I SO Love the Midwest in Springtime

Now I know that it is really Spring and working it’s way towards Summer.

Why is that you might ask?

Because last night we had these…..

Oh it was a fun evening let me tell you. Fun, fun, fun. Can you detect the sarcasm in that. Stormy weather is not unknown here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio. In fact, we expect it during the Spring and Summer months…and the Winter as well. But during the winter we aren’t so worried about swirling winds that will pick your house up and deposit it in Pennsylvania.

Honestly, I didn’t even realize that we were in the path of bad weather until it was almost upon us. I was watching “Crimes of the Century” on Netflix. I was knitting. I was enjoying my Laguinitas IPA. It was a good evening. But it seemed to be getting a bit darker outside than I might have expected for that time of the night so I just though I would casually check my iPhone weather app.

Oh dear.

So what did I do first when I realized that the bad weather might be coming our way?

Why I went outside and took a picture of it of course. And then I put it up on Facebook and Instagram. And THEN I went inside and turned on the local news station where the lovely, but unseen, weather girl was talking about the golf ball size hail that had been reported. So it was back outside to move all the plants a bit closer to the house.

Don’t you just LOVE going outside into the OPEN when there is lightening all around.

No?

Me neither.

OK, I am going to go off topic here for just a moment. Not like I EVER do THAT! To all the people who flood the local news twitter feed and Facebook feed with complaints that your precious shows like Dancing with the Stars are being preempted by continuous weather coverage…..please SHUT UP. Sorry, I know that is rude but REALLY! Don’t you think this is a bit more important than finding out whether Charlie White got voted off the dance island. I might be mixing my reality show metaphors there but you know what I mean.If you missed the show last night I have a mind to just TELL you what happened. Personally, I am very glad to be able to watch WALL TO WALL coverage of where the possible tornado might be going thankyouverymuch.

Steps back, adjusts her self righteousness shirt, and humphs along.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing. Actually, I just went upstairs to check the weather because I swear I hear thunder. My office is in the basement and the only windows are little teeny tiny ones that are that cinder block stuff that you cannot see out of. The clouds are building but no thunder…at the moment. However it is currently 86F and there is always the chance….

At any rate.

Things seemed to be quiet outside, not necessarily a good sign but I was willing to think positively about it. I could hear the thunder, a lot of it, and I could see an occasional flash of lightening but I decided that I would just go and have some ice cream….it cures all things. I had just sat my ever expanding bahookie into the couch to flip back and forth between weather and Bizzare Foods when…..the tornado siren went off.

Dang it! My ice cream! I put my bowl back into the freezer and……

Max and I went to spend some quality time in the basement. Don’t you love his face! It just looks like he is thinking, “Why is Alpha making me take a picture with her during this stressful time?” He really doesn’t like being in the basement. So I monitored the weather from the computer since there is no TV down in the bowels of Chez Knit and occasionally zipped upstairs to check on conditions, which were not all that bad although there was a boat load of rain and thunder and lightening going on. But I have to say that my stress level was in the totally manageable range which was completely different from the 13 years that we lived at OCK.

Big storms with strong winds were VERY nerve wracking when we lived there.

Notice all the trees. The big TALL trees. And off to the right of the picture is an enormous oak tree that you cannot actually see but that was a constant worry to me when there was a big storm. If it fell just the right way it would have taken out…..a big chunk of house. Big storms also brought the distinct possibility of a loss of electrical power. No power meant no working well pump meant no water meant no using the toilets because you cannot put anything into the septic system because the septic pumps run on electricity too and things will be bad if you do.

In the end there was a big bucket load of rain, lots of really loud thunder and a seriously large amount of lightening….but no tornado. And no power outage either.

But lets not do it again any time soon OK?

7 Quick Takes (Vol 258)

You have your marching orders! When you are done decoding the blather contained in this super secret blog post you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at a rate MUCH faster that Johnny Manziel’s NFL draft experience, over to Conversion Diary.

Blather made to order.

1.
Good customer service. I love good customer service. And Universal Yarn has fabulous customer service. I can’t tell you the whole story just yet because I can’t actually talk about the yarn that I ordered from them.

It might be currently on my needles being fashioned into something as a gift for someone.

But what I can tell you is that one of the skeins that I ordered had FIVE knots in the skein. One or two knots is acceptable. But five is a whole lotta trouble. Let’s just say that Universal Yarn made everything good again, and in a fashion that wasn’t just timely but super sonic.

I will tell you the whole story when I am done with what I am knitting and the gift has been given.

How’s that for being cryptic.

But really, if you want yarn, order from Universal. They have made me a customer for life.

