Yup, it's me, back from the land of the silent and the procrastinators.
The holiday was great and I came back with renewed energy and enthusiasm. In the meantime, Spring arrived, which always cheers me up. The long winter is finally over, the dogs agree to go out again without complaining and they spend time in the backyard chasing squirrels.
With arrival of Spring came the dreadful income tax preparation week of hell, where I proceed to do 12 months of bookkeeping, followed by the preparation of 4 income tax returns: my own, my husband's, my son (because of transfer of tuition fees credits to us) and my daughter (same reason). This year, I actually finished more than 24 hours before the deadline and we are both waiting for a refund (our quarterly instalments were quite hefty based on the previous year's returns and we were hit hard in 2008 by the stock market downturn -- as were so many other people).
I took a workshop with Amy Swenson at the Purple Purl on Photography for Knitters. It was a great class and I learnt how to improve my photography skills when it comes to finished objects (and just plain yarn, for that matter). Here are a couple of photos I took of a cardigan I finished some time ago (the Amelia cardigan from Knitty) that I was happy with:
I learnt that it's not always necessary to have a model around to take a good photo of your knitted item. It does help, though.
I knit every day and have little to show for it. Too many projects on the go, some frogging, general inability to complete anything. This is the one project I pull out most often at the moment, determined to finish it before next February:
Yes, this is a February Lady Sweater (Ravelry link), started at the beginning of February. I'm not enjoying it, and it has nothing to do with the pattern, which is fine. It's the yarn -- I bought it at Romni Wools, where the light is bad at the best of times. In the store, it looked like a subtle variation of lovely greys. In the actual daylight, it's a boring shade of grey. And the yarn is not the softest, for a merino. It's Cascade Yarns, The Heathers 220. It was my first time buying Cascade and frankly, I was disappointed, but it really was the colour more than anything. Anyway, I should know better: I have never met a cheap yarn that I have enjoyed knitting with -- go ahead, call me a yarn snob, I don't care. I will finish this sweater one of these days, but I have not enjoyed the experience.
I went to the Knitter's Frolic last week-end and had a great time. Bought lots of Tanis Fiber Arts, she has really lovely yarn in vivid colours. She has the yarn weights cleverly organized by band colour : the yellow labels are DK weight, the blue labels are fingering weight, the green labels aran weight and the pinks labels are laceweight. She has an etsy store, but I find the shipping rates to Canada (from Montreal!) are a bit on the high side ($9.00 per item, and $2.00 for each additional item), so I won't be ordering from that site. Fortunately, the Purple Purl sells her yarn in Toronto (not in all weights) so this is where I will go next time I want some more of her yarn. Her yarn and yarn colours remind me a lot of Dream in Color, it's as pretty if not prettier.
That's it for now. Hopefully, the next update will happen before summer!
The sweaters look wonderful Manon - the photography is also great! It is definitely an element that can be so easily overlooked. Glad you had fun at the frolic; I did not go but it was a good thing.
Posted by: Cynthia | Thursday, 07 May 2009 at 13:46