The pattern is easy; increases being the most ‘difficult’ part I think. Five petals are made separately; and then joined (which is quite easy). The not so easy part: making sure the silly yarn ends get hidden.

The cotton yarn (Sublime Cotton) was purchased at Loop (on sale!). It, being cotton, was quite easy to work with (compared to the slippery Misti alpaca that i’ve been battling on my WIP “Calm”); but it was annoying because of the separate threads…every once in a while I’d miss one.

I got three different colors of this cotton; the one I used here is Mashed Banana and I used about 0.6 to 0.75 of a ball…so not that bad huh? What do you think of the finished product?

In this day and age, children seem to have it all: dolls that speak to them, bears that know their names, crazy cars that do back flips, robots that double as pets….amongst many other amazing toys that my generation didn’t have. You can understand why searching for a birthday gift could be a little frustrating!

Luckily for me, the adorable little lady that is about to turn 3, likes creativity just like her siblings…and her mom hinted at how much her older siblings had loved a gift that I made for them 2 years ago: Crayon rolls!

These rolls are a lot of fun: They’re not too difficult to make and are easy to personalize if you want to spend a little more time thinking of that little person.

First step:

Come on, personalize it!

You’re making something hand made! It doesn’t take that much longer to add a few finishing touches!

I chose to embroider birthday girl’s name onto it along with a teddy that would tie the front to the patterned fabric i’d use in the inside.

Notice I also used simple letters; nothing worse than confusing a 3 year old learning how to read with fancy handwriting! (Save the fancy stuff for the older kids).

Two:

You’ll need five pieces total.

2 large rectangular pieces of of the size you choose the roll to be.

2 small rectangular pieces for the holding of the crayons (these were about 1/2 the width of the large pieces).

1 large 1.5″ wide piece for the ribbon that will hold it together.

You sew the long side of the two small rectangles together and press (trust me, press, it takes a few extra minutes, but makes it so much easier for you!)

Then you put all pieces together: if you’re embroidering,  remember where you’re putting the tie!!

And here is the finished gift! Pair it with a few coloring books and it should be a good entertainment tool for  a three year old when they can’t go out because it’s cold/raining out!

Anyway, I had a great excuse to get a couple of yards of minky: K & N were having a baby!

In  a previous Joann’s trip I had found a cute Winnie the Pooh fat quarter bundle in various colors. As they decided to not find out the gender of the baby until it was born, this would be perfect for my fabric addiction and schemes…er I mean blanket!

Compared to the smaller knit blanket I made for Jess’ baby, I made this quilt top 35″x45″.

I lined the inside with the stripped minky fabric I had purchased and added a bias edge instead of the fancier quilt ribbon I had bought. It just didn’t feel right to use the ribbon.

While the knit blanket had me continuously asking Thad “Honey, does this look too small?” this blanket meant that he was instead bombarded with “I think this will be too big”.

Ok, so it might be too large for a newborn, but then, they’ll grow into it right?

Call me crazy, but since I had a couple of squares left for each color I went wild and made a little bag to go with the gifts. I’ve been going a little nuts making drawstring bags with French seams lately…

So this is Sophie’s quilt…She’s now a smiley almost-4 month old and growing fast. I hope she enjoys it!

Last year, in a trip to Joann’s fabric I was lucky enough to find a ~1 yard piece of acetate in the remnants rack. The background color was black; but it had beautiful bright happy print of hibiscus and orchids on it…I was sold.

The piece of fabric shouted to me “tropical drinks” and “afternoon sunset by the beach” while the theme of Hawaii Five-O played in my head. While I’ve never had a tropical drink while admiring the afternoon sunset by the beach, I’ll happily start go-go dancing when I listen to the theme of Hawaii Five-O.

A couple of weeks later, on a sewing kick one Saturday morning, I looked at the fabric. “What to make?” I thought to myself. Having just made a halter dress, I decided to make a halter top; a dress but shorter!

I cut three pieces, two for the back, one for the front and barely had enough fabric for the length I wanted. Since making a cord from that was not an option, I used some silk ribbon I found….and ended up with this halter (i kinda love halter tops, not sure why).

I might not love hot and humid weather, but I do love this top. Sadly for me, so do the mosquitos!

That I was tempted to make another one in the same table runner?

Well, I liked it so much I had to make yet another one…this time the butterfly is going to be in a napkin that will be wrapping bread/tortillas in my table! Aren’t butterflies pretty?