2.
Every house has it’s own quirks. It’s own personality. Chez Knit is no different.

One of the things that we are finding is that when the weather outside is warm, the temperature inside will also be on the toasty side. We can get a cross breeze by having the front door open and the windows in the family room open as well, not a great cross breeze but a breeze.

However, at the moment we do not have any ceiling fans, which would help the situation. Those will come eventually. And at night we can’t leave the doorz and windows open except for the window in the bedroom.

It is May and I am NOT putting the air conditioning on. Not going to do it. However, that meant that the temperature in the master sleeping chamber (I have been reading too much Elizabethan history) was, shall we say, just this side of the temperature that I need to bake a good loaf of bread.

Thank goodness for oscillating fans. I had that baby on low and pointed stationary right at my poor menopausal body all night long.

3.
The grill is gone.

You didn’t know it was going anywhere? Well it was and has. The behemoth big grill has gone to live at the office of HHBL where it can more easily participate in Grill Fridays. It is happy. We are happy. Everyone at Public Insight will be happy.

And we will be happy here at Chez Knit when we get a grill that is more suited to the size patio we now possess.

I am also so very glad that you didn’t see us this morning putting the Behemoth in the van that HHBL rented. I did a fairly accurate impression of a Russian heavy weight lifter. I am thinking that I could sign up for the Clean and Jerk competition without any difficulty.

Thank goodness I no longer have a uterus that might have fallen out at an inopportune moment.

4.
I am completely enjoying the do it yourself macro journey that I am on. It is definitely a journey of adjustments and contemplation. It is about learning what a lens turned backwards on my camera body is actually capable of and what is the best set up for coming close to capturing the photos that I see in my head.

It is also about understanding what this do it yourself macro set up can and cannot do.

I cannot, for the most part, hold the camera in my hand all the while trying to get the focus right manually and still expect that I am going to have any kind of clarity. I must use a tripod.

I am also finding that the angle at which the camera is situated also make a great deal of difference. When you have the lens on the camera with the reversing ring there are things that you can do and things that you can’t. You can set your ISO and exposure. You cannot set your fstop. It becomes a dance of moving the object that you are working with and zooming in and out with your lens and then very carefully adjusting your focus before hitting the shutter button and waiting for the timer to tick down.

I have also come to find that the best camera/lens position for this is with the camera pointing down as best as is possible. With the lens reversed the depth of field is as shallow as Kim Kardashian. The photos are much sharper with the camera placed at that angle rather than at a 90 degree angle to the floor or table surface.

Like I said, it is a journey.

My morning coffee grounds, obviously post use.

The every day average things are so very fascinating close up.

5.
The Spring fever continues here at Chez Knit. I am rearranging things in the kitchen area. I would like to better utilize the pantry space that I have and I would like to move most of my stocked up items and my canned items up to the kitchen area so that I can better keep an eye on stock and not have to go to the basement every time I need something.

But to do that I have to move some other things and then find a place for them.

It will all get done eventually, right about the time I get it into my head to re-organize again. I am not one to rearrange furniture but pantries and closets are totally fair game.

6.
A BIG Happy Mother’s Day to my momma. She is the best momma a girl could have.

7.
And here are the Instagram pictures for the week.

I am totally obsessed with Instagram.

The Bucket Brigade

For most of the winter I have been mulling over in my menopausal mind about my patio space. It is small. The footprint cannot be changed. There will never be a deck. Just a slab of ugly concrete.

As the snow fell, I pondered. As the winds blew, I mulled (and drank an extra glass of wine). As the winter dragged on and on and on and on and….I thought.

I also watched the pattern of the sun and where it fell over the course of the day. Yes, I know that the sun pattern in the winter is different from the sun pattern in the summer. But I could at least get a feel for what was going to be the amount of sun vs shade. Was there enough sustained sun to be able to grow a few herbs and flowers? Time will tell.

I cogitated on what I should do about plants. I cannot actually “plant” anything in the ground because the ground doesn’t belong to me, well all except for that scant one foot of soil extending out from the house. And I can tell you if I took my shovel to that one foot space and dug it all up and put in a flower bed, well, I would get calls. And possibly strongly worded letters.

But, I don’t have to actually dig anything up to have a few herbs and flowers on the back patio. No indeedee.

This is the beginnings of my bucket garden. Last year these galvanized buckets were a part of the decorations for Shoe Queen’s wedding. This year, planters! I love it when I repurpose things.

To be honest I had been thinking all winter about going in a different direction with this little space of mine. I was actually going to buy some square wooden planters. But each of those beauties cost about $30 and I really hated to spend that money. I hate to spend money in general….

Stop talking about the yarn. There is nothing to talk about. Moving on.

