Oh hai! I sort of forgot I had a blog, I have been doing things like working and cooking and reading and being lazy. I don't think anyone is reading any more, but I'll try to get back in the swing of posting again, and maybe people will come back? 

I know this info is out there on the internet, but I was recently having a Ravelry conversation with another knitter working on her own Juneberry shawl, and she asked about my preferred method for blocking, so I thought I'd share my response here, just in case anyone reading is working on their first lacy project and wondering what to do when they finish knitting. 

First of all, I am obviously still pretty new to lace, and I'm sure there are many ways to do this. This is just what I have been doing, and it's worked well for me. If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments, I'm always ready to learn better ways of doing things. Also, I waited to post this until I had a project finished that needed blocking, so I could take pictures. It turns out that my Daybreak shawl was much more challenging to block than any of the lace shawls I've done, so at the end I'll tell you everything I did with that, and what I learned from all my struggles. It also turns out that I am not too crazy about the finished project, I love the pattern, and I love the yarn, but they just don't belong together, I think. I'll probably frog the whole thing and make some crazy bright socks instead. 

Here's what I like to do: 

• Fill a sink with tepid water and some wool wash if you have it (I like Soak, Eucalan is another nice one. They are a little pricey, but I have been using a tiny bottle of Soak and have blocked 7 or 8 things and still have half a bottle left). 

• Just drop your finished item in the sink and walk away for a long time. Let the weight of the wool pull it down under the water. I’ve left things for a couple hours, no problem, but I would say at least one hour. 

Daybreak, just settling in for a soak

• After that, pull the plug and let the water drain. You can walk away again and just let gravity get a lot of the water out for you. If you’re impatient, you can go on to the next step :o) 

• Get a big towel and carefully lift your knitting out of the sink and lay it on the towel. Wrap it up like a burrito. 

• Take the burrito to your washing machine, and lay it inside. If what you are blocking is large, place another towel opposite for balance. 

• Run the spin cycle for just a minute or two. It sounds dangerous, but it really won’t hurt anything and it will get so much water out, you won’t believe it. 

Here I am inserting blocking wires along the edge. They didn't really work out in this case.

• Now for the fun part! Find a spot where you can pin it all out. I use a couple big towels on the floor in my little studio (the only pet-free zone at my house), so you don’t need anything fancy. One day I’d like to have a blocking board, but this works just fine for me. Blocking wires are really handy for lace, but you can get by with just some pins. You just have to be careful about getting everything straight and even. Either way, you want to really pull it into shape. It’s pretty amazing how much bigger a piece of lace will become, and how strong the yarn can be, so don’t be scared to give it a good tug. The pattern will give you some measurements to aim for, I think of them as a guideline and don’t worry too much if I’m a little off.

Then you just have to wait impatiently for it to dry!

So I thought that with my Daybreak shawl I could use blocking wires in the outer edge and gently curve and pin them out. The problem was that it took two wires for each half of that edge, and I couldn't get a smooth curve, there was a big jog where the wires intersected. I did get it mostly pulled into shape with the wires, however, so I just eased them out and carefully fine-tuned the edge and just used a few pins to hold it in place. 

I was a little worried, because I didn't want the pins to pull the edge out into little points, but it came out nice and smooth, so it all worked out just fine. 

So there you have it. Blocking makes the difference between something being ho-hum or incredibly beautiful. It's also one of my favorite parts of knitting. I don't have anything lacy on my needles at the moment, so I think I should remedy that ASAP!  

I've enjoyed the cold winter weather these past few months. Handknits and boots and sweaters are nice. But spring is my favorite time of year. I can't get enough of spring flowers, and I love the green hillsides, the buds on the lilacs and Easter and my birthday. The longer days boost my energy, and I want to soak up as much fresh air and sunshine as possible, despite spending eight of those sunny hours indoors at work five days a week. 

I'm still loving the daffodils in our yard, and picked an enormous bunch today. With each new type that blooms, I declare a new favorite. Today I love the little apricot ones (center left).

Of course I can't forget the tiny grape hyacinth and snow drops with their green-dotted bells.

We don't have any ranunculas in our yard, but Trader Joe's was well-stocked the other day, so I brought these peach beauties home for just $4.

What are your favorite spring flowers?

While in Spokane, I got to spend a fun day browsing antique shops and malls with my sister-in-law (her excellent finds are here). I showed you the elephant pitcher I couldn't resist as we were checking out of our last stop, but that's hardly all I brought home. 

I also couldn't resist this tiny pink dress, not with it's $5 price tag (actually, the shop owner quoted me $6 and then lowered it as I got ready to pay). 

I've been wanting to start designing some knitwear patterns, and one of my first ideas is a sweet little baby cardigan. The details on this dress are providing all sorts of inspiration, and I am thinking I will document the design process here as I figure it all out. I hope you don't mind. 

I love this round, smocked yoke:

And the miniscule embroidered pocket:

I have a couple things to finish up, but once my needles are free, I have the perfect pink yarn and a head full of ideas to turn into a sweater.

I'm also enjoying playing around with the video camera on my phone, and I so loved the lodgepole pines surrounding my brother's house in Spokane. I'm still figuring out all the editing, but I rather like this brief glimpse of the wind bending the trees.

 Did you catch that brief glimpse of my nephew and his chip bag kite? I will have to tell you more about that, but in the meantime, here he is with his "smile for the camera" smile, curved lips just like a smiley face. He is the funnest 7-year-old I know, and I miss him already.

