A Magic Box and other Pretty Things

I've had a very exciting addition to my craft room recently. Want to see?

Yes, I know, it doesn't look very exciting. It's basically a big black square with a handle on the top. Open it out though and you get ...

... a big black cube. This is the Pixapro Light Box which I ordered from Essential Photo when it was reduced the other week. Obviously, other people had been eyeing it for a while too as it quickly went out of stock so I had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive. 

To put it together, you just unfold it - everything sticks together with velcro strips - it takes hardly any time and then you just slot in a background and you're ready to go. It gives you a nice white backdrop for photography which is so hard to get right.

That's not all though. Did you notice the pocket with the cable in on the first picture? It has LED lights inside the top, operated by a dimmable switch.

And yes, I did have to virtually crawl inside to take this photo.

This is how bright the inside is with the light switched on to full brightness.

This means that I can now take project pictures, however gloomy the day is. They still need the brightness adjusting digitally (my camera is pretty basic) but the quality of the photos is so much better. You don't get annoying shadows and the colours are spot on.

If I open that square flap on the top (more velcro), I can also take photos from above. This is very useful for the many step by step photos I often need at the start of a project.

Obviously, I had to test it out straight away. I've been waiting for the magic box before starting on a crochet shawl pattern using this very pretty yarn from Scheepjes called Whirl which is a blend of cotton and acrylic.

I was a bit concerned that taking photos of small scraps of crochet on full zoom might not give good results but I needn't have worried. These two pictures are from the same photo, both on full zoom with the second being a cropped version of the first.

Of course, it didn't take long for Tolly cat to discover this new, exciting place ...

Needless to say, I've been removing cat hair from the backdrop ever since. I now keep the flaps closed when I'm not in the room. Not that he ventures up there without a human in attendance - he's not the bravest of cats. Meanwhile, Linnet still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the room. She will occasionally venture as far as the doorway to collect me if their food bowls have been empty for too long but that's about it. It's lovely to be able to take decent photos whenever I want to. 

In other news, my daughter was here last weekend and she helped me clear out my kitchen cupboards. Actually it was more of a case of her doing it while I did a bit of washing out of containers and answered simple questions like "do you ever use this?" and "have you seen the best before date on this?". The combination of change, nowhere to sit and a task involving more than one thing to do made me feel particularly ill; I wouldn't even have been able to start it on my own. By the end of the day my cupboards were transformed. Here's the big, built in one which no longer has heavy china where I can't reach it ...

I can actually see what I'm low on now and I've even got room for some of the dishes and bowls I inherited from my Mum which have been languishing in boxes for years. I love this cupboard which was built with the house in the nineteenth century and holds lots of stuff. My neighbours have one just the same (the two houses were built as a pair) and my son has an even bigger one in his new house which was built around 1860 or so. His goes right up to the ceiling.

I must write a blog post about his house which is very exciting. Anyway, we also tidied up my kitchen cabinet which is one of my favourite things in the room.

I'm not a fan of fitted kitchens so this drop down table on the cabinet is one of the few work surfaces in the kitchen. My cutlery lives in those drawers and the cabinet also houses the all important tea making supplies. My son gave me the lego calendar a few years ago which is brilliant. You do have to re-make it at the start of each month though which leads to me being very confused if I forget to do it. In front of the calendar is my chicken stapler. What do you mean you don't have a chicken stapler? Needless to say, it is purely ornamental.

For many years the little brown armchair that my mother-in-law upholstered has been living at the end of the kitchen. It was a daft place to put it really as it meant that anyone sitting there often ended up hidden by the open scullery door. So ... we (well, I watched) swapped it with the table so that it's now in the middle of the room.

This simple shifting of a chair led to another burst of making things this week. First, I used some old barkcloth fabric from Orinoco to make a cushion cover, complete with buttons. It took twice as long to sew the buttons on as it did to make the cover. Another couple of photos to compare, this time the cushion photographed on the chair and then in my new magic box. As you can see, the colours are so much better when I use the light box.

I've got enough of the fabric left to make a couple of little bags too. I regularly find treasures at Orinoco. I made this little pincushion from a needlepoint kit I found there; it was very compulsive stitching, I think I finished it in a week.

Anyway, having made the cushion for the armchair, I then had a lovely time choosing colours to match it and crocheting a cover for my little milking stool that I uses as a table. Mats are always falling off it so I made this one to fit.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. At first I'd thought of just adding elastic to a big circle to hold it in place but then realised that it would be better to shape the crochet as I went along so that's what I did. The cover finishes on the underneath, just where the legs meet the top.

One more photo before I go and this one isn't a pretty thing at all. Tolly cat managed to get something greasy all over his fur the other week (oil? something from a barbecue?) and he couldn't wash it off so he had to have several washes with actual detergent. He wasn't impressed.

Let's hope he's learnt his lesson and will keep away from strange stuff in the future. I wouldn't count on it though.