Where was I?

Oh, planters, that was it.

I didn’t really want to construct the planters myself, although I am quite capable of doing that. So I really was all set to spend that money but I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t something else around Chez Knit that I couldn’t use instead. And there they were, sitting on the shelf in the garage, just waiting to be used. On Monday I had gone out and bought some of the plants that you see here, despite the fact that it was still colder that a well digger bahookie in Montana. I also picked up some blue spray paint. Today it is lovely outside so I fired up my painters tape and got out the tarp and painted my buckets and planted my plants.

It is a work in progress. I don’t like that the buckets are all on one level, it offends my artistic sensibilities. But that can be worked out somehow. I will keep an eye open for something in someone’s garbage that will fill the bill. I really had to restrain myself from picking up that lovely toilet in the garbage around the corner. I love those things as planters. Oh wouldn’t THAT just be the talk of the next neighborhood dinner.

Dang, I might just have to do that. Someone, restrain me.

The next thing will be making sure that the four footed hordes deer don’t nibble. I think I am going to make a hot pepper spray and possibly some netting to go over them. It is them or me and I have the opposable thumbs so I am going to win.

And then there are also the bunnies.

When everything is planted and all is set I will take a better picture.

Beauty in Miniature

I am trying to spend some time experimenting with my do it yourself macro photography using my reversing ring and one of the lenses that it fits on. Those lenses would be the 50mm, 85mm and my stock 18-55mm.

I am sure that having an actual macro lens would make things a whole lot easier. But I don’t always want easy…and right now a macro lens just isn’t in the budget. That would be a completely frivolous purchase. Some day perhaps….some day. But in the mean time I want to get everything possible out of this set up that I have. I want to own it, so to speak. Working with the reversing ring means that I have to slow down and think about what I want to do. I have found that most of the time I get the best results by having Big Bertha on a tripod and whatever I am photographing laid stationary on a small platform I have rigged up with an onld box and some felt. Focusing is a slow and precise process and isn’t always great. I am going to have to do some more research here because I am spending time looking at other photographer’s work using a reversing ring and the photos are often much sharper than mine. It is a learning process.

But it is so entirely fascinating. Every day things look so very different and so incredibly beautiful when looked at really close up. I have a growing list of “Everyday Things” that I am going to take the time to photograph.

Outside of our bedroom window is a tree with the most beautiful blossoms on it. This is one of the blossoms that wasn’t quite at the fully open stage.

I am completely mesmerized by some of the results that I am getting.

7 Quick Takes (Vol 257)

Folks it has been one of those days…and we have guests coming for dinner. I am afraid to think what might happen between now and then. You know what to do. When you have consumed the blather herein you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of lawyers lining up to sue Donald Sterling, over to Conversion Diary.

Blather most powerful.

1.
I pulled out the Macro reversing ring this week. I will be honest and say that I haven’t played with it for a while. I love that thing but I was frustrated when I used it. The frustration had nothing to do with the ring itself and how it works. No, the frustration was completely my own fault and solely due to the fact that sometimes….occasionally…OK more than I like to admit, I do things on a too rapid basis.

I see a picture idea, I pick up Big Bertha, I execute said picture.

But you see, with this macro reversing ring, I just have to slow down. I cannot just grab Big Bertha and take a photo because I have found that I really must use a tripod with this set up. No matter how steady my hands might be when holding my camera, they are not steady enough to get a relatively clear picture with the reversing ring.

See what I mean. I worked and worked to steady my breathing and my hands and still, blurriness.

Using this macro reversing ring is much slower. I must be more precise in my focusing and it takes a bit longer to find the right spot to focus on. I MUST use the shutter delay, preferably the 10 second shutter release so that all camera movement has stopped.

Oh that is SO much better.

By the way, these are Hoya blossoms. Look at how the blossom looks like it is made out of velvet! I would never have thought that by just looking at the blossom in the normal way. I love my Hoya with a fierce passion. He/She/It predates HHBL by several years and was a cutting from Parental Unit Mimi’s plant and her plants all originated from a cutting from HER mom’s plant. The thing about a Hoya is that it won’t bloom for a LONG TIME. It took almost 10 years before the first blooms appeared. But now it blooms regularly.

2.
So, so loving finally having things up on the walls here at Chez Knit, even if not everything is up. There are a bunch of “miscellaneous” pieces of art of various sizes that are being held back for something that I want to do in the master bedroom. But I am just going to wait on that installation until after the walls are painted in there.

3.
For a while I have been searching for a new, basic knitting pattern for the charity blankets that I knit over the course of the year. It is ridiculous how frustrating this has been. For the love of PETE it isn’t like I don’t normally knit fairly complicated things like socks and lace. How hard could it be to knit a basic blanket with acrylic yarn.

