Blog update first.

I finished importing Blogger entries and comments to WordPress and now slowly editing the first 50 or so posts to make them look neat here. Heck of a task but nice because it gives me a chance to reminisce and also correct any smelling pistakes that slipped through before.

But you’re here for the yarn so let me show them to you. The ever gracious Skein Queen agreed to custom dye a few skeins of her baby alpaca/silk/cashmere blend and with only a few hints from me, she came up with these beauties.

The colourway is called Cloud Gazing and is a blend of 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere. It’s a 4 ply sockweight, 100g, 435 yards. I have decided to knit myself an Adrift cardigan with this.
This next one is from the June mailing of the Madelinetosh Yarn Club.  I subscribed to two mailings and chose the natural and jewel tones.  This is the natural tone shipment in the colourway Northumbria.  The yarn base is Tosh Merino Light, or TML as MadTosh Lovers call it.  I love the mossy green look to it.

There have been plenty of chatter about how cranky this yarn is when it comes to winding time, even my fellow Amira and knitter Ramblingroses said as much of her experience winding TML she bought from Etsy.  I consider myself warned.  Thanks, Preeti!

Onto other yarny stuff.  I received this today, finally!  A new stock of my silk/merino lace and fingering yarn bases.  Debbie, I can finally do that custom order for you!  I didn’t order the Arabesque base this time.  It’s not a very popular base so will have to consider a replacement for now.

And I may have just found it actually.  The mill sent me this sample skein of 85% superwash merino, 25% nylon which has a nice feel to it.  I will dye it tomorrow evening and see how it goes.  I asked the mill if they can offer a base similar to Sanguine Gryphon’s Bugga! and they said they could custom spin for me but I would need to order something silly like 50kgs!  *gulp*  Maybe in a couple of years or something.

Speaking of Bugga! I managed to get hold of a few remnants in the cone which arrived last week.  The yarn varied from 2.6oz to a whopping 4.2oz!  I immediately played with one of the remnants and this is what came out.

It was so much fun watching this rather uninteresting, skinny bare yarn blossom into the squishy soft Bugga! that I have grown to love.  The colour was just s0mething I put together but I plan to do multi-shade and variegated dye jobs soon.  But of course, the dyed Bugga! base will be for my own pleasure only.  Not for sale.  Sorry.

In other news, I recently received the white balance lens caps I ordered off Amazon.  Not quite Expodisc or Photojojo, but they seem to work just fine.  They’re also unbelievably cheap!  I bought 52, 62 and 72 mm sizes to fit my most used lenses.  I tried it out on my 50mm lens and I was amazed at the difference it does to the colour of my photos.

Take this ball of Tosh DK I am knitting with.  It’s a pale lavender but with auto WB and even I can never get the colours right and usually had to slide the tempreature scale in Lightroom to get the most accurate representation of the actual colour.  This is the yarn in Auto WB, ISO100, f/1.8, 1/10 sec.  You can see the varying shades of Wisteria.  Some might say this is an alright photo.

But wait, this is what the yarn actually looks like!  See the difference a bit of custom white balance makes?  I certainly do!  This is with the same settings as above but with my custom WB applied.  Let’s look at some daylight shots.

This is one-half of the test-knit I’m doing for Femme Fatale Fibers. It’s a nice purple shade with some brown thrown in. Nice, right? Auto WB, ISO100, f/5, 1/13sec.

Same settings but with custom WB.  The yellow tinge is gone, replaced by the actual shades of the colourway.

Here’s another subject.  Same settings with Auto WB as above. It’s alright, could use with a bit more exposure I think.

But on here, with custom WB, do you see how the yellow tinge is gone and the red of the fan pops out?

I’m sold on this.  I love my cheap-o WB discs!