Stay At Home Round Robin: Week 3

I don't normally put two posts up in one day, but while the SAHRR is going on, I'll probably wait till the last moment to post my progress so I can link up with the weekly progress post. This week you can see everyone's progress on week 3 over at ChrisKnitsSews SAHRR link up.  This will double as my normal Monday morning post for Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Even being home a lot more now that I'm retired, the piecing for SAHRR is running behind.  Maybe I'm just a slow stitcher?  I'm still working on the Friendship Star blocks from week 2. Those are almost finished, but not quite.  I've made a start on the hour glass blocks for week 3, but haven't gotten very far. This is what's up on the design wall so far. 

Hard to see where I'm going from what's up on the wall at this point. Here's the EQ mock up for the plan at this point. 

Catching up is probably not in my future this week. So I'm not even going to speculate on that.  We'll see what the week brings. My Guy is out of town, so I'll have fewer distractions. I'm behind on my other quilt alongs so those will need to have their round at the sewing machine this week.  EQ projections may be all that shows any progress for the SAHRR over the next few weeks.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 6 of 2023

It feels like this week went really fast.  It's Sunday again, so it's the point in the week to share how much stitching time you were able to sneak in. 

I did really well this week at finding time to stitch. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Feb = 11/11 days
• 15 minute days in 2023 =  38/42 days
• Success rate = 90.48%

It was a good week. Most days this week, I managed to get in at least a couple of hours of stitching time each day.  I'm still not caught up on my SAHRR project, but there will time this afternoon to play catch up.   

I did get in a couple of hours of sewing room clean up last week.  I cut more scraps, but not enough to make a dent in any of my piles.  But every little bit helps.  I may switch gears this week to address at least one of the piles of fabric sitting all over the sewing room.  

How did you do this week on finding time to stitch and/or organize? 

1. Gretchen 2. Ivani 3. Julie in GA 4. Marti 5. Karen

6. Shasta @ High Road 7. DonnaleeQ 8. Frederique 9. Lyndsey 10. Janice

11. Susan in TN 12. Andre at Quilting and Learning 13. Carol Andrews

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

Week 59 Photo Challenge: Something Metal

 This is photography post number three this week. I'll be back to quilting stuff tomorrow.  This week's photo card was definitely easier to work with than last week's. All three of us were able to get some fun photos for this card.

I played with several different subjects for this week's challenge.  There was a potential shot found on one of my Art of Seeing walks. But I decided to go with a photo of an object that sits on the breakfast nook table and is just such a part of everyday life that it tends to get overlooked. 

Kate: Metal Plates

 

This is a "bowl" made of bicycle chains.  It was a Christmas gift to My Guy (who is notoriously hard to buy for) from my sister. We use it to hold paper pads for the grocery list, pens, pencils and other odds and ends that are used when doing the crosswords, writing up recipes, etc.  

My Guy chose a subject from one of his other hobbies for this week's challenge. 

My Guy: Metal for Metal

My Guy plays his acoustic/classical guitars pretty much every day when we are home.  Every once in a while he'll get out one of his electric guitars, plug in the amp and jam for a bit.  The guitar is a BC Rich Mockingbird.   

Grad Girl pulled her photo inspiration from one of her experiments this week.  

Grad Girl: Too Much Pink

The pink color in both liquid phases above is due to potassium permanganate. Potassium is chemically classed as a metal, so is the manganese that is also present in that compound. She was trying to remove the pink color  (the potassium permanganate) from the bottom phase so she could proceed to the next step. 

Grad Girl's photo is my favorite for this week.  I'm looking forward to this week's challenge, it's one I've got lots of subjects to select from.  

How to make it interesting will be the challenge, but I have some thoughts on that.  We may have two weeks on this challenge. My Guy is heading out of town on Monday and won't be back till next Sunday. It depends on how much time he has to get a photo before he leaves. This is a busy weekend, we are judging the junior and senior high science fair projects this morning, then he's helping with another science project for one of the elementary schools in the county.  So there may or may not be a photo challenge post next Saturday.  

Photography Lesson 3

Disclaimer: Non-quilting post, quilting related posts will return Sunday.  

