Knit season

So strange that I was in a tank top earlier this week and yet today's casual Friday outfit of a sweater dress and leggings was totally appropriate. I wore flats without socks as I can't quite bear to break out the boots just yet because once you do there's just no going back. Yet it either didn't warm up much today or it had gotten cool again because I was SO COLD when I got home. I'm not ready to turn the heat on just yet, but I AM ready to pull out my knit cottage slipper socks. I made these probably 4? 5 years ago? And I just love them. They are so warm and cozy (and fit in rather nicely with the debris of a child who loves reading and stuffed animals lol) that I keep coming back to them every year. These are basically my test version. I've improved the way I handle the ribbing in such a chunky yarn, and subsequent pairs I've made about an inch shorter in the foot for an average (7-8) size because mine are ever slightly too large. But I never make myself a new pair. Must be nostalgic or something. I've given a few pairs as gifts that have been quite well received, and I put them up in my shop last year on a whim. And wouldn't you know, they've become one of my most popular and inquired about items. As the knitwear season rolls around again, I have to say, I can see why!

Knitting group

So I think I've joined a local knitting group! A few years ago I attended one at my public library, which was a super convenient location, but as it meets the same time and day as my book club, not so much a convenient group to join. As I'm getting back into crafting in general, and thinking about taking my Etsy shop semi-seriously, I felt like now might be the right time to reach out to the community. It would be good to be able to ask for advice, improve my skills next to women who have been knitting longer than I have, and get inspired to branch out and do different things!

And I think I may have found it! I mean, these women make sweaters for full grown adults! And more than one in a lifetime! As it is, I once bought enough yarn to make a cardigan for myself, and I got so intimidated by the size of it and how long it seemed it would take to complete it that I may or may not have many tiny sweaters in that color - and more to go - to use it up. I reached out on the forums on Ravelry because the group list for my area was overwhelming and I couldn't really tell which groups were still active. Within a few hours I got a reply from a really nice woman inviting me to join their group! It's about 20 minutes away from me so it's not the convenience of the library down the road, but it seemed like it might be a good fit. It's a diverse group, they come when they can and meet at a local coffee shop and bakery. They've been meeting for THIRTEEN years! That's impressive! My book club has been going for 5.5, and I thought that was a long time for a group to stick together.

Like I said, they have women knitting gorgeous sweaters, socks (another item I've been intimidated by for the opposite reason as sweaters - such tiny needles!), shawls, hats, etc. Some women even spin and dye their own yarn! For someone looking to be inspired, man, did I hit the jackpot. It can be hard to intrude on such a well established group, but I could tell that they are the type of group you'd want to join - they were great at pulling me into the history and long-standing stories. They also do a holiday party and charity project each year. This year is hats for a local shelter. As evidenced by my urban farming experience, I do like to try to make a difference where I live. I was a greeter and also knitted comfort shawls and chemo caps for a local hospice a few years ago too, but fell out of it when my schedule got busier, so I like the idea of joining a group with a charitable aspect to it.

So yay! Knitting group! And if you are a knitter or crocheter and you aren't on Ravelry, seriously, get on that. They have really active forums, not to mention a vast library of searchable patterns, a ton of which are free.

Visiting Ethereal Confections

Yesterday I went to visit my good friend's new chocolate shop and cafe in Woodstock, Illinois. The shop is actually a few years old now, but the cafe is new this summer. And I must say, it's adorable! Of course, this is absolutely no surprise to me. See, a few years back we worked together, and she was a pretty awesome interior designer. And as you can see, she still is!

We had this dream of being able to quit our day jobs and work from home in our sweatpants. (haha) So much so that we even started an online interior design consulting business, which turned out to be a lot of work and a sort of tough market to break into, despite our (her) credentials and (her) talent. So sadly that dream went by the wayside. But a little while later, she capitalized on the chocolate making skills she'd been earning on the side with her sister-in-law and realized the dream! Well, the quitting her day job part. I think she mostly wears regular pants.

I totally snuck taking these pictures. Because I didn't tell her I had restarted my blog lol. Actually part of the reason I took them was to show my husband how cute this place is, but the other part was because I fancy myself a bloooooogger.Which is totally embarrassing to say.

You can see more details of the making of their cafe on her blog here (wait, so if she has a blog too, why was I embarrassed to say I do?). And if you don't happen to be in the Woodstock area, never fear, because they ship their delicious chocolates all over! I'm partial to the meltaways and anything salted caramel. :)

Trials in product photography and new listing in the shop!

