Filed under: collaboration, favorites, photography, silliness by ramune

Attempting to break into National Airport?

The other week when I went to my friends’ Christmas dinner party I got a lomo fisheye camera from my secret santa (Brandy). I was pretty thrilled and have had a chance to play around with it. Normally I post smaller images but I could not help posting these ones large, I think they are so much fun. The ones on this page are from this past Saturday, but you can see more in my Fisheye set on Flickr.

Have a fantastic New Years and see you back here in 2009!

My sister looking “troubled”

Filed under: animation, collaboration, silliness by ramune

Since I have been behind on the posts and it is the last day of the year, I am updating twice so that I can start 2009 on track. This past Saturday my sister, brother and I went to Gravely Point by National Airport with my dad and his wife. What usually ends up happening is we watch the planes for a bit, walk around and then we take random photos of us either frolicking or doing handstands. This time I tried to get a photo of my brother doing a handstand and my sister doing a cartwheel simultaneously with an airplane coming down to land at National Airport. It isn’t meant to be a smooth stop motion animation, it’s more just to show the progression of the motions.

Filed under: gift, knitting, photography by ramune

Patrick wearing the scarf I knit him (backwards, but that’s ok)

My friends Lilly and Brandy hosted a Christmas dinner/gift exchange at their house this past weekend. The food was delicious, the Eggnog dangerously tasty (I might have been 12 when I last tried Eggnog) and I was strangely too full for the large quantities of dessert (my second dessert stomach seriously let me down). After dessert we exchanged Secret Santa gifts. I was Patrick’s Secret Santa and knit him a scarf made from Peruvian Highland Wool. When I was at the yarn store it took me a good 10 minutes to decide which colors to get, they were all really lovely. I might have to go back and buy the other colors for another project.

Filed under: favorites, holiday, photography by ramune

Playing with star shaped bokeh

I have been wanting to play with shaped bokeh for a while now and forgot about it until I saw Flickr’s recent blog entry on holiday bokeh. It’s really quite easy to do if you have the right kind of lens (which thankfully I do). I haven’t tried playing around with it much on my other lenses because I have had pretty good results using my 50mm F/1.4 lens.

After cutting out some of my own shapes and experimenting with them I went to Paper Source and tried out their moose hole punch (for all my fellow meese). Initially I was hoping to get a snowflake hole punch but was not too impressed with the selection. Either way, I was like a little kid taking photos with my shaped bokeh filters. I might make some other shapes and add them to my Christmas set, in the meantime here are some to keep you entertained.

The beta with some hidden moose bokeh

Star bokeh over fish bowl

Shooting star bokeh

Regular bokeh with Christmas lights

Filed under: favorites, knitting, self-portrait by ramune

My first pattern! Knit gauntlets

Years ago my sister gave me a lovely pair of gauntlets for Christmas. They were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one. The following year she gave me a new pair of gauntlets by the same designer and again, they were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one.

This year I decided to “throw down the gauntlet” and knit myself a pair. I looked online for a pattern but didn’t find anything I was particularly excited about. Either they looked way too complicated for a first try or they looked boring. I decided to go through some stitch pattern ideas to see what I could work into a gauntlet pattern (no, not the Medieval pieces of armor) . The chevron pattern jumped out at me as a good first simple/interesting design. The yarn is super comfy/warm/soft and I can’t wait to put them to use! I also look forward to making other gauntlets with different knit patterns.

Silly attempt at modeling my new gauntlets

Filed under: enamel, jewelry by ramune

Cloisonné Fig Pendant on a fig branch

I meant to post this last week but with Thanksgiving and all it was pushed back. Last week was my last Enamels class and I managed to finish my fig cloisonné pendant as well as a few other pieces. This is my second cloisonné and I am pretty happy with it, but wish a few things had worked differently. For one, reds are hard to work with and it is difficult to get them to look vibrant. The red inside the fig is a little bit duller than I would have liked, but that’s ok.

Instead of putting the shot in early on in the process, like I did in my last cloisonné piece, I put them in at the very end during the last firing so they would stick out more and stay round.

On the trivet waiting to go in the kiln for the last time

Closeup of the cloisonné fig pendant on a fig branch