Today I turned in the manuscript for the book. Huzzah! There are still some loose ends to clean up, and lots to photograph (wish me luck in this weather!) but I can’t tell you how excited I am. I wish I could share it all with you. I can’t even believe I designed so many things in one year. I think I was a little crazy when I took it all on, but I can’t tell you how anxious I am for the next steps. I had the pleasure of meeting Lily Chin at last years TNNA, and I recall saying to her “I have no idea what happens after I turn everything in, thats the part I’m most anxious about” to which she replied; “get ready Brandy, you get ready for it!!”

I’m here, and I’m ready for it.

Lace, garter stitch, top down raglan, bottom up seamless, pieced,  boys, girls, other *things*.  Cables, short-rows, slipped stitches, twisted stitches and LGs favorite animal. I can not wait for you to see.

Every once in a while I’ll be going through my day with the girls and “un-vent” some little trick I’m sure a 100 mothers before me, have also invented. I always think “I should blog that!” but I don’t. Well now I am even if I’m starting a little late.

BG loves being first, this is pretty standard behavior for a 4yo but it does tend to grate on my nerves after about 100 times and I worry about her always thinking she has to be first. So this evening when the girls asked for some cow cheese to tide them over before the baked chicken was ready, and I said “whose first?!” and BG said “ME ME ME!” I did something I sometimes do when I’m not sleep-deprived. I said to her “Okay sissy here you go your first, give this to LG!” and she did it without even thinking. Because she still got to hold it first, she didn’t care if she didn’t eat it first, she just wanted it in her hand first. Technically speaking LG wound up with the first piece and she still got to feel triumphant. I have no idea if this will have positive long term effects, but it seems like a nice way to re-direct the “first-ness” of my 4 year old!

LG looked so funny when I put her in the red dress BG wore two years ago. She’s just more “baby” then her big sister was at that age and the silhouette looked a little too big girl for her! It turned out cute in the photo above with them both sitting. We used this for our Holiday card this year. We use the term Holiday because in our family we celebrate Hanukah and Christmas both to some degree. American is a melting pot and my little family is a very good example of that! My girls even have a tiny bit of Cherokee indian in them along with a myriad of other interesting DNA! I’m actually first generation American, on my fathers side.

LG’s favorite present this year was a sweet little singing-lightup birthday cake (leap frog I believe) and BG has been most excited over her Mini Lalaloopsy Treehouse Playset (which I got on Amazon Vine, super score) and the very cool snow sled from G’ma. I was fairly impressed by the Lalaoopsy set and may have to get BG some more of that line, she seemed to really love it.

The husbeast contributed some $$$ for me to get a new lens, and let me pick something out at Target (a canon printer I have to return because it wouldn’t read my CF cards) and I got lots of other cool goodies (such as a neat wooden needle gauge!) and the ever welcome $$$ from my mom and dad. It was a really nice holiday season. I suppose it’s not over with New Years just a few days away, but I’m going to be a bit oblivious as I work into oblivion on lots of fun designs, trying to get  the last details perfect!

I’ve seen lots of conversations on photography forums about how to get the blurry background (and fun arguments about the use of the word bokeh, which is a really fun word to say. I like to use it, a lot. Because its fun.)

These are the three ways in which you can achieve a blurry background:

F-Stop/Apature – wider like 2.0 and lower makes for very pretty effects
Smaller margin of error means more difficult to nail focus if you have not practiced a lot.

Auto users: Pop your camera into apature priority mode, which is about the same as auto accept you can control the f-stop/apapture and set it to its LOWEST which on an entry level DSLR and kit lens may be 3.0 – 4.5 (try zooming all the way out, and all the way in to see which zoom gets you the lowest setting, those lens’s lowest setting actually varies based on your zoom length at any given moment. Did that make sense? If not please comment!). You can still do this without being in manual!

Focal Length – 85mm + makes for pretty portraits
More dummy proof and unique looking but costs $$$ to get an 85mm lens (if you have a kit zoom lens zoom all the way IN then step back as needed and zoom with your FEET, keeping the camera zoomed all the way in, these tricks are funny aren’t they??)

