I know I'm supposed to be packing but...

Last night I had an idea. The idea simply would not go away, which is what lead to me wandering around town late at night with a tape measure.

All will be revealed shortly.

Life stuff

I hate it when everyday life stuff gets in the way of photography.

Over the last few months I feel like I've barely touched my camera. There are all sorts of things on my photography 'to do list', like looking into making a smaller contraption for my TtV rig, getting more Alamy shots processed and uploaded and so on, but right now there are too many other things which are, unfortunately, more important.

Nevertheless, when I do get a chance to take some photos I'm pleased with what I get. This shot of the Millennium Bridge, Gateshead, was originally rather dull. Nothing wrong with it exactly, just taken on a very average day. I started playing around with it in the new version of my favourite workflow/editing software and this is the result.

I promise that, when this particular bit of 'life stuff' is over, I will grab my camera and make up for lost time.

The demise of the London yarn stores

When I returned to London earlier in the year, I fulfilled my duty as a knitter and visited every yarn store I could find. Back in June, that meant iKnit, Loop, Socktopus and Stash.

My first experience of iKnit was not the best. I found it to be a bit grubby, disorganised and the atmosphere between the shop employee and her daughter made me feel uncomfortable. They stock lots of lovely yarns and the shop is easy to get to, but I didn't find anything I wanted to buy.

Loop is a lovely shop, but a little walk from the tube. They stock plenty of good yarns and I had a nice chat with an employee who got more strange looks on the train when he was knitting: "as a pierced, tattooed 40+ year old you do get odd looks when you knit."

I visited Socktopus twice - the first time just for a GoKnit pouch, the second for the Knitting Goddess trunk show. There was a great spirit of community and Alice was a lovely host. Similarly, when I stopped by Stash, there was a knit-in in progress and the community seemed well-established and enthusiastic.

Six months later, we've lost my two favourite London yarn shops. Socktopus closed and their remaining stock went to Stash, then Stash announced that they were also shutting up shop. Both were due to the owners finding it difficult to manage their home and business, which I can totally understand, but it's such a shame to lose such lovely shops with strong community focus.

I wish both owners well and hope that the knitting communities which developped around their stores will continue to thrive in their absence.

Knit Pro (Knit Picks) Needle Tip Stand

I've been struggling for a suitable storage solution for my Knit Picks options set ever since I bought them. Until now they've gone back in their original packaging when not in use, but when I saw that they had brought out this needle tip stand I put an order in straight away.


It's a very simple, but functional, design with a minor flaw - no space for 3.25 or 3.75mm needle tips. It goes straight from 3mm to 3.5mm and then on to 4mm. A bit strange since Knit Pro (Europe) supply both of the missing sizes and Knit Picks (America) sell 3.75mm but not 3mm. This is a real shame as it means finding somewhere else for two sets of tips to live. Still, I love the look of it and it keeps my pretty needles organised so I'm quite happy.

Great North Run

I completed the Great North Run in 2hrs 23mins. More soon.

Photocamp Bradford 2009 - Part 1

Having seen the session topics posted before the event, I already had an idea of what I wanted to get out of the weekend. In the next year I would like to take my photography to the next level. I've been handed a great opportunity to shoot a big event and I'm considering a little exhibition to go along with it. The idea of this is completely new for me - I've never considered it before and I often find the art photography world a bit scary, so when I saw that Impressions Gallery were running a session on how to prepare a body of work for presentation I immediately put it on my 'must attend' list.

The session focused primarily on portfolio reviews - opportunities for photographers to get critiques on their work from established photographers, gallery directors etc. but the information was equally useful in terms of self-evaluation and planning projects. We discussed the physical presentation of work, the questions you would be asked (and should therefore ask yourself) and we looked at Carolyn Mendelsohn's portfolio, which was a revealing insight into what an actual portfolio review would involve. All of this certainly made the process seem less intimidating and I think made everyone a little more comfortable with the idea of presenting their work to others.