Right off the bat, I am not a good photographer. In fact, I'd just go ahead and say I'm a downright BAD photographer. It's just one of those things that I can't get to click (oh lord, no pun intended) for me. For years I decided it was just my point and shoot, as everything I took came out blurry and dark, and my solution was just to not take pictures. Win! However, on the rare occasion when I could get over my awkwardness about even taking out the camera to begin with, I'd go to download them to the computer, and realize that the Christmas pictures I was saving were the first pictures there since the Christmas before. Now I'm not saying I want to photograph every waking moment of my life, but I'd like to be able to look back on more than one day a year!

So 2 years ago, I decided, well maybe it's not all me! Maybe it's the camera! I mean, what problem can't you improve by throwing money at it?! However my thrifty side said that there was no way I was dropping $4 or 500 at a DSLR for something that realistically probably wasn't going to improve my pictures, so I went to Craigslist. I managed to find a 10 year old Canon Rebel XT. Definitely not a top of the line model, but I figured it was something that I could try to learn on. So I got my camera for about $200 I think, and I proceeded to put it in auto and use it just like my point and shoot! Yeah...that didn't help a ton! I mean, things got less blurry, and I had the courage to actually use it more, but still, there are so many buttons and modes that I just didn't know anything about.

For my birthday last year, I decided to go ahead and learn this darn thing. I tried looking at a lot of tutorials online, and actually reading my manual, but it still just felt like Greek to me. I decided that the best thing would be to take a class, so that's what I asked for as my present - one of those extended learning seminars for beginners through my alma mater. This...kind of worked. I mean, at least I now kind of know what a lot of the modes do, and in certain circumstances I feel ok putting it into manual for low light situations, which seem to be all of my situations inside my house. But I'm still bad. I can't seem to get a grip on white balancing, and I end up doing a lot of adjusting after the fact in Photoshop. I think what I probably need to do, apart from practice, is sign up for an intermediate class. Maybe I'll ask for that for my birthday this year!

In the meantime, I want to try to make sure my Etsy listings don't look like total garbage. #1, I want people to look at them. But #2, I can't say in the description, "hey, this totally looks better in person! Trust me! Just buy it, then you'll see!" So I need to try to make my items look realistic and try to convey the cuteness through the screen on a plain, non-distracting background. I was reading a book that talked about a super simple construction of a light box. Just clip smooth white paper onto cardboard and set it up like a box with 3 sides, aim a lamp into it, and shoot away!

Fail.

I mean, I guess it's a little better than just putting my little hats on my white desk and shooting from above. But not much. I think maybe my biggest problem was scale. Even for the baby hats I'm mainly working on, an 11x17 sheet of paper wasn't big enough so that I wasn't catching the edges of the cardboard in the shot, which just seemed to throw off the colors even with my feeble attempts at editing the photos after the fact. Also, I even went ahead and started writing up a listing for this cute little pumpkin head hat, and that little leaf just seemed so feeble! It was late, and I decided that it really needed more work before it was ready for sale, so I knew I'd have to retake the pictures anyway, so I might as well try to make them better.

I poked around a bit on Etsy to see what other people were doing. Of course the cutest and most common photo set up was the hat on an adorable baby's head. Duh! And I even have one of those lying around. However, I've taken a stance of not wanting to splash my baby all over the internet. We've not posted a single picture of her on line, even on Facebook. (We do all our family photo sharing via emails and texts.) So....it really didn't seem like a good idea to bend my rules to sell something! Then I saw some pretty attractive shots set up either outside, or in a little vignette somewhere in the house. I opted against an outdoor option because I work for a living and most of my spare time - when I do this stuff - is in the dark. So somewhere in the house it is!

We have espresso colored dining chairs and off-white curtains, so I thought that might be a nice and somewhat consistent background I could use for most of my items.

Except, well, reflection. No matter where I aimed my lamp I just got this hot spot on the not-leather leather-ish fabric of the chair. And then I thought....wait....couldn't I just take that curtain and use it like a photo backdrop?

I think....win?!

Yeah, it's still way less good than a professional would do. I think ultimately if I keep this up with any level of success, my best bet would be to swap props for photos and have a pro shoot my knits. But this is not that time, and if we're going to go, we're going to go grass roots.

Does anyone have any other tips for product photography that a total photography neophyte like me could try to pick up?

And also, what do you think of the new hat? I added a second, larger leaf that I think balances it out a little. I can't wait to see my little one sporting it all next month!!

Well that's embarrassing