What a Life!

My headache is back. I think it’s just the insanity of it all. I feel like a cat chasing my tail. Seriously.

On Monday, I started knitting a pair of the Broad Street Mittens I mentioned yesterday. I worked on them here and there, and at the end of the day, the only thing I had to show for my efforts was a pair of sore arms. I had been knitting at 8 stitches per inch, and clearly, with the yarn and needles I was using, not only was it wearing me out, but it would also take much longer than it would if I did it at the 7 stitches per inch as called for in the original pattern.

So yesterday morning, when I arose at 5:00 a.m., I started again, this time, knitting much looser. I achieved the necessary gauge and had the ribbing done by the time I went to take a shower (Steve comes upstairs shortly after 7:00 and I run down to get a shower before he leaves – otherwise I don’t have a chance until Joey takes his morning nap).

I worked on the project here and there throughout the day and by 4:00 or so, I had this to show for my efforts:

We ate supper and did all our regular evening stuff, and once the boys were in bed, I set out to finish the fingers. By bedtime, I had this to show for my efforts:

The palm looked a little long to me so I asked Steve to try it on for me. His hands look big, but mostly he just has long fingers. On the ones I knit him originally, he’s told me the fingers are a bit loose so I did the fingers on this one in ribbing so it would pull in and stay close to the finger. Well, he said the fingers are a bit snug. Alas! There goes an evening’s worth of knitting…and it’s not like I have an evening to spare.

So the knitting has been set aside and today my focus is back on pictures.

My husband is, in many ways, a very patient man. Though I have many failings as a wife and mother, he takes them in stride and does not complain. But if I was to make a list of his top 5 complaints, they would be as follows:

1. Why aren’t any of our photos in photo albums so we can look at them?
2. I wish we had photo albums to enjoy.
3. We don’t have any photos in albums since we got rid of the film Canon Rebel back when Ben was little.
4. I wish we had photo albums to look at.
5. Are you ever going to get any photos in albums so we can look at them?

Or something like that.

So, for Christmas, my gift to Steve is going through all my photos on the computer, downloading them and having them printed out. Then I will assemble them in albums (which were purchased here and there as I came across ones I liked), wrap them up and put them under the tree. They have a special over at Shutterfly where you can purchase 500 4×6 photos printed for a mere $0.12 each – since I am going back to photos taken in 2003, I will be taking advantage of that offer.

I’ve told Steve, when he’s seen me working on the computer, that I’m working on a project for him for Christmas. But he has absolutely no idea what it is. [Though if he reads my blog, the secret has now been spilled. I wouldn’t care if he did read my blog, but I don’t think he does, and the things I talk about here are mostly the things on my mind that I think would only bore him so I blabber about them here instead.] He swears he doesn’t need anything for Christmas and that he hasn’t asked for anything, which only adds to the fun.

But 500 pictures. Seriously. I’m about halfway through the photos taken with my first digital camera which had that two-second delay between when you hit the shutter and when the picture was actually taken. With that camera, many of the pictures didn’t turn out (due to that fabulous delay), and my photo-taking style was still much like the style one employs with a film camera where you pay $0.33 for each shot, whether it turns out well or not.

As I go through the pictures, which are sorted by the month in which they were taken, I find myself printing 1/2 to 2/3 of them. I’ll have two or three shots of the same scene, and I’ll just pick the best one. Just the same, this process is very tedious and intense. I work until the downloading window tells me it has x number of pictures remaining which will take about a half hour to download, and then I take a break while it finishes. And these are the little files from the old camera (2.1 megapixel I think?). This is quite a chore. I don’t even want to think about what assembling them into albums with two little boys running around is going to be like. Perhaps we should call it the ultimate gift of love.

My original plan was to get completely up-to-date with picture printing, but I may stop when I have 500. Or I may stop when I get to February of this year when I upgraded to my Canon S3 IS and started taking 400 pictures a month instead of an average of 40. Then I’m thinking this will be my annual gift to the family – printing out my best photos from the previous year and assembling them into albums. Perhaps I should be doing this every month instead, but sometimes distance makes it easier to choose which pictures are truly album-worthy. Theoretically.

Of course, while the pictures are downloading, I browse through this year’s pictures and contemplate which ones are wall-worthy. I’m still stuck on that. I have come up with some new insight, however, as to why this task is so difficult.

Most of the best pictures I’ve taken are candid shots of my children doing things. Such as this one.

Joey reaching for his birthday cake after we pulled it away so we could light the candle. Clearly, we took it away before he was done playing with it.

These Halloween pictures of Ben are good examples of that as well.

A good portrait has the following characteristics:

• Subject is wearing nice clothing, not dirty or torn play clothes (regardless of how practical or realistic such clothes may be in real life)
• Subject is looking at the camera and has a pleasant expression, if not a smile, on their face (in most candids, they’re looking at what they’re doing)
• And, the background is fairly simple (while I do pay some attention to this with my pictures, what is appropriate for a candid action shot – and even necessary to give context for such a shot – doesn’t work to well for a portrait worthy of being hung on someone’s wall)

I am having great difficulties selecting which photos to include in the calendar this year because I have so many really good candid shots of the boys. At the same time, I only have a couple semi-acceptable portrait shots of Joey and hardly any of Ben. Not good when you want to give wall-worthy photos as Christmas gifts.

Thus, I’m now actually thinking of buying those collage frames like this one which holds six 4×6 shots – I could put three of each of the boys in it and give that instead of 5x7s or 8x10s for Christmas. The price is right. I could just include six of my best candids and they wouldn’t have to be portraits. No sweat. But wait! Availability: Item arriving in 2 to 6 weeks. Uh, that would be after Christmas.

Which I think is why my head hurts so bad. If it isn’t my knitting going awry, it’s the style of my best photos not matching the need I currently am trying to fill. Oh, whatever am I to do? I need to decide quickly, or nothing is going to arrive in time for Christmas.

But I will leave you, dear reader, with a laugh rather than a headache. Alissa has this favorite tree she’s always taking pictures of – different seasons, time of day, etc. In fact, she has a whole set over on flickr with photos of that tree.

I, however, am a SAHM who doesn’t leave the house very often, and who certainly does not lead this glamorous life where I drive down this scenic country road and by this photogenic tree every day on my way to and from work. So instead, I present you with what I have discovered is my most often photographed subject – Steve and Ben sitting together on the couch.

I swear, I have one (or more!) shots of the two of them like that every month. I could build a whole set of my own over on flickr with those pictures. Welcome to my world! Oh my!

Enough for today. I have things to do.

[On a side note…The lens on my camera – a 50/1.8 – is the equivalent of an 85 mm, which is what many photographers consider a “portrait” lens. As in, you can get an up close and personal shot without having to get, shall we say, in the face of the subject. The main difficulty I have with it is that I am unable to capture as much of the context (aka background) that makes the photo. If they’re making a cute silly face but you don’t know why, it’s a cute silly face, but the photo would be so much more powerful if you got the why in the picture as well. Which is why I want that 35/2 lens so badly. It would just be so much more practical than the lens I have now.]