took my film cameras for a trip to the park today. took a whole pack of polas that i’m not head over heels in love with - although i’ve found that those i’m not so happy with at the time can grow on me later. i’m actually finding that under the conditions i have to shoot in i prefer the more vivid colour rendition of the filtered 600 film to the low contrast and cyan/blue cast of the sx-70. i have one pack left and i’d like to find a way to use that to its best advantage - tbh i think a trip somewhere very hot and sunny might be my only chance

also shot some slide film to have a play with cross processing. unfortunately the battery in my light meter died and it took me a while to notice so i can guarantee there are a load of overexposed pix in the batch. i suppose you can call that an experiment… haven’t finished the film yet and will need to send away for processing so i’m going to leave today blank until it comes back - it may turn out that the polas are today’s highlight after all.

yay craft content!

a present for nanny, for her 60th. i looked around for a long time to try to find a simple stitch pattern that would make a light lacy summer stole, something along the lines of the seraphina, but in a rectangular format. a stitch dictionary would have been my best bet, i think, but this was a bit of a last minute idea (well, i had 2 weeks) so i didn’t really have time to get hold of one. i’m happy with this simple design though, the pattern is here.

i love the meditative nature of simple crochet and once you’ve worked the first couple of rows of this it’s super easy to remember. it made a good project to force me to sit down and take it easy, rather than quilting which is all up-and-down, and crochet is so much cooler to do than knitting when it’s warm because you’re not in constant contact with so much yarn at a time. it was quite a mammoth undertaking, considering it’s worked in 4ply on a 3.5mm hook. it’s fingertip to fingertip length, and about 16″ wide after blocking. i would have liked to go a bit bigger but a) i wanted it to be narrow enough to use as a scarf in the winter as well as a stole in the summer b) i ran out of time c) i lost my hook, didn’t have time/energy to go buy a new one and i knew a size up would show. so i just ripped back to a finishing row and finished with a row of sc on 4mm.

the yarn is my ubiquitous colourmart cashmere. it takes a certain degree of faith working with the yarn which is rather hard as it comes, since it’s oiled for machine knitting, but i’m really happy with how this has bloomed. it’s only had a gentle hand wash, a machine wash will soften it up even more.