Month: October 2010

weekend in flying colours

Posted on by trish

It was Thanks­giv­ing week­end and we left the city to vis­it fam­i­lies. We also vis­it­ed the chip trucks by the water and a coun­try fair in a near­by town, and I took some pho­tos with the Zumi. I’m rather pleased with how old-fash­ioned the pic­tures look, espe­cial­ly the ones at the coun­try fair. I also took a lot of tree pic­tures as we drove home, and of course a sun­set pic­ture from our west-fac­ing bal­cony :) The colours are just amazing.

I felt kind of bad that I’ve been neglect­ing my pink point-and-shoot since Zumi arrived, so I’ve been reas­sur­ing it that I still like it very much because it takes great indoor pic­tures and pic­tures of peo­ple, and it lets me see what I’m tak­ing a pic­ture of, which real­ly helps with com­po­si­tion. Here are some proud prod­ucts of the pink cam­era over the weekend.

And now, a haiku:

The week­end flew by
and now we are home again
full of thanksgivings.

Hap­py Tues­day! :D

 

 

 

new header! :D

Posted on by trish

Yup! A new *cro­cheted* header!

It looks like this before crop­ping. If you look close­ly you might see the free-form pat­terns on the rec­tan­gle. I thought play­ing with some sub­tle stitch changes through­out would bring out more of the exper­i­men­tal nature of a mudpie.

I’m not sure why I chose yel­low. Yel­low is prob­a­bly one of my least favourite colours. But when I was think­ing about a new head­er I kept get­ting yel­low cro­cheted stitch­es in my head. I tried to pic­ture oth­er colours, but noth­ing seemed right except yel­low. So I stuck with the yel­low, and I love how cheer­ful it looks!

Mike helped me pho­to­graph the head­er. To get the best light­ing in the house we hung him on the bath­room door with some den­tal floss and tape.

He also set the type on the head­er, which I think is perfect :)

So why did I make a new head­er? Some­thing very, very excit­ing is afoot, com­rades! Hope­ful­ly I can tell you all about it soon!

Have a hap­py Thursday!

melancholy

Posted on by trish

Melan­choly is a win­ter mel­on. Here he is, in his cor­ner, moping.

What is a win­ter mel­on? Well, it looks like this.

It might sound real­ly mean, but I had a lot of fun try­ing to make him look as melan­cholic as pos­si­ble. The weath­er’s been real­ly grey these days, I can’t help but feel a bit blah. Mak­ing this char­ac­ter takes a bit of the melan­choly out of me.

Win­ter mel­ons are actu­al­ly quite deli­cious, espe­cial­ly in soup. I actu­al­ly thought of mak­ing a water­mel­on first, but thought a mel­on that’s called “win­ter” might con­vey melan­choly a bit more effectively.

… look how sad…

Don’t wor­ry folks, as sad as he is, he’s being well tak­en care of and has a place to live up in the type case. Maybe he’ll bright­en up when the sun peeks its head out of the clouds tomor­row, it’s sup­posed to be a nicer day.

Take care, everyone!

weekend adventures

Posted on by trish

Went around with my Zumi on the week­end, and here are some of my favourite shots :D The one above is prob­a­bly my favourite out of all the favourites. It’s a dis­play of man­nequins wear­ing dress­es made out of toi­let paper. I like how plas­tic the man­nequin looks.

At the Knit Cafe: star­ry night and glow­ing orbs with a knit­ted planet.

Spin­ning as we go…

Yarrrrrn! Knit­ted pirates of the constellations.

EEEEvil Gargemel lurk­ing the streets.

View from the streetcar.

High­light of the night — a spin­ning, glow­ing lace car! (It’s called “Auto Lamp”. It’s not real­ly a lace pat­tern, just pat­terns of cir­cles of vary­ing sizes. But it just reminds me of lace.) It lid up the streets with lace pat­terns on con­crete walls all around. I tried to cap­ture the play of  light/shadow on the walls on video, which I thought was equal­ly inter­est­ing, if not more so, than the car itself. (yes, the Zumi takes videos! :D) It’s the first time I use the video mode, and I for­got to hit the record but­ton, hence the chuckle.

