Thoughts on Perfection + My NEW Pom Pom Garland VIDEO Tutorial

I was talking with my friend Cheryl a while back. We are both about the same age and both had kids when we were a little older than most. We are both artists and authors and struggle with many of the same things. She mentioned something that really resonated with me and which I have thought about a whole bunch since then. And then the same subject came up in a different way the other day with another friend. I would love to hear your thoughts about it - whatever your age..... 

Cheryl was saying that people of our generation (we were both born at the end of the baby boomer generation) have trouble putting things out there on-line as compared to the younger 20's and 30's generation. She said that she worries too much about perfection and will not launch something until it is perfect. And she said she is trying to change that part of her personality. 

I fall somewhat into that same category frequently - although not always. Because I write books and make art and things for sale, I strive for perfection. I want my products to represent me in the best light. I think that people expect a certain standard from me. 

But perfection is such a hinderance. I cannot be good at everything. Do I want the striving for perfection to slow down my product range? My life? My art? My income? Sometimes you just have to let it go - especially when you work by yourself and are self-employed. Sometimes my patterns may have a typo. Although when I do find them, I shudder  and I fix them - do I really think a mis-typed word makes my work any less valuable. Seriosly. 

I think that having a child with special needs and living on a farm has helped me to face the fear of lack of perfection. I think that living with animals and all the life and death that goes on here has helped me realize that life is too short to worry so much about everything being perfect. 

I'm working on a range of new pottery to sell for the holidays on-line on my Etsy shop. Is it perfect? No, it isn't. But I will be putting it out there for sale. It is an expression of my art, my life, my growth as an artist working in clay and surface decoration. Whoever buys the pieces will have a bit of me in their home - my hands, my design sensibilities, my lines, my love of color, my slightly mis-shapen pots. 

So those are my thoughts for today for you. I would love to hear what you think about perfection, about the generational differences in "putting it out there" before it is really perfect. It's an interesting thing to think about. What do you do? Do you put it out there? Do you hide something that isn't perfect in your closet? And what generation are you? 

Now onto the rest of the story......

Sometimes I wonder where the weeks go. Don't you? I know where Thursday went. On Tuesday, I got an email from Yankee Magazine. I'm not sure if you remember but they were at our farm for an upcoming feature in their magazine last December 18th. (I run to the the mailbox every day hoping the magazine will be there! No luck yet.) Besides hundreds of photos that Joe Keller took, Amy, the editor, took a video of me making pom poms for their website. 

The Tuesday e-mail said something like "HELP" - the video file has disappeared. UGH. That meant that I had to re-create the tutorial on my own because it was referenced in the print article. I have made videos by myself in the past but not in several years. I much prefer having someone tape me and then let them do all the editing which takes hours and hours. I lugged out my camera, my tripod, my camera manual (remember those? I had to buy mine), my computer and carried it upstairs into the bathroom. It is the best place to tape audio because the room is small and well lit. 

Sometimes I really wish I had an assistant! It took me all morning. I am having trouble w/ my 70-105 camera lens - it seems to move by itself after focusing. It is fine for stills because they are quick. Every video I did was fuzzy. So I changed lens to my 50 mm, reset everything and re-taped everything. 

Then I wanted an intro because somewhere on some website or podcast I learned that viewers like the presenters to be seen in the videos. I set up the tripod and camera in the living room and then made believe I was on t.v. If anyone knew what goes on in here some days they would think I was nuts. I had to make Mark wait outside until I thought I had a decent take. Poor guy - all he wanted was to eat lunch. 

Then I had to crack open the new version of IMovie and try to put the video together. I hadn't used IMovie in at least 6 years and this version is much better and easier. I did find this tutorial on YouTube which was really helpful. Thank you YouTube. But it did take me at least 4 hours.

So here is my finished project. It is in high def on YouTube.

It is a little long - 11 minutes. I would love to re-edit it into a shorter version but I have so much to do that I'm not sure I can find the time. Remember - I am trying not to worry about perfection. I had to get it out there and move on. 

I hope you might making your own Pom Pom Garland project this upcoming holiday season. It is a fun project to do with kids and a great way to use up your scrap yarn - even moth damaged less than perfect yarn - as long as you have gotten rid of the bugs. 

Pretty Early Summer Colors

Pretty flowers from a walk around our farmhouse...... 

 

It might not be a manicured fancy yard but there are bits of color peaking out.

The feverfew is amazing this year. It has popped up all over and looks like a white halo above the stone walkways. Must have been absolutely perfect for germination last year and then blooming this year. I welcome the spreading, carefree habit of this plant. It is one I can never have too much of.

 

These photos were taken with my iPhone in the Camera+ app and then tweaked.