Evidently more difficult that I thought because I have knit, hated, frogged, started again with another pattern, knit, hated, frogged. Repeat ad infinitum.

But I think that I have finally found the right pattern, so INCREDIBLY simple and interesting looking. I am about half way through the first blanket and it is flying by. The pattern is simple enough, being garter stitch, miles and miles and miles of garter stitch, with increases on the right side row only and a few purl stitches thrown in on the edges. Easy peasy knitting squeezy.

When I am finished I will show you.

And maybe I can cut down a bit on the acrylic stash that is breeding in the basement despite my best efforts at yarn birth control.

4.
The Kentucky Derby is tomorrow! And I will miss it. And we don’t have a DVR so I cannot record it. But there is always YouTube later. I have been contenting myself with watching these….over and over and over and over.

Please excuse the absolutely ENORMOUS video window. Windows Live Writer has been abysmal today and I just do not have the mental bandwidth to rewrite the entire blog post and WLW won’t let me delete this thing.

And this is why I am looking for an alternative to WLW. Any suggestions?

5.
Next week I am hoping to get myself over to the Cedar Lee Theater to see this…..

Finding Vivian Maier

WLW (yuck, patooie!) again will not let me embed the video. Click on the link.

I have been waiting a LONG time (or at least it seems like it) to see this.

I am so excited I can hardly contain myself.

6.
I needed to clear my head yesterday, making some changes to certain aspects of Hidden Moments Photography and I needed thinking time. But it is really hard (read that as impossible) to sit and just think when I am in my house. All the other things that need my attention scream at me, whisper to me and disturb my brain in ways that cannot be ignored.

So I stuck some $$ in my pocket, exited Chez Knit and walked down to Burger Fresh to get myself something to eat for dinner (HHBL was teaching last night). I could walk at a leisurely pace, I could think through some things. It was fabulous.

And there was seared, medium rare dead cow with blue cheese and bacon at the end of it.

Then last night I came across this article on purposeless walking.

The Slow Death of Purposeless Walking.

I think that is what I need to do more of, purposeless walking.

We must not let purposeless walking die!

Work with me people!

Purposeless Walking Revolution!

7.
And here are the usual, end of the week Instagram photos. Because I am a lazy so and so.

Say Cheese

Taking Senior pictures, some photographers dismiss it as busy work. Personally, I love it. It gives me a chance to visit with someone who is just on the cusp of starting out in the world. Senior sessions are low key, or at least they are in my mind. No pressure, just chatting and taking a few photos.

And I even got Luke to talk, which I guess is a major accomplishment according to his mother. By the time that we were done I knew where he is thinking about going to college, what his major might be and why he works at The Flip Side….the best burgers around in my humble opinion. I just kept chatting and he finally had to give in.

Resistance was futile.

Seriously folks, I would take Senior pictures and family pictures all the live long day.

Seeing the Beauty in Minutiae

When I am photographing I am most often drawn to the ordinary things of life. It may be because I lead, in general, a small life. I have my work. I have my family. I have my friends. I have my knitting/sewing. I don’t crave fame or fortune. I love home and work and calm and order, being useful.

Maybe that is why I see the beauty in the ordinary minutiae in my life and am drawn to photograph it. HHBL has learned to adjust to my stopping in the middle of walking somewhere to take a photo of something on the street, or perhaps something out of the ordinary at home. He didn’t even bat an eye a while back when he walked through the living room to see me, Big Bertha up to my face, photographing a row of mason jars full of dry beans that I had set up on the linen cupboard. I remember seeing those mason jars lined up in my pantry and knowing that I had to photograph them.

The neighbors in our “new” neighborhood haven’t quite adjusted yet to periodically seeing my spread out on the driveway photographing a leaf or a bug that has captured my interest.

To be perfectly honest I think that is what I am best at as a photographer, capturing the small and insignificant things that others don’t see. I love looking at big and grand landscape photography but I don’t have any desire to do it. I am awed by many of the top wedding photographers (Katelyn James OH MY GOSH Katelyn James), but I know that isn’t my absolute forte, although my Wedding photography is very, very good. In a large group of people at any given event I am just as likely to be taking pictures of peoples footwear as I am of the event itself.

I live a small life. I see the minutiae of it.

I have soft boiled eggs frequently for breakfast. I have mastered the PERFECT soft boiled egg and am about to start work on the perfect poached egg. But that is a post for another time. After breakfast was done and the dishes were sitting on the counter by the sink I turned around and saw the egg shell and just knew I had to photograph it. It spoke to me.

Like I said, small life = seeing the minutiae.