I had signed up for two classes at this year’s Knit Nation, Franklin Habit‘s “Photographing your Fibre” and Merike Saarniit‘s “Estonian Lace”. Unfortunately, when the weekend came round, I was ill, taking a bizarre cocktail of antibiotics, decongestants and paracetamol and mostly deaf in one ear. Undeterred, I turned up for the classes anyway and I apologise to any of you who were in class with me and had to listen to me coughing and probably seeming somewhat anti-social as I was struggling to hear anything anyone was saying.
Because of this, my memories (and most of the photographs I took over the weekend) are somewhat blurry, although I do remember enjoying myself and I did manage to learn some things!
Franklin’s class (which I attended on the Friday) was a good basic introduction to the technicalities of photography, covering things like aperture speeds, depth of field, etc. Lots of the technical stuff I had learned before but mostly forgotten and Franklin’s explanations were really clear and easy to understand.
He also discussed different types of light and lighting and how to get better results with light for your photographs without having to spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on professional equipment. I decided there was no better time to put my new knowledge to the test than when photographing the yarn that I bought at the marketplace.
The photograph on the left was taken without the aid of any special lighting equipment. The photograph on the right was taken with the aid of my new super-duper high-tech reflector (otherwise known as a piece of cardboard wrapped in tin foil):
The difference is subtle but definitely worth the two minutes and no money that it cost me to set up the reflector. I can see it getting a lot of use in future!
The yarn is Juno Fibre Arts Buffy Sock, which is the only yarn that I bought this year (mostly because I realised beforehand that I still had quite a lot of last year’s yarn left). I think the colour is Wraith. It’s a beautifully soft superwash sock yarn but I have a feeling that it might end up as shawl. That is what usually happens to yarn around here, after all!