with specific photo questions if you have any, and I’ll either answer in the comments, or turn it into a whole post if it’s a major topic.

It seems fitting to end this photography post with a peek at my new stitch set, which I plan to release on Monday! (some camera nerdery – that’s the same Argus camera that I carved into a lino block, which you can see printed on a couple shirts here, and it’s the camera that took these photos.)

(update: I ended up getting everything finished earlier than expected and the cameras stitch set is ready to order now!)

New Pattern: Shapeshifter!

It’s here! Shapeshifter is an any-gauge pattern and can be worn a seemingly endless number of ways, giving it truly infinite possibility! (Many thanks to April for thinking up the fabulous name!)

It’s an asymmetrical chevron shaped flat piece, with very basic eyelet lace making buttonholes all over, along every edge and down the off-center chevron seam – depending on how you line up the buttons with the eyelets, and whether you add any extra buttons or ties, it can shift into a hood or a cowl in whatever style you can arrange it into!

I’ve been wearing my bulky orange one constantly since finishing it, and I loveloveLOVE my new handspun version!! I’d love to see someone else knit one up in a nice sock yarn – I bet it would be gorgeous!

Button size depends on gauge, since bulky eyelets are much bigger than finer gauge eyelets, of course – I chose these 3 mismatched vintage beauties to pop on the orange base:

The pattern PDF is 9 pages – 2 of those pages are just photos of different ways to wear it; the 3 pages you might want to print out are photo-less to save ink. (The pattern itself is on one single page, but there’s some simple math to figure out your numbers for your gauge, and I provided a page of help with the calculations to make it as easy as possible.)

There’s a page on making a hood, either by adding extra buttons or tying up the hood seam. Even with the hood, there are lots of different ways you can position the buttons for the cowl part, for a tighter, warmer fit, or with looser wrapping, etc.

I didn’t attempt explaining how to wear it all the different cowl ways, because the way I usually position it is to get in front of a mirror and just start wrapping it and buttoning it until I like how it looks. I often can’t recreate a position (like this one – I love how it looks here and I couldn’t recreate it for the photoshoot!) so there’s no way I could explain to you… But, my advice, just play around with different positions, twisting and looping in different directions, and you’ll find methods you like.

For a little design backround… the original idea developed off of this smaller piece I made a couple years ago (on ravelry) – it was knit at a super loose gauge so that the fabric was all buttonholes, and I loved how it could be worn so many different ways. It’s a silly little piece, but the asymmetrical chevron and buttonhole abundance were a great combination! I made the prototype (ravelry) a couple months ago (in Imperial Stock Ranch’s Lopi bulky wool), perfected the eyelet pattern, and adjusted it to turn it into an any-gauge pattern!

You can grab the pattern for $4 on the leethal page, or on ravelry – I can’t wait to start seeing your versions!!

March 3rd – 9th photos

I’m so sorry to have blogged nothing between 2 photo-of-the-day posts a week apart, I’m trying hard to give you more value, really I am! (speaking of Value, I’m also trying to spend a bit of time in Diane’s free online class on the subject, today only, be sure to check it out!) The last week has been totally nuts – we put an offer on a house yesterday!! Plus, the club was mailed out yesterday, plus there’s another exciting thing happening today which I’ll probably be telling you about soon, plus I’m trying so hard to get this cowl/hood pattern out this week (it’s looking like either Friday or Monday now)… that’s a lot of plusses, sigh…

So, yeah, excuses, but things should be slowing down a wee bit starting tomorrow, and I have some fun things planned… for now, photos! I’ve spent a lot of time with house stuff – checking out the neighborhood, etc to decide for sure if we want it – but that’s not so photographable, so here’s my last week in photos…

3rd – Knitting away on my handspun sample of the upcoming pattern, with my own self-striping single, mostly BFL wool, mostly hand-dyed by me:

4th + 5th – Dyed club recycled yarn, and spun tons of recycled club yarn, while watching a bunch of movies on netflix instant (also spent much time knitting up ideas for the club designs):

6th – This day we got serious thinking about the house, checked out the neighborhood at night, then went to Dots for tofu burritos, fries, beer, and house-talking… fitting for us because Dots is where we talked about moving to Portland in the first place 3 years ago:

