Osborn Fiber Studio

Good day, lovelies around the world. I am the sort of person who will watch all the extras on any DVD I own. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve watched every featurette about Lord of the Rings. So it seems fitting that I give you some behind the scenes low-down on the making of Migraineur: Poems and Patterns on the Experience of Migraine. (Ravelry link – Amazon.ca link – Amazon.com link – available in all Amazon marketplaces). Today let’s talk about the making of the pictures!

Second only to the quality and correctness of the patterns, photography is the most important part of publishing a book or pattern. Knitting pattern books are such a visual medium. Photos have to communicate so much – they have to give an accurate overall sense of the shape and structure of the pattern, show how they wear on a human body, and they have to be appealing. I don’t expect anyone to make all of these patterns; these photos are how most people are going to experience most of these designs. So of course, one wants to make those photos as delightful as possible.

It’s also the part of the process that I find most intimidating. Most of the publishing process I do from the comfort of my own home, and even when others are doing the work (like test knitters, tech editors, etc.) we are interacting by email. Photography means you have to (a) get out into the world, (b) communicate with and direct a model, and (c) do a good job.

October 25 2024: Alternate colourway shot with Akumalik

Back when I thought I’d have someone else to do the main photography for the book, I set up a photo shoot with Akumalik to photograph what were then the “alternate” colourways for the book. They were going to be released as a digital extra. Ultimately when I took total creative control of the project, I decided to incorporate those colourways into the body of the book, but that’s why the shots of Akumalik look different – they’re on a totally different day!

When shooting outdoors in the Arctic, you can’t plan too far ahead. I knew I wanted snow in the pictures (we also shot some pics for Cause and Effect on this date, and Knitty had requested wintery-looking pictures) so we waited until snow had started to fly in October. When the weather looked like it would hold, I picked up Akumalik and we drove out to the standing stones that are a local landmark here in Rankin Inlet.

We are so lucky in Rankin Inlet to have a long, well-maintained road we can use to go on drives at all times of the year. It goes to the gold mine that’s about 20 kilometers out of town, and the first 15 or so are open to the general public. A few kilometers out of town, these standing stones mark a turnoff on the left, to a road that goes to the Diane river. I’ve tried to get the low-down on these stones. I don’t think they’re a particularly ancient Inuksuk, nor do I know if they have a particular name. Traditional inuksuks aren’t usually this big. Speculation from local friends has it that it was set up in modern times to show where the turnoff to the Diane road is – a road that used to be just an ATV trail. Regardless, it’s a striking set of standing stones overlooking the bay. Click here for the GPS location.

It was a beautifully sunny day in October, with the sun starting to turn golden as the weather turned. But it was cold. It wasn’t too windy, but it was windy enough that we didn’t last too long out there. Akumalik was an incredibly good sport, looking into the wind and sun so the light could be on her face, warming up her hands in my sealskin mitts when we were shooting just shawls. But if we rushed the shoot a bit towards the end because we were getting a chill, you can’t blame us.

Akumalik just grabbed this parka on her way out the door, but it happened to go perfectly with so many of these colourways. I didn’t realize until then just how much red I had incorporated into them. These colourways tend to be a little darker, and I reach for those samples a lot to go with my usual jeans-and-plaid-shirt uniform. (Akumalik if you see this, who made your parka so I can credit them?) I’m always amazed by the parkas made by so many local seamstresses. While most parkas are made with modern materials, the fox fur on the hood is absolutely essential to protect your face; it cuts the wind like nothing else. Just try going for a walk in -25 or below without fur protecting your face.

As always, Akumalik was a great sport and is a lovely model. Despite our discomfort, I got so many beautiful shots with that perfect light.

April 27th 2025: Three-Chapter Shoot with the Sanguin Sisters

Shooting outside in the arctic winter just can’t be done. Not with knitwear. You could jump out and take a few pictures and jump back in, but even my camera battery would freeze and die after a short time. So when it came to the main shoot for the book, I waited until spring. It doesn’t look like spring, but by late April it feels like it. There’s still lots of snow on the ground, but we get plenty of days in the -10s C. I don’t remember exactly what the temperature was on the day I asked Marikah and Rebekka to join me for the biggest shoot of the book.

Knowing there was lots of blue in the knitted samples, and wanting that post-industrial-decay vibe, I really wanted to shoot at the Dinosaur. The Dinosaur is an old gravel pit tool, no longer in use, that stands on top of a hill not far down the aforementioned Diane road. It’s a fabulous quirk of Rankin Inlet that everyone knows, as soon as they’ve seen it, without anyone telling them, that it’s called the Dinosaur. Here it is on a map.