Teaching at Stitches East Hartford and Upcoming Classes at VKLive

I'm back from teaching a couple of classes at Stitches East in Hartford. As always, it is great for me to see many old friends, meet new ones, and meet many blog readers. My classes were at the beginning of the convention so the students were fresh and ready to learn - not exhausted from knitting overload. Here is a montage of the embroidery samplers the students did in my Friday a.m. class. 

I used this cool app called PicFrame to compose the collage on my iPhone. If you don't know it, check it out here. 

Here's a really cute photo of all some of my students. They were so serious and quiet (it was 8:30) and worked so hard. At the end of the class, we placed all the swatches on a table and they all climbed up on chairs to take photos. Really sweet - don't you love it?!

The highlight of my weekend was Julia and my Sunday afternoon lunch date with the fabulously talented color genius Anna Zilboorg. If there is one author I really admire in the current knitting world, it is Anna. Eating lunch with her, sharing our tales of author-ship, publishing, and life in general is my favorite memory of the weekend. I have a small collection of Anna books that I treasure dearly. My favorite is her self-published title "Knitting for Anarchists." Do you know it? Lots of writing about knitting.

Her "Magnificent Mittens" has just been re-published by XRX. It was Anna's idea. The book was selling on Amazon and eBay for huge amounts of money and Anna didn't think it was fair that newish knitters couldn't buy it reasonably. She added an entire section on socks and it is now called "Magnificent Mittens and Socks" and is a paperback book. If you don't own it, make sure you add it to your library. A truly beautiful book.

You can listen to a podcast with Anna here on the FiberBeat podcast. I haven't listened yet but plan to later when I have some knitting to do. She has a lovely voice - so soothing. And such a wise woman.

I have one more fall event to do. I'm the featured speaker at the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild up in Shelburne, VT. The meeting is being held at the Shelburne Museum.  It will be wonderful to speak about color to rug-hookers. I hope I don't come home with another craft I want to try.

The registration is open for VK Live in NYC January 14 - 16. The roster is loaded with lots and lots of fabulous teachers. Should be a really great time. Let's hope there isn't a big snowstorm but I will get there somehow. Can't wait to meet some of you there. Check it out - the Big Apple in January..... What could be better?

Random Colorful Hipstamatic Photos from our Farmhouse

I'm in New York City at VK Live! But I haven't forgotten you all. I am teaching Embroidery on Knits, Edgings and all about the Joy of Color. So, here are some colorful Hipstamatic photos for your weekend!

Looking in late in the evening on a really cold night!


Christmas lights on the tree. We don't take ours down until Valentine's Day! It seems to help make the winter seem shorter.


Lights along the mantel

Looking up the cellar stairs



Pairs of cloisonne vases in the living room


Vera, the "Head Cat" on the daybed in the kitchen nook. She barely ever strays from this spot unless it is to the food bowl.

Phoebe asleep one evening


Photo by Julia of her Ugg boots which were a Christmas gift from her Aunt Jen. A huge hit!

Neutral Hipstamatic Photos In and Around the Farmhouse

First off, you must check out Gale Zucker's Photo Tutorial for an embroidered mug sleeve, shot entirely with her Hipstamatic camera app. Do you know Gale's beautiful photography? If you think not, you probably do. She has photographed many knitting books including Shear Spirit and Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines.

So back to my Hipstamatic (borrowed from Julia) for a few very neutral colored photos.

The thermometer has been hovering at just about zero


A curly iron garden chair under the snow


Snow along the road with a running stream beneath


Our kitchen light and a cracked plaster ceiling


Looking out the kitchen window before the storm


Sheep under the crab apple tree after the storm


Hydrangea blossoms in the snow


Sheep along the fence in the snow

Before the Storm

Whenever there is a big storm coming, the animals know intuitively that something is up. They must feel it in the atmosphere, in their bones, in the air. All the cats head indoors about a half day before a storm hits. The chickens make sure they finish all their grain and whatever else I throw their way. The sheep eat copious amounts of hay. Unlike the animals, we humans listen to the radio obsessively, trying to determine if the storm will actually make it here. Lots of times, the big storms hug the New England coast and don't get this far. Wednesday's storm sure did arrive - we got about 18" of beautiful, fluffy, diamond encrusted snow and we are still digging out.

The evening before the storm, I went out to walk around in the sheep pasture knowing that soon only snowshoes would work. I took both Julia's iPod Touch for the Hipstamatic camera and my DSLR. Nice thing about the Touch - it fits easily into a pocket. Can't say that about the big camera with a telephoto lens on it.

