I was struggling with an idea for this week’s challenge. i have an idea in my mind, but the lighting hasn’t been right for it and I was sort of stuck. Then today, I borrowed from the library a book on macro shots, and started wondering about all the body parts that might make cool up close shots. Of all the parts I could think of that it would be appropriate to post on the internet, here’s one of my favorites.
After my first attempt at knitting and the creation of The Perfect Thing, you might have thought that I would just call that my masterpiece and move on to other more important things. Like, you know, sitting around watching HGTV on the cable. But no! I was determined to top even that level of beauty and creativity and I set out to create something that actually involved (gasp!) planning ahead. And here we have knitting project number two: (It’s a pillow!)
It doesn’t totally come through in the internet versions, but there is a square of vertical stripes in the middle of all the horizontal stripes. I think it’s kinda nifty. I actually had to count stitches! I suppose those who are naturally gifted at knitting don’t find it challenging to count to 10 and then to 20 and then to 10 again, but us “creative types” struggle with math, you know?
And then, all jacked up with the success of creating an actual functioning pillow (look at that honey! you could lay your head right down on that thing and have a nap and wake up with a funny square knitting pattern right on the side of your face and I think that means that it is a pillow!), I decided to tackle the dreaded circular needles. Not only are circular needles sort of intimidating in themselves like some sort of assassin’s tool, if you are making anything that’s going to decrease in width (like a hat or socks or mittens) you will at some point have to switch to double-pointed needles, which looks very scary in all the pictures because it seems like you’re supposed to use 5 different needles, each of them with two ends and, I don’t know if y’all have noticed, but I ONLY HAVE TWO HANDS! But it turns out that the circular needles are even easier to use than straight ones, and although you do have to use 5 double-pointed needles at the end, you only use two at a time and ignore the others. If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s ignoring stuff, so that worked out just fine for me and I made this lovely hat.
Obviously, there are a few quirks to work out (next time I will start with fewer cast-on stitches and work further before I start decreasing…and of course, there’s that whole tension issue), but I was just excited that it was identifiable as a hat rather than something you would make with string and a garrote.
There’s a local non-profit organization called GRuB that I’ve volunteered with off and on for the last year or so. They have a really cool circular program where they recruit at-risk high school students, pay them to work in the organic garden learning to make raised beds and grow organic fruits and vegetables, and have these students build raised beds for local low-income families so that low-income families in Thurston County can raise much of their own healthy produce. There are so many really cool things about this project that it’s hard to describe them all, so you should just go check out their website if you’re interested.
I just show up for the occasional letter-folding party, and this time of year is when they do the big seed-sorting party. They provide a bag of seeds to each family for whom they build a raised bed garden. Various seed companies donate these huge boxes of seeds, and they need to be sorted out and packaged for each family. It takes a couple hours, and after all the packages are sorted there are miscellaneous seed packets left over that the volunteers are allowed to divy up. I went and helped out today, expecting to get a couple packets of seeds, maybe some radishes, a little lettuce, a few carrots maybe. I had no idea how big an operation it was, and here is what I came home with. You can click for a really big picture where you can identify what most of the packets are.
I’m a little overwhelmed by it all, but totally excited. I don’t think I’ll need to buy any seeds at all for the new house garden. In fact, I don’t know where I’m going to put everything. In particular, there were boxes and boxes of flowers and I may have got carried away with all the variety that I picked. I also came home with about 15 packets of lettuce seed, but I think I’ll actually be able to use that, since you can grow it pretty close to year-round around here, and Preston and I try to eat a lot of salad. If we had unlimited access to it, we’d probably go through a head of lettuce every two or three days. I also got some crazy stuff that I don’t even know what it is, like kohlrabi and salad burnet. Because, did I mention, it was all free!
Now I have some serious garden planning to work on, in order to figure out when everything needs to be started, and how much sun it wants, and how I’m going to fit it all in. And of course, I don’t want to actually start any of the indoor starts until after we move, and I don’t want to get too invested in planning the garden until we actually close on the new place. I’m trying to keep in mind that we don’t have the house yet, and I shouldn’t get my heart too set on it. But even if we don’t get the new house, there is actually a really large community garden space at this apartment complex we are in now. It’s totally unused now, so even if we decided to stay here for a few months more, I’d start the spring crops here. In any case, I have a lot of research (when the hell are you supposed to plant kohlrabi??) and planning to do.
It seems like you can’t really have a month of black-n-white self portrait without trying a candle-lit shot. I think my face kinda looks like the Man In The Moon at this angle. I’ve always heard that there’s a woman in the moon also, but I’ve never been able to see her, even when people try to point out the details. Apparently, you can see her whole body and she’s wearing a flowing dress or has long flowing hair or something. I think you’re required to be able to see her if you want to be a good pagan. And then you could come up with all sorts of symbolism with this picture about me being the woman in the moon looking down on the flame of one soul burning brightly on the earth. But whatever. I never claimed to be a good pagan.
I just came across this Google program that will translate any page into Gangsta-speak for you. I almost like my blog better written in gangsta. Check it out! Particularly scroll down to the general update from a few days ago. haha…the “bitchez in my family”! I think I should change the essay’s official title to the gangsta version.
Me: I overheard this shop owner talking to a friend about how a particular woman had been called to come into the shop so that the shop owner could pray for the woman’s son, who had leukemia.
Preston: Wow, what delusions of grandeur, to think that you have the direct line to God’s ear. That your prayers will be the ones that cure a boy’s cancer.
Me: She probably didn’t see herself as all that special; anyone can have the same power. All you have to do is “accept-Jesus-Christ-as-your-Lord-and-Personal-Savior”.
Preston: I see. So it’s sort of like a Costco membership then.
Boss: You know, you are actually very tender-hearted.
Me: People are always telling me this as if it’s a big secret. It’s not something I try to hide.
Boss: Well it doesn’t come out at first. You don’t seem to caring when a person first meets you.
Me: Well, that’s because I don’t actually care about someone until I get to know them.
Boss: (shocked laughter)And also, you are very honest and straightforward.
…here’s how Preston’s day at the beach looked.
But back to being self-centered, I’m really becoming unhappy with my camera. It’s been really great for the sort of photographer I’ve been for the last couple years, but I feel like I really need to upgrade in order to be able to do what I want to do these days. For instance, the telephoto lens that is available for it is just not good quality. These surf pictures of Preston just don’t have the clarity that they should have at this level of zoom. The macro shots also don’t come out as clear as they should. And what I really need these days is control over the focus. This camera that I have gives me manual control over everything except focus if I want it. But I’m at a stage where I really want to be able to do the focus also. Especially where I’m taking pictures at the ocean, it’s hard to convince the auto focus to focus exactly where I want it. Unfortunately, the next step up is a really expensive one. I have the high-end of the point-n-shoot cameras. To step up, I have to move into the realm of digital SLRs, and we’re talking around $1000 for the minimum kit that I would want. I’m working on convincing Preston that we should go in halves on one, but you know I can only work on him on so many issues at once, and I’ve already started my campaign to convince him that we need a dog when we move into our new house.
I’m so happy with these self-portraits that I’m posting them a couple days early. I was a bit trepidatious about the black-and-white theme this month, since I haven’t done much with black and white. But it turns out that I’m really enjoying it. Preston and I spent Saturday at the beach and I snapped these while he was out surfing.
Check out more black-n-white self portraits at SPC.