Over the years I’ve also developed a contentious relationship with words and have found it difficult to convey what I want to get across. As someone who used to love what I could do with words and had a lot of confidence in my ability with them, it’s been distressing and I haven’t been able to work through it. I feel like I’m wrestling with them all the time. I can’t imagine a day when I’ll feel confident with them again.

Tonight I crafted a light and quick “About Me” (In Relation to Knitting!) for the knitting community I just joined, Ravelry, and felt it captured the easy way with words I used to have. I admit I’m sort of proud of it, and if I can’t showcase a way with words I want to recapture here, then where can I, right?? (And at the moment I’m not even supposed to be on the computer because carpal tunnel is kicking my ass!)

So here it is:

• I adore color. Love love love it. I think this is in part because I’ve done photography for many years in my spare time and capturing and photographing vivid color is one of my preoccupations.

• I can see this love of color aiding and abetting a development of a stash. In learning about and beginning to appreciate yarn over the past few months there have been many times when the color of something has made me go “I MUST have that now!” Luckily I’ve been able to consistently talk myself down from the edge.

• I am always cold. I daydream about the possibility of knitting up comfortable, incredibly warm garments (instead of the several ill fitting, uncomfortable layers that characterize my winter days now) and maybe a few light hoodies to deal with summer AC.

• I like fingerless gloves and find them useful to go about day to day business while never having to take them off. Every fall I buy a cheap, one size fits all pair of stretchy gloves and cut the fingers halfway. This has mostly worked fine for me besides the inevitable holes they suffer by the end, my always losing them, and the hints from people that I look homeless. I’m looking forward to the possibility of knitting up a number of quality, nice looking and warm pairs of fingerless gloves!!!

• I just got into graduate school and may join the ranks of commuting knitters.

• I guess another of my loves that resembles a knitter’s yarn stash is my book “stash”. I have hundreds of unread books and I’m trying to combine knitting and reading. My first try at reading from the screen while knitting was a dismal failure, but my second had limited success. Maybe one day I can graduate to books… lol. (I have a bias against audiobooks – not sure why.)

• I like to watch documentaries while I knit and call it “radical knits.” (That’s me making fun of myself about taking myself too seriously!)

• I am waiting impatiently for carpal tunnel symptoms to clear up so I can finish my first project for my beginner’s class and rush headlong into one I’ve chosen. Typing certainly isn’t helping.

Now back to regularly scheduled broadcast. (I think Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are up next.)

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An excerpt:

even more to the point–while young promising male congressional employees hobnob and network with other men to get to the or high power senator position, young promising women congressional employees are being manipulated and fucked with by dirty old man fuckwads. or they’re marrying dirty young man fuckwads in the hopes of helping their own careers.

and queer women of color are being thrown in prison for giving the police the finger. is it any wonder that cynthia mckinney had her run ins with the law? if a black woman can’t be fucked, what good is she/what the hell is she doing at the doors of Congress?

And my latest favorite picture -

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As easy as it was to get something decent looking, there doesn’t seem to be any way to mix vertical and horizontal images without getting ugly gaps on the index page. Unless I’m missing something, that’s an epic fail. And as usual, severe desaturation in Firefox!! Argh technology.

Some of the stuff has been uploaded before, some not. Had great success with some color saturation editing tonight and am pretty excited about it.

gwytherinn.com aperture gallery

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Going out in a minute to go get a new lens – Nikon 50mm f/1.8.

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I promise I’ll get to slightly less boring things in the near future, as soon as I finish chronicling web site failures and hosting issues (and who knows what else at this rate!), dear loyal readers, 1 or 2 that you are. But since sleep and I don’t seem to be friends lately, I figured I’d regale you with the run in I had with luck today. (Of the bad variety.)

Among some of the things I’ve run into in the past few weeks, I had a ton of sensor gook, and it’s shown up in about 600 pictures now which makes me feel like an idiot. I kept thinking I had gotten it in the lenses only to see that I hadn’t. And then realized one of my lens’s polarizing filters is gone. Filters don’t just fall off. The viewfinder rubber piece has fallen off as well. So while these things were irritations, today was just bad.

