Listings day

I'm just about to start listing the stitch markers again on Etsy and I'm contemplating putting them on the UK version called Folksey.com but first things first, I've done a cool looking, easy to follow two page photo tutorial for them.

If you wish to purchase a copy of this, it is $4 and will be emailed to you as a PDF thus providing the double whammy of saving on postage costs and the environment - no addition to either of our carbon footprints here!

Cick on the Paypal Buy it Now button on the right hand side of this website, log into your account to pay and I'll email you the PDF as soon as I can.

How simple is that! And for your perusal, and to tempt you into buying one, here's a couple of sneak peaks. The first is a shot of the cover page - I've called it 'First Take Your...' because I want to do a series of simple to follow tutorials. The second shot is of part of the instruction page. Enjoy!

Relisting on Etsy

I decided today to have another go at taking photos of the stitch markers as I wasn't 100% happy with what I'd done before - not bad for a first try doing close-ups though.

The main thing was making sure that they were better lit because although our digital camera is about a couple of years old, it can do close-ups really well. What I needed was to bounce the light from the daylight bulb around the shot better. Before I had been just shining the light on the object, not realising it was still being hit by the other lights in the room - the yellow light from the ceiling light and the light from the window. So this time I took my old Spears size 3 loom box lid and put some white paper in it as a test. Success! The picture was better lit but it needed something a bit better as the box only had narrow sides so was still letting other types of light in.

Knowing a little about photography from everyone on Etsy, I thought a photographer's tent would be a good idea - this site has examples - http://www.stevesphotoshop.co.uk/photo_light_tents_cubes.html

So into town it was to have a scout around because I didn't have the patience to buy one off of Ebay. Luckily, more on this in a few sentences, as soon as I got off the bus there was the Jacobs camera centre. They had a few tents in there and the woman in charge was even kind enough to open up the box for the smallest size to show me it. However, unfortunately, I'd already seen the price -£55! How much! It would take me ages to pay that off using sales of my stitch markers. I even asked if they had anything cheaper but no, that was it. Bugger that for the proverbial game of soldiers! So it was up to my original plan of going to Jessops. But they're also targetted at the middle class boys toys kind of market so I wasn't holding up much hope there either. I needn't have worried, the shop had been closed down and because I couldn't be bothered walking across town to the other one, I had to go for plan C. Plan B by the way was this - http://jasontomczak.com/2007/12/17/a-quick-easy-white-box-light-box-for-product-photography/ - but I wanted to see if I could do cheaper.

So I did a trawl of the shops in town for a reasonably large box that was white inside. Would you believe it, the best place I found was Clintons cards. For £4, yes £4 - much better than £50 odd, I got a large box for putting presents in it and it was perfect. The one I bought was holographic silver on the outside, so if I wanted I could have bounced more light off of that by sitting the stitch marker holder on that but to be honest, the light bouncing off it was blinding so I put some white felt over it.

Here's some of the results....

Not bad yeah! Okay, not perfect and I had to do a bit of tweaking in my camera software photo editing package but I'm happier with them.

The way I displayed them by the way was to use bamboo double ended needles held up by those crocodile clip photo holders - courtesy of Paperchase.

Warping and wefting

Well, the weaving's improving. This weekend was the first time in about a month I was able to sit down and get some serious work done.

I'll show you some piccies at some point but I managed to do about half a metre of plain weave using yellow (warp) and green (weft) 4-ply. Then I rolled it up in a towel and stuck it in the washing machine with tonnes of conditioner and it's come out dreamy soft and balanced.

Next on the loom is more yellow (warp) and fushia pink (weft) 4-ply. I think I'm about 3/4s of the way through the warp and the seleveges are looking much neater. There was a point where it looked like I was working at a serious angle but fingers crossed that it's just the way I've wound it on.

Rather than use these as blankets or scarfs, I much prefer the idea of using them as fabric to make things like bags, etc with.