Deliberate half-marathon #1

Yesterday I did my second half-marathon training session and this time it was deliberate. Having run out of longer routes in Ilkley, I decided that a good option might be to take the train to Shipley and then run from there to Leeds along the Leeds & Liverpool canal. The first time I did it I hadn't been able to get an accurate distance for it, so when I got half a mile in and saw 'Leeds 12 3/4m' on a towpath marker I panicked a bit and started to build in walking breaks. I finished that one in 2:27, which wasn't bad considering the circumstances but I knew I'd walked too much.

This time I was much more prepared with a bit of carb-loading and some Jelly Babies in my back pocket as en route fuel. I haven't run as much as I would have liked in the last few weeks due to work rotas, but I decided to try out a 10:10 pace, which turned out to be pretty comfortable. I finished in 2:12:55, celebrating with a dash through the fountains in Leeds to cool off.

My Great North Run race pack arrived on Saturday, which makes it all a bit more real. Just 5 weeks to go now and I need to get my training back on track.

Damn those guinea pig-eating wool winders

Most of yesterday afternoon was spent with my knittting buddy in an hysterical attempt to wind a badly-constructed skein of wool into a ball. Now a skein isn't a complicated thing. It's really just a big circle of yarn twisted up a bit. It should be easy to put on a swift and re-wind to a ball. Should be. Not this one. This was the single most twisted, knotty, screwed up skein I have ever come across and we ended up having to create a new form of cats cradle just to get it wound properly. Still, at least we had a laugh (and some cake) while we were at it.

The next big decision is what to make with it now it's done. Since it's variegated it needs to be something with not too much lace pattern but not so plain as to be dull to knit. I'm considering something like the Knitty surprise sock pattern. We'll see.

Knitting progress

Here's the finished hat/mask. It seemed to go down well with Cruella's dalmatian puppy who wore it for most of the night. Should come in handy for Halloween!

Now that's finished, I'm down to two works in progress. Socktopus' Twitter knitalong shawl. The shawl has been making fairly slow progress as you'd expect with 300+ stitches of lace, but I'm halfway through the last repeat of clue 3 and will probably manage to move on to clue 4 today.

I've also still got the gathered pullover on the needles - just need to decide whether to add more length to the arms as my vertical tension is a bit off.

Hat/Mask in progress

So this is what the Jackyll & Hide looks like this morning. Not far to go until I get to the eyeholes....

On the needles...

The train commute project of the day is the Knitty.com Jackyll & Hide hat/mask. I'm making it in fairly hideous acrylic, purely because I'm not likely to wear it very often. Fortunately the yarn's not too squeaky and it was very cheap, so I shouldn't really complain... although it would be far nicer if it were baby llama or something.

Anyway, I managed 4" of 2x2 ribbing and 2" of stockinette today, so I think I'm on target to finish it in time for a friend's party on Saturday.

Getting back on track

I've had a couple of weeks of inconsistent running schedules for various reasons and now the Great North Run is only 7 weeks or so away I really need to get back into a regular training routine. That started tonight with a 3-mile run in 27:29. In future weeks this will be my 'recovery run' from the big one on Sundays.

Of course now I know I'm capable of travelling 13 miles under my own steam, but I was slightly disappointed that I didn't run the whole of my 'accidental' half-marathon the weekend before last. To be fair, I hadn't been expecting it to be that long a run so I wasn't prepared for it physically, mentally or nutritionally and took a few walk breaks purely to conserve a bit of energy. But for the GNR I really would like to say that I ran every step of the way. Let's see how that goes...

Blocking Ishbels

This pattern drives me insane, but I love the finished objects. It's Ishbel, by Ysolda Teague and this morning I've been re-blocking the two I've made so far on my new (and very cheap) blocking mats.

The light blue one is made with Artesano Alpaca 4-ply and the darker one is Araucania Ranco Multy sock yarn. My advice to anyone attempting to make one is to count every single row and put a lifeline in on every purl row. That way if you screw up you haven't got far to frog.

(the blocking mats came from Argos and are sold as children's play mats - the package says 'Pink Play Mats... colour may vary')

Having just deleted several posts from circa 2003 when I originally
started this blog, welcome to my new-look photo blog. It's being
created because iWeb cannot currently accept blog posts by email and I
suspect the vast majority of posts on this blog will come straight
from my iPhone.

If you've made it here then you probably already know me, so I'll skip
the niceties and get straight to the posting...