Behind the Scenes: Taking pictures of yarn

Being an indie business means that I wear a lot of different hats. One that I struggle with is the "photographer" hat, and I've tried a lot of different setups over the years. But it's only recently that I've found a setup for yarn photos that I like, so I wanted to share that with you for this newsletter.

When I first started taking photos of my yarn, I wanted an "interesting" background. I had bought an Amish-made basket from Woolgatherings a few months before that and thought it would make an interesting backdrop.

But I noticed that the pictures were pretty dark overall, and when all placed together on the same website, the overall color was just "dark" which de-emphasized the bright colors of the yarn.

A few people suggested that I use the typical white background for the pictures. I resisted. But it wasn't just because I wanted to be different. It was because I thought getting good white background photos would be a ton of work, involving light boxes and special lighting and whatnot. I've tried that in the past and hated the experience.

So I tried something else with the help of this blog post. I bought some white foam board: one piece that was flat and one that was tri-fold. I tried a few different locations and times of day until I settled on the mid-morning light coming in from the window of my craft room. I set up a chair, placed the flat foam board on the seat, and placed the tri-fold foam board on the back of the chair, so it could bounce the light from the window down to the yarn.

I also used some settings on my camera, including my 50mm macro lens, to help with the white balance (the blog post linked above goes into detail about suggested settings). And I did do a little post-process editing, although I found that once I had my optimal setup, the photos needed very little editing.

So it took me a while, but all of my current inventory has been re-photographed and everything in my shop is up to date. And now when I look at the overall image of the shop, I see a much lighter and much brighter image. And the background fades away, allowing the yarn to be the center focus.

This makes me want to do the same thing to my personal yarn stash so my Ravelry stash page looks nice as well. Hmm... *adding note to my "to do" list*

Here's the old picture. I still find the background interesting, but then again, the background isn't supposed to be the focus!

And here's the new white background picture. The eye is now focused on the yarn rather than the background.

Updated August 31, 2016: I've still been struggling a little with getting the white background to be truly white. I discovered an iPhone app called Snapseed that I now use for editing my photos. It allows you to edit specific areas of the photo, so I can edit the white background by brightening the area without also brightening the yarn color.

Here's an example of a newer picture:

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (October 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Evolution of my pattern template

My first pattern that I released for the public was the Criseyde Scarf. I designed it during a class at my then LYS and thought I might write more patterns but wasn't sure. So I used my limited graphic design skills, put together a layout, and posted the pattern on Ravelry.

Two years after that, I started designing more seriously and wanted to develop a better-looking layout. So as part of what I was looking for when I found my tech editor, I asked if she could help me come up with a pattern template. Because I used knitCompanion a lot, I wanted my pattern template to be super easy for someone to use in knitCompanion.

Almost a year later, I felt like I needed something else. Something to add some "oomph" to the layout. But I didn't really know what to do. So I left most of the layout as it was and added some colored boxes on the front page and rounded the edges of the pictures.

And then I saw what Elizabeth (from Stitch Definition) had done to the layout for the Gawain's Shield collection. It is so beautiful. I wanted that feeling for my individual patterns as well. I tried to do it myself. But I just couldn't come up with something that I was happy with. So I turned to Elizabeth and asked for her help. And she came up with a new pattern layout for me. When I saw it, I was amazed. It seemed so simple, yet she had paid attention to tiny details (such as echoing the circle in my logo) that really made the layout look amazing.

So updated all of my previous patterns with the new layout. I also took the time to polish some of my first patterns (no changes to the actual pattern but just a refinement of instructions or details here and there).

Here's a look at how my Criseyde Scarf pattern has evolved:

What do you think? Do you like the new layout?

One of the things I love most about it is that I'm now able to include the "story behind the name" section so the story that used to be available just on the Ravelry description is now on the pattern itself.

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 20, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn Reskeining Process

So now I have the yarn dyed, but it's still in that gigantic loop. I need to get it into the smaller circumference skein so it is ready to go to a new home. (Could you imagine if I sent out the giant loop? What would you think?)

This is when I go back to the warping reel and put the yarn back in place. I go through and cut off all of those choke ties I had put on, thankful that I took the time to do that because it makes putting the skein back on the warping reel much easier. I then combine the warping reel with my swift (using it as a skein winder) and wind the yarn back down into a more manageable sized skein. This doesn't take as long as winding the yarn onto the warping reel, but it can easily take up to an hour depending on how many skeins are on there (2-4 usually).

Once I have the yarn reskeined, I twist it up and label it and sigh. Yes, it was a lot of hard work. But imagine the socks it will make!

