Moving & the Knitting Groove

It's amazing how moving to our new home has gotten me back into the knitting groove. I think it has to do in part with the fact that I have a new studio space to work in, so my yarn no longer lives in boxes and laundry baskets.

I also think it has to do with the house itself. We have bought ourselves an atomic ranch. This house looks like it could be on the set of Mad Men. We freaking love it. Michael and I have always loved mid-century/Danish modern style, especially the woodworking, and now we have the house to match. We spend our time hunting used furniture places for more pieces. Here's our living room, which is still in progress. Can you say "clerestory"? Love it.

Yesterday we found this handmade drop-leaf walnut table from the 1960s. Tapered-legs. Smooth joins. This thing is awesome. Michael took one leaf off (and I carefully wrapped it in an old quilt to store it) and he's using it as his desk.

So, the home design thing is definitely spurring the creativity.

I also found a local knitting meetup that gets together twice a month. If I can manage to keep my eyes open past 8pm, that'll be a lot of fun, too.

Lastly, I wandered into my new local yarn shop. Mostly I just touched everything. (Isn't that what LYSs are for?!?) and then bought all the yarn from the oddballs basket. Here's the haul:

I'm particularly intrigued by this fingering-weight mercerized cotton. Hmm.

--Katie Rose

Adrian's Lines

Adrian (my elder son)'s second-favorite thing to do, after building drag-racers with Legos* (and he is extraordinarily good at building drag-racers with Legos) is lining things up. Anything. He just wants to line it up.

When he woke from his nap yesterday (early. after 30 minutes. like, can we even call that a nap?), he came down and joined me in my (new!) studio. He hadn't seen the studio since it had become all snazzy. He asked if he could play with the yarn. I said, Of course. He started touching skeins and moving them around and smooshing them together.

And then, predictably, he started lining them up.

First, though, I had to talk him out of unwinding everything. I explained, using 3-year-old logic, that if you unwind the ball, it will cease to BE a ball. He got it.

I'm not sure how he decides which colors or sizes go together in his lines of things. But he always looks very serious when he is doing it.

He didn't even notice that I was taking his picture. Usually I get out the camera and he dives under the couch. I haven't put the lines of yarn-balls away yet. They're too cute. 

--Katie Rose

*I just want to note that, Jordynn, as a Canadian, insists that the plural of "Lego" is—wait for it—"Lego." Like "sheep" and "sheep." I think that's nuts. What kid wants some "Lego"? I think, though, she might be technically correct. So I'm putting a footnote here to acknowledge her technical correctness.

The New Studio, and Zorro

Like most professors, even non-knitty ones, I do a lot of work from home. My studio serves as both a writing sanctuary and a creative space for fiber arts. I have always really liked having all of my creative work in one space together. The challenge, of course, is getting the different materials to coexist nicely.

We moved at the beginning of December (more on that in another post), and the new house has a great studio space. It's a large room in the walk-out basement. I claimed it as my own as soon as I saw it. Last night, to celebrate New Year's (and because we are LAME), my husband and I finally got the furniture into the space and cleaned it up. (Thank you, husband!)

Here's a short photo-tour. First, the view when you first walk in:

That's a small kitchenette to the left, complete with 1965-vintage stove for dyeing wool. Sweet! (Love the avocado green, by the way.)

Here's the view from the other end of the studio. This is more of the "knitty" end. You can see that I have two desks. One is more of a "serious" desk, with my second monitor and a bunch of supplies. This secondary desk only has a Tiffany lamp on it, and it sits next to a big window. This one is for those moments when I need to get away from the business on my other desk or for when I have a friend come over to work.

Now, the yarn! The yarn! I still keep it in the dollar-store wire racks because I can't find anything I like better. (I use zip-ties to keep the shelves intact.) 

Ain't nothing better than a stash. The purple bins in the background are filled with raw wool and roving. Which leads me too...

My carding station! Michael had some furniture stored at his warehouse (he has a very interesting job that requires a very interesting, and very large, warehouse. Go here: atlasstageworks.com). One piece was a table he made when he was younger (as in, 16 or so) that mounted on his great-grandmother's sewing table base. It weighs a ton, so it is perfect for mounting the drum carder on. Of course, I had to test the carder, so I made that butter-licious roving you see there while Michael watched. 

Next, there's the antique cabinet that looks like it's straight out of Zorro. In it, I've stored WIPs, FOs, sewing projects, and mending. I've never had such a nice-looking place to store stuff that essentially is ugly to look at. The top drawer is great, too—it's holding odds and ends. 

Below is a picture of Promenade that you can see through the metal fixtures of the furniture.

The top of the Zorro unit is covered in the contents of my knitting bag, contents that desperately need to be organized. First, there's my aptly named fun-fun-fun* bag. I got this in Tokyo and have used it to hold knitting notions ever since. But it always gets full of the wrong things and empty of the things I need most. 

Then there's the never-ending challenge of figuring out how to store one's interchangeable needle collection(s). I have Denise, Bamboo, AND Harmony (from Knit Picks). I tried this gigantic Della Q bag but it isn't doing it for me. Ideas, anyone?? 

And then there's the regular circulars, which inevitable turn into this rat's nest.

But it's fun to discover old sketches of knit designs. This one looks interesting. Maybe I'll try it out now that I've found it again. It's dated from last June. Where did the time go?

It's time to reassemble the wheel. (See my Beech Tree forest out the window? Yes.)

And I found this cross-stitch piece done by my mother-in-law Mary inside the Zorro cabinet, because the cabinet used to be hers. I'll keep it on the mantlepiece.