7th + 8th – Finished up the March club these days, making and sorting everything, then finishing and packaging, during which I consumed lots of coffee (as always) and after which I worked on getting my studio cleaned up:

9th – And coming around full circle, last night I got back to knitting the pattern sample, at Radio Room with friends, beer, and trivia:

February 21st – March 2nd photos

Lots of knitting with orange in this group! I promise, I won’t use orange yarn again for awhile! (at least, like, a few weeks…) Oh and a quick hello to any new followers who came over from Craft or One Pretty Thing for my dyeing tutorial! I am planning more tutorials for the near future, so I hope you stick around!

21st + 22nd – these 2 days were spent finishing the Twisted Ankles pattern; knitting, knitting, finishing, buttons, and more knitting (Did you know I’m a very slow knitter? It’s true. A pair of these leg warmers would take a fast knitter one day, no problem):

23rd – ate at Los Gorditos before trivia – yum so good!

24th – I spun this day! Whoa! For fun, for me, from some Spunky Eclectic dyed Shetland! These singles were plied into an awesome big, bulky, squishy yarn:

26th + 27th – worked lots on the computer these days, not photogenic, but I did a bit of knitting too (on this!)… and I went to the I Heart Art event on Friday (where that name tag came from – I didn’t know what to write for what I heart, then I felt bad for not writing anything, oh well):

28th – more computer work this day, so I took a photo celebrating my love of Trader Joe’s – have you tried their new, weird Cucumber Wontons (which I just found out are vegan)? Not super great, but I like weird food… and who doesn’t love $2.99 per 6-pack decent tasting beer?

25th + March 1st – forgot to take a photo-of-the-day! Fortunately, I had taken this extremely silly phone picture of my kitty being very distinguished, when I had my phone in my pocket and I knew if I went to get my real camera she would move… and the other terrible quality photo is from when Pete took me out for a silly dinner at a very un-Portlandy restaurant in the Beaverton mall (long story why) and I took this point-and-shoot shot of my very yummy stuffed mushrooms:

2nd – spent a chunk of this day working on my second example of my upcoming pattern, with this handspun! Love knitting with handspun, especially self-striping – so fun to see how it works up!

A quick thank you to all of you who’ve taken that survey – I’ve gotten way more responses than I’d expected, and some really excellent, helpful feedback! Thank you so much for helping me out during this time of planning and analyzing, and it’s fantastic to know that there are so many of you out there who like my weirdo sense of style and design!

Some reflection, a survey, and a design preview for you!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my business, with some things coinciding and pushing me to get more organized and really figure out what I should be focusing on. Doing creative things for a living is damn hard sometimes, and I’ve felt a little lost for the last few days.

I want to just do what I love, design things I’m passionate about, blog tons of free tutorials and other fun stuff, and not worry about money at all, but alas… rent does need to be paid, we are searching for a house, and though I’m in no financial state to even think about contributing to the down payment, my monthly half will likely go above what it is for this supercheap apartment where we currently live.

I have absolutely no plans to change what I do, change this blog or my website in any drastic kind of way, and I will continue to design and make things I’m into, even though I know they’re not the kinds of things that will appeal to the bulk of mainstream knitters or buyers… sigh, that’s just how I roll.

But, I am trying to figure out just what I should be putting at the top of my priority list, that kind of thing. I’m currently working on 4 different concrete knit designs (1 free, by the way), plus several more ideas floating around in my head, and I have big plans for a freaking awesome ebook, which I want to get started on as soon as possible! And then there’s the connect-the-dots stitch sets, which I absolutely love designing, but are not exactly booming with sales, so, sadly, it’s not practical for me to devote tons of time there. I know if I did some kind of big makeover to the packaging/branding/etc, they might attract a wider audience, but hey, I like using recycled envelopes, and I like them having a handmade feel, because, you know, they are handmade!

That’s the problem for so many of us creative professionals… the conflict of staying true to who we are, continuing to do what we love and love what we’re doing, with that damn need to pay the bills messing it all up. I learned all about business planning, and also about google docs, the other night at Trillium, from super awesome superPhoebe, which is part of where all this business analysis came from…

So, I’ve created a survey with google docs to try to help me get a better grasp of who you are, my dear readers, what you like, what you want, and how I might want to steer what I do in that direction. It’s a short survey, and it’s totally anonymous and every question is optional – I really so much appreciate any feedback you can give! ThankYouThankYouThankYou!

