A Great Workshop

Guest poster, Sarah here. Just dropping in to report on the WONDERFUL class/workshop that I attended at The Yarnery.

Photography for Knitters workshop evening.

Learn to make your photos phabbier.

taught by the most talented Gale Zucker and hosted by our very own Mary Lou Egan.

Gale is the photographer of Shear Spirit and the most recent Mason Dixon book. Great patterns aside, the photos are inspiring. You can watch her blog about her talents at She Shoots Sheep Shots and her Real People in Real Places at www.gzucker.com.

So now, onto our wonderful night. It started with a slide show of her photography relating to the fiber arts. She was kind enough to show us some of the pictures she thought worked and solid enough to show some that she thought didn’t work. It was great to see that even professional photographers have to take more than one shot to get the good one.

She was very open and giving up the “secrets” on how to make your photography work. One of the things she said that I really thought was great was that you really should strive to get that good shot in the camera, not the computer. Although I will say it doesn’t hurt to know a little bit about the computer and how to “pump” your photos up, especially for blogging. That’s right, she shared all that information with us too.

But only after a field trip outdoors where she really took so much time to show how you can use everyday items to enhance the photos you are taking of fiber and knitwear. Here is Gale with one of the lovely ladies from class (wearing her very own sweater - how beautiful!!). Showing us how to take plain white tagboard to reflect natural light into some of the shadow areas.

And some photos (courtesy of Mary Lou Egan) from that part of the shoot. I especially like the shot with movement. One of the things Gale let us in on was when knitting a garment on a person you have to remember that you either get a good shot of the garment, or a nice portrait of the person. I think Mary Lou has succeeded, don't you?

And here are some shots I got. The first is of Mary Lou in a beautiful scarf (again knit by one of the gals in class... check out the detail!! Love it)

And this next one is of the February Baby Sweater. This photo tries to employ the concept that patterns are ok for a back drop but you should stay away from highly textured back drops. Even if they seem right because they are a light color, a textured back drop will compete with the texture of your knitwear. That Gale... she knows her stuff.

So a big thank you to her for coming to Minnesota and teaching us a thing or two about photography. Now look out world, here we come with our cameras and sweaters!!

Kids Camp

Hi, Guest Blogger Jess here.
I just finished a super fun week at the Yarnery and I wanted to share a little of what went on.
This past week was Kids Camp week.
Just me, 6 girls age 9-13 and piles of fiber fun.
Longtime readers will recall that we ran this camp last year as well, and we did many of the same projects.
We dyed yarn with Kool-aid, and made needle toppers from Sculpey.
We covered notebooks with fabric from felted sweaters

and did some knitting and crocheting.
This year we also covered barrettes with felt.In addition to these projects, some of the ladies asked if they could do a little independent study in sewing and needle felting
I am so inspired by the dedication and creativity that these wonderful young people brought to the camp.


Thanks Ladies, for making Yarnery Kids Camp such a creative place.
Jess

Rowan Fall 2009

The new fall collection of books and yarn from Rowan has arrived.

Some of the new titles are Rowan Magazine #46



a new 4 ply book for both men and women



Winter Solace featuring the new yarn Alpaca Cotton



and my personal favorite, Lima, which is still in transport but should arrive soon.


The new yarns include British Sheep Breeds DK,


Felted Tweed Aran,


Alpaca Cotton



and Lima.


More on these later after I've given them a test drive.

Visiting Teachers at The Yarnery

Photo Workshop Evening
with Gale Zucker
Thursday, July 23 or Friday, July 24
6:00-8:30 pm


Gale Zucker, a professional photographer, fiber enthusiast and friend to our own Mary Lou Egan, has developed a 2.5 hour photography workshop for knitters, knit bloggers and fiber lovers. This hands-on workshop is for anyone who wants to improve their digital photography of fiber related projects, and the world around them, and for making the images look as wonderful as possible on a website or blog.

Topics to be covered

· Photographing yarn and fiber and finished objects, both on & off people.

· Simple lighting tricks and solutions to fiber & knitwear photography problems.

· Optimizing your images once they're out of the camera and into a blog page or website.

More about Gale:

Gale is the co-author/ photographer of the book Shear Spirit: Ten Farms, Twenty Projects and Miles of Yarn (PotterCraft 2008). She is an award-winning editorial and commercial photographer who's worked on assignment for Smithsonian, Yankee, Wine Spectator, TV Guide, CraftStylish, and Womans Day, and for The New York Times. She also photographed the Potter Craft title Mason Dixon: Knitting Outside the Lines (October 2008). A lifelong knitter, Gale says creating Shear Spirit was a grand mash-up of her passions for photography and fiber. She lives in Branford, Connecticut, with her husband and two sons, a large hairy dog, and wishes for goats.

Gale can be found online at her knit blog She Shoots Sheep Shots, on Ravelry as SheShootsSheep and her professional website,

Sock Summit Preview Tonight

As we stated in our recent newsletter, we are putting our act together and taking it on the road to Portland, Oregon August 6-9, 2009 to be part of the first ever Sock Summit.



Join us tonight from 6pm to 8pm for a preview of our booth. While you enjoy some lemonade and cookies give us your feedback. Help us determine how we could make our booth better.

International Reading

Since we finished celebrating all things American, I thought it might be time to turn our attention to something international - specifically books.

While at TNNA last month we visited one of our favorite vendors, Lacis, and stocked up on international books to stock our shelves.

Starting with Japan - we reordered favorites from the past year such as Cable Fashion Drama


and plenty of new titles including Textures in Elegance. Sally Rainey of the Rainey Sisters fame recently completed the Cathedral sweater from this book. Read her wrap up post here.


We also added these.



Both have a variety of knitted and crocheted small projects such as hats, bags, placements, baskets, slippers etc. which might make an easy way to get your feet wet reading the Japanese charts.

From Germany, we added a few new lace knitting titles.



and Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling.

Once again I reference the Rainey Sisters for a completed Niebling project. This time it was Susan who WOWed us with her Lyra.

Finally, for a little Norwegian history, we added Everyday Knitting by Annemor Sundbo.


This book is a 'treasure trove of knitting patterns and cultural history' found in pile of rags!

As always, keep checking our shelves because you never know when other international titles will appear.