Lest we forget, this is also a room for writing. My journals have officially filled up an entire shelf on my bookshelf. They'll be moving on to shelf two when I finish this next volume. Crazy.

And a little reminder about why I'm here, for those times when I get discouraged. 

Does anyone else have links to virtual tours of their studios? I saw pictures of Ysolda Teague's once, and that was jealousy-inducing. Indeed, it looks like she's gone and published pictures of it again. Go check it out, and be jealous, too.

--Katie Rose

Baby Surprise Surprise

My husband, Michael, put my Handspun Surprise on Edward (my younger son) to take him to get some emergency groceries this morning.

[Emergency groceries = eggs, bananas, eggnog. Clearly, the eggnog.]

When they returned, Michael sent Edward running into the bedroom to wake me up. It was, as always, the cutest thing.

He's wearing the Baby Surprise Jacket (a classic Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern for those of you who are new to the pattern) over his footsie pajamas. So, I got out of bed and chased him around with the camera.

I knit this particular jacket for Adrian (my older son) a few years ago out of some icelandic wool that I washed/dyed/carded/spun. Clearly, I was still pregnant at the time, because no woman with an infant would have had time for that. I used a store-bought, off-white worsted-weight wool as a contrasting color. (Michael couldn't be bothered to button up every little button I sewed on the sweater. O, the humanity.)

You almost can see, as Edward darts across the house (I need my high-end sports camera to catch this kid in action), where the shoulder seams meet the front. If you haven't tried this "magical" pattern before, it's way worth it.

Well, hello there, Edward. Merry Christmas.

- Katie Rose

Studio Tools

My family and I relocated from Durham to Chapel Hill (10 miles that feels like 1000). More on that later, but for now I wanted to share a serendipity that occurred when I was unpacking my studio:

My husband is still outfitting his workshop, and so I permitted him to store two saws on the floor of my studio. I just unpacked my spinning wheel and drum carder and set them on the floor to break down the boxes.

When I returned to the room, the sun poured through the window, illuminating the table saw and mitre saw, and my tools as well. It seemed such a nice meeting of old-fashioned and modern. Of two different ways of working with your hands.

On another note: Much love and sadness and condolences for the families who lost children and other loved ones in Connecticut today.

- Katie Rose

Photographing Knits

Hello readers!

I received a message via Ravelry.com about photographing knits. With the writer's permission, I'm reposting the message here:

Hello,
i read your article about photographing knits on your blog and wanted to ask you a question.
i am thinking of starting a blog soon and want to take better pictures of my work. problem is i have never really liked posing for photographs and don't wish to subject others to the same, hence no camera.
i was wondering if my phone would work? it has a 5 MP camera with resolution of 2592x1944 pixels.
Thank you

The knitter poses a few important questions. I'll rephrase them here so I can answer them all.

(1) First, she talks about a common concern that many knitters share--modeling their own knits on the internet. For a variety of reasons, folks just don't want images of themselves online. 

(2) Second, this would-be blogger doesn't own a fancy camera, which might pose a challenge as well.

(3) Third, she would like to know how to use the phone on her camera to take good pictures for her blog. 

Okay! We can handle all of these challenges. Let's get to it.

(1) Modeling Knits

I totally understand that you might not want to model your own knits on the internet. I can also understand that you might not want to ask other people to model them for you. So what do you do?

Here are some ideas:

• My favorite: Buy a dress-form in your size. A dress-form is a great thing for a knitter to have anyways, not just for modeling knits. You can use it for blocking, for construction, for measuring, etc. etc. But you can also use it to display your knits when you want to photograph them. Find a vintage one at a thrift shop or buy a new one from a sewing shop (but these can be pricey).
• Ask your friends to model, even if you think they might say no--you'll be surprised! Some people love having their pictures taken. My little sister modeled my knits for me when I was pregnant. She loved doing it! I was completely surprised because she's not a knitter and wasn't a part of the knit-blog community in any way--but she was happy to help me out. Here she is modeling my Liliane sweater coat, for example. 

(2) What Kind of Camera?

I wrote an earlier post in which I discussed the best type of camera for taking pictures of knits. If you want to learn more about the technical aspects of cameras and photographing knits, hop over to that post.

(3) Using the Cell Phone Camera

These days, cell phones come with great cameras. Here are a couple ideas to keep in mind when taking pictures using your cell phone camera.

• Angles are your friend. Shoot your knits up-close and at steep angles to maximize your cell phone camera's lens. Below is a photograph of Chopin that I took at a steep angle to show you what I'm talking about. 

• Use a filter app. Instagram is my favorite--it's an app that allows you to apply fun filters to your photographs to enhance images. Plain-Jane photographs can become super-fun when taken with Instagram. Below one I just took of my son wearing a hat I knit for him. I used Instagram to blur the background and to enhance the contrast of the photo. Instagram also added the black border.

And that's my advice on photographing knits for today. I'm sure I'll think of more. If you have other questions, feel free to message me on Ravelry and I'll answer your questions here. 

- Katie Rose

Pets Love Knitting

The life of a Knitty Professor wouldn't be complete without pets. I've recently acquired two new friends. And they both love knitting!

Like any good kitty, Leo (our Siberian Forest Cat) can't resist playing with a ball of yarn:

And Cooper (our minitaure poodle) just likes to snuggle up to some warm and cozy knitting:

Of course, it is hard to get any actual knitting done with two energetic pets... who happen to be hyper just around the time I usually sit down to knit in the evening. But the cuteness is worth it.