For Christmas I got a new camera. A step up from the tiny point and shoot I had been using. It’s a Canon SX120 IS. And it’s very nice. In theory. See I never read the 144 page (!!!!) manual or tried to figure it out.  Until today. Today I visited the Yarnography group and started doing the assignments that other folks did years ago.

The first lovely shot you see here is on manual settings. With a tight aperture and a deep depth of field. So everything is pretty much in focus. On a good day, this is the sort of pictures I take on the auto settings.

But today I figured out how to change the settings. So I opened the aperture up wide, and took the same picture with a nice shallow depth of field. See how the yarn is in focus, but not the stuff behind it? I’ve been dying to take shots like that all along. And the first couple of Yarnography lessons had me rocking and rolling and no time.

And finally we have the 2nd photo assignment for Yarnography. Take a picture of an egg. No, I’m not kidding. Doesn’t my egg look nice? You can even see all the bumpy parts on the shell. Although in hindsight it kind of looks like the yarn laid the egg, which is vaguely disturbing.  To be honest, I’m still not sure what I was supposed to learn from this one, but I did have fun with it.

There’s a joke here somewhere about which came first, the yarn or the egg, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Today my boys were not showing their best selves. So I made something. I made something quickly and angrily and with a box cutter. Probably not the best plan. But hindsight is 20/20 and let’s just all count our blessings that Mommy didn’t end up in the emergency room. (Mommy would be me!)

I made a light box using the tutorial from Strobist.

And then in the kitchen, under fluorescent lights, I took this very true to color picture of yarn. True to color on my monitor that is, which is a first!

If you click to embiggen this picture, you can even see yarny details such as the twist and the slight halo of fuzz on the yarn. It’s amazing. And I’m very proud. I think me and my light box are going to become very good friends!