Friday, October 5, 2007

Fiber photographs



Along with starting a blog, my daughter also talked me into trying to sell my knitted stuff on ETSY. Hence the little pictures along the side. So far, I haven't had any buyers for my hats and scarfs, but I haven't had the website up long.


Ever since I started to knit, people have told me that I should try to sell my knitted stuff. For those counting, I started knitting back in the fourth grade, nearly 35 years ago now. (Man, I am old) I have tried a couple times to sell my work, once at a consignment place which did not work, and once wholesale to a hat shop. The hat shop bought three hats from me, but never got back to me. Just a little discouraging, huh? Selling, or in my case attempting to sell through the ETSY website does have some advantages. For one thing, I'm not selling wholesale, I'm selling at retail. The ETSY site itself is pretty inexpensive. And unlike the consignment shop, I control how my items are displayed. Which brings me to this problem. How do you photograph a gray scarf, and have it look like anything?

This picture was probably the best of the 10 I took, and it still looks like it was photographed in black and white. None of the texture of the yarn shows up in the picture, and the gray color itself looks really blah and flat. I guess I just need to work on my photography. Maybe a light box for better lighting, or a colored back drop for contrast against the gray would help.

The yarn this scarf is made of is from some shetland sheep roving I bought from the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool festival last year. I bought the pound of roving thinking I was going to make a vest for myself. I loved the color of this roving, it was a clear gray with a mix of darker fibers. So many gray rovings have more of a brown tone to them than this one did. When I started to spin the roving though, I had a lot of problems. I think the roving might have been from a shetland sheep with a double coat, because most of the fiber was about 4 to 5 inches long, but there was a lot of short neps all balled up in the roving. This made it hard for me to draft the fiber evenly. I tried long draw and short draw, and neither draw was easy. The spun yarn has a very interesting tweedy nature, but I got very irritated trying to spin this yarn. I gritted my teeth though, and finished the two bobbins I needed for a 2 ply yarn, but I couldn't see finishing the whole bag of roving. So the vest wasn't going to happen, but I did have enough yarn for a scarf. The yarn works really well for the lace rib scarf , with the tweedy nature of the yarn adding interest, but not obscuring the pattern.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of the roving. Right now I'm trying to comb the roving on my minicombs, which should separate out most of the little neps, and align the remaining fiber for smoother spinning. This is a really slow process for me, so it might be quite a while before I have enough fiber to spin. I kept a little bit of the first yarn to compare with the combed fiber whenever it gets spun. Maybe in a couple years. I'm so aggravated at this roving that it is pretty much at the back of my to-do list right now.

Now on another subject, I have to be the proud parent and talk about my daughter. She makes the most beautiful enameled jewelry, with flowers, birds, leaves, and houses as her themes. You have to see them! Her jewelry designs are like nothing else I have ever seen. The colors are exquisite, and her subject matter is a different take on common themes. She sells at the ETSY shop Copperheart. Go check out her work! If you live near Oshkosh Wisconsin you can see her work live and in person at the Oshkosh Art Walk held tomorrow October 6th. Her work is shown at Thompson Photography, just down the street from the Grand Opera house.

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