Squirrels Go Like This

Manual Lenses, EOS Bodies

Pentax K to EOS EF adapter

Christmas arrived a little late this year, but today, I finally got the Pentax K manual lens adapter for Canon EOS cameras I’ve wanted for some time. A less paranoid friend of mine, Kent, ordered one from some random guy in Hong Kong via eBay and PayPal for me. Fortunately, he had no problems with the transaction, as it arrived about 8 days after clicking on “buy it now” and paying. The only sketchy thing about the whole process is that the seller marked on the customs form “gift”. However, that’s up to him, as it’s up to the person shipping an item to sign off on it. Read the rest of this entry »

Vest Pocket

2009 or 1919?

What happens when you take a camera made some 90 years ago, designed to use an obsolete format of film, and make it work again? Here’s your answer!

Since I started in with this photography hobby in earnest, my father gave this Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak camera to me about six months ago. Yesterday, I decided to take pictures with it. Today, I did! Here’s how I did it… Read the rest of this entry »

Llama, llama, llama, llama!

If you follow me on Flickr, last week you found out about a dark (or colorful, depending on how you look at it) secret I’ve been hiding: My yarn stash.

I love to buy yarn as much as fabric. I love soft yarn, yarn that makes me feel warm, yarn in bright, solid colors and my favorite: hand painted or hand dyed yarn…

In one of our Boston area visits, Boombadeus mentioned there was a farm that had llamas close by… and that they sold yarn made from the llamas! We just had to stop by and pick up some to make him a scarf.

That was the first of our trips to Iron Horse Farm. Read the rest of this entry »

The geekiest scarf ever.

While I never make New Year’s resolutions -I believe ideas/learning/projects/resolutions should be a year round thing-, this year I have a resolution to make. I would like to finish my DNA double helix scarf.

I started the DNA Scarf about 2 or 3 years ago, but has become an UFO (knitter speak for UnFinished Object). Every time I re-start, I knit a few rows, get distracted and stop. The project only gets re-started when I have a few moments away from busy daily life and the knitting bag is close by, which isn’t very often.

I first came upon the DNA double helix scarf in the Fall of 2003 Interweave Knits magazine, where the pattern was featured. According to the article, June Oshiro was in the middle of a lecture when the idea came to her. She turned on her voice recorder (obviously to not miss the rest of her class, in bio classes we tend to get tested in things that are mentioned for 2 mins in class) and she started to draw the now famous pattern. This pattern isn’t just famous around knitters, it has even appeared in Nature Genetics!

For this scarf I chose a beautiful yarn I found while perusing the yarn at Iron Horse Farm, a farm in Sherborn, MA. I had gone there to purchased some of their llama yarn (they grow llamas and make yarn!) which was to become a scarf for Boombadeus…but that’s a different blog post.

While looking for that yarn, I happened to touch this one. I liked that the reddish yarn had bits of color here and there; from white to yellow, pinks and even a beautiful blue. It claimed to be 50% “soy silk” (I had never heard yarn made from soy) which I thought was weird but interesting, so I thought “why not try?”. Read the rest of this entry »

Eternal Spring: The Monarchs

I love Flickr, I get a lot of ideas by looking at pictures….but it can be dangerous for me to visit it while working on a project. As I mentioned, after seeing this picture, i just had to add a butterfly to my embroidery! I keep on getting more ideas every time…

Monarch butterflies are another icon of México, and boy are they amazing little things. A few days later after seeing it, I printed out Will’s picture, and  worked up a little pattern to draw this pretty little lady.

Males of the Monarch butterfly have two spots on the lower wings, on the black “vein” closest to the abdomen, and the black lines in these wings are much thinner than the females, so I knew the picture Will had taken was of a female.

A little more biology: Some of these beauties migrate from the US and Canada to central México; in specific they travel to the border between the states of Michoacán and México to winter on the oyamel trees of these mountains.  That is where where the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve, a world heritage site, is located.

