Autumn makes for difficult pictures

I have spent at least the last 3 or 4 days trying to get a good picture of my woodland shawl, to show off. It's been a failure.
Part of the problem is that, by the time I get home from work, it is already relatively dark. Not night yet, thankfully, but dark enough that I don't get good natural light.
Turning on lights hasn't done a lot of good either. The shawl goes towards darkish, and the light disappears on first contact with the shawl. If I try to play with the camera settings, the yarn, which has a little bit of a natural shine to it, appears to be made exclusively of shiny, and it doesn't quite show how it really looks.

I finally manage to take a decent picture today, by finding a nice rock on my way home from work. Because nothing says knitting obsessed like finishing a row by the side of a road so you can take pictures while the light is right.

Yesterday my chair ate some of the yarn that was attached to my shawl (you can sort-of see the two strands on the left). So well eaten I had to snip it. I was not happy. Then the evening kept piling on crap on my, so I broke out the big weapons: SpindleImp's hand spun silk. It's now wound onto a ball, ready to start Branching Out. I just need to decide whether I want to use 4.5 or 5 mm needles. Also bought some more Rowan Pure Life Organic Cotton so I can make some Veylas. No, I don't have too many projects on the needles, why you ask? :)

On a light-related topic, I have started to take my light box to work. First would be to mention that I have, indeed, bought a proper (although travel) light box, instead of just a craft lamp. I have been taking my box to work this week, after checking on Monday with my co-workers that the light doesn't bother them. I've been getting of the expected silly questions (are you going to get a tan? isn't sunlight enough? -after using it for a morning: so, now you don't have SAD any more?), but overall people have not been bothering me.
Technically, I'm not sure I have SAD or not, but my vitamin D levels go a bit low during the winter, and I have found that the light helps me be less sleepy all the freaking time, so I'm trying to fight everything off with the Power of Electricity!

Look, a shawl detail! I have pictures to show!

Week event pile-up

Sometimes things just pile upon you. I'm not talking necessarily bad things, but just how you happily coast along quiet weeks when nothing happens, and then suddenly all the events and occurrences of the month happen in the same week. I am in one of those weeks, and I find myself almost wishing that it was next Monday (Monday, people, Monday!), as that marks the beginning of what will hopefully be a normal, quiet week.


I have been squeezing some knitting time, in a (probably misguided and futile) attempt at keeping me sane. Most of this knitting time has happened during my work commute, but as a result, my Pluto for Planet Woodland Shawl (ignore the silly name) is coming on. I probably knit about half a pattern repeat when I took it with me on holidays, but now it's finally starting to prosper.

I have also been doing some crochet: I've finally carried on with my GIR, after deciding that I wanted to start with 6 stitches instead of 8, and I've reawaken the tachikoma, which I'm making up all on my own. Smithers was a big fan of tachikomas, so I figured it was about time I continued with it. Even if he can't see it now.