Digital Camera magazine is running its Photographer of the Year competition and to help you get the most from your snaps, they've given us some great tips. We set Pete Gettins the challenge of seeing how well they worked on yarn.

Colour Matters


 
“Nothing comes close to the textile industry for the sheer range and inventiveness of its colour use,” says Pete. “Glancing through Miriam’s yarn stash throws up some interesting colour combinations. You can’t deny this shot has impact!”

Getting the colour right

• Light is crucial here. Try to shoot in natural light, if possible.
• If your camera has a light setting, use it. It will make shooting indoors a lot easier.
• Take several shots in different lights – indoors, outdoors, lights on, lights off and see which one matches your yarn best.
• Diffuse the light from a desk lamp by covering it with tracing or baking paper. Just make sure it doesn’t get too hot and start to burn!
• Turn the flash off, it can make the yarn look strangely shiny and rather like all your luxury yarns are a nastier sort of acrylic!
  
• Go macro and make the colour the main focus of your shot.
  

Monochrome

Even we struggle to get excited about grey, but nothing brings out texture like stripping the colour away. “This piece of a cable knit almost looks like volcanic rock,” says Pete.

Many cameras will shoot in black and white and most photo editing software will let you turn a shot into monochrome. Try it both ways and see which one you prefer.



There’s a Black & White category for your monochrome shots, or if you’ve shot stunning colours, why not submit them to the Creative & Vision category? You could be the Photographer of the Year 2008!
 

Get your geek fix with Anna of Mochimochi Land's latest free pattern, Captain Capacitor. Cap'n Cap (as we can't help calling him in the office) is a knitted capacitor and Anna says he will soon be joined by a knitted resistor. They're awfully cute – I wonder if my dad would like knitted electronic components for Christmas? Beats cufflinks, don't you think?

A few weeks ago we got an email from reader Emma Lamb.  I'm soooooo pleased you're reviewing knitting blogs, she wrote.  Little Cotton Rabbits and Black Dog Knits are two of my favourites, but there's one more... the Monkee Maker. I know she's taking a break but her archives are well worth a browse when you need a good laugh! Also if she gets plenty of hits she may come back to entertain us all...

Emma sent us a link to the Monkee Maker's old site, which is brilliant and very funny, so we were thrilled to see that the Monkee Maker has a new site and it's still just as funny and quirky. Thank you very much Emma, for letting us know about this blog! The photo stories about 007 and company are a really good pick-me-up when you're having a stressful day – although if your boss doesn't knit, you may have a bit more trouble explaining why you're laughing out loud! Monkee Maker is fast becoming a firm favourite in the Simply Knitting office, and we loved reading the latest about Pocket Monkee's adventures in Italy, as well as keeping up with the day-to-day goings on. We're rather jealous of the gorgeous weather there: we're certainly not having any!

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday.

As we already mentioned Digital Camera magazine is running its Photographer of the Year competition and we thought we'd join in the fun and perhaps learn a bit more about photography while we were at it. We got some tips from the Digital Camera team, and set Pete Gettins, production editor Miriam's infamous husband the challenge of seeing how well they worked on yarn.

Macro – Up Close and Personal

“The closer the better as far as I’m concerned,” says Pete. “As long as it’s sharp and well lit you can get really nice pattern details without much effort.”


 
Top tips for close up shots:

• Keep the camera absolutely still. Rest it on a table, a box or a chair if you haven’t got a tripod.
• Even lighting is key. Shoot in natural daylight but out of direct sun, outside if possible or near a window.
• Large sheets of white paper make a good backdrop.
• If your camera has a “macro” mode (often symbolized by a flower), use it.
• If the camera’s wobbling when you take a shot, use the timer so it snaps the picture once you’ve moved away.
• Take lots of shots – some will come out better than others.
• Change things around, try different back drops. Did you knit wristbands to wear at the gym? Why not shoot them with your trainers, or show your latest on-the-go sock on the bonnet of your car.

“One of my favourite techniques is reversing the lens,” explains Pete. “By turning it backwards the lens magnifies stuff to an extraordinary degree.”


 
“The great thing with this is that you don’t even need a clever camera to do it. All you need is a cheap second-hand lens that you can pick up for £10 or £20 and hold it backwards in front of your built-in lens. The only problem is that you can now focus only by moving the whole camera backwards and forwards.”

The Creative & Vision category is ideally suited to interesting close-ups. Have a go – you could be Photographer of the Year 2008!

The Saltaire Arts Trail takes place from 11-21 September, and this year includes an ace knitted river. The Saltaire knitted river. We mentioned the river in issue 43 of Simply Knitting, when we featured the Saltaire Knitterati, the people behind the river, as our club of the month. They mentioned at the time that they could use a few extra hands to help the project come to fruition – and of course, you turned out in force!

"Please allow me to complement you on your readership!" wrote Knitterati organiser, Maria Crimmins. "Our River has been contributed to by people the length and breadth of the country.  One lady said that she knitted her squares whilst watching Wimbledon!"

To keep things moving, the knitters are holding a knitting picnic on August 24th, from 12-2pm, in Roberts' Park, Saltaire and on the weekend of 13-14 September, the beginning of the two-week festival, they are organising an embellishing workshop, which is aimed at helping children to make fish, frogs, ducks and other creatures, to put in the river. Adults will also be encouraged to knit a square or two to include in the River itself. 