Around winter time the trees get completely covered with the monarchs to the point that branches bend down (think of how pine trees look after a heavy snow storm) and visitors have said that the wings of the butterflies create a soft rain-like sound. I can’t wait to visit this reserve some day!

Back to the embroidery, I went shopping as I had no orange or black thread and started. The idea was to use double threaded stem stitch for the veins and single thread satin stitch for the thicker lines, also the abdomen had to be padded for it to look round.

After the outline was done I was amazed. I liked what i saw so far:

I wanted to add more butterflies everywhere! But not so fast, let’s finish the first one: Read the rest of this entry »

Eternal Spring – the sweet smell of vainilla*!

I bet everyone thought this had become a photography blog huh? Wrong! I’ve just been lazy (well, lazy to blog; trust me, I’ve been quite a busy bee!).

Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

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If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

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And now we have this: Read the rest of this entry »

Spreckels on my Ice Cream

Spreckels Organ Pavilion

Yesterday, CraftyAngie finally took me to hear a concert at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It’s a reasonably unique thing; I can think of only two other permanent outdoor pipe organs in the world (one in Germany and the other, a small one in Salzburg, Austria). Concerts are held weekly at 2pm on Sundays, free of charge, sponsored by the Spreckels Organ Society.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yashica YL

Yashica YL Rangefinder

You’d think my father would know better than to encourage my camera habit with cameras he finds here and there. But you’d be wrong! My father found this Yashica YL at the town recycling center, grabbed it, and gave it to me.

According to this website, the Yashica YL started production in 1959, which means that this is a nearly fifty year old camera. The lens is 45mm f/2.8; there was also a 45mm f/1.9 version available. The lens appears to be a simple 3 element design; the middle element on this one might have a small fungus problem. The lens elements are not coated, as proven by lens flare. (More on that later.)

This is the first rangefinder camera I’ve ever used; it was interesting to see how it’s different to use from an SLR. Read the rest of this entry »

All I want for Christmas…

50mm f/1.4 SMC-M Lens

Folks who follow my Flickr photo stream far too closely are probably aware that we’ve got two 35mm SLR cameras: a Canon Rebel XTi/400D (digital) and a Pentax K1000 (film). I’ve come to appreciate their respective strengths and abilities. I’ve also found that I really wish I could share lenses between them, but of course the K1000 uses Pentax K-mount and the XTi uses the EOS system EF mount.

For example, there are two Canon primes I’d like to get for the Rebel: the 50mm f/1.4 and the 28mm f/1.8. I’d get the 28mm lens to replace the 35mm f/2 we’ve got: it’s a little bit wider, a little bit faster, and has silent USM focusing. (Not that this is going to happen any time soon.) And the 50mm f/1.4, pretty much Just Because. (Probably not going to happen, period…)

Too bad I’ve got a 50mm f/1.4 lens for the Pentax, and intend to get a 28mm f/2.8 for it soon. They’d probably be really killer to use on the XTi. If only… Read the rest of this entry »

Eternal spring 2

First Dahlia finished

So the first bunch of bougainvilleas was finished…i moved onto the dahlias. First Dahlia was done with satin stitch only.

As you can see, the edges were done in a darker pink than the middle…at some point i tried blending it in, but voted against it…I can’t remember why.

For the second Dahlia I wanted to try something different: I wanted hints of color rather than a bold edge. It had to be one of those cream/white ones, with a hint of pink (you can tell that pink is one of my favorite colors in flowers can’t you?)

This was done by using button hole stitch on the already satin-stitch filled second dahlia.

perhaps bouillons might have also worked here.

I could not decide on what to do for the middle in the second dahlia. Should I do bouillons? Should I just fill in with satin stitch? Should I use button hole? I felt like the Wordpress spell check, which right know must be in Spanish mode, as it is highlighting basic words in the English language.

After realizing that perhaps buttonhole might get lost if placed in the middle (as it did on the first bougainvillea bunch, which was re-done) so i went for satin, just made sure they were not on top of each other as that might make them look quite messy….

Read the rest of this entry »