This week, as I have been fooling (and I will admit, slightly obsessed, depending on who you ask) with the Hipstamatic settings on the iPod Touch, I have become totally frustrated. I guess it has been awhile since I have tried to learn something new (message to self - keep trying to learn something new). And this camera is completely wacky and unpredictable. I guess that's what kept me interested. I kept trying to get the images from the Histamatic that I thought I was seeing. With literally a flick of the finger, the lens changes, the film effect changes, and the flash changes. It is pretty much pure genius, as I'm sure many of you have already seen when you tried it.


But, it is a very different camera. What I have learned this week is that even with a DSLR or whatever camera you have, it helps to take a different look at things. Don't just stand there Kristin. Bend over, kneel on the ground, lie on the ground on your back, on your stomach. Everything looks different from a different perspective. It's so easy to just stand up and shoot, isn't it? Set up the tripod often and keep changing the heights even if you can't see what you are getting because it up against the wall and you can't get your body behind it. Change lenses. See what happens.

When I looked up in the sky as I was walking through the little bit of snow in the pasture on Tuesday, I saw the most beautiful clouds lit by the sun as it was slowly setting. (What do you call those clouds, anyone? Is it a mackerel sky?) It was just darn spectacular. It was so awesome that it made me think that the sky, the clouds, and the sun were telling us that something... and that we should listen.... that something big was coming.


And then I looked over at one of the lone trees in the pasture, a tree I love to photograph. It is an old apple tree that is being smothered by a giant grape vine. Every year, the grape vines grows wilder and wilder, full of beautifully shaped big leaves. The sheep love to rest under the tree and the vine for shade. Now it is bare and looks so alone. I walked around it to see how it looked from the other side. It was just so beautiful with the clouds and light behind it - mass of branches making its own beautiful painting against the sky. I started snapping, not knowing what I was getting. I can't say the photos turned out quite as good as the moment but oh well. I tried.


That's the thing with taking photos, it is really hard to capture the exact moment and to have the photo exactly replicate the image before me. I think that is what keeps me interested. I've got a few more days of Hipstamatic images and then I promise you, I'll stop with it for a little while. Next week, I'll also share the pre, during and post storm images that I took with my DSLR.

Next week, I'll be down in NYC at VKLive teaching six classes in three day. What was I thinking? I am going to be plum exhausted. I know the classes are sold out but anyone can go to the market and I'm pretty sure it will be fab. I'm looking forward to VKLive immensely - to be in the big city where I worked just after college, to see good friends that I never get to visit with anymore and to meet lots and lots of knitters. It will be overstimulating to say the least. The roster of teachers the Vogue Knitting staff has lined up is amazing. I look forward to sharing what I know with the students I meet and meeting many teachers who I have never had the pleasure to say hi to.

Either tomorrow or Sunday, I'll be launching the new "Get Stitched on the Farm Knitting Retreat" website and announcing the classes for 2011. Pop back in if you have the chance and have internet access. Good weekend everyone!

Storm Preparations

Spent the day on Tuesday getting ready for the big snowstorm of 2011. We don't always get what they promise but this one sounded like we should be prepared. We heat our farmhouse with a wood furnace (it also uses oil so we can decide how hard we want to work). When it is really cold, wood keeps it warmer. Although The Farmer used to cut all the wood himself, he has resorted to buying it from his brother because he just doesn't have the time. At least we are keeping the money in the family. Most of the piles look like this.


Covered with snow and about to be covered with more snow. At Thanksgiving, my family helped us stack some of it so it would be dry.


I spent the day Tuesday hauling in piles of wood and kindling for the next couple days. Being the frugal person I am, I saved all the odds and ends of wood from last summer's construction project for kindling. Those big Ikea bags work great for collecting the kindling.


We're ready for what comes - axe and shovel.


The farm animals always seem to know what is coming. My chickens "helped" me with the wood and seemed particularly energetic - flying around and perching in the trees. I gave them extra grain knowing that it could be awhile until I got out the door to feed them on Wednesday. They will stay huddled together in the coop.


Julia and I will spend the day inside and The Farmer will venture out to across the mountain to feed the sheep at their winter quarters when the snow slows down. He stocked up the hay so the sheep have plenty to eat since he's not sure when he will get there. We don't bother moving too fast and going anywhere in the snow because it is plain stupid. I know. I've been in a couple of snow-induced wrecks and totaled one truck a couple of years ago - not my fault but consider Julia and I very, very lucky. Now, I just stay home. Have plenty of food and everything will be cancelled anyway.


We've got this dry pile of wood along with a few others to keep us warm. As long as the power holds, it will be a Winter Wonderland with a capital "W". I'll try to take some photos during the blizzard if I feel like going out in it.


