Tag Archives: cey

cey & i: the shoot (part 1)

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i headed into cambridge early tuesday

planning to take pictures,

lots of pictures,

but, there’s work to be done at a photo shoot.

decisions must be made, outfits organized, hair consulted on, scenes decided upon.

so in the end, i didn’t take many pictures at all.

the few i did take, i’m going to share.

ready?

first up, the man behind the camera at work.

i did have to blur lindsay out a bit so as to not give too much away,IMG_6576crop

but the model in front of the camera was really working it, too.

it’ll be a few weeks until i get to see the final results.

what mike showed me in miniature that day

on his little camera screen

was awesome.

i couldn’t be more excited about

 how this collection is coming together right before my eyes.

‘share’ taken from 30:24 of 1st samuel.

(this post is part of an ongoing series,

chronicling my collaboration with classic elite yarns on

an indie collection.  all posts tagged with ‘artistic differences‘ and titled ‘cey & i‘.)

lucet-ing

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a knitting friend pointed me in the direction

of stewart woolery and ron’s handcrafted wooden accessories.

i’m not necessarily anti-plastic,

i mean we have plastic in the house,

but it’s definitely on the bottom of my preference pile.

wood and stone are at the top of my list.

first thing i’ve tried is a lucet. do you know it?IMG_6501crop

i actually had to look up what one was and how to use it.

then my 14 yr old took over.

a lucet makes great 4 sided cording.

just a little leftover yarn goes a long. long way

(it’s color by kristin in the photos here).IMG_6500sat

she’s done worsted weight so far and

it’s begun to look like sport weight would make amazing

shoelaces or giftwrap ties, or …

later this weekend i’ll be trying out

ron’s sock blockers.

i’ve only ever dried my handknit socks laid out

flat on a towel, so this is going to be fun.

i’ll let you know how it goes.

‘wood’ taken from 2:20 of timothy.

cey & i: fresh copy

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there comes a time when

so much is scribbled out and written in

that you need to just print a whole new chart to clear your head.

at least that’s what happens to me.IMG_6476crop2despite all the ‘3 steps forward and 2 steps back’ over this last design

i have cast on and am all forward motion now.

still anticipating a tangent, or two,

but it’s a good start.

having to chart this one

and longing to be mobile, i have once again

turned to my new knitter’s pride magna pattern holder.

i’m finding that i so prefer this to all the other

more awkward ways i’ve tried to keep track on charts before.

highlighters, highlighter tape and just crossing out

IMG_6471are frustrating compared

to the simplicity

of moving the magnetic strip

to wherever i am

at any given moment.

steady on.

me & the magma,

& my minnow merino,

and these square

‘symfonie cubics’ needles

are going to be best buds

for the next couple of weeks give or take a little,

and i’m chomping at the bit to go, go, go.

‘compare’ from 28:17-18 of job.

(this post is part of an ongoing series,

chronicling my collaboration with classic elite yarns on

an indie collection.  all posts tagged with ‘artistic differences‘ and titled ‘cey & i‘.)

cey & i: exactly

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17 days until the photo shoot for ‘artistic differences’.

feels like yesterday that susan and i first sat in her office

and discussed ideas and possibilities.

still, 17 days until

my end of things is done.

then the cey staff tech editors, layout and various other people

have the ball in their court.

here’s the thing.

i’m still swatching for the last piece

of the collection.  back at that again tonight.

IMG_6318cropand it’s not that i couldn’t have knit the full piece

about 10 different times over.

i could have,

and it would have been 10 different variations on a theme.

but, it’s not quite what’s in my head yet.

this is why

i often refer to myself as a ‘hack’.

i know i have skills, experience, and all kinds of excitement for the process.

what i don’t always have is the ability to mold my fingers

and the yarns they’re holding

into the picture in my head the first time out of the gate.

or the second, or the third.

so when i say ‘hack’, i mean not intuitively able

to leap from idea to final design in a single bound.

maybe no-one can.

some people sure do make it look

just about easy, though.

my friend pam send this quote to me sometime before i woke up this morning:

being a hackperfect.

this is exactly what i mean when i label myself a ‘hack’.

it is often one mistake,

one detour or another, that

pulls any given design of mine into a place

where it can hold its own as an original.

this is mostly likely why i always feel more like a happy kid

whose crayon drawing was hung on the fridge

by an adoring parent who sees the effort as beauty

rather than a grown-up holding her own as a ‘knitwear designer.

i admit that every time i write

‘knitwear designer’

as profession on a form, i giggle a little.

so now you know.

‘original’ from 24:13 of 2nd chronicles.

(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling

the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.

to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)

cey & i: experiment gone good

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this was originally a swatch.

then i forgot how i did the swatch

(because i brazenly thought in the moment

that i was knitting it, that i would never forget how i did it).

then i dissected the swatch and wrote down how it was done in the first place.IMG_5695crop

now it’s one of the pieces in ‘artistic differences’

to be released later (i know, i’m a tease).

but, it you will see it later

(i promise)

and when you do, i hope you think the same things that i did

when i first stumbled over how to make it happen.