With a bit of help, the river should be ready in time for the Trail. "Squares or rectangles of whatever size in shades of blue or green will be gratefully received," says Maria. They've already got the first 25 feet (7.62m) crocheted together, and there are pictures on the Saltaire Arts Trail website (click the image to go straight there) so if you've contributed a square, or would like to, you can see what you're getting into!

Of course, there will be lots of other great events making up the Saltaire Arts Trail, and the village itself is a world heritage site, so if you think you might be in the area, have a look and see if there's anything else that takes your fancy!

If you've jumped on the iPhone train, then we've got a tip for you: you can turn it into a row counter.

The widget is free, and has been been put through its paces by knitter and iPhone owner, Megan Reardon who blogs at Not Martha and sells gorgeous handmade needlecases at The Organized Knitter. Click on the image to read the full post and find out if this one's for you!

We're iPhone-less here at Simply Knitting Towers, so until we think up a really convincing reason for charging one to expenses (any suggestions?), we'll have to keep watching from the sidelines.

I've been trying to design something. Any sort of something. I'm fairly new to knitting, having only been doing it for a few years (it's not essential to what I do on Simply Knitting) and have finally reached the stage where I fancy designing something. Kirstie gave me a stray ball of Rowan Damask, which is really a beautiful yarn, soft and silky without being completely smooth. I had an idea, sat down with my knitter's graph paper to work it out and then… nice idea, but it didn't work with Damask.

Back to the drawing board, or at least the knitter's graph paper, to come up with another stitch pattern. Idea 2 didn't work either. I'm either going to have to take the idea to another yarn, or keep on with the Damask and try new things. As I like the Damask, I'll probably keep plugging away with that. Kirstie, meanwhile, has come up with all sorts of beautiful things to do with the ball she has, and she makes it seem so easy! My friend Claire is also now writing her own knitting patterns, and I'm really impressed with her creativity.

As a knitter, it's easy to dismiss simple patterns because they're so trouble-free to knit, but I'm quickly learning how hard it is to manage even a simple design!

Have you designed a pattern? Did you begin with the idea or the yarn? What sort of modifications did you have to make (if any) as the design progressed? I know the overall idea I have for the Damask will work, it's just finding the right pattern in which to execute it that's the problem.

Oh woe! My husband sat on one of my beautiful Lantern Moon needles and snapped it. (In case you're wondering why I'd left my needle where he could sit on it, he'd put it on the chair himself while he took photos of the other one. We've got some great features on photography and knitting coming up for you on this blog!) Aside from the damage to the needle, though, no harm has been done, so things could have been worse.

According to ROSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, knitting needle-related injuries have been declining, with 231 recorded in 2000, 179 in 2001 and 103 in 2002. Knitting started becoming fashionable again around 2003-2004, so it'll be interesting to see whether there's a rise in injuries again when the statistics for those years are released. My guess would be that a lot of the injuries involve eyes, as it can be tempting to stick needles in a basket along with yarn, or have them sticking up out of a jar. If you need an excuse to get a beautiful needle roll or some cute point protectors, do it for safety's sake!

Working in the knitting business, we do get to see a bit more of what goes on behind the scenes than most knitters do, but that doesn't mean we're not curious about the bits we don't see – or that we don't enjoy reading about how a new season's yarns knit up!

Fiona's Knitting is written by a Rowan design consultant, which means that the Fiona behind it has to knit up samples of the new Rowan yarns, for work. It's part of her job. (It's a hard life.) She's generous enough to share them with her readers – as well as the other gorgeous things she's knitting. Stop by to see what she thinks of Rowan's new Colourscape yarn (hint: Kaffe Fassett designed it for Rowan...) or find out how her latest cardi is coming along, and stay to read one of her handy tutorials – we recommend the two about lifelines, particularly. They won't save your life, but they might well save your knitting!

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday.

The September issue of Simply Knitting hits the shops today, and it's the one with the yarn tidy!


Click for a larger image.

As you probably know by now, we designed this handy ball holding yarn bag and were all set to give it to you as your gift on issue 40, but the ship they were coming to the UK on was severely delayed by really bad storms (apparently some of our readers caught the tail end of it, while holidaying in the region. We hope the rest of your trip was sunny!) We were pleased to report that the ship eventually made it safely to the UK, and here the yarn tidies are, at last!

We hope you'll enjoy using yours. You can use it to keep up to three different balls of yarn separate while knitting, so it's great for stripes, Fair Isle, intarsia – or even knitting two sleeves or two socks at once.

Let us know how you get on, and do drop us an email if you find any uses for it we haven't mentioned!

Of course, we've got lots of patterns you can try it out with straight away:

• Knit a yoga mat/rug and learn instarsia at the same time!
• Pretty summer dress with three coloured trim.
  
• Little girl's cardigan with dancing Fair Isle ballerinas.
• Cotton and linen blend men's cardigan.
  

We've also got lots of other things for you to enjoy, including Alan Dart's stunning scarecrow, an easy crochet bag, quick-to-knit belts – oh, and an interview with the Yarn Harlot herself, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.



And don't miss any of your usual favourites. This month, we've got a round up of World Wide Knit in Public Day, three great cable patterns for you to try, and lots of great books, patterns and websites for you to check out.