Distance – having your subject far away from the background, and stand close to your subject!
Best practice, rule of thumb – aka always do this unless you want them leaning against something

50mm set to 2.0, background very far away, me pretty close to the kid considering its 50mm on FF. (What did you jyst say brandy?? FF = Full Frame camera, so 50mm on full frame is more like what you would get if you used a 35mm on a consumer grade DSLR, it means I want you to understand 50mm on my camera may not be the same as 50mm on yours.)

50mm at 1.4, again I am pretty close to the niblet and the background  is 20+ feet away.

50mm at 1.4, I am at such a shallow depth of field (aka 1.4) it does not matter that the ground is only 3 feet away.

You can get pretty blurred/bokeh backgrounds with a zoom lens as others stated, like 100mm will give you some srsly pretty blurred background that is actually very different in quality then the above. When working at 85mm + you can get some really interesting and unique quality photos in particular if you combine the 85mm with a shallow depth of field like 2.0, as a general rule though I would say do not work below 2.0 until all your 2.0 shots are in focus. You CAN get a lens that goes down that low for cheap, the “niffty fiffty” 50mm 1.8 or the 35mm 1.8, everyone recommends this to people who get a DSLR and with good reason, but stay above 2.0 until your getting sharp shots, then venture below!

It feels like the whole country has been so divided for so long now, I do not want a political discussion because there are no winners in that, but I would like to discuss how depressing it is to have things so polarized. It’s hard to feel “together” in all this with the current climate. I’m so tired of it.

The book is due SOON, like really soon. Exciting I suppose, I won’t enjoy that excitement until it’s turned in! the manuscript itself is the part I have to turn in first, then I have to finish knitting some of the stuff and photographing them. It’s taken so long and taken over so much of my life I will be really happy to have it completed. I want to knit something again for the pure joy of knitting it. It’s been hard to enjoy the photography aspect of it because the weather is not what I really wanted to be working with, but such is life. Sorry if this is slightly depressing, I’m just a bit frustrated and want to have more work complete, faster. We’ll be visiting my family next week, which is a bad idea time-wise but it’s been a year and life is too short to not see family.

At home here we have a lot of this;

and some of this;

After taking those two photos (about a week apart) I’ve decided to do a little series and keep it going, capturing funny moments of what life is like for us, and make an album for the girls. I find them so much more interesting then portraits, and are more honest, bringing back a lot more memories when viewed in retrospect. The lower one of me with the girls was with a little wired trigger I have for the camera, and I plopped the camera down on a lopsided basket so it was truly just a blaze thing. I had my hair straightened and wanted to get at least one photo of my “good hair day”!

Waiting for the husbeast to come back from the apple store (fixing his computer) so I can go out and knit more and write more!

When Flax & Twin came out with this adorable owl tutorial, I was ALL over it. I KNOW I KNOW the owl thing has been going on for like 5 years now, but man I can’t get enough. LG has an owl obsession and we collect the cutest ones we come across. When I saw the tutorial I thought “I can be lazy and just use decorative card stock, and hang them as a banner across her curtains in her room!”. I have a lot of owls to make to get there, probably 12. I made two initialy to test the theory.

I found that it all works perfectly, but would do better if it had the paper-board backing, because the little ball head thingies don’t really stay in place because there is not a very thick space for it to cling too on the back. But it’s fine and you can totally get away with it. LG promptly destroyed the blue one (cry!) but I wanted to give both girls a chance to play with them because really, I made them for their enjoyment. The pink one is also a favorite, with the sparkly wings and pale blue eyes.  ♥

I got all of my supplies from Joann’s. Your best bet being the large bag of assorted sequins (lots of wonderful colors, more then in the individual smaller bags) and a large bag of assorted white buttons, this will make your $$ go a bit further. Then I found for the ball head thingies they had some special ones that came in clear and pink crystal, WAY too fun to miss out on though bring the price up a bit on creating these little sweeties. I found it most certainly worth it, and they were sold out of the size and color I wanted anyway. I had to buy the card stock because I didn’t have any in the colors I wanted, they had the thicker papers mixed in with the thinner ones so it took more time then I wanted to pick out what would work. I wound up getting a “book”  of card stock that I found in the baby section with ginghams and polka dots which I used for the two above excluding the sparkle paper.

