I ♥ photobooks. I heart them even more if they’re full of hearts and include one of my own photos!

There it is, on the left. However, lest you think that I would use the word ‘located’ anywhere but in a geography report, I feel compelled to include my original, grammatically ambiguous caption:

‘My boyfriend spotted this mossy heart on the doorstep, and I took a photo of it with his camera, coupled with my lens. Our heart is in the beautiful Welsh countryside, green & growing.’

‘Focus: Love’ (Amazon UK | Amazon US) is a collection of heart-photos from online amateur photographers. It’s a really exciting book; you can see the spontaneity, the meticulous observation & the abundant enthusiasm of all the artists. The variety of colours, themes and styles is wonderful too; you might otherwise imagine a book full of lovehearts would get boring fast, but I found myself smiling as I flicked through. The heart is such an enduring symbol, I’m happy to embrace it. I often do, in fact…

Looking through heart photos reminded me of a long-forgotten project. I knit this illusion scarf when I was so new to knitting that the thought that stocking stitch curls incurably didn’t even enter my mind. I was still trying to work out how ‘right-side’ and ‘wrong-side’ worked (thank goodness there’s no ‘off-side’ in knitting). Illusion (or shadow) knitting is a very neat technique, and I love the colours I chose, but I’m surprised this didn’t turn into a disillusion scarf instead, and put me off knitting forever. Happily, it didn’t, and I still ♥ knitting. A lot. :)

I hope you’ve all seen the wonderful wintry delight that is the latest issue of the Twist Collective, dear readers. Apart from the usual joy I feel at seeing the latest patterns, this issue had an extra little something that sent my heart racing in excitement. As the page loaded I jumped up and walked around the room for a while… Then I took a little peep. Eee! I ran off again and did something else because I just couldn’t bear the excitement. Then I came back again and looked at the next page. Squee! Here’s the spread with my photos illustrating Paula Berman’s beautiful poem, ‘Clotho Visits the Local Yarn Store’. There are a couple of photos on the Articles page too, but I thought I’d share some of the outtakes with you, and tell you how it all came to be. You can see the full set on Flickr.

The whole vision took a while to present itself to me, as it always does. After I received the poem, I did some brainstorming on paper, I set up a few shots with my spindle and some roving, but things were grey and still and boring. As is always the case, I had nothing in my stash that would work for the assignment. I was also having trouble with good natural lighting, so I decided to take a trip to Wales. True to the title of the poem, I visited my Local Yarn Store first. I walked in, carrying my weekend bag & backpack, rather out of breath as I was hurrying to catch the train, and asked the girl at the counter whether they had some nice creamy-coloured yarn, something fluffy. She thought about this for a bit, then went and found me a ball of Wendy Chic. I explained that I meant yarn with a nice pile, preferably something natural. She ummed a bit more and found me another ball of acrylic. I gave up, spotted a bag of a silk/merino blend that was on offer, paid and ran out of the shop. I’m sure Clotho never had this trouble…

Clotho, in case you don’t know (I’m sure you do) is one of the three Fates (Moirae) from Greek mythology. Clotho (the “spinner”) spun out the life of a person, Lachesis measured it out, and Atropos cut it. The Fates were usually depicted wearing white, and I thought making everything very pale would add to the sense of mystery and dislocation. This meant getting very cold in a white summer dress in the cottage, and seeking out blank walls. I did my best with the spinning shots, as my skills are still rather rudimentary. I dreamt a lot about ordering a custom ebony spindle, but I overran the deadline as it was! Ah well.

The next photo involved emptying all my boyfriend’s books off his shelf. I wanted a lot of ghostly motion in the photos; everything must be ethereal, as the premise of the poem is basically a dream (and I imagined Clotho as rather incorporeal).

I love the end of the poem, the strong voice booming, ‘I am Destiny’. This is mythology, after all, not the place for happy endings. I wanted to presage this; Clotho’s inability to escape her role. Here is Atropos sneaking into the shot, ready to cut the dream short…

I hope you enjoy the photos, and thanks once again to the lovely ladies at Twist for giving me this opportunity! :)

A quiet day. Oh except for the persistent tap tap tap, and click click click and tick tick tock. :)

shh… I’m working very hard! Really!

Your life has all the makings of an idyll.
Have a wonderful week! :)

The first postcard set is now available for purchase! There are 5 postcards in the set entitled warm wool heart, and I’m so so pleased with them. There are small motifs that thread through the images and pull them together: hearts, curls, folds, snows & greys. I also think one could construct a timeline of the life of the knitted garment from these photos: the yarn in a foetal ball, the cast on, the ‘live’ stage, the finished fabric, and the leftovers. The more I look at the postcards, the most I realise how many memories I have attached to them, and… how wonderful all these memories are! This one winter of working on Laylock; all tentative beginnings, slow beginnings, false starts & restarts, Welsh snow, Turkish snow, the metre-deep, draughty windowsills of this small cottage, days alone with my camera, wrapped in shawls & wearing many skirts, crackly cricket on LW, birdsong. Honestly, I can’t say how they all sneaked in there…
Well, if you feel even a fraction of what I do about this set of postcards, I thought you might like to send them as gifts. To this end, there are instructions here, and here’s a peek at the envelopes, and one of the ‘wrappers’ that I designed. Thank you once more for all your support. :)

Speaking of packaging, I requisitioned my free Graze box to keep buttons & bits in. If you’re in the UK, I strongly recommend you give them a try. You can get a free box using this code: V2M17XB, and a selection of yummy healthy snacks will be delivered to you by Royal Mail, in a handy box that’s small enough to fit through your letter box. Just remember to cancel the next delivery if you don’t want to receive any more.

Thank you very much for the sweet comments on the stockings!

I ordered some postcards soon after I wrote my last post, and I was amazed to find them in the postbox this morning! A few will be winging their way to Turkey, where I know my family will appreciate them for being my own photos, but I was wondering whether from a more objective point of view, you think these are professional enough to be sold in small packs. Maybe 5 for £5? I would like to sell packs with photos from each collection, mostly of knitting, with maybe some ‘nature’ shots thrown in; you can see a lot of them up on my Flickr Photostream.

Well, I have yet to win any, but giveaways seem to be all the rage in blogland recently. So if you chime in with your opinion in the comments, you will be entered into a giveaway when the website launches (very soon now!).