as the skirt turns

well, i have found out that my skirt turns at the rate of approximately 1 full turn per mile. this is useful information as up until this point i have been twisting my skirt back into place as i walk to work, but, since my work is pretty well 2 miles from my home, it should be the right way around by the time i arrive at the office.
how did i figure this out? well, on my way home from the stitch n bitch last night, i decided not to bother to try to keep my skirt on straight and just let it twist. in the 3 and a half mile walk home, it turned 3 and a half times, ending with the back pockets in the front.
the stitch n bitch was entertaining. i definitely learned some things, and some of them were even about knitting. sharon from the KR forums came also. She was just in town from PA for her mother's birthday and, even though she had a horrific travel day, came and was knitting away on lace for a christening gown! wow. she must have patience.

lab time is happy time

most of the time

despite my previous post, i have made progress on a couple of images. you may notice that in these images, the whites are not so blown out (check out those slot canyons!!!) and i am feeling pretty good about a few pictures. i do feel that my color images were the stronger ones on that trip, however.

bleagh

grr. waste of so much time, this picture here. see the fuzzy (that is the technical term, i believe) over to the right of the image? The one that looks like a sideways "D" with a loop-d-loop coming off it? well, if you don't, let me send you a copy of the print, because it is highly visible there :( i spent most of friday night working on this image only to find that not-only is this loop in the neg, it maybe was on the lens, as i cannot get it out of my negative. sigh. but, in looking at the image now, i notice that the rocks in the foreground are a bit fuzzier than i thought they were and so it is perhaps better that i let this one go...

spooky black and whites

well, i did not get many black and white negatives scanned the otherr night, but i did get a few. i think some of these will do better in a print than in a negative scan, so if that is the case, i'll post scans of the prints instead.

these are all from peekaboo and spooky slot canyons. again, taken with my nikon and a nikkor 24-50mm lens. It was really hard holding still, and it was very subdued light, so i was thrilled that any of these turned out at all!











i think the hard thing is that so many people have taken pictures of the slot canyons that is difficult to feel like yours are any different. some of mine are different here because the whites are totally blown out. go me! hopefully i can fix that in the darkroom :)

for a limited time only

miss not-so-messy hair

yes, i got my hair cut this weekend and after she styles it it is always so neat! neat as in tidy and with hair products and stuff. it won't last long, i don't think i even have any hair products, other than shampoo and conditioner, at home anymore.

just finished

Eats, Shoots and Leaves last night. okay, i think punctuation is a weird and fun thing, which makes me a bit weird i am sure, but this book was so fun. The title is based off an old joke where a panda goes into a cafe, eats, shoots the waiter, and leaves. All due to a typo in a dictionary where it states that a panda is an animal that "eats, shoots and leaves". corny, yes, but if you had grown up in my family, you would be used to it.

beautiful sight

as i was leaving photo lab friday night, i walked out and was astounded by the yellow-ness of the sky. it was very reflective, bouncing light between the clouds and the city and, as i learned later, a storm had just ended. i walked up further and saw a huge, full, extremely bright rainbow. it was truly the brightest and most complete rainbow i have ever seen. i ran back in the lab to tell the people still there (all two of them, friday nights are not big photo-lab nights for some odd reason) and by the time i got back out, the rainbow had started to fade. Within 5 minutes, it was gone.

no psychoanalysis please

it's another dream report.