Now another thing… some topics discussed at that same meeting, and also reading Ysolda’s latest post, about sharing design process, got me thinking… if I’m designing something to self-publish, there’s no reason to keep it a secret, so why not show you a first version prototype of a design that I’m working on? So this is one of the designs I’m currently knitting up – while knitting this one pictured, I changed some design details as I knit, since it was just to test out the shape, and then I frogged it. I’m working up another similarly sized one now, and I’m planning on making it an any-gauge pattern, so I’ve spun up a skein of self-striping specifically to make it into another one of these bad boys!

It’s kinda bonkers, but I love it! It’s super transformable – can be worn a bunch of different ways – and by adding more buttons it could be even more so! I had been thinking about trying to release it next week, like in a few days, but it would probably be Fridayish at the soonest, and now I’m wondering whether I should move my to-do list around and put this design off till later. So, part of the reason I’m showing you here it to ask, whaddya think? Do you want the pattern asap, while there’s still a little winter weather left?

February leethal quick knits club!

Oh first of all, there’s only a few more days to sign up for the March club – and I’m really excited about March, it’s gonna be a fun one!! Ok now for February…

There’s everything above, but I’ll start with the yarn… The 10 yards of recycled spun yarn is called Night Is The Day Turned Inside Out, and my color choices are totally inspired by Weaverknits’ love of Grellow! It’s a 100% cotton recycled sweater yarn, in 2 shades of grey, wrapped in 3 threads – thin dark grey and variegated purple, and thick yellow/white/blue variegated:

And the 15 yards of dyed recycled yarn came from a reclaimed hand-knit sweater, so the fiber content is a mystery, but it’s some kind of wool or wool blend, dyed short striping sections of dark purpley red, blue, and grey-green, over the grey base. It’s called Whatever Gets You Thru The Night:

The 2 patterns this month were both cuffs, both meant to be as gender-nonspecific as possible – Argyle Cuff and Bolt. The theme this month was a little weird – I called it “His or Hers” and it’s loosely inspired by Valentine’s Day. I got thinking about the 14th… how it means really different things to different people, depending on relationship status, etc… so I decided to put together a kit that can be used for all different purposes or people. So, the point is, either (or both) cuff could have been a V-day gift, or just an any-day gift, or not a gift at all…..

Bolt ties around the wrist, and the dyed yarn came with 2 buttons to use for argyle cuff closure. The argyle knit up in a solid would pop more, as April shows in her ravelry project!

Then the extra goodies were a greeting card, and a bunch of card making and decorating materials – so they could have all been turned into Valentines, or any kind of greeting cards, or silly works of art! Check out my awesome sticker-covered card:

The non-specific greeting cards are reclaimed cards, cut to fit in the (reclaimed) envelopes, then made over with photos I took (either the dinosaur or the horse). Then I included a 2-sided crayon, and 10 stickers inside the envelope. Everyone got a set of fish stickers, and 6 foam stickers – 2 each of farm animals, sealife, and dinosaurs (awesome foam stickers from Dollar Tree)! And then there were some strips of cool patterned paper (blogged back here), which could either be made into little mini-cards (or Valentines like mine), or could be cut into shapes to embellish the greeting card, or whatever else. Thanks to Scrap, my local community reuse shop, for all these great cards, envelopes, and paper tags!

So that was February – weird disjointed theme, I know, but hopefully everyone had fun with it all! March’s theme is more cohesive, I think it’s gonna be rad! (See more quick knits club stuff and info here!)

Tutorial: Crock Pot Yarn Dyeing!

You may not even know about these, but way back at the beginning of this blog, almost 3 years ago, I did a couple of kool-aid yarn dyeing tutorials. They were specifically how-tos for getting particular kinds of variegation (as opposed to dyeing basics) – part 1 being three blending colors, part 2 longer stripes of random-order solids. (I’ve just gone back and edited these old posts a little, changing some bad advice I’d given and some minor details, but not anything major.)