Although per­haps one could say that the result­ing shad­ows on the walls are also part of the work.

Which reminds me of this bril­liant tuto­r­i­al I saw a while ago on kootoy­oo, with lace, jars, and LED lights!

I sup­pose one could make them spin too with a small motor under­neath :D

Hap­py Monday!

the scowl project

Posted on by trish

They’re like scarfs, but they’re actu­al­ly cowls, so I call them scowls. I made them fol­low­ing the instruc­tion on mer mag. Found fab­ric that I bought a long time ago but nev­er had a use for, thought they’d be per­fect for the scowl project! :D

I first used the pol­ka dot fab­ric to make a nar­row­er one.

Then I used this satiny flo­ral fab­ric to make a wider version.

I actu­al­ly quite like the look and drape of the flo­ral one. It looks nicer when there’s less con­trast in tones between the right and wrong sides of fab­ric, I think. Wore it out to the Knit Cafe for their Nuit Blanche dis­play last night! :D

As you can see, the pic­ture was tak­en with the Zumi and so it turned out real­ly dark. Would prob­a­bly looked bet­ter if I turned up the ISO but I for­got :P I also found the per­fect cam­era case for it (which I’m hold­ing in my left hand in the pic­ture). A dear friend got it for me as a sou­venir from Hong Kong. It says “it is a fish” on it :D

More pic­tures of Nuit Blanche com­ing soon! Have a great week ahead everyone!

it’s like film, only digital! :D

Posted on by trish

YAY! My Zumi cam­era came in the mail yes­ter­day! This is a birth­day / Christ­mas / the­sis com­ple­tion present from Mike :D (even though the­sis is not exact­ly com­plete­ly com­plet­ed…) I’ve been want­i­ng to get a Diana for a long time, but was always weary about the cost of film and pic­ture devel­op­ing. So I was real­ly excit­ed when I came across the Zumi, because the qual­i­ty and unpre­dictabil­i­ty of the pic­tures are like film, but only dig­i­tal! :D

So we test­ed it out last night! This is a pho­to of the box and the (pink!) plas­tic dinosaur it came with.

The sun was just set­ting as we were fid­dling with the camera.

Very sat­u­rat­ed colours of the sunset.

And then I took this sad pic­ture of the dead flow­ers we put out­side on the bal­cony after it was infest­ed with bugs while we were away on the weekend :(

As you can see in the first pic­ture, it has a black and white mode. It also records video with sound. I real­ly like the unpre­dictabil­i­ty and the sur­pris­es that it brings. Espe­cial­ly being so used to dig­i­tal cam­eras with pre­view and know­ing exact­ly what I’m tak­ing a pic­ture of, the guess­work of a viewfind­er (which actu­al­ly isn’t very accu­rate) is a rather inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence… I took around 80 pic­tures to get 8 that are worth keep­ing. I think it’s bet­ter for tak­ing dis­tant scenery than close-up shots of peo­ple or objects… just because it’s so hard to gauge what I’m aim­ing at. But I’m hap­py with it! Oh it also has a superb macro func­tion which is in focus at pre­cise­ly 3cm away from the object, but not at 5cm, 1cm, or 10cm.

Look at the tex­ture of that leaf!

I usu­al­ly have a real­ly hard time spend­ing mon­ey on what is essen­tial­ly a toy. But we’re tak­ing a trip to Hong Kong in a month, and I think this cam­era can cap­ture some inter­est­ing images of my homeland.

Plan­ning on bring­ing it out to the Dis­tillery and Nuit Blanche on the week­end — stay tuned for more Zumi pic­tures! :D

Have a great week­end everyone!