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Tinking Turtle Raverly

Back from Maternity Leave!

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Photographing a project

Hello from the Turtle Household!

Monday marked the end of my self-imposed maternity leave.  I’ve been taking the last month to sort through emails and triage what I needed to do for the business.  If everything goes as planned, the remainder of August and the month of September will be marked by an increased amount of activity as I learn what the new normal for the business and our family is.

The intent is to begin to contact individuals on the waiting list for finishing and repair services and begin taking in items again.  I’m so looking forward to burrying my hands in yarn!

I’m hoping for the ability to return to a little more blogging, a few news emails if you’re on the newsletter, and a somewhat regular teaching schedule.  We’ll see how ambitious this will be!

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this picture, of a project I worked on during my maternity leave for an article that will be published later this year.

Yosemite, In a selection of Pictures

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I never did get around to showing some pictures from Yosemite, so I thought I’d take some time to share a glimpse of what other creative outlets I have: fooling around with my camera.
Alpine flowers that needed very little to grow.
I fell in love with the wood, how it was preserved, and what it looked like.
I have very few photos I took of views (well, I’m still processing the panoramas), but there just wasn’t a good way to convey scale – everything is just so BIG.
Flowers and Rocks – formations by glaciers.
I looked like a road from a car commercial.
Wood!
Yes, it was really necessary to get in the lake. I had to know if the water was as cold as everyone was making it to be.
Berries, and wood.
Blue, blue Sky.  And yet, so many different shades!
A long, long, way down.  It was hard not to get dizzy when you looked down.
Playing with the capabilities of my camera.
A quiet lunch moment.
Flowers.
I loved the stuff that grew on the trees – such a vivid green!

Visiting Atlantic Beach

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I wrote this post once already, hit save, went to do something else, then went back to edit it and it was gone.  I did everything right and I’m still having to rewrite it.  *Grumbles*

I’m catching up on things that happened while I was super busy and couldn’t keep up with everything.  One of the things I wanted to share was a trip Michael and I took with his parents to Atlantic Beach.  It’s become a tradition for them to visit the beach in the off season – when the rates are cheap, the beaches are empty, and you can have the ocean all to yourself.  I have to admit I probably like the beach better this way.  I don’t mind the cold, particularly.  In fact, when you are bundled up there isn’t really a chance of getting sunburned, which is what I’ve done every time I’ve went to a beach in the summer.

Unfortunately for me it was a working vacation – I had a number of designs due at the end of January and beginning of February and I couldn’t just not work on them.  But I only did the essentials – so no email or answering the phone.

The unit where we stayed had a GIANT easychair, which I took possession of early in the weekend, and worked on most of my crochet/knitting there.  It was an amazing chair.

The lovely lovely easy chair, where most of my knitting or crocheting took place.
beach vegetation against sunset
Me, watching sunset (Michael can’t seem to get a horizon line straight)
Michael, looking picturesque.
more vegetation
And all along, I stitched away.

Glimpses of My Life, Lately

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Things have been rather chaotic lately, so some pictures to hold you over until I can create a more content-worthy post.

On National Train Day, Michael and I dressed up a little old-timey and rode the train to Baltimore, where we proceeded to spend the entire day at the Baltimore and Ohio Train Museum.

We were mistaken three times as was figurines – we’d be standing with each other looking at an exhibit, go to move to the next one, and scare the living daylights out of somebody.  I think it was the hats.

Summer has truly settled in, and I’ve been kept jumping to land on things to keep Sweetness and Light entertained.  They’ve done so much growing lately.

I’ve been teaching a bevvy of classes at both Woolwinders and Fibre Space.  I love getting to teach new classes – and I have a bunch of new classes that I’m getting ready to roll out in the Fall!

I got a DSLR Camera, and I’ve been having way too much fun figuring out its capabilities.  Michael and I went to the farm this last weekend, and I had a bunch of fun with my tripod and setting long exposures.  Naturally, after a few shots of the stars, I couldn’t help but play with flashlights.

Inspiration

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 I’ve been thinking lately about inspiration, and color.  It’s sometimes hard as a designer because I’m already supposed to be thinking about winter designs.  Such is the turn around process for publishing that it takes that long from design to actualization.  This can be hard, as the weather is warming right now, the air spring-like.

For instance, I broke out my sandals this evening for a run to pick up what is god-help-me-please the second-to-last piece of furniture we’ll be taking up to our eighth-floor apartment.  There’s cherry buds on trees, not yet bloomed.  The daffodils are out full force, Bradford pears are on the cusp of blooming, and the tree I’ve always thought of as the tulip tree (I’ll post a picture in a couple of weeks) is also out.

It means I have to be creative when trying to get myself in the mood, and the mindset of winter.  I have to think warm things, cool or cold nights, and heavy knitting on my lap.  Practically the opposite of what I’m thinking of now.

One of the ways I try to get myself in the mindset is visual images, and color.

Michael was transferring and organizing all the spices this afternoon.  He’s taken the week off before his vacation days end, and is taking the opportunity to get most of the packing we haven’t done yet.

I glimpsed a look at the spices he had put out on our (brand-new-to-us!) dish-hutch, and snapped some pictures.  I liked them because most of the spices are ones I normally think of as warm – the browns, the reds of curries and nutmeg, turmeric and other things.

These are the perfect things for me to draw me into the thought of winter, combating my growing certainty that it’s spring.  Spring spring spring!