Wednesday I posted about my new photography project to improve my creativity and imagination.  The project started just over three weeks ago so I'm a little behind on documenting how it's going. Exercise 1 and 2 were in the last post, this post covers Exercise 3.  Basically the assignment started at your front door, walk a prescribed number of steps, then shoot 20 photos within the proscribed radius.  My steps took me to our breakfast nook.   Here's the best of the 36 photos from that exercise.  (All photos Canon 70D w/18-400 telephoto)

I may have cheated a bit with the direction I choose. The breakfast table was covered with the stuff we were decluttering from other locations. So there was a lot of subject matter, but how to make good pictures from those odds and ends?  That was the challenge. My Guy makes his own beer, these bottles are old so were slated to be dumped.  I like the narrow depth of field in this one and the way the light highlights the right side of the bottles. 

 

My Guy has several herbs sitting in front of the window, those were also within in my radius.  I like the diagonal lines that run from left to right. I got the depth of field right as most of the leaves are in focus. 

I like the dark monochromatic colors and the texture of this shot.  Any guess what these are?  

Lastly, I really like the detail in this photo and the angle isn't usual. The lighting just works.  This is half of a set of book ends, the other end is the front of the bike.  

Those are my favorites from the exercise.  There wasn't much practicing after this assignment because it was so cold. But it snowed one morning, so a walk (a short one I assure you, it was pretty cold) yielded this shot. 

I really wanted the tree with the snowy field in the background. It took a bit of maneuvering to get the perspective I wanted. The composition is what I wanted, but this isn't a sharp photo. The branches look blurry when you blow it up. It was a really dreary day and my combination of shutter speed with aperture just wasn't up to getting the right depth of field for a sharp image.   

What did I take away from this exercise? Judicious cropping coupled with a narrow depth of field can create an interesting photo of even mundane objects. I still need to work on learning all my camera settings to address blurry and dark photographs.  

New Non-Quilting Project: Photography

Warning: Non quilting post. So if you've come for piecing and quilts, this post isn't for you. I won't be offended if you don't read on.

I've always wanted to improve my photography skills, but when working full time one hobby was often more than I could manage. With retirement, I have the time.  So I pulled this book off the shelf late last year and decided to put some effort into the assignments. 

 

The first assignment was to take pictures that break some of the common rules of photography. My choice was the "rule of thirds"  Meaning that your main interest points should lie along the lines that break the photographic area into thirds.  Here's my effort avoiding having subjects at those key intersections.

Camera: I-Phone 12, taken on a walk in the neighborhood

Well, I tried. The large leaf in the bottom is pretty close to the intersection of those lines dividing the photo into thirds, so it does draw your eye there.  But the branches do point up towards the left with no clear focus on the other lines.  This probably wasn't the best example, but it's all that I came up with on my short walk.  

The next exercise was to throw a hoop (I used a 10" embroidery hoop) onto the ground and take at least 20 pictures of things in that area. I actually did this before Christmas, but there still wasn't much on the ground. I did take 20 photographs, here's my best of that bunch. 

Camera Canon 70D w/18 - 400 telephoto lens, taken in the field down the street from home

This was before we got the below freezing cold front, so there was still a bit of green around. No idea what kind of ground cover this is, but it filled the screen with green. I like the texture and detail in this photo.  There's a lot of brown dead stuff  in my other photos from that exercise. So not off to the most auspicious start here.

You have to practice what you learn in the exercises, so I've been going on photo walks as part of my project. Note that these photos were taken in January, so most everything is dead and brown in Oklahoma.  You have to look hard to find something photo worthy and even then I'll concede that some of my pictures don't have the best subjects.  But like scrappy quilt projects, you work with what you have. One of the main goals of this book is to learn to see possibilities for creative photos. January in Oklahoma is great for that challenge. 

1/17/23: Canon 70D w/18-400 telephoto, 

   

Initially this photo was put in the dud file.  But after considering it for a day or two, it grew on me. The exposure is wrong, the tree and sky on the left are overexposed. But I like the star burst of the sun just showing behind the tree.  What I learned from this shot is that I need to get a better handle on my camera settings, so I'm also working on that.    

A different walk later in the week yielded this photo.

1/19/23: Canon 70D  w/18-400 telephoto,

I like the red leaves against the rough bark.  (Remember I said most everything is dead and brown, so a little color seemed photo worthy).  I did better watching my exposure for this shot, but I didn't get to that point till the later part of my walk.  Some of my previous shots are a bit blown out due to overexposure. 

What did I learn?  Automated digital cameras have made it too easy to just take a picture without any consideration for composition or camera settings. "I'll fix it in Photoshop" is one of my common comments about my photos. So I'll work on that for the next exercises.