i'm riding on a flat-bed with my family and we reach our destination of a roman estate. then we're inside, in a convenience-type store, getting food. I am looking around, not hungry. They even have creamies and i don't even want any of those. Quite a statement there. My dad comes up to me with a slice of pizza with sausage and pepperoni on it for me. i ask him what exactly am i supposed to eat on that, the bit of crust over on one side that doesn't have meat on it? i tear off that little chunk and wave it at him. somehow, i end up holding the slice of pizza and then i throw it at him for making me take it when he knows i don't want it. after this bout of teenage bliss, i grab a big, square pizza from one of the freezers and leave, running to hide. Now i am inside a larger store, trying to decide whether it would be better to hide in the office supplies or the action figures. my sister ends up finding me and is, of course, mad at me for running off. we go back to out 'rooms', we are in the roman estate again now, and we're in the process of packing. everyone in the estate is: there is something coming and although we know what it is, i can feel that, in retrospect i am not sure what it was. i'm helping my neice and nephew decide which "little people" set to take and then i am trying to put in my contact and something keeps causing me to drop it, though i usually catch it before it is on the ground. there is a dog nearby who i know will eat my contact if he gets it. i know that one of the roman gods is the one messing with my contact and, as i put my contact back in its case and fill the well with solution (my dad had warned me by this time not to attempt putting the contact in, to wait until we were away from the estate), a ringlet of blue is formed in the contact where the solution has risen, but left an air pocket still in the center of the contact and, since this is obviously a sign representing the Caesar, i call out in a sarcastic voice, "how very caesarian of you!" I am still angry about this and working on packing and getting ready and i know that these roman gods are working against us. i am then holding a silver bracelet made of a thin, silver chain and then a slightly thicker, curved, silver bar, about an inch in length with a slight pattern. the rumor is that when you rub this bar you can call upon these roman gods and there is a legend, or is it a memory of mine, of a girl who foolishly tried this, and going through a list of god names had the bar start heating when she got to a certain god. the name apollo keeps coming to me and that could have been the one who caused the bar to heat. i know that this god is trying to vex me and i throw the bracelet and yell "you are a god of jealousy and SPITE!" The word 'spite' echos in the halls.

i awoke angry and upset.

escalante digitals

while in escalante, i primarily shot film. It is rather unusual for me to shoot color film, but i did it down there and had a lot of fun with it, in case you couldn't tell. I did shoot some digital pics as well, but not as many as i should have, probably. You see, i bought an s500 recently (i've only been ogling the S line of canon digitals for 2 years now, so i guess it was expected). The reason for buying the s500 as opposed to a more-featured, perhaps less-expensive, camera was that i wanted a camera that i wouldn't even think twice about taking with me. If i have to think, "ooh, do i really want to carry that" i won't have it with me enough and the s500 is nice and small. i also checked newegg.com every single day to wait until it dropped to a price i could justify. Anyway, after all that, the case that i bought for it falls off the belt of my camera pack, as i found out while hiking the grand canyon, and so i have been putting it in the pocket of my water pack when i am hiking, which means i have to take off the water pack every time i want to use it. Grrr! So, i need to find a new case for it.

all that aside, i did get a few shots in escalante on the digital and, since Iknitoo from the Knitter's Review Forums asked about the digital camera, i figured i better post some of those pictures, too.

These flowers were so neat: i love how life in the desert pokes its head out wherever it can:



i think this picture of a scrumptious desert mushroom was taken on "The Gulch" hike along the Burr Trail. Hike names are approximate as we were using a close to worthless hiking guide-book. (hint: if a hiking book indicates that you should "turn when you see the fence with tumbleweeds pressed up against it", DO NOT buy it!)



chmney rock:



and, from the last day, in oh-not-near-enough-light, the sunrise during a storm:

the finished fmb!

this picture does not really do it justice, but it does give you an idea of how much the size changed! i ended up washing it 3 times! i thought i was finished at 2 times, but when i got up the next day i was not happy with the amount of stitch definition still present, so in it went again. Let me tell you, i have some extremely clean, but fuzzy, jeans now.



i used cascade 220, charcoal, for the base and the handles up to the grips; noro kureyon, 82?, for the body and the grips.

monday, glorious monday!

you may ask, "why on earth are you excited that it is monday?" Well, let me clue you in, it is PHOTO LAB DAY!! Yes, those 5 rolls of black and white film that have been grumping at me for neglecting them while having color film (!!!) developed are finally going with me to the darkroom tonight. heehee. they are dancing in my bag as we speak, i am sure, although they mysteriously stop dancing whenever i peek in there, those sneaky things!