No more posts from my phone for awhile! I can't make links or format anything, so it's only really good for quick, short posts. I have way too much to talk about for that!

Anyway, a couple people asked about editing photos on the iPhone. I'm not any kind of expert on photography, iPhone or otherwise, so this will just be about what I've learned so far, which is not a lot. I do know what I like, and I think I've developed something of a style, if that makes sense. So I would encourage anyone to just play around and eventually you'll come up with your own, unique style and workflow and hopefully be able to create some really lovely pictures to enjoy!

The first thing to remember is that using a camera on a phone has limitations, but those limitations can really boost your creativity. Because there aren't any settings to adjust and little you can control, you can focus simply on composition and light. I don't think it's enough to take a poorly composed picture, slap a funky filter on it, and call it good. It's important to start with a well-composed, well-lit shot. I have learned more about composition using my iPhone for the last year or so, than I have with my Nikon in the three years I have had it. I have to add that I am really impressed with the iPhone 4's ability to take sharp, nicely white-balanced photos indoors, especially in the evening.

So, let's talk about composition first. There are a couple things that can help with that. One thing I do is use an app called GorillaCam to take my photos. There are many similar apps, I like this one because it's free and has all the features that I want, so look around and compare. I've just tucked the native camera app away in a folder and never even open it, and GorillaCam is the first app on my photography apps page on my phone. Here's why I use it:

• It has an anti-shake feature and the sensitivity can be set to low, medium, or high. That means that the shutter won't release until you're holding your phone very, very still. And that means that your photos will be much sharper. I leave it at medium, but I'll adjust it up or down, depending on what I'm doing. 
• It has a full-screen shutter release, so I can tap anywhere to take a picture, instead of trying to tap right on that little button. This also makes for sharper photos.
• You can show a 3×3 grid on the screen to help compose your shots (rule of thirds! If you don't know about that, then read up on it!)
• There's a bubble level, so you can make sure your photos are nice and straight.
• There's also some other nice features like digital zoom, self-timer, and three-shot burst, which is nice for action shots.

 What about after you take your picture and the composition is not quite perfect, or it's just a little too dark or too light or too contrast-y or crooked? To fix small problems like that, I'll open up a photo in PS Express, the free Photoshop app. The main thing I like this app for is cropping and straightening. Honestly, it's a little disappointing that Photoshop hasn't created a better app. It is free, however, so it's still worth the download. I'd love to see them create something a little more robust, I'd be more than willing to pay for it.

Let's look at an example of a photo I edited and posted a few days ago. Here's what I started with:

Remember all that stuff I told you about light and composition? Well, I was obviously not taking my own advice here. But it was early in the morning and a little breezy, so I did the best I could with what I had to work with. I used the zoom feature in GorillaCam, which is not ideal, since it's a digital zoom and not an optical zoom. You can see a little pixelation. I was also not happy with that branch on the left side. So I opened it up in PS Express and cropped and lightened it up a little. So now I had this:

That's a little better. I'm not crazy about the pixelation still, and I really want to focus on that open flower on the right, so now I'm going to use TiltShift Generator. This is probably my favorite photo editing app, and the best 99 cent app for sure. There's also a free version if you want to try it out before you commit, but it won't save at full resolution, so my advice is to just spend the 99 cents. Adding a little blur, with the focus right on that flower is getting me much closer to what I want. I also really like using this app to adjust the brightness, saturation, and contrast, so even if you don't want to add that blur effect, it's nice and easy to use to brighten up any kind of photo. The vignette feature is also really useful, and very subtle.

 Now we're getting somewhere. There are still some pixels showing, so I decided to try playing around with some vintage-style filters. Lo-mob is a $1.99 app that has a big selection of filters, and gives you the ability to edit a little more once you apply a filter. You can preview all the filters in a list with thumbnails of your photo, and then select one to go back to the full-sized image. I didn't do any further editing, but you can also re-size and adjust the vignetting and some other little things depending on which filter you use. I liked all three I used in that previous post, but I think this one is my favorite:

The scratches further hide that pixelation I didn't like, and I think the frame and the elongated shape work well with the composition of the photo. So there you go! That's the kind of stuff I often do with the photos I take on my iPhone. This was really long, and there's lots more to talk about, so I think I'll break this up into a series of posts. Coming up: some more apps I like, links to some inspiring iPhoneography, and let's talk about the ubiquitous Hipstamatic app (I have a love-hate relationship with this one). Any other topics you'd like me to cover? Let me know in the comments! 

I am finally getting over my stupid bout of strep throat. When I arrived home Saturday night after a very fun and relaxing week visiting family (despite the aforementioned strep), I found that the daffodils had gone crazy, and our normally wild, weedy yard was blanketed with scattered patches of yellow. I hope to get pictures this week, and pick bunches and bunches to share with friends. Anyway, the point of the daffodils was to say that I may be developing a minor case of spring fever, and have started doing a little spring cleaning. I kicked it off by washing the curtains in our little guest bedroom, which is also currently my sick room. I decided to perk things up a bit with this sweet little crocheted garland from Yvonne of Yvestown. When you are a not so good crocheter, like myself, it’s really necessary to have friends who are masters of the craft, don’t you think?

I got terribly, annoyingly sick on Wednesday. Luckily, I am still in Spokane, and just happen to be staying with a doctor. A little antibiotic prescription was called in, and I will soon be better.

Yesterday, for therapy, my sister-in-law and I went to some antique malls, where I found this little elephant that needed to come home with me. We also had pho, which is excellent medicine for any sort of snot infestation you might have.