Here is the finished Butterfly bread napkin…

Jeannette, one of the wonderful knitting ladies in my Stitch & Bitch, was making a lot of these cute booties around the time I was making the blanket. She was pregnant and wanted to make these for her daughter, but instead kept on giving them to friends that were also due soon.

She shared the link to the pattern, Sullivan’s baby booties, with the knitting group, and I started making them right away. In no time I had two pairs of booties, which was perfect to go with the two blankets ready to be gift wrapped!

These baby booties are extremely easy; just follow the link and see for yourself. They didn’t really make a dent on the remaining Pound of Love ball, so I’m guessing i’m going to have to make another baby blanket!

Also, because I was asked on Flickr, I am translating the pattern into Spanish below:

Este patrón de botitas de bebe es super fácil; alguien, via Flickr, me pidió el traducir el patrón, asi que aquí esta:

Botitas de bebé de Sullivans Knitting Yarns:

Materiales:

• 1 bolita de 50g de Sullivans Baby soft knitting yarn
• 1 par de agujas de 3.25mm, y otro de 3.75mm (UK 10-11, 5)(US 3-4).

Tamaños:

• 0-6 meses: 9cm o 3.5 pulgadas — 1 bolita
• 6-12 months: 10cm o 4 pulgadas — 1 bolita

Con las agujas de 3.75mm  (UK 5, US 3) montar 33 (37) puntos.

(H1) 1p. al derecho, aumentar 1, 13(15)p. der., aumentar 1, 2p. der.
(H2) Al derecho.
(H3) 1p. der., aum 1, 15(17)p. der., aum 1, 2p. der.
(H4) Al derecho.
(H5) 1p. der, aum 1, 17(19)p. der. aum 1, 2p. der. (45-49 puntos)
Trabajar 8 (9) hileras al derecho (punto musgo)
La próxima hilera: 26(29)p. der., 2p. juntos der.,  voltear, dejando el resto de los puntos en la aguja.
(H1) deslizar 1p, 6(8)p. reves, 2p juntos rev., voltear.
(H2) deslizar 1p., 6(8)p. der, 2p juntos tog der., voltear.

Repitiendo las últimas dos hileras trabajar hasta que queden 33(37)p., deslizar 1p., tejer al derecho hasta el final de la hilera.

La hilera siguente, tejer al reves.

Cambiar a las agujas de 3.25mm (UK 10-11, US 3-4)
(1) 1p. der. *(laz, 2p. juntos der.) repetir de * hasta el final.

Tejer al reves la hilera siguiente.

Trabajar 6 hileras en punto resorte. Terminar.

Hacer I-cord para las agujetas.

I scoured the internets for a project; something pretty, something not too girlie (Jess didn’t know the gender yet) and something not too complicated as I wanted to complete the project before the baby was born.

I also wanted to start using a recently purchased a “stitchionary”, Lace & eyelets, that I had gotten with a gift certificate Boombadeus’ mom had given me for my birthday…but I was still intimidated by the eyelets…but the eyelets and lace look so pretty! Oh, what to do?

I started looking at baby blanket patterns on Ravelry, but most had hearts, bears, and simple squares. Don’t get me wrong, I like hearts, bears and simple squares…but Jess has lots of crochet/knitting relatives…I wanted to do something that was going to be different…then I found this blanket by maggiecrafts. I was saved! Not only did it look beautiful, she mentioned that she had whipped it up in no time. Well, I was new at the eyelet/lace thing…but heck, it looked so pretty, how about I give eyelets and lace a try?

I chose Tulip Lace from my stitchionary, and off I went. I can’t remember how many stitches I cast…probably whatever they recommended in the ball of yarn (Pound of love) and I started.

At the beginning I was knitting on two needles; a few inches after I started it was getting heavy. My wrists were starting to hurt from holding all the weight with only one hand…so off I went to Rosie’s and purchased 36″ circulars. Oh, what a difference that made!! I loved it!

Less than two months later it was done! Since I tend to mostly knit on Tuesdays, at the knitting group, the timing wasn’t so bad for a first timer at lace, right? If you’d like to download the pattern, click here.

Self Portrait

The last time Craftyangie and I visited my parents, my father dug through his collection and found a treasure: my Grandmother’s old Minolta Hi-Matic 9. It’s a late ’60s 35mm rangefinder camera, with a 45mm f/1.7 lens. It features fully automatic exposure, but also allows full manual exposure control. Like so many hand-me-downs in my family, even though this camera was used extensively by my grandmother, it’s in absolutely perfect cosmetic condition.