I hope you all are home safe and warm and enjoying a snowy day. Are you knitting? or baking? or eating soup? That is our plan for the day.

p.s. This Hipstamatic camera is tough - you don't get what you see through the viewfinder. Wrap your photo-taking head around that one. Total unpredictability. It's fun though and I think it is making me think a little differently about taking "regular" photos with my DSLR.

New Discovery! Hipstamatic Weekend and Week

We had a lovely snowstorm on Friday night/Saturday morning making for the perfect opportunity to not go anywhere. I love those kind of weekends, don't you? Especially after all the running around of the holidays. A quick visit to the library to pick up some movies and a mad dash to the grocery store.

Somehow, we here at the farm are catching up somewhat with the rest of you. With the arrival of the "air card" we all are feeling a little more connected with what most bloggers take for granted. It is good and it is bad. I got Julia an iPod Touch for Christmas knowing that she is going to have an extremely long bus ride to school next year. Some days though, I'm making "internet free" days to restore the balance.

This weekend I discovered the photo capabilities of Julia's gift. I downloaded the basic "Hipstamatic" camera app and have had a really good time exploring some of the possibilities. There was a lot of "Mommy, it isn't yours!" "Yes, I know Julia, but it is so much fun!"

This week, my photos are going Hipstamatic. Anyone want to join in? You will need an iPhone or iPod Touch. The download is $1.99 and there are extra lenses and flashes available for $.99 each. Haven't bought any of them yet. (An aside, is the Hipstamatic available for other non-Apple devices?) I'm going to take photos of domestic scenes around the house and outdoors. Nothing groundbreaking. But it is just plain fun to see what happens because the camera is random. What a fabulous feeling - no f-stops, exposure, ISO, shutter speed. You can learn more about the development of the Hipstamatic here. (It is a fascinating story.)

Yesterday Julia and I baked our favorite Reine de Saba from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.


For the first time, it didn't work and I'm not sure why. I used cheap chocolate leftover from some Christmas baking. And the other thing was I was letting Julia do everything herself and the folding of the egg whites and mixing of the flour didn't go too smooth. She ended up mixing it with the mixer and I'm pretty sure that is where it failed. Good learning experience though I must say.


We will try again another day. What we got was a pretty thick chocolate/almond pancake that still tasted good. To tell you the truth, for us, it is just the process of making the cake - it isn't about the eating of it.


Back to the knitting.... And did you see the Op-Ed on KNITTING in the NYT on Saturday?

If you are going to join in the Hipstamatic Week, leave a note in the comments of the blog so we all can check out your photos. Thanks!

ADDED: Check out Alicia's gorgeous Hipstamatic Photos on her blog today!

News the Old Fashioned Way

I read the NYTimes a few days of the week for the Style, Dining, House and Home, Business, and Magazine sections mostly. Since Streeter’s closed, I now buy my NYT at the Country Corner in Bernardston. They have been kind enough to hold it for me three days a week. I usually don’t get to reading it for a few days but today I was stunned to see none other than “fat-tailed sheep” with shepherds in the center of Cairo on the front cover. After my post on tail docking the other day, I though some of you might want to see what an honest to goodness fat-tailed sheep looks like. I wonder how the shepherds control flies there, much less keep the speeding trucks away from the animals in the center of the city. Take a look for fun – the article is quite interesting too.

Back in the business section, I found an article about digital cameras. The Farmer bought me a new camera for my birthday last fall which I have been using like a crazy woman. Picture after picture of cute little sheep and darling little Julia are overloading my iPhoto folder on my iMac desktop. My camera is reviewed in today's NYT article and since everyone seems to like my photos, you can read about it there = it's a Canon PowerShot S3 IS. And yes, it has come down in price since last fall.


Here are some of the “Julia” yarn photos I took for my web page re-do last fall. Unfortunately, they were too busy for the Julia web page – I went with a simple PDF-able color card shot instead of the artsy, blurry photos. These show the range of the camera and how pretty the Julia colors are together - all taken by a complete amateur. The camera has lots of programmable and the manual options make it similar to shooting on my old Nikon FM with film. It has a fabulous 12X zoom. I can do the faded out, fuzzy background thingie easily by adjusting the f-stop. It takes awesome close-ups in its SuperMacro mode. It also takes pretty great movies and the sound isn’t bad either – maybe one day I’ll be able to post our very own “Lampede.” Generally, I haven't found anything I dislike on it yet. Thanks to Hunt Camera in Hadley for steering me in the right direction.


Back to the NYTimes.... All for a buck - and I don't have to wait forever for the homepage to load on my computer which is shear torture. I just don't have the patience. I'll gladly keep paying the dollar so I can feel the paper, smell the ink and relax for a few brief moments with some old-fashioned newspaper technology.