Merry Christmas

"Merry Christmas!" says the bear in the 10-minute-insta-sweater I made it, my only finished craft project lately.

Hope everyones' holidays are going well. Mine did! Small Christmas, but a good one- I got a macro lens for my camera (macro lenses tend to be really expensive so it was exciting for me to get one).

I took this photo from 8 yards away with my macro lens! This catapult was my present for my brother- he loved it!

Tomorrow I'm heading out with family to visit my grandparents, who I haven't seen (not counting graduations) since I was about 15 years old. It's a 15 hour drive each way, and since I get crazy car sick at the least provocation, I'm taking along a pound-sized ball of yarn for my latest crochet project- it involves 30 8"x8" squares in different stitches that get sewn together into a moderately sized afghan throw. At this point I only have one square done, so there's room for a lot of work during the drive!

Hoping everyone traveling gets where they're going safely, and I'll be back in a few weeks with updates!

Photography

One of my few hobbies that doesn't take up a lot of space is photography. I love taking photos of everything- whether it's interesting or not- and recently upgraded to a Canon Eos Rebel T3 (or as I call it in my head sometimes, the "Terminator 3000" because I'm a nerd).

A park near my house

It takes crazy detailed photos and because I am somewhere between 'beginner' and 'amateur' in my skill level I'm learning my way around the camera as well.

The camera I'm using for my photography class. Using real film instead of digital is so nerve-wracking.

Mostly I just wanted to show you some of my pictures I've taken with it.

One of my classmates. He has the Canon Eos T2, and it's his fault I couldn't wait for the T3 for Christmas like my original plan had been.

Hopefully I'll get the dress I made tailored a bit to fit and photographed for this blog soon, or at least finish a craft at all. Photography's taken over. That's all for now, folks!

The Brick

I just made the move from New Mexico to Arkansas, and right before I left I went to a bunch of the antique stores that I'd known of but never gone in. Among the things I purchased was this impressively heavy old camera in kind of bad condition:

Originally I got it so I could work on restoration and maybe get it to work (assuming it doesn't, I haven't tried yet). After a quick Google search I discovered that it is an Argus C2, produced from 1938-1942 and referred to as "The Brick". My grandfather, as it turns out, took my mom's prom photos with one of these and greeted it like an old friend.

Also, I am (in theory) receiving a new camera as a graduation present from my parents. I've narrowed it down to the Canon Eos Rebel series, and within that to either the T2i or T3i.

The Canon Eos T3 with a lens on it.

I have a Canon Powershot that works okay for what I want- the photos of the Brick were taken with it, but the little camera cannot do what I want it to do to the extent that I want it to do it. I generally have to go into photo editing software to get the images to come out the way I want them to, whereas if I had a camera capable of just taking the photos right it would save time and editing.

We will see how this works out. A storm arrived that's progressively getting nastier so I'm going to cut this blog short. I'll be back later but blogs will remain erratic for probably another week as I finish unpacking.