Hi-Matic 9, straight on

Of course, there’s always a catch to these things. (There kind of has to be!) In this case, there were a couple of catches. It originally took one of those nasty old Mercury cell batteries, that are now illegal in the US. And, as we played around with it, we discovered that the shutter didn’t always fire. In fact, while playing around with it, the shutter stopped working entirely. You’d hear a “click”, but nothing would happen. Fortunately, I was able to fix both problems…

Market Apples

The mercury cell battery problem is an interesting one. Mercury batteries were 1.35v batteries. Unlike Alkaline batteries, mercury cells maintain a constant voltage over their lifetime, until they finally die. This voltage is so constant and reliable that circuit designers were able to use the voltage from the battery as a reference voltage, without creating any circuitry to normalize the voltage first. This means that if you put a battery in with a different voltage, say 1.5v, the light meter will give incorrect readings, because it is relying on it being 1.35v.

The good news is, I’m hardly the first person to run across this problem. Albert Yee has a good description about how to solve this problem using a Zinc Air 675 hearing aid battery (which is 1.4v, close enough). I bought a pack of these hearing aid batteries, selected a rubber washer from my father’s collection, and the light meter was back in business.

Then, there’s that shutter problem. I’ll write a blog post soon about how I fixed that when I returned to Philly. It took some more effort and disassembly to fix, and is worth a post of its own…

Anyway, I loaded the camera with a test roll of Kodak Gold 200 that came with another camera I bought a few months back. And I’m thrilled with the results! The 45mm lens is just as sharp as The Internet said it would be. The colors and contrast are good, and I can’t see any flare, chromatic aberration, or any other bugaboos in the photos. The only cheesy thing about it is the 5-bladed aperture: I bet a 7-bladed design would make for much better background blur. The photo to the above left is a good example of what the camera is capable of.

Hi-Matic 9, rear

Here’s the specs: The shutter goes from 1/500 to 1 second, plus Bulb, in one stop increments. ISO can be set from 25 through 800, in 1/3 stop increments. The light meter’s range is on the small side, from EV 5.5 through 17. (Though with manual exposure, it can go down to EV 1.5.) My first reaction is that it’s too bad that there’s no ISO 1600 on this camera, but then I doubt it would be terribly useful when the meter only goes down to EV 5.5. I’m thinking the fastest film I might ever put in it is ISO 400, which is still fast enough for most general photography.

Hi-Matic 9, showing EV

The light meter reads out in exposure values (EV) inside the viewfinder. In automatic exposure mode, it chooses an appropriate aperture and shutter speed itself. In manual exposure mode, you choose an aperture and shutter that corresponds to the number the dial points at in the viewfinder. If you want to over- or under-expose for whatever reason, you simply set the EV lower or higher than recommended. If you turn both the aperture and shutter speed control rings together, you can keep it set for the same EV setting, but go through aperture and shutter combinations that are all equivalent. (For example, EV 10 is 1/125 at f/2.8… twist both to 1/60 and you’ll get f/4, which is still EV 10.) Very clever!

That said, I’m a little bit concerned about the metering on this camera. I took the next two shots with the same EV reading, using the method described above. The first is at f/4 and the second, at f/2.8. When I scanned them myself at home, I scanned both frames with the exact same settings. Note that there’s a definite difference in how bright the scene is from one to the other. F/2.8 is already stopped down by 1 1/3 stops, so I doubt it’s flare from being shot wide-open or anything like that.

Faucet, f/4

Faucet, f/2.8

It’s not like the brighter exposure of the second shot is so awful or that it’s unsalvageable… but it’s probably not the ideal camera for shooting slide film with. (Though my grandmother definitely did shoot slide film with it!)

The Hi-Matic 9 handles well, but it’s definitely a solid brick of a camera. It’s not a tiny like the Canonet GIII QL17 or Olympus RC35, but comparable to a Pentax K1000 in size and weight. In fact, I weighed the Hi-Matic 9 and compared it with my K1000 (an older all-metal model) with a 50mm f/2 lens attached. The Hi-Matic was 1lb 11oz, and the K1000 with lens was 1lb 12oz. Neither is exactly compact or pocketable, unless you have particularly big pockets. The Canonet or Olympus seem like better choices for a go-anywhere camera, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Some more beauty shots of the Hi-Matic 9 itself:

Hi-Matic 9, top

Two focus scales, one in Metric and the other in English measure. No DOF scale, though.

Hi-Matic 9, bottom

Hi-Matic 9, loading film

The Hi-Matic 9 is especially easy to load film in. The film take-up reel on the right sort of grabs the film leader, making mis-loading difficult. Nice.