Today I made a second one with a fancy flower paper I had picked out and some textured orange paper with a kind of linen/canvas feel to it.

There will be lots more to come, and I want each one to be unique! I would also love to make a few fabric ones as well, eventually, and I have enough fabric in my stash to keep me in owls for a while! I want to see about getting some pretty letter stickers from Joann’s, and maybe make some solid colored tummies for the owls and spell out something in the banner… would be super cute. I also think this is going to be a MUST for her 3rd birthday invitations if she’s still into owls next year!

My blogging will be sparse until the book is done. I’ve been busy collecting accessories and props…

This is from that cool antique shop I photographed the Summer Petite Purls issue at…

I coded up and took a few photos for the Fall Petite Purls (such a wonderful issue, so proud!)…

Someone got a haircut…

Kept busy making fancy school lunches…

and tried to enjoy the last warm days of the year…

Read about the story here: http://www.denverpost.com/music/ci_18904986

“The conclusions are grim. Unless the symphony works fast to slash salaries, find new sources of cash and ultimately change the way it does business, its very existence is in question… We’re talking dead: a major city without a symphony orchestra.”

I’m not usually one to post these sort of things, I’m sometimes wary of giving money because I don’t know where it’s going to go and if it ever actually gets there, but in this situation I know exactly where the money will go and that it goes directly to the source. I think about those 79 musicians (and the paltry pay they are receiving due to pay cuts, and this has been going on for a while now) and I feel incredibly sad to think of those 79 musicians out of a job, Colorado without a symphony, and the world with less music. Music, I think is probably as important to most people as it is to me. Its an emotional outlet, a way of expressing ourselves, a way of feeling different things. I listen to the Classical XM stations in the car all the time with the girls, and it’s always the best way to calm them down when they are irritated. BG and I call it “Ballet Music” and she requests it most every day. I can’t imagine the world without music.

I know the power of knitters, I know if we come together we can do amazing things. I want to ask that if you have $10 you are able to part with, to donate it to the Colorado Symphony to help those 79 musicians. 1,000 knitters times 10 is 10,000 and 1,000 knitters times 50 is 50,000 (more then one musicians salary). Any amount I believe will help, if you have more to give that is wonderful as well!

DONATE TODAY

I will add this is very personal for me because my good friend and Petite Purls co-editor Allegra Wermuth is a violinist in the Colorado Symphony, she did not ask me to post this, I simply feel compelled to do something and when I saw they had a donations page I wanted to donate and thought maybe someone else would want to donate too. If we can in any way shape or form help the Colorado Symphony, and help even one of those musicians keep their job, we will have done something amazing.

I just donated $50 and added this line to my donation request:
“I would like this money to go towards the salary of a Colorado Symphony musician.”

If you donate, please comment below (no need to mention the amount). I believe when we all come together to do something, other people are compelled to act as well, for every action there is an equal or greater re-action.

*Please note I wrote this while a 2 year old and a 4 year old squealed their heads of so kindly excuse my writing. What must be done, must be done!

I have wonderful ideals all the time about things I want to blog about, but when I find the time to sit and type I can’t remember a single one of them! I seriously need to start making myself write them down.

Today I want to talk to you about door-nob safety covers. My little two-year-old has finally discovered how to open them (I put great effort into making sure it took her this long to figure it out) and when I could not find the old ones we used to have I ran to the store to get some. I brought them home and was promptly aggravated because they seemed to small and wouldn’t totally snap closed. LG would all the time bring me the two broken pieces from the one on our door. The one inside her room on her bedroom door magically has not yet fallen off.

