Southwest details

its been busy around here the last week or so, with various extended family members coming and going. turns out everyone likes to visit Tucson in january and february. saturday i spent the afternoon poking around Tubac with my parents and aunt and uncle. tubac is a quaint, artsy, little town south of green valley with lots of neat stuff to see.

ristra on a saquaro skeleton


water pots hanging outside a store

i am infatuated with vintage actions


some bones in the wash behind my parents' with PW's seventies action processing

i've been trying to take more pictures and tubac presents plenty of opportunities. it also presents lots of opportunities to spend money, but i managed to stick with just taking pictures this time :)

A lonely mitten

i was flipping through A Knitter's Almanac and there was a passage about how the author thought that mittens should be knit in the summertime when the knitter could take their time and make beautiful mittens, rather than in the winter time when the mittens would be more utilitarian. while i did not end up making the mittens from the Almanac (not yet anyway) i did take the advice and decided to try a pattern that has been on my "to knit" list for a very long time while i'm soaking up the sun in Tucson.

Pattern: Anemoi mittens by Eunny Jang
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in camel heather and rainforest heather
Size 1 dpns

it took me just over a week to finish the first mitten and i love how it turned out! this project also marked numerous firsts for me... first tubular cast on, first stranded colorwork project, first project in which i held the yarn in my left hand (one of the colors anyway), and first project knit on rather small needles in the round.

palm view

there is a section of the "diamond" pattern up above the swirly bit that can be repeated to add length. due to my freakishly long fingers, i had to repeat this section once and i feel like it makes it look funny. too much diamond pattern and not enough swirly bit or something. or i'm being overly critical, but whatever. the plus side of knitting one's own mittens (and i assume gloves if i were masochistic enough to try knitting gloves) is that you can make the thumb (and fingers) as long as you like so they fit just right.

now i just need to get moving on the other half of the pair...

chrome

let me preface this by saying that i am totally NOT into cars. i know nothing about engines or makes and models or whatever else it is that people talk about when they talk about cars. but i don't mind spending an afternoon wandering around a classic car show because it means spending a little quality time with my dad, and also because i happen to like shiny things. and these people LOVE to shine their cars.

my favorite part of car shows is all the shiny chrome details; this also applies to photographing large motorcycle gatherings. in cars, i am particularly drawn to old school hood ornaments and script writing. the shiny-ness is mesmerizing, plus sometimes the reflections make for neat pictures as well. and for car shows there is the added bonus of getting to make fun of how ugly cars from the 70's and 80's were.


ok seriously?? this car is salmon pink and black... the only sweeter color combination in a car like this is turquoise and white, and its a close second. i want this car.



some fun reflections PLUS script details... double bonus.

i said i liked hood ornaments, but i never said they weren't a little bit creepy sometimes.

this one is a head too, but without facial features. its a little difficult to make out through the blur though.


so i'm wondering, did this weird thing with putting heads (with or without actual faces) on the hood ornaments stem from the women on the front of ships or something? because there seemed to be a lot of humanistic hood ornaments. there was also a sweet one that was supposed to look like an airplane but the picture didn't really turn out.

this was my first real chance to experiment with the lensbaby that mr. z got me for christmas and its a lot of fun. (these were actually taken before the ones at st. xavier) the crazy blurred look probably isn't for everyone but i think it works well for some pictures.