Hi-Matic 9, showing battery test

It’s easy to unambiguously check the battery status. Note on the lens barrel that there are three green dots lined up with the “check” arrow. You line up the green dots on the aperture, shutter and focus rings with that arrow, and look through the viewfinder. If the light meter points at the lightning bolt icon, your battery’s good to go.

After having an underwhelming experience with a Yashica YL a few months back (admittedly, an older camera not quite in the same class as this one), the Hi-Matic 9 has redeemed rangefinder cameras for me. I plan on keeping it loaded with film and shooting with it!

I’ve been working on a few projects that I couldn’t upload right away; also known as baby shower gifts. There were also projects that I completely forgot to take pictures of…oh well!

Besides the crafts I’ve also been getting organized. While Ravelry helped me get my yarns organized this past winter, in the form of pictures and amounts of yarn, I still needed to do something desperately about my needles. They were just… everywhere!

I had seen pencil cases being used for paint brush and knitting needle storage; and I had already made some over a year ago; gifts for the cute flower girl and ring bearer in our wedding. So, why not make one for my needles?

Armed with a cute green cotton fabric found at Joann’s, some linen in my fabric stash and some adorable leftovers, a Japanese fabric purchased last year from Purl Soho, I went ahead and made one…

While I knew which size needles I had (once again, thanks to Ravelry), I couldn’t find them easily. Some were in half started projects I was going to unravel, the remainder in their original packaging somewhere in my “crafts box” in the living room.

I needed them to be more accessible,  ready in case I needed them at a moment’s notice. Why at a moment’s notice? Because of the Stitch & Bitch* (we meet weekly, see details below)!

I was working on baby projects which are tiny and often I finished them as soon as I got there. Since I needed to start new projects away from home, I really  needed to make sure I had my needles with me.

Here is the finished product! Since then, the collection has grown a little bit. I might have to make another one!

*Stitch & Bitch at St. Stephen’s Green*

Tuesdays, 7pm — 1701 Green Street (in the Art Museum/Spring Garden area), Philadelphia PA

Graflex RB Super D SLR 3x4 camera

Amazingly, a couple of people have actually asked me what ever happened with the Graflex RB Super D 3×4 large format SLR Marisa gave me some time ago. Good grief, you people are actually paying attention to me?? Ahh, but seriously, it’s a good question.

To tell the truth, I’ve run two rolls of film through the RB Super D already, in fact, the first one was developed maybe a month after I got the camera (and 120 6×6 roll film back). So where is it? Wellll… it’s finally been long enough that I don’t feel totally stupid saying what happened with it… When I picked it up from getting developed at Photolounge, the entire roll was blank. I mean, all that was left was the substrate, no evidence of a picture. I left, totally confused, trying to figure out what happened. Maybe the giant reflex mirror wasn’t swinging out of the way of the exposure fast enough? Did I really forget to remove the Dark Slide from the 120 film back every time?

No, it was much more stupid than that. I finally figured out I’d loaded the film backwards, with the paper backing facing the lens. I’d been very meticulously exposing plain ol’ paper the whole time. A pretty stupid mistake. One big reason I didn’t catch it while shooting is that the 120 film back doesn’t have a little red frame counter window on it; it advances the film one frame at a time, mechanically counting off the right number of turns to advance the film the right amount. (Remember that detail for later.) With no little red window, I couldn’t see the film was installed backwards.

Anyway. After I finally got to the point where I could even look at the camera without feeling shame, I ran another roll through it, this time loading the film properly.

The results are very nice, actually, but there’s just one problem. Here is a scan of the 120 film:

Roll of 120 film from the Graflex

Notice any problem? Right. The frames are overlapping. Remember how the 120 film back automatically advances the film? Well, this one isn’t advancing it enough, by less than 1/4″. It makes clicking noises as you turn the advance knobs, so I started to think about all kinds of work-arounds I could do involving counting the clicks to do it correctly. I told Alvin about all of this, and he said “why don’t you just wrap some tape around the spool, so it winds more on every turn?”. Why don’t I, indeed?

That Alvin, he’s a smart guy… Anyway, I calculated how much thicker the spool needs to be to move the film about 1/4″ further each frame, and wrapped enough packing tape around the spool to do that:

Spool wrapped in tape

We’ll see how that goes, next roll of film.

Anyway, here are the results. Not quite 6×6 due to the overlapping frames, but here you go:

Chain

Lady on 13th

DOF Test

Creative Disguise

Good stuff!