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn Dyeing Process

The dyeing itself can be done in a few ways. I've seen people using mason jars within a water bath (either crock pot or pot on the stove), but my current setup isn't big enough to hold multiple mason jars, so I'm using a different method. I dye one color (sometimes two) at a time.

I find the colored ties and choose one section, placing it in the dye pot. I use the crock pot lid to hold the yarn in place. I let that color set and then move onto the next section and dye it. I continue like that until I've dyed all of the colors. If I am doing four colors, I will sometimes dye the sections opposite one another at the same time, using two crock pots. But this means that I'm technically going through the dye process 2-4+ times for each colorway, which can take up almost an entire day's worth of dyeing time!

Problem!

I was moving right along with my self-striping dyeing and then I hit a huge problem. Color creep. This pink/green colorway pictured below (Erec and Enide Variant) is a good example of that. I dyed the pink first and then when I dyed the green, the dye just moved right on past that crock pot lid and into the pink, creating a 2-4 inch section of a dark color. No! I really wanted much cleaner transitions between colors.

I tried multiple fixes, including using clips or super tight choke ties at the color changes, but that still didn't work well.

Then I got that spin dryer I mentioned in the last newsletter. So I soaked the yarn like usual but then put it through the spin dryer before putting it into the dye pot, thinking that if the yarn was less wet, the color might not wick too far into the other section. I then put the yarn through the spin dryer in between each section of dyeing.

I also added gravity to the mix. Before, I had a shallow bowl that I placed beside the crock pot to hold the sections of yarn that were not being dyed. Now I use a tall bucket so the yarn is coming down into the crock pot (which is what is shown in the above picture).

These two factors (dryer yarn and gravity) seem to have done the trick and I'm getting much cleaner transitions between colors now. Whew!

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn set-up process

I don't know about you, but self-striping sock yarn has become a favorite of mine. I always have a "plain vanilla" sock on the needles so when I want to knit but not think too much about my knitting, I can work on it. It's also a great travel project and is what I usually bring to my weekly knit night. But doing a plain sock over and over again can get boring. Enter self-striping sock yarn! With it, you can have fun watching the stripes progress, wondering what color is coming next, which livens the knitting.

When I was at DFW Fiber Fest in 2015, all the yarn I bought was self-striping sock yarn. At first, I thought I wouldn't actually dye any myself, so I needed to get it all from other dyers. But wow! Self-striping yarn can be expensive. Now that I'm actually making it myself, I totally understand why. It's a rather labor-intensive process. But it's so rewarding that it is worth the process, so I've been hard at work developing my own process and colorways. And in this blog post (and upcoming ones), I'll be taking you behind the scenes of how I dye self-striping yarn.

To dye yarn so it creates stripes as it is knit, long sections of each color need to be dyed. But if you just take a skein of yarn as it is sent from the supplier, the loop of the skein has a small diameter. To get the long sections of yarn for each color, the first step is to reskein the yarn into a very very large skein. Dyers have various methods to do this and I've tried three, finally settling on one as the method that works best for me.

A warping board. In many ways this was the easiest to get the yarn into a loop, but getting it off the warping board is not so much fun because each section actually contains both "sides" of the loop, which need to be separated. Maybe I wrapped the yarn too tightly, but I had a hard time separating the two sides of the loop.

The kitchen chair method. Place two kitchen chairs far apart from one another and walk the yarn around and around. Although I got a lot of steps in while doing this method, I have a three (almost four)-year-old boy and three cats, who were all super interested in the yarn. Plus I wasn't sure if I would be able to get the chairs the exact same distance apart each time and worried about the chairs moving while I was working.

A warping reel. Ah! So much better. With this, I can wrap the yarn around and around while rotating the reel. I can make skeins of various circumferences, and it's more contained than the chair method, so although it is tempting for the cats, it's easier to keep them away from it. Plus, the two sides are separated which makes removing it from the reel much easier.

So based upon how many stripes I'm going to be doing, I'll wrap the yarn a certain number of times around the warping reel. I also do more than one skein at a time (again, depending on the number of stripes), which is really helpful.

Once I have the yarn reskeined, I have to remove it from the warping reel. But dealing with a gigantic skein of yarn can lead to tangles, so the major key here is to add lots and lots of choke ties. So before taking it off the warping reel, I cut short lengths of a white cotton yarn and create loose choke ties throughout the entire skein.

I also have a colored cotton yarn that I use to measure off the increments to know how much of each color to dye (so if I'm going to do four even stripes, I'll measure and divide the skein into four parts and place colored ties to mark them).

It varies depending on how many skeins I do at once (2-4) and how big the circumference is, but it generally takes me well over an hour to prepare the skeins. And I haven't even started dyeing it yet! 
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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.