We had one small problem when we headed out. While the mine road is always plowed by the mine, as is the part of the Diane road that cuts over to the mine’s airport bypass road, the Diane road itself is maintained by the hamlet. They don’t always have the resources to keep it plowed, what with keeping the town plowed. Usually by late April the Diane road is plowed so that people can go fish at their cabins at the Diane River mouth. Perhaps it had been plowed, but hadn’t been re-plowed after a storm. Regardless, I wasn’t ready to get my new truck stuck while guessing at the trail’s location, so we could only get so close. But Rebekka and Marikah were totally game to walk the rest of the way! So we took my bag of samples and camera and the rest and hoofed it the twenty minutes or so through the snow to reach the Dinosaur. I sure appreciated their cheerful tenacity!

We had a lot of fun, and the ladies had lots of ideas for where and how to pose and model. There was one point where they climbed up the hill to get a fun shot with the cloud-covered sun in the background –

But then we had to get back down the snowbank to where our stuff was!

Unfortunately, the days that are nicest to be outside don’t always look the nicest. Sunny days are more likely to be windy, and calm days tend to be cloudy. We had limited days at our disposal, so we shot on this very cloudy day, and I intentionally underexposed the pictures a bit. This meant I had to go back and do a lot of correcting, which is a skill set I am pretty weak on. Lots of the snowy background looks really washed out. The positive about that, though, is that it makes the weather look a lot colder than it felt! Literally, it was more pleasant to be outside on this day than on the windy day in October with Akumalik. This is why I always tell people the best time to visit Nunavut is April, and why we have our big festivals and fishing derbys this time of year.

These ladies rock and did such a great job!

June 19th 2025: Toast at the Cabin with Stringbean

I had an idea in my head of the shot I wanted for the cover of the book. Originally I wanted to do it inside, with some sort of device to suspend the camera directly overhead, but that didn’t work out. For the best light with my limited photographic capabilities, it would have to be outside. Ultimately I decided it would be easiest to shoot at the cabin, where I could go inside if I got cold. Since I finished the Toast chapter last, I decided to go ahead and shoot all those pieces together, and enlist my oldest daughter to help me.

I photographed the entire Toast chapter out there with Stringbean on a gorgeous sunny day in June. June is our family’s favourite time to be out at the cabin. Flowers, starting with Nunavut’s official flower Saxifrage (above), start to bloom the second the snow melts. There are more warm and sunny days to enjoy – and the bugs aren’t out yet.

Stringbean and I climbed to a little hill across the valley from our cabin that we like to visit. It’s got a weird little rectangular stone standing on top of it. Here she is posing on it, with the cabin in the background; I didn’t use this pic because of all the bird poo on the rock. Did you know that lovely orange lichen grows best on bird poo? Now you do.

It was a gorgeous day, but very sunny. Any shots with Stringbean’s face in them meant attempting to look into the sun without squinting. She was a brilliant sport about it, but it was hard!

Thankfully, not all pictures require faces or staring into the sun, and there are other ways of showing off a textile in sunlight while protecting your face:

My final goal for this photo session was to get that cover image. I’d been dreaming about this for a long time and had a very specific vision. To get this shot, I set up our ladder (which we had been using to repaint trim and fix caulk on the cabin) and put it up as high as it would go. I had to find a fairly flat spot on the tundra, tilted slightly toward the sun. Then I positioned the ladder so that it wouldn’t cast (much of a ) shadow on the image. You can still see a bit of shadow at the bottom left corner. Tundra is not flat; I had to stabilize the ladder with blocks of wood, and even so the whole thing is pretty spongy to climb on.

Then, using sticks and rope and strap, I rigged my camera to the ladder to frame it as best as possible, and sent Stringbean up to take shots. There were many resets – she’d take a few frames, I’d crawl up to see how it looked, then get set up again. It took a lot of doing to get the blanket to look as square as it does. There are some tricks of perspective – I stretched it as wide as it would go at the top and cheekily eased it in at the bottom, so it’d still look square. I will also tell you without shame that I photoshopped my neck a bit. No one’s neck looks flattering from that angle.

Can I just take a moment and say it’s really satisfying to have a vision for something and have it come out close enough to how you hoped? Close enough to be proud of it. Which is pretty much the whole of how I feel about this book. Perfection is for the birds.

I was glad I got a couple good pictures of my puppies as well, which you’ll see on some interstitial pages. I’m especially thankful I got a couple cute shots of Diamond, since we lost her that fall. You’ll see her on the facing page of the Abbreviations page in the back, and Sisko giving his best side-eye on the “a note about faith” preface page.

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this little featurette on the making of the pictures for Migraineur. If you haven’t snagged a copy yet, please do! I finally got to see a physical copy of the final version last night, thanks to Alide who ordered it and brought it to craft night. My author copies are a bit held up in transit but I’ll have them by the end of the month. It was a relief to see the colour editing is ok, though I have a lot to learn about that too, and the print quality is excellent. I hope you feel it’s worthy of a place on your shelf.