So, after 3 years and countless skeins of dyeing experience have now passed, I want to do a couple of new dyeing tutorials for you! (For the basics of dyeing, if you’re new to it, see the link list in my first tutorial, since this post is only meant for this particular variegation method, not for kool-aid dyeing in general.)

I recently dyed up a skein of bulky yarn (Imperial Stock Ranch Lopi) with 5 different colors in my crock pot, for a spotty, kettle dyed kind of look, as you can see above. Dyeing in a crock pot is different from dyeing in a pot on the stove because the water is more still, so the dye tends to stick to the yarn where it falls more, and colors tend to blend together less. This makes a variegated yarn with more defined colors, instead of just a few colors which are blended together. My specific flavors used were: Lemon Lime, Orange, Strawberry, Berry Blue, and Lemonade.

To get this look, you’ll need a crock pot (I got mine at my local Goodwill outlet for around $5), wool yarn (or a blend with other animal fibers like alpaca, angora, cashmere – a small percentage, like 15% or less, of something man made, like nylon or rayon, would be ok) in hank form, several colors of kool-aid, a large spoon, a colander, and vinegar is optional since kool-aid already has acid, but I usually use a little anyway because I feel like it might help with colorfastness.

So, start by filling the crock pot with water (and a little vinegar if you want) and submerging the yarn in there. Let it soak a bit, then turn on the heat and put the lid on – the yarn should soak for at least 15 minutes or so (longer is fine) before dyeing, and the lid should fog up to show that it’s hot. (My vintage pot only has two settings – medium and high – so I usually use medium and it works well.)

Now you can add your first colors – this is all up to you, but I’ll just tell you exactly how I made this particular yarn. First, I covered one half of the yarn in the pot with orange, and the other half with green (lemon lime), sprinkled directly from the packet into the pot. Orange and green are complimentary colors (edit: no they’re not! what was I thinking?! but they don’t always blend well, which I what I meant), which means you need to be careful about putting them together, but it doesn’t have to be avoided completely – green with some orange makes an olive green color, and orange with a little green makes a darker orange. So, I tried not to overlap them at all on purpose, but I knew that if they bled into each other a little, it would be fine.

Cover with the lid and let it sit until the dye fully absorbs into the yarn, so the water looks clear and the yarn is colored. Now use your spoon to turn the yarn over, so all the undyed yarn from the bottom is now on top. I tried to keep it arranged the way it was, just flipped, so that the bottom layer stayed orange on one side and green on the other side. I poured blue on the half that had green below, and red on the side that had orange below. This was because green and blue blend well, as do red and orange (blue+orange or red+green, not so much) and the top colors were likely to do some blending with the bottom colors. Red and blue were chosen to add next to each other for the same reason, to make some purple when they touch and blend.

Cover and let the dye absorb again, then use your spoon to turn the yarn around and search for white spots. I used my last color, yellow (lemonade), which would blend well with all of the other colors, especially since lemonade kool-aid is really light and subtle, to fill in any white spots I could find. When I found white, I’d arrange the yarn with the spoon so as much white as possible was on top, sprinkle on some lemonade, and cover to let it dye. Then I kept repeating the white investigation and dyeing until the yellow packet was all used up. (As you can see, the powder sits on the water surface a little before sinking to the yarn – if it doesn’t sink down right away, you can push it down with the spoon, but this might mix the colors more than you want.)

Once the dyeing is complete, turn off the heat, and let it sit in the water to cool for awhile (until cooled to room temperature is best, but not totally necessary). Now scoop the skein out with the spoon, into the colander in the sink, and let it cool all the way to room temperature there. Rinse a bit, with water of the same temperature, and squeeze the water out as much as you can, without twisting. Roll up in a towel to dry more, shake it out, then hang to dry (in the shower, or on a hanger in a doorway, or on a coat rack, etc) overnight or until totally dry. Ball up and knit!

A note about my yarn, and the colors I used… red bleeds like crazy, way more than any other color, so even though I used exactly equal amounts of the 5 colors, the red really took over the skein. (The photo below shows how much red there is.) So, if you are using the same (or similar) colors as me, and want more even variegation of the colors, I think it would be wise to use about half a packet of red instead of a whole packet.

