Finished!

Yes! I finally finished the Vest. This has been a labour of love and I'll admit, a bit of a battle (see here, here or here for proof).  Indeed, the idea for this project was conceived when I was in Botswana and now almost 18 months later and worlds away it is finally, finally finished.

Finishing this project, sewing in the ends, blocking and fitting has made me think a lot about this knitting love of mine. I first started knitting while I was workng night-shifts.  It was an activity that kept my hands busy and my eyes awake and yet was an easy enough 'thing' to put down and pick-up if and when I was needed. As I knitted through the night I was also surprised to discover that knitting was incredibly relaxing.  Now, several years on, I find that it is still my go-to activity when I need to de-stress.  The rhythmic clicking of the needles, the repetitive stitches amd the concentration required to follow a complex pattern, all of these things allow me to relax and almost meditate away from life's ills. It is very much a craft where the process is as much a part of the reason "I knit" as the end product.

But I do love an end result!  And I'm very happy that this project is off the needles and being happily worn by it's recipient.  The details, if you're interested, are on my Ravelry page... and before I go, a few pictures that I managed to take of my favourite model - as always, modelling under sufferance but I believe, happy to be wearing his new knitted gift. 

we interupt this blog...

1. Woman, Portrait, Serbia, 2. Reykjavík, Iceland, 3. Sad or happy tears?, 4. Sad Woman - Traurige Frau, 5. something has changed, 6. 268/365, 7. Shandi-lee X {pieces I}, 8. Black and White :), 9. jolie fille pleure NB

No 365 up-date today.  Lastnight I may have had my first proper I'm-hormonal-and-pregnant-and-feeling-overwhelmed-by-life meltdown.  What started as a simple misunderstanding of a letter from the bank became a 'I'm never going to be able to learn German' thing and then 'Why doesn't the internet ever work at home?' before it descended into 'We need to buy drawers/cot/pusher/baby bath/nursing chair... do you have any idea how much stuff babies need?  And I need new clothes...immediately because all my clothes make me feel fat and my breasts hurt and have you seen how much baby clothes cost? maybe you can just wrap them in blankets until they're... umm... say 18 and oh boy, I really don't think we're ready for this and it's only six months away which will go like that and now it's 8.30pm and we still haven't eaten and I'm hungry and cold, Why is it so cold today? and are you laughing at me because I really don't think this is funny and you might pretend that you're co-pregnant but I don't see you waking up in the night to go to the toilet!'

Um... yeah... I kinda freaked out.

After my little outburst I listened to sad music, received lots of hugs and soft cooing sounds about how it would be alright and went to bed feeling sorry for myself but much better about life in general.  Today I feel great again. Ah, the pregnancy roller-coaster.

So no 365. Instead some inspiration from the Flickr pool somehow reflecting how I felt last night.

A Winter's Ball

Many moons ago in a place far far away, an idea was hatched to attend a Winter Ball in Vienna.  Born over a long dinner that went long into the night, even at the time the idea seemed incredible.  Months went past, we moved in different directions and yet, despite everything the idea kept surfacing - initially as a "what if..." and then as a "maybe next winter?.." and then finally "how about January?"  

I will probably get into trouble for saying this, but there is something very charming and old-world about Vienna.  It is a city where, in order to buy gloves, you go to a 'Glove Shop' where they expertly size your hands and offer you a selection of gloves to try from behind the counter.  It is a city where the Danube waltz is played on the radio at midnight on New Years Eve and everyone dances and a city which still has a Ball Season.  Most weekends in January and February you can attend a Ball.  And so we did.

 It was an amazing evening.  We danced long into the night, rather poorly for Viennese standards, but we all had a lot of fun and really I think there is almost no better place to have a Ball than the Hofburg Palace. Dreams of being a Princess in the 1800s were not that hard to conjure up - especially when walking up the entrance stairs.  These pictures really only give you a taste of the almost 13 rooms (4 orchestras and 1 Disco) from the old Imperial Palace that were open for the night. 

All the pictures from the Ball were taken with my little point-and-shoot camera.  I spent a bit of time trying to remove the red eyes although I realise now (thanks Matthias!) that we've all been left in a True-Blood trance-like state.  If anyone knows of a good way to remove red-eye without rendering everyone into Zoombies, I'd love to hear!

A Snowy Walk in Vienna

I'm being a bit cheeky and writing this post on Friday night.  I have a feeling that this weekend isn't going to leave any time for blog posting because... this weekend is/was the Vienna Doctor's Ball. Yep, a true proper, franzy-schmanzy, ball-gown wearing, orchestra-playing, waltz-dancing Ball!  I'm sure there'll be a post coming about said Ball, but for now I thought I'd show you some pictures I took in the Vienna Forest last week. 