On a side note, to prove that i’m right, and it is spring, Michael’s celebration dinner for us moving and settling into this new place was all about light flavors that move us away from winter.  We did have beef… you can see it poking out of the soup, but it wasn’t in a beef stock, rather a thinner stock, full of the last of the root vegetables.  Our salad was full of spring-ish things too… the mushrooms we’re growing in our closet (courtesy of my future mother-in-law – white buttons and Portobello).  There were cranberries, invoking the color we’re seeing in the fours, and lots of other delicious things.


And still, I must try to think, Winter.

Photographs from the farm, and the rare bit of snow we’ve gotten this year:

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My darling fiancee Michael’s family owns a farm in rural VA that they use as a retrat.  Being within a few hours drive from DC, we are sometimes get to use the farm as a getaway from our own busy lives in the city.  It’s refreshing for Michael and I, for different reasons.  While I am pretty much happy living wherever, Darling Michael is a country boy at heart, and happiest in a place where you can’t see your next door neighbor, and it takes a car to get anywhere.

We went to the farm with a couple of friends, and it managed to snow that afternoon.
Naturally we had to play in the snow.

Because Ellie and Rob were with us, we had to make a snowasaurous. (pictured in the back).  Rob decided to make his own dinosaur (pictured in the mid-ground).  I was having so much fun rolling snowballs (which were being used for the two dinnosaurs) that after they said they didn’t need any more snowballs, I continued to roll balls for my own amusement.

I got rather tired.

But I had a lot of snowballs.

Last count I rolled upwards of 22 snowballs.  Some with a little help.

One of the more interesting aspects of the farm is the old equipment dragged into the woods to die.

It is affectionately known as farm art.

Michael took a walk with me in the snow, a grand tradition we try to honor as much as possible.  There he is in his trenchcoat, and one of the myriad of farm hats to wear at the farm.  This is one of his many glares (sometime I’ll do a post about how Michael really only has three expressions, and all expressions are variations of those three).

This is a hurry up and stop taking my picture look, under-laid with an I’m amused but not trying to show it look.

I found a Whoville tree.

Yellowfarm Cowl

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Hot off the press, a cowl design for Yellowfarm.

Yellowfarm is a small but vibrant farm and yarn business back from my hometown Guilderland, NY (technically, they’re from Altamont, but Guilderland and Altamont are practically the same place).  They grow Wensleydale and American Teeswater long wool sheep.  Both breeds are know for their beautiful silky lock structure, which simply can’t be ignored.

Yellowfarm will be featuring this cowl design when they head to Vogue Knitting in NY, NY, and I will be releasing the pattern sometime this spring.

This versatile cowl can be used as both a button-up scarflet or a cowl, and uses thrumming and entrelac.  But instead of thrumming to the inside of your piece (which creates some of the warmest mittens you have ever seen), the thrums go to the outside of the work, creating a distinctive pattern.

Working with Yellowfarm was truely a pleasure, and I hope to do it again in the future.  Thanks guys for letting me work with your beautiful wool!  Good luck at Vogue!

PS: Recognize the model?  It’s Ellie again, being a great trooper as I pushed her around on a cold winter day.

Engagement photos

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Last weekend after I ran Rosemary home after her visit (YEY sister visiting, but boo her leaving) I got together will Ellie and Rob, possibly my best friends from around the area.
On a side note, proving that the world is truly a small place, I met Ellie at the Yarn Spot about a year ago.  After talking to her for about an hour, I pulled a “friend pick-up” maneuver, got her number, and told her we needed to hang out.  You know how you sometimes meet people and you just know you’ll get along?  She was one of them.  Later we found out that we were born in the same small hospital in Vermont, and most likely was in the same playgroup when we were two.
We ventured out onto Sligo Creek, to the same park where I had my birthday.  We were on a mission.  You see, we needed some engagement and save the date photos for Ellie and Rob.  We were going to do some traditional ones, and then we were going to do some fun ones, involving dinosaurs.
Now, I try to work on my photography all the time, taking pictures mostly outside of my two favorite little girls (Anna Elliot‘s little girls, Bella and Vivi).  I’ve gotten pretty decent, and I try to work on this a lot because photography is a really important part of blogging, and selling patterns when you are doing it online or in magazines.  Hey, and it can’t hurt.
So I thought I’d share some of the pictures from our shoot, and give you a glimpse of two of the best people in the world to have as friends.
November 005
Cookies and engagement rings make the best combination, I think.
November 014
I was using Ellie and her dog, JoJo to take some test shots.  They turned out remarkably well.
November 026
Interestingly, it takes a longer time for adults to relax in front of a camera than children.  It took Rob accidentally shoving a cookie in Ellie’s mouth to make them stiff.
November 042
Hey, I got to also play around and take some more artistic shots.  It was a win-win.
November 052
Rob threatening the to-be-photoshopped in dinosaur.
November 056
Running from a dinosaur.  Not a t-rex, but perhaps some other type of theropod.  I was informed that the dinosaur we see most often portrayed as a T-rex is often another type of theropd.  I’m sure I’m spelling theropod wrong.
November 113
Another lesson learned, if I change my settings, change them back.  But not before this happy accidental shot happens.
November 111
Ahhhhh!  Theropod!
November 128  Things learned from this photoshoot:  Happy accidents happen.  Get people to do silly things. Get people to relax.  Adults may perhaps he harder than children to work with. Ellie and Rob are really cute together.
Cuteness.

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