Day 106- Woolly

I started knitting as a child, then again as a teenager, and finally really learned how about ten years ago.  I have battled a serious wool addiction since then and am trying to avoid yarn stores as much as possible these days (knitting rivals photography as an expensive hobby. . .). My craft room is stuffed with yarn- leftovers from previous projects and works in progress,  as well as yarn for projects that have never gotten off the ground.  I use my carpal tunnel as my excuse, since I can only knit about an hour a day- but of course, if I actually worked an hour a day on all the yarn in my room, I would have a lot more projects finished!

So today is going to be a day where I do knit, since I am behind on a project that will be a gift (shhhh…).  But as I get out my knitting bag, I can’t help but admire all the yarn I have. This photo shows just the yarn I have displayed in the top part of my wonderful Lantern Moon basket that my daughter bought me for my sixtieth birthday.  She is a knitter too and loves wool in the same way I do. In the foreground is the blue yarn I used to knit my first baby blanket, and the pink multi-colored yarn was used for my first baby sweater.  Both baby items were part of my Grandma Hope Chest (actually a drawer) way before my two grandbabies were even conceived.  Miles has Blue Blankie (yes, that’s what he calls it) and sleeps with it every night. The pink sweater? Well, that’s still in the drawer . . .

f/1.8, 1/160, ISO 500, 35mm

Melinda2 Comments

Day 105- Garden Path

Today is a day to catch up and do some errands- with photography not really on the list.  I think it took me all of five minutes to find my photo of the day. With all the azaleas in bloom, the path in our side garden is looking colorful and Spring-like.  I decided to go for a shallow depth of field to emphasize the azaleas in the foreground.

f/1.8, 1/1600, ISO 500, 35mm

Melinda4 Comments

Day 104- Love and Silence

The house is silent today- an empty nest. I thought of photographing the emptiness, but that made me too sad.

When I started this project, I considered that it would be a good way to document some of the family heirlooms, so that my children would remember what they were and which family member had owned them. So here is a photo of my mother’s mother’s Wedgewood.  It may even have been my great-grandmother’s- I am not sure.  Anyway, it belonged to my grandmother and my mother- and now it is ours. I’ve always thought it was beautiful, even though one piece is cracked.

I used two of Kim Klassen’s textures in post-processing:  love and silence.

Melinda2 Comments

Day 103- Last Day

Today was our last day with our daughter and her family.  It was difficult to choose photos out of the hundred or so shots I took today, so here are a few.

Top left: Henry with his stylish new outfit, featuring a puppy on his behind!

Top right: Henry and Papa mimicking a pose we have of Papa and Henry’s mama when SHE was a baby.

Bottom left: Miles singing songs with puppets from my puppet apron (Caitlin actually took this photo)

Bottom right: Miles playing on the stairs, which have been transformed into Miles’s boat during his stay here.  There is usually an arrangement of blocks or toys on each of the steps, depending on what is happening on the boat.

It is so hard to say good-bye to our little family, especially to these little boys who will be so much bigger when we see them next.

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Day 102- Disneyland for Moms

IKEA!  For my national park residing daughter, IKEA is like Disneyland. She and Baby Henry and her dad and I spent a couple hours browsing the aisles shopping for items that she can normally only buy online.  We ended up with toddler dishware, some toy storage items, a duvet cover, picture frames and more.    I hadn’t visited IKEA in a few years and am already planning my next trip.  Before we left, I snapped this quick picture of a display of colorful storage containers.

Melinda5 Comments

Day 99- She’s still there!

Didn’t have much time for photography today, so I’m using a photo of Mama Hummingbird that I snapped when I checked on her this morning. I know this doesn’t look much different from my other photo- slightly different angle and very different lighting.  What IS different is that this was shot with a 35mm lens and was cropped, whereas the other was zoomed at 270mm.

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Day 98- Copy-Catter, Dirty Ratter. . .

Nope, I did not get my photo done this morning before life with grandbabies and company began.  I took a few random photos during the day and uploaded them- but nothing blog-worthy. So during naptime I started to- not really panic- but kind of obsess randomly, if that makes any sense.  As I was looking through the photos I did take- and rejecting them all- I saw that my friend, Carol had already posted for the day- yikes! Pressure! I needed to get going! I grabbed the camera and went outside. Wandering aimlessly around my over-photographed garden, I checked out the hummingbird in her nest and rejected that- no zoom on the camera and too lazy to change lenses. I noticed the azaleas were in bloom and quickly snapped a few photos.

As I walked back in, I started thinking- hmmm, Carol had white flowers on her blog- and I think they were azaleas!

But- I am too lazy and unfocused to figure out something else, so today I am shamelessly copying my friend. The lighting is different- it is cloudy right now and later in the day than when she made her shot. And we used different lenses- but they are pretty similar photographs.

So with apologies to Carol, here are my azaleas . . .

f/9, 1/125, ISO 2500, 35mm

Note to Carol: I also always forget to check my settings- ISO 2500? – good heavens! And I am also on continuous autofocus because of the babies. . .

Melinda2 Comments

Day 97- Bright and Early

Three more days until 100 Days of sticking to this commitment of a photo a day! I think I have learned a lot and am not totally panicking every day about what to photograph.  Today is going to be a busy day with the grandbabies, some special guests for lunch and in the afternoon- AND then our son and our son-in-law’s parents are flying in tonight.  So today, I chose to get up early and quickly snap a photo of some daffodils I bought at Trader Joe’s yesterday.  There- I’m done for the day!

f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 1000, 85mm

Melinda5 Comments

Day 95- Starfish

A fun day playing tourist with the grandbabies in San Francisco yielded a full SD card, but no outstanding photos- the “focus” was on the family, not photography. We took the ferry from Vallejo to the Embarcadero, BART up to Powell Street, and the cable car down to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39. The logistical challenge of the day was finding elevators in each of those places, because we had two strollers.  The emotional challenge was realizing all too late that Miles was terrified of the cable car- he screamed loudly for the first part of the ride, his cries only increasing in volume as each group of tourists boarded the car. The carousel and aquarium at Pier 39 were Miles’s favorite moments of the day (and ours too)- especially when he got to touch a starfish.  I chose an image of a starfish as my photo of the day.

f/1.6, 1/50, ISO 800, 35mm

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Mama Hummer

After I had already posted my Monday photo of the day, my son-in-law, Justin, discovered a mama hummingbird sitting on her nest in our magnolia tree which hangs over our deck.  Using my zoom lens, I stood underneath and snapped a zillion photos. I was happy with this image and had a lot of fun processing it with Kim Klassen’s warm sun texture.

Melinda21 Comments

Day 94- Macro Misting

While misting my spider plants today, I realized I had a fun opportunity for using the macro lens.  I really do need to get a good tripod- any degree of camera shake is so intensified with the shallow depth of field in macro shots.  I trashed most of my images- thanks goodness it’s a digital age!  These droplets are TINY.  In the photo on the left, only the reflection within the drop is in focus!

Both photos were taken at f/5, 1/125, ISO 2000, 85mm.

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Day 93- Milestone

Last night Henry rolled over (from tummy to back) for the first time!  Until this week, he didn’t particularly enjoy tummy time. But last night, he was especially rambunctious and not only rolled over twice, but looked like he was going to take off crawling.

I snapped this photo this morning. Unfortunately, Henry was not in the mood for rolling over, but he was very interested in his octopus.

Melinda2 Comments