But, that said, I still love this yarn, and knitting with hand-dyed variegated yarn (that you dyed yourself!) is unbelievably fun and satisfying, an experience I think every knitter should try! With yarn like this, every stitch is different from the last!

Oh yeah, I should show you, this is the same method I used to dye these yarns (and more):

Fun! Yay! And I’d love to see your yarns dyed using this how-to! (you could link to photos in the comments, or add them to the leethal flickr group!)

New Pattern: Twisted Ankles!

Want to knit some legwarmers?!

My newest design, Twisted Ankles is squishy, bulky, cabley yumminess – with the cables twisting around each other, then bursting off the garter stitch base to become buttonhole straps, wrapping around the backs of your legs…

There’s a smaller size, which are like ankle warmers (the blue/green and white examples) and a taller size (the orange example) – I was so eager to get this pattern out (I’d planned to release it last week and wasn’t able to), and I decided pretty last minute that I wanted to knit up a taller size example (which I just finished this morning), so the orange version photos are pre-blocking, but you get the idea!

For a pair, you need about a skein (130-160 yards) of bulky yarn (or super bulky, depending on how the brand labels it) and 8 fun buttons of your choice! See the pattern page, or ravelry, for other details, or to buy the 11 page pdf for $4.99 – it includes full written patterns for each leg, and charts for each (my first cable charts!).

Side note – don’t you love these natural wood+bark buttons I picked out at Twisted?! I’d planned to choose something cheap, but splurged a little on these because they just looked so fabulous against the orange. By the way, the orange yarn is Brown Sheep bulky Lanaloft (an awesome bday gift from my buddy Star – who knows me oh-so-well), which I am completely in love with!! I am so happy that my most favorite local yarn store started carrying Brown Sheep – yumyumyum so woolly and smooth and squishy! (you may be seeing a project in the worsted soon!)

So yeah, back to the pattern! I had it test knit by 6 fabulous knitters, and am ever so grateful – a few of them sent along some photos of their finished knits!

Above are Line‘s pair, in Copenhagen! She used Lammy Yarns Fjord Solid – 135.7 yards (124.1m); US 13 / 9.0 mm needles – and they look so warm with those boots in that snowy Denmark setting! Thanks for all the great photos, Line!

These are Anna’s – I love the pink cables contrasting against the worn chucks, so comfy looking! The yarn here is Cascade Eco+ held doubled.

And Amber‘s 2-toned pair – if you run out of yarn like she did, it’ll look cool to just switch to a new color for a chunk – yay asymmetry! These are Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick in Sky Blue, with size US 13 needles.

Anyone want to see some design process background stuff?

One morning, I brainstormed up the concept of buttoning legwarmers with cables that twist around and become buttonhole straps, while still half-asleep, and sketched it out right away before I forgot. I knit up the idea and it turned out pretty much exactly like the sketch, but I didn’t like it – it was too small, the cables weren’t nearly squishy enough, and it was basically boring looking, to me…

So I updated the design, with the same basic concept, but fixing those problems, making the cables bigger and squishier, etc. There were some minor problems with that one, but the final design stayed pretty close – in the photo below, the left one is that second version, and the right one is the final pattern… also, the left one is blocked and the right one is not yet, which, as you can see, makes a difference for sure:

Once I figured out the final pattern, I knit up a pair with some hand-dyed yarn (natural Imperial Stock Ranch Lopi base). The pattern was final and I loved it, but I couldn’t say the same for my dyed yarn…

So, I took off the buttons and stuck the knit up pieces back into the dye pot, overdyeing them much darker, then sewed the buttons back on and tah dah!

My finished example was complete! Hope you like them!

February 1st – 20th photos

Ok these have really built up over the last few weeks… oops… and I’m hard at work trying to finish up this pattern, so I’ll keep the captions semi-brief… Pete’s vacation meant lots of eating out (we don’t normally eat out this much!) and fun times, yay!