So in desperation and irritation I ordered two different sets from amazon. The original ones that I had from ages ago, I loved. They where a bit loose on the doorknob, but not too loose. They had a bit of rubber to help you grib the doorknob itself, it was just a circle on each side an you could press them in a bit. I was always irritated by the groccery store Safety First variety because they lacked that little peice of rubber and I have to stick my finger through the holes to grip the door. Howoever after testing out two other brands, I think I hate them all.

As for which to actually use,  it’s a toss up between the Safety 1st brand and KidCo Door knob Lock. I think I prefer the Safety 1st to them all, as I’ve gotten used to it, but as it didn’t fit properly on all my doors, I have had to use the KidCo on a few.

The Mommy’s Helper Doorknob Safety Covers can, well go sit in the briars on my back hill. I looked on the Babiesrus.com website and found a Dream Baby Door Knob Cover, it does not totally look like the old ones I used to have but I am 100% certain I got them at babiesrus so maybe it was an old model. I would like to try those out but I don’t live remotely close to a baby store.

So in turn I share with you after my frustration and my poor wasted dollars, to just stick with the Safety 1st from the grocery store. You may not like it but there are worse out there. It was a sad conclusion to come too!

About a month ago the very wonderful little mailbox place near my house went out of business. The owner was a wonderful artist and a very funny guy with a good sense of humor. He prided himself on being the cheapest in town and I think that may have just been his downfall. He had ben in business for over 18 years. Petite Purls has had our mailbox there from the beginning and they never minded my crazy kids (ever try taking a 1 and a 3 year old into a store to mail something?).

So he went out of business suddenly and we (Petite Purls) lost our mailbox, and I have forwarded the address and hope some stuff that got re-directed arrives soon. I got VERY lucky that I had just gotten the last of my book yarn, in fact one of the wonderful women who worked their took my boxes to her home so I could come get them because they got kicked out of the building. I was out of town and couldn’t come get them right away. It’s sad, and also a pain because I have to drive quiet a bit further to get a new mailbox, that costs nearly double. I am anxious for this economy to improve.

I’ve met all sorts of new people with my photography work, I have a sweet girl who I now use as a model for other people’s knitting patterns when they need a young women. I have something new to photograph this wednesday for someone, and I have 2 Petite Purls pattern to photograph on whichever evening LG wants to cooperate. She was soo whiney the last few nights I could not, and she won’t allow me to put any weird clothing on her at all. I have a sweet little vintage style dress I got on etsy and she has a big fit if I want to put it on her, doesn’t bode well for the knit-wear! I am crossing my fingers she lets me do it this week so I can be done with that. I did finally manage to get one of them on her, so one down and one to go.

A few months ago I got to shoot her wearing an adorable hand-knit bib designed by Nancy Anderson for Petite Purls! It was the perfect time to photograph her because she was not so confident in her climbing and I stuck her up on a long book case (only 1.5 feet off the ground) and she stayed up there because she could not figure out how to get down. I got some seriously adorable shots of her!

Below is a more recent shot of her, playing with the ipad. My kids don’t watch a lot of tv, and it seems to mostly bore them anyway. LG spends most of her time watching “Gummy Bears Nuki Nuki” song on youtube, or watching “The Snowman” on the ipad, which she called “Snow White” (which seriously confuses her big sister). They play outside when it’s not too hot, they spend a lot of time building stuff with their cardboard bricks and most of the time they are just wreaking general havoc and pulling all the toys out (again). BG spends a lot of time changing her cloths and setting up mock picknics, and LG lately just listens to that song, over and over and over. It’s finally been the motivation she needed to learn how to use the ipad.

I was so surprised to get so many comments on my last blog entry from my iheartfaces.com entry, it was fun to see a bunch of comments on the blog again. People don’t comment like they used to back in the hard-core blogger days! I also have a neat little facebook plugin that lets people post that way, but it doesn’t add to the post count which stinks, I mean who doesn’t get a bit dorked out when they see the post count number go higher then 1, or even into double digits? I know people are reading but I’ve always attracted a more quiet audience!