After five years of owning my lovely Nikon D100 SLR camera I dropped it for the first time today. Usually I’m pretty paranoid and careful about my camera, but today carelessness and stupidity prevailed. I did not close my camera bag after taking a few shots with it, at which point camera hit pavement when I dragged my bag out of the car.

Ugh.

I think the sound must have stopped my heart for a moment.

The LCD protector cracked straight off the camera, but luckily nothing was damaged there. It will be a simple matter to replace. Took a few experimental shots and everything seemed to be fine aside from a loose lens. About a half hour later, upon a further “just in case” inspection, I found that loose lens was actually half off the camera’s body lens. Apparently 2 of the 3 grooves that attach the lens to the camera had been snapped off with the impact.

Much gnashing of teeth ensued.

After many hours research, I found that all is not lost and I might not have to spend $130 to replace something due to my stupidity (Instead of investing in a new lens!!). More hours of searching, and I finally found what I believe is the replacement part for the mount. With a few fancy screwdrivers I can probably do the repair myself for $30.

I’m still bracing myself to the discovery of more subtle damage to the camera body. But hey… with most of what’s happened in the past month there’s been a good side to these things. Once I had taken care of things with the broken lens I started researching lenses in general and the possibility of purchasing a new one altogether. It’s been on the list of things “to do.” (ie, maybe in the far future)

I’m embarrassed to say that as the owner of a fancy expensive camera, my knowledge of lenses was rather vague and lacking. Atrocious. I took steps to begin remedying that today and I also found a few pretty inexpensive lenses that I’m excited to add to my gear. (“Gear” sounds so professional..ha.) The $500 macro lenses were making my heart flutter, and not in a good way! The highly recommended $115 Nikon 50mm sounds wonderful though.

Also happy to report that I’ve been reading up on technique and the basics have come back fast. Reading it alone was making my head swim, but actually applying it has made a big difference. Also getting to know my camera better than I had before. I guess the penchant for obsessive research I’ve acquired over the past few years is paying off!

So here is the shot I took today before the terrible incident with the camera. Was planning on going out to the arboretum, but the weather was crazy storms and hail. It cleared up a bit and after waffling I decided I’d definitely go out. Turned around halfway there when the weather got bad again, only to drop my camera.

Yeah, this post is huge. And I’m not a bit tired yet!

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Joni Sternbach: Surfers

(And I love that there’s actually some sort of gender parity!! And all the women look strong!)

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I’ve been alternating between researching new options to display pictures and looking through the first batch of pictures I’ve taken in years (yes, years) while on a hiking trip the other day.

I go through a lot of mental wrangling when it comes to taking pictures. (But then, don’t I with everything?) I switched to a digital SLR a few years back and I feel as though I lost something important in the transition. I don’t think I’ve ever been strong on the technical aspects of photography, but this has really allowed me to slack off. So while the camera has more than made up for itself in the volume of pictures it allows me to take, it allowed me to completely let go of the understanding of the way things work. There was a finite amount of tries to get the shot right with a manual SLR. I had to calculate to get the shot the way I wanted it. I’d like to get that back with my digital.

Another thing is, I adore color. I’ve always found that the pictures taken on my digital SLR have been lackluster in comparison to what is in front of me. I’m being pretty harsh on myself as I look through these shots and recall how deep the colors were when viewing them in person and the comparison to what I captured. I’ve always been frustrated with the idea that one needs to “retouch” the shots in a photo program to get them to look their best. I’m trying to move away from that… Reading through a photo retouching thread last night on Flickr, I came across someone commenting on “purists.” It’s not that you’re doing anything different from the way it used to be with the darkroom process – there was certainly retouching going on there – it’s just that the tools are now different. And you know what, he’s right.

So, I think one of the things I’d like to tackle in the near future is relearning the technical aspects of photography and sharpening my understanding of them – learning to work with my DSLR rather than letting it dull my abilities.

The 27 that made the cut.

I’ve also opened a Flickr account.

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