on another, less happy note, i finally got my fmb felted. Now you may ask, "Why is this not a happy note?" and i will forgive you your extraordinary inquisitiveness today and tell you that it is sad because my sister was not able to come over and felt with me. :( She had to go on a business trip and was very busy getting ready for it so she could not come over. Since she would not be able for quite some time to come over, i ended up felting all by myself. now, before you feel too bad for me, she is going to come over when she is ready to felt her bag and so it will still be an enjoyable time AND i will have a better idea of how to felt her bag as she is using the exact same brands of yarn as i did, although different colors.

i am, as they say, "on one" today. but keep it a secret, please...

tonight!!

my sister is coming over so we can felt our FMBs!!! should have pictures up by monday. whoohoo!

escalante

just a couple of pictures from my trip to escalante the other week. All pictures shot with a nikon n70 using a nikkor 24 - 50mm lens

from 40 mile gulch (fuji provia 400 slide film):



from spooky (kodak e100GX slide film):



from the desert on the last day (fuji provia 400 slide film):

dreams

last night was a night of weird dreams. maybe it was the storm, but i had several weird dreams and at some point, i believe i turned off my alarm clock since it did not go off this morning.

the one dream was one in which i was in a store, kind of a department store / mega store. It is someplace i have been in dreams before, but never in person. Kind of like my favorite ski resort. i know it every time i go there: it is really cool in the summer, too, when you can float down the river and then go climbing in the canyonlands-type landscape that is just around the bend...

but back to last night's dream. i was in this store buying dye. kind of a paint dye. i was going to be making a floor mat, from what i can tell, i believe i was going to knit it and then dye a design on it. I had bought a couple of colors and then realized i wanted a different color in it and was going to go back, but had lost my receipt and was afraid they would charge me again. i had walked to the store, so i had no place to stash the stuff while i picked out the other dye, so i hid the box with the dyes in it under a staircase and went searching for the receipt. As i am walking through the store it seems all the men shopping for furniture and such are singing to the Cure; i only know it is the Cure because a kid passes and says "i hate the Cure". Just as i was about to give up hope, i found my receipt in the aisle and went and got another bottle of paintable dye. And wouldn't you know it, then there was magically a register on the floor where i was so i could pay and i wouldn't have needed the other receipt at all!

Gyrid...

still working on it, but i just had to mention that it is coming along and looking good! i am nervous about doing the front and joining the pieces together, and i have to pick up stitches for the neckline also! oh boy.

gyrid

so, i fell in love with this top at first sight. ordered the yarn and the pattern book and then let it sit while i made another top, some washcloths, a pillow case, and the fmb. when i finally got started on it, on a road trip, the metal sleeve at the end of of the needles had come unglued and kept slipping down over the cable and when i would have to push each stitch onto the needle individually. ugh. so i gave up until i got back home where i fixed the needles (susanne needles! they should not do this on the first usage!)
right now i am halfway through the back panel. i am nervous to start the front, as that is the beautiful part, but it will be doing it soon!

and here is the real deal at fuzzy mabel

bbbb

i've been working on this project for ages. i pick it up when i need something to work on that will relax me. the yarn is classic elite flash 'green tea'. 100% cotton and it feels SOOO gooood. the blanket was supposed to be square, but it will end up being a rectangle; that's okay. i have no idea why i am making this blanket; i was just looking for something to make with this yarn, really. i don't know anyone having a baby anytime soon, so i have plenty of time to get it done.

fmb!

here is the project i can hardly wait to finish. "Why?" you ask? well, i would like to put one of my other WIPs into it, that is why :), namely the big bad baby blanket from Stitch n Bitch which sits by my bed as a "relax" project.

the project is the french market bag from knitty.com. i found some cool noro kureyon yarn for myself and for my sister and away we went. we both added cascade 220 for the bottom and handle colors. i did part of the body in the cascade as well and then the handle grips in the kureyon again. i don't know that my sister is decided yet about how to do the handles, but she should be soon!

anyway, i finished mine a couple of weeks(!!) ago and am waiting for my sis to get done so that we can felt them together. it should be cool!


as you can see, i made the body a bit deeper, so i should have room to put that big blanket in it!
here's a picture that may give you an idea of the actual size: