• Food,  Photography

    Project 365: Birthday

    March 15, 2008

    Project 1/365: Birthday Brownie

    In December 2006, I started participating in 365 Days, a self-portrait a day for a year. I had just bought my first digital camera after years of coveting and a flickr account to boot. I only managed to do 129 days of photos; it become too difficult to do after awhile and I became lazy in the summer. The photos that came out it or the creative process that forced me to take so many self-portraits resulted in some of my best photos. It was a large exercise in creativity.

    A month go, I decided to take up Project 365 which is just a photo a day for a year. Aside from taking photos of my knitting, I was not picking up the camera as much as I had previously or wanted to. The project will allow me flexibility in photography because part of the difficulty of 365 Days was the self-portraiture. Though, I will take a lot of self-portraits I think because I sort of got use to being my own model and experimenting with versions of myself. If anything, I need to document my aging process since I dislike it when others photograph me. The reason I wanted to start this on my birthday was symbolic and would mark the beginning of an interesting twelve months. There may be some drastic changes in the next year, and if not, there will be some travelling.

    The project will hopefully allow me to blog more photos here on the blog because for the longest time, I wanted to make a photolog. Wordless Wednesday will resume, and I’ll post more photos for the sake of posting photos.

    About this photo: Sadly, I did not bake these brownies. They were a gift from a friend. It just goes to show you how easy I am to please. Some good comfort food and appreciative effort and care from loved ones is all one asks for. I am curious about what kind of birthday I’ll be having in one year.

    Enjoy the ride 365 ride with me.

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  • Beauty & Skincare,  Musings,  Photography

    What’s in my school/gym bag.

    November 18, 2007

    What's in my school/gym bag

    I haven’t posted a Worldess Wednesday in awhile because I am too busy to take some serious photos. I was going to wait until Wednesday to post this, but I decided just to do it now while I have now.

    Flickr has a very popular group called What’s in my bag? which is essentially people sharing the contents of their bag. It’s quite the portrait of people’s lives and can be rather addictive to see glimpses into what we carry in our bags. I’ve wanted to do it for awhile, but finally managed to do it today. I’m a bagaholic so I tend to rotate my bags for different outings and occasions.

    This week, I decided to start going to the gym at school which makes my bag a lot heavier, but less than when I use to carry my laptop to school once in awhile. Click on the photo to go to the flickr page and see the items in more detail and explanation. Not pictured things including: food container+fork (which I carry some days), reading material (novel, this week it was Anne of Green Gables), and sometimes I’ll take my a personal journal to school (with a fountain pen).

    Now that I’ve started this, I think I’ll be doing this periodically. It’s rather fun and allows me to organise bags such as this. What’s in your bag?

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  • Knitting & Crafting,  Photography

    Shedir

    August 10, 2007

    Amidst the vines

    Shedir, started July 22nd, 2007, finished August 9th, 2007
    Pattern: Shedir from Knitty.com Special Fall 2004
    Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed (50% Merino Wool – 25% Alpaca – 25% Rayon/Viscose [50g / 191 yards]) – #153 Phantom – 1 ball
    Needles: US3/3.25mm 16″ circ and DPNs (Boyle)
    Modifcations: 4 repeats instead of 5, knit stitch through the back of the loop for stitch definition
    Lessons Learned: Cabling without a cable needle (mini-cables with slip stitch method)
    Cost of Project: $13 yarn + $7 for the circs + $6 for the DPNs = $26
    Would I knit it again? Yes, but with yarn in a lighter colour and I may graft the top rather than cinch it next time.

    Top of the world Cabled Crown

    Pattern Notes and Comments: One of the reasons I took up knitting was to make a hat for myself because I’ve had trouble finding a winter hat to fit my slightly larger than average head and cover most of my ears. This hat doesn’t protect the ears as well as I’d like, but I think it will stay put rather than slip up on my head as the store bought ones have done. A lot of knit bloggers do only three repeats before decreasing since this hat is long, but I felt safer going with four due to aforementioned reasons. Five would have been too long for me. This hat may be too thin for the upcoming winter, but definitely will look good in autumn with all that tweed.

    The yarn is very nice. I liked it right away; I’m partial to DK, and I’ve grown fond of tweed as well. It is also quite stretchy, and I always like alpaca and merino. Rowan wool is expensive around here, but the Felted Tweed is actually less expensive than the patterns’ recommended Rowan Calmer. Still, the most expensive yarn I’ve bought yet. The other gripe is that the wool may be a little scratchy for some people, but I’m usually not bothered by this in the long term. The Phantom colourway may have been too dark, but the cables still pop out. I’m glad I knitted tbl for this as I tried the first repeat with a DPN (lost my small cable needle) and most of the stitches not tbl, and it does look a tad better with the tbl.

    Speaking of the cables, it’s almost necessary to know how to cable without a cable needle to make this hat move along faster. It did not take me a long time to actually make this piece, but it felt like it did when I was doing all those mini cables. I don’t frog or rip back things so my decrease cables are a little sloppy, but overall, I’m pleased. The ladies at the LYS were very impressed since I’ve only been knitting for less than 1 1/2 years. Won’t knit this again for awhile, but I like the result.

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