A Photography Themed Post

Our family just became the excited owners of a Canon Rebel T2i EOS 550D. I had been dreaming of a Canon Rebel of some type for quite a while and had been saving my craft money towards it when my husband lost his job last year. At that point the craft money went towards preschool tuition instead. I figured it would be quite a while before we replaced my Kodak Easyshare, but then the opportunity came to get this particular camera because of its use in my husband’s new business. So, instead of getting the camera for myself, I get to use it when my husband does not need it for his business.

Using portrait mode and artificial light

I played a little bit with it last night as well as today. I am trying to learn one little bit at a time with it. At first I listened to my husband and took some photos in portrait mode. They were not as crisp as I would like, which made sense after checking out the instruction manual, which said that portrait mode makes flesh tones and hair look softer. It ended up making the stitches in this j look softer.

This morning I took some photos using the scant amount of light from the windows (really dark and dreary here today.) The camera popped up the flash for this photograph. I used the close-up mode for this one.

Cloudy, Dreary Day near window

I plan to work on using the white balance and exposure compensation next to play around with the photos. I want to learn one step at a time. Hopefully I will also get a brighter day this week to work in some natural light.

Also in the photography mode, I was pleased to discover some beautiful photos of a child with one of my letter pillows at Life in Motion Photography. I absolutely love getting a glimpse of the children who get the pillows that I make. I also enjoyed looking around at the blog to see where I may someday take my own photography. If you live anywhere near Austin, TX and want to have some incredible photos of your kids, please check out this site.

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Crafting Up A Storm and A New Spot To Find My Patterns

With letters as the decoration, of course

I have been a busy woman this month, with several letter pillows to create for customers as well as taking some time to start making some of my favorite Christmas paper crafts, as you see above. I am also currently crocheting a red letter Z, which I am very happy to do since it brings me closer to my goal of making all the letters of the alphabet.

I have also been busy getting Lovely Little Letter patterns ready for testing and sending them off to testers. I have been able to add three more letter patterns to my shops this week (K, v, D) and hope to add a lowercase m tomorrow.

One of my patterns available at YouCanMakeThis.com

Finally, I have spent the last month getting several of my crochet patterns ready for YouCanMakeThis.com, which has graciously accepted my patterns to sell on their site. I discovered YouCanMakeThis.com through a friend from church who sent me one of their newsletters. I registered and received my free patterns as well as signing up for their newsletters. Then I decided that I might try offering them my patterns. I am happy to say, after some work, they have started to offer some of my patterns on their site. You can find my patterns here.

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ABCDEFG….How many letter pillows do you see?

I have two more letter pillows to make. And, wouldn’t you know it, one of them is an M. I think I am up to five letter M pillows so far. I have almost memorized the pattern for it. I get to add another photo to my alphabet soon, though. The other letter is a G in light blue.



One of the many ideas I have rolling around in my head is a set of lower case letters. I have been researching cross stitch programs in hopes that I might use one of them to help me design a set of lower case letters. Of course, I keep wondering how I might work out lower case i and j, with their pesky dots. If the cross stitch program does not work out, I guess there is always graph paper. Hopefully I can get to work on this idea next month when my girls go to school and I can have a semi-normal routine again.

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Whose Hands Are These?

I have finally returned to my puppets and worked on making some arms with hands the other evening. Any ideas whose hands these will be? If you have been paying attention, you can probably guess. Here is a hint: think fairy tales….

I just finished this and mailed it off for a four year old this week. Fortunately, with my Ott-Lite, making this with the navy blue yarn was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. The last navy blue letter I made had to be put together during the day because I just could not see what I was doing.

ASL Sign for the Post: To sign the letter J, you close your dominant hand, keeping your pinkie finger out. Then make the J shape in the air with your pinkie finger.

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This post brought to you by the letter M

I just finished making this pillow for my youngest daughter. She loves purple and picked out the yarn with me at the craft store. She brought it with her to bed tonight and as we were saying our good nights, she turned it upside down and told me, “This is what a W looks like.” Pretty good for a three year old.

I also made a letter L for my oldest daughter, but she has not let me have it to take a photo yet; she currently has it wearing a pink leg warmer as a sweater. Hers is made from yarn that changes colors and was my first attempt at following the letter patterns I found. If I have a reason to do “L” again, I think I will make some changes to it because either my gauge is off (pattern did not mention gauge), or some of the pattern has some problems.

A few children’s books come to mind that start with M. My daughter loves reading Jan Brett books, which have incredible illustrations. The Mitten is very popular with preschool and kindergarten teachers, so if you have not read it with your child, I am sure a teacher will. The author has an awesome website, with many, many fun activities.

One we have read aloud with my six year old is Morning Girl by Michael Dorris. This story has short chapters, so it is good for a child just learning to listen to books that take more than one sitting to read. It goes back and forth between two characters as well, which is another, more advanced way of storytelling that could be introduced with this book.

I read The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman to my sixth grade students when I taught about the Middle Ages. I look forward to sharing it with my daughters when they get a bit older. Because of the unfamiliar setting, there would just be too much explaining to do with each page for my daughters to get much out of it yet.

ASL sign for the post: The letter M is made by putting your thumb under your index, middle, and ring finger, and over your pinkie. You do not need to fold your index, middle, and ring fingers all the way down. This would take too long when fingerspelling. (I tried to copy the free image from wikipedia, but it kept turning out black, so you can click on the link above (letter M) to see it.)

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