“oh.” … “hmmm.” … “wow.” … “cool.”

‘later’ taken from 20:25 in proverbs.

(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling

the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.

to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)

cey & i: the art of enthusiasm

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i have met lots of people

in all different artistic fields who are talented,

whose skills really set them apart from the rest of the pack.

the most memorable of those,

the ones who

truly move

me, are

the people who possess both mad skills

and remain excited about what they do

day after day after day, no matter what the circumstances.

friday’s ‘theater of the mind’ shoot was my first ever,

but everyone else there, save one model, had wrapped up a previous shoot

late in the afternoon of the day before.

this was not new to them

and they’d just done it yesterday,

but i would never have known.

that they knew their stuff was obvious

(pros without a doubt),

but the level of creative energy was palpable, too.

that’s what caught my attention.

second day shooting, pouring rain, creative energy still high.

these are great people to work with.

IMG_5408crop

oh how i enjoyed listening

to the ongoing banter, to the decisions being made,

and to the flow of warm, interesting conversation

that kept the models engaged

coming from the photographer as he nearly seamlessly

captured each frame exactly as he imagined it

one after the next after yet another.

thanks to cey and the full crew for allowing me

to be a ‘fly on the wall’.

i loved it!

‘listening’ taken from 18:13 of proverbs.

(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling

the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.

to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)

cey & i: new colors in the mix

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i just finished working with

a beautiful tweedy yarn and i thought,

“i love the vibe of this.  why didn’t i think to include some things that were

softer and tweedier in the upcoming collection?”

so, as is my prerogative as both a woman and an artist,

i proceeded to change my mind…

7ef426673050a557eacd6344248513afand staying true to their easy to work with nature,

classic elite yarns quickly sent the new colors

right to my back door.

majestic tweed and inca alpaca are going to make for

fun new swatching tonight.

thanks, cey.

‘mind’ taken from 46:8 of isaiah.

experimenting

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ribbing and stripesIMG_5147sat

has always equaled

‘tricky’ to me.

i didn’t understand

just how sts work

well enough

to stop

purl bumps of the

previous color

from breaking up the

smoothness of

the striping color changes, until now.

IMG_5143satafter reading

this post by

techknitting,

everything

just

clicked

into place.

it was a real

ah moment.

now,

as i’m trying

ribbing and stripes,

it’s working just the

way i always wanted it to.

success.  hope the techknitting posts can teach you something you’d never

considered before, too.

‘previous’ taken from 3:2 of judges.

.

same old, same old it’s not

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the hazy early morning light

seemed to forecast a normal type of day

but that was just not to be.

IMG_4990satbecause later that day, under the same sort of light

my dad taught my 14 yr old

how to mow with

 the ride on.

IMG_5002crophe sat on my rock, with her younger siblings

and a few assorted neighborhood kids

to ‘supervise’.

IMG_5032cropthe smallest of the onlookers

was by far the loudest as he chanted

‘go, go, go, go!’

trying his very best to be heard over the

roar of the engine, unsuccessfully.

IMG_5029satand then, as if pretending

that this day which feels so monumental

(watching my oldest baby do such a ‘grown-up thing’)

was ‘just an average day’ after all,

things have wound down to quiet knitting

which is the ending of a lot of good days around here.

IMG_5137crop‘rock’ taken from 32:31 of deuteronomy.

cey & i: so very close

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this is

about as scary

as knitting gets for me

(if we don’t throw steeking into the equation,

but that is another story for a different day):

will there be enough yarn to finish?

IMG_4975sati almost never cut it close.

unlike my friend (and fellow contestant in ‘the fiber factor’), tracy

who if i remember right was left with only inches of yarn

remaining at the end of two different challenges.

i would have sweat myself into

a little puddle of goo.

i’m the knittah who buys an extra skein (or two)

over what the pattern calls for just to be exceedingly sure

that i could not possibly run out.

but, two nights ago

as i was working on one of the patterns

for my upcoming indie collection with classic elite yarns

i cut it close.  real close.  too close.

IMG_4977satfor the last 18 rounds my head spun

searching for options of what i might do if, or more likely when,

i ran clean out of yarn.

when i tied off the final stitches

with a whopping 98″ left,

i felt a little silly.

i mean over 2 yds remaining isn’t really cutting it that close, right?

i tried telling that to the butterflies in my stomach

and to the weak in the knees feeling between my ankles and my hip bones,

but they were having none of it.

irregardless, this piece is done and i’m moving

full steam ahead into the next new design

 which i’ll be sure to have just

one extra skein for.

smile.

‘enough’ taken from 36:7 in exodus.

(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling

the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.

to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)