Bar Harbor, Maine

In preparation for photographing the book I used a good bit of my advance towards a photography workshop which I came back from just a few days ago. My dream has been to go a workshop at some point. Tamara Lackey is super high up on my list of photographers I look up too, she’s very well known for her children’s photography and has published two books on the topic. The workshop was pretty much phenomenal. I got away with lots of goodies including a reflector from Adorama.com and I won a song from triplescoopmusic.com (the legal way to use songs in your video’s and slideshows) which was neat because I actually won one of those when watching the Tamara Lackey CreativeLive workshop about 6 months ago when she did that. And we got a bunch of discounts on photoshop actions and large gallery prints and neat nerdy photography stuff like that.

Examples of things I learned:

Reflectors are powerful and helpful (I already knew that but had wimped out on using them so this was a proper reminder).

I took the above as soon as I got home to practice.

Kubota Actions (automatic filters and effects in photoshop) are darn expensive but pretty amazing (download the free trials but maybe you shouldn’t ’cause then you’ll go broke buying them all).

My first attempt editing with Kubota actions, I’m smitten.

Confidence is key, shrug away all that guilt and don’t let it bog you down. Your worth more then you think you are. Keep your mind clear (that’s a hard one for me right now!).

Those last items being sort of odd take-away’s from a business/technical photography workshop but those stood out the most for me. We spent 2 hours outlining a business plan for ourselves (which my little buzzy brain was busy applying to Petite Purls and trying to keep the two straight!) and we even worked up a budget/finance plan in an automated excel worksheet that helped us figure out cost/income/expense ratio’s and how it all works together. We spent a nice chunk of time in photoshop which was one of my favorite parts, and then of course we got to watch Tamara work. She offered for us to get in on the fun ourselves and no one said anything, and I thought “hell I didn’t spend all this money to come out here and not try something I have not tried before” so I asked, and then walked right up to one of the models she had been shooting and put that reflector right in her face, and ya know what? She didn’t mind one bit, in fact she smiled for me and I realized using a reflector isn’t that hard at all, it just LOOKS hard (isn’t that the truth for so many things in life!!) and the best thing you can do in life is drop all the pretense, drop all the apprehension and just do it.

Tamara is on the right, she’s gorgeous and has some seriously fantastic charisma, a wonderful attitude and a good sense of humor. She’s just an incredibly cool person. You never know what you’ll find when you meet someone in person that you’ve sort of formed a little picture of in your mind based on thing’s you’ve read or seen. It’s pretty phenomenal when that someone supersedes that and impresses you that much more. She’s fun, she’s kind and damn does that women have some energy!

The reflector was used the entire day, it was really powerful to see how helpful it is.

Bar Harbor was quiet pretty, it rained a lot and went from chilly to hot back to chilly again.  On my way flying to, there was a huge storm and flights got canceled all over.  Delta had to switch me over to another airline (I don’t recall who) and they wanted me to get on 5 stinkin flights to get there, so I talked them into sending me straight to Bar Harbor instead of Bangor (Delta doesn’t fly to the puddle jumper airport) and got lucky to only have to be on a total of 3 flights and got in at 10pm (I left the house at 7am). My wonderful roommate Stacy (a fellow photographer) picked me up, and even had dinner for me (I was so sad to have missed the big dinner that was set up for that first night).

I was sooo happy to have gotten in at all and was seriously stressing about missing anything. In fact when I was waiting on my last flight, I found out there was an earlier flight, and squeezed on (I mean seriously, it had 28 seats and I got number 27) and there was several people behind me trying to get on too, and even crazier apparently the flight I was scheduled to go on later wound up canceled so all I can say is, thank goodness for perseverance. All that traveling, bad airline air and changing of tempratures of course got me sick. I started sneezing on day 2 of the workshop and didn’t stop for days. I feel so incredibly lucky to have gotten to go, and so incredibly lucky the sickness and the flights didn’t mess anything up. I totally spazzed out for the one-on-one I had with Tamara. My brain went to jello and I basically just vented to her, but in the end maybe that is all I really needed to do, share my chaos with someone who would understand. I got some great advice for when I shoot the book, so I slipped in one good question before my good ‘ole brain melted (pats self on back). Hah!