2nd – had dinner at the best sandwich shop in the world – East Side Deli (that is some amazing fake meat, by the way):

1st + 5th – Feb 1st was the first day I forgot to shoot my photo of the day, and didn’t have any other photos taken that day to make do, so the photo of my pants in the bathtub was taken the next morning to show what happened that night – Banzo’s clumsiness landed a glass of beer in my lap, and all over the floor, chair, etc (but thankfully not on my computer!). So my pants were drying in the tub overnight to avoid getting beer on my laundry… And then I spent the 5th designing quick knits club patterns:

3rd + 4th – spinning club yarn; dye day!

6th + 8th – club sorting and packaging… always takes so much longer than I expect it to:

7th – the first day of Pete’s stay-home vacation, this day was all about coffee, knitting, beer, and this crazy spicy chocolate he gave me:

9th + 10th – our 5 year anniversary dinner was mac n cheese at Hedge House (yumm… and breakfast was Juniors, also yummmm); I played these drums and it was awesome:

11th – my birthday breakfast was this amazing Farm Fusion waffle at the Waffle Window (then we went downtown to the art museum, Powell’s, dinner at Paradox, and a movie at the Avalon – super fun birthday!):

12th – did some dyeing a couple days before, then balled it up into this massive bulky ball:

13th – happy hour at Laurelwood, where we ate superyummy food and played games:

14th – decided to play tourists in our own city this day and wandered all over a part of town we’d never explored before – Nob Hill, way over on the other side of the river! (that’s a joke – it’s about a 10 minute drive) Can’t say we’re a fan of the neighborhood, but we are definitely fans of playing tourist and exploring new spots! I’m also a fan of these pigs:

15th + 16th – tried out a new place for breakfast – Sweetness – and will definitely be going back! Thanks to Groupon (bought a $20 coupon for $10), we got some awesome scrambles, 2 extra muffins to go, and this german chocolate cupcake… the next day was spent building the club patterns ebook:

17th – our only real trip during Pete’s vacation, this day was spent in Olympia! I think our favorite part of the day was Old School Pizzeria – rad place altogether, but we were blown away with awesomeness when we discovered they could add roasted potatoes as a topping to our slices!

18th + 19th – drove around looking at houses (now that we are officially pre-approved for a loan, and have a real estate agent!); made pom poms with bulky hand-dyed yarn for a secret project:

20th – spent the afternoon at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden (across the street from Reed) for a photoshoot (also for a secret project) and got honked at by tons of geese, and watched them hissing at a dog and saw their crazy long mammal-like tongues! (check out these pictures Pete took if you don’t believe me.) It was an amazing park! I’ll definitely be going back when I’m in need of nature photo backgrounds, or just want to hang out with a ton of ducks and geese and water and flowers and trees…..

New mini-ebook: First 4 months of Club Patterns!

Oh goodness, I have not been able to keep up with everything while Pete’s on vacation! I’ve been working on deadline-y projects whenever I can squeeze it in, and I’ve spent the last many days (week? I don’t even know) working on this project I’m about to announce, bit by bit, but I’ve been completely detached from things like twitter and blog world… and I am weeks behind now on posting photos-a-day, though I’ve still been taking them, so you can expect 3 weeks worth of photos this weekend!

Ok so, the one thing I have finished – the first 4 months of leethal quick knits club patterns are now available in a mini-ebook! Each month’s pattern pair can be purchased alone, but it’s a much better deal to get the whole set – 8 patterns, plus extras (like the pencil cover), in a 20 page pdf for $5.99, versus 2 patterns from an individual month for $2.99. But that way, if you really just want one pattern, you can get it for half the price of the whole set.

The ebook is all up on ravelry too, and all the patterns are now on my quick knits patterns page, where you’ll find more photos of each pattern.

Not much else to say about this, since the patterns have all already been released to club members and blogged about…

A couple fun quick things… I’ve been spending some time in Pete’s studio playing around with making music! So much fun! Us and a couple musical buddies (Star and Grant! Yay!) have created a couple of songs (I’m the only non-musician, so I’m either on super-simple drums or xylophone) and then Pete and I made a song by ourselves yesterday. Nothing to put out to the public (yet?) but I just wanted to tell you because it’s been such a fun time – yay music!

Lastly, I have another pattern I’m super excited about that I had been hoping to release this week, but it’s getting bumped to next week because of life… but hey, since I’m just self-publishing it, it doesn’t have to be super secret! Here’s a peek for you!