I had a meeting in Vienna on Wednesday and rather than flying back to Berlin only to return to Vienna on Friday night I was lucky enough to be able to work from "home" for Thursday and Friday.  Although working from home did involve some work, I also managed to get out for a long and delightful walk in the forest.  The snow had just stopped falling and I had the tracks mostly to myself, save for a few dogs and their owners.  It was really the best way to reconnect with the beauty of winter after feeling so gloomy about the grey clouds and drizzle that have been hanging over Berlin for weeks.  Plus, I've decided that snow is really quite wonderful, as long as you are just "visiting" and not living amongst it for months.  How are all you northern hemisphere people feeling about winter at the end of January?  Ready for a bit of warmth yet or happy for the snow to stay?

Colour Compensation

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, despite apparently exposing your photo correctly it ends up looking a little wishy-washy and blah? To understand a common reason why this happens you need to understand how the camera's light meter measures light.

Camera's "meter" (read light) by sampling areas within your camera's frame and deciding what settings will, on average, bring everything back to a mid-grey.  This generally works pretty well, but a camera's internal light meter tends to "make mistakes" when you are taking pictures with extremely bright or dark areas or if there is a lot of white or black in your photos.

How to adjust the bright/shade problem in photos is a topic for another week.  The other problem you run into is when you are dealing with mostly white or mostly black photos.  It is not surprising that, with the camera's light meter trying to make everything mid-grey, photos with lots of white or lots of black will tend to look grey if you take your photo with the exposure settings that the camera suggests.

Yesterday I took a walk in the forest and took a lot of photos of the fresh snow. Perfect opportunity to take some picture to show you how to think for your camera when photographing whites and blacks.

In the first photo I used the settings that the camera suggested - it's pretty dark and the white is a little grey.  The second photo is better and by over-exposing the photo to two stops (+2) above what was suggested by the camera's in-built light meter I got a photo I was happy with.

Finished photo - which has been sharpened slightly for the web.

The same concept applies for photos mostly of black.  The camera slightly over-exposes black to try to bring the tones back to mid-grey.  If we trick the camera by under-exposing the image slightly our blacks will be true black.

But how much should we over or under expose in normal conditions?  Well that depends on the photograph and what you want to be correctly exposed.  White and Black tend to need around 2 stops over or under exposure to get the correct colour.  Mid-green, red and mid-blue will generally be correctly exposed at the "true exposure reading".  Colours brigher than red (yellow, orange, skin tones) will need anywhere between +0.5 and +2 stops and darker colours will fall somewhere between -0.5 and -2.0

Metering using an external light meter, or grey-scale card is a much more accurate way of correctly exposing a shot, but the loose rule-of-thumb above will take your photos a long way.  If it doesn't work out you can always change your settings and take another photo.  

Intentionally over or under-exposing your photos is possible in all modes on your dSLR cameras, some bridge cameras and even some point-and-shoot cameras (although it is by far the easiest to manipulate when you use manual mode).

Carrol Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (1949-1980) is another Australian photographer that I have recently discovered and admire. She spent much of the 70s photographing counter-culture in suburban Sydney and Melbourne, mostly photographing herself and friends in both contrived and more relaxed settings.  What's particularly interesting to me is that her work still looks quite contemporary, particularly when compared to today's photographers who work with film and/or use vintage processing techniques. 

Jerrems died, aged 31 years, of a rare blood disorder.  She documented her short illness on film and donated all her work to the Australian National Archive after her death.

Finding Rhythm

This is by far my favourite photo of the week and was a little lesson in why I insist on lugging my DSLR around with me everywhere. Typical story really - 9pm at night and on the way home from German I still haven't taken my photo of the day - I'm half-heartedly contemplating cheating and just taking it tomorrow.  And then I see this - this dog, sitting quite happily if not somewhat ambivalently on the tram seat as if, say, he's coming home from work, or German, or whatever occasion might cause someone to be out at 9pm on a wintry night.  And so I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots. He didn't seem to notice or mind a bit and everything about this shot makes me giggle from the inside-out.

As for rhythm this week I haven't really done too much.  I'm in Vienna for the week, so no yoga practice or much grocery shopping but I am planning on getting out for a walk in the forest and I'm convinced that connecting with the rhythm of nature's seasons must count for something.  Plus I've been crossing off a few major knitting projects which have been looming over me for months.  I finally finished the long awaited vest which will get it's very own post once I can get Matthias and the vest outside to photograph and I also started some better-late-than-never baby gifts for a few babies born in December and January.

Linking up to Lisa's Creative Challenge this week too