I’ve never been really good at the blogging+picture game, and while maybe once upon a time it was technical limitation--taking photos and getting them online was complicated--anymore it’s probably not. To this end, I’ve started a knitting specific Instagram account as a kind of photoblog for knitting things. It’s @gestaltknitting, if you’re interested.
While I took this picture a while ago, I must confess that my knitting basically looks the same now.
The same, not because I’ve made no progress, but because sleeves take a while and it’s just plain knitting, so unless you have a very discerning eye, you might miss the details.
Indeed, I really want my next project to also have a lot of plain knitting with black yarn: I expect the photographs will be captivating. Perhaps it will be enjoyable for people to be able to spot the different patterns of embedded cat hair in the sweaters.
I get that knitting is visual for a lot of people, and I do like a smart looking sweater as much as the next guy, but I’ve always felt somewhat resistant to this view: knitting is about the process and the act more than it is about the product, and so the things that are most exciting aren’t the visuals.
While it’s gotten much easier to take high quality pictures, my intention for this book that I’ve been writing is that it mostly would not be a book with a lot of picture, though we’ll see: If anything, I suspect that diagrams and cartoons may be more effective for this kind of application.
Having said that, it’s nice to see what other people are knitting, and I like the way that the ephemeral nature of instagram stories make it less daunting to post in-progress updates on projects. So I’ve definitely been enjoying that.
We’ll see!