Crunching data on the soil critters today. (Because it seems like it's going to be at least three weeks before it's even reasonable to think about doing the spring sampling; it is once again grey and cold and if not exactly raining, close to it)

Not seeing many differences, other than the expected: ants, when they are present, dominate (these would be the much-hated Red Imported Fire Ants or RIFA). Lots of the teeny tiny things (diplurans and proturans). Lots of mites. Lots of earthworms. Summer sample had the most stuff but spring had the highest diversity (That's because summer was overrun with RIFA and they biased the numbers)

I hope there's enough to get at least a poster abstract from.

I did broach the idea to my grad student of presenting HER work as a poster. Even if she doesn't want to go to the meetings, I could be the presenter and she could be first author, seeing as she's done >80% of the work on it. She seemed amenable to the idea. (It would actually be rather nice to do two posters at the meetings - if I think the soil critters have enough data - because that makes the cost of driving up to Iowa and staying in a hotel for a few days seem more reasonable.)

***

I did give in and start a new project for while I read journal articles. I want to save the sweater for while I invigilate (I have two more bouts of it this coming week) and I'm really not happy with how the Mini Mochi knits up. (I have an almost-done first sock, the yarn is just so splitty, that I have to look at it when I knit - which means I can't read and knit.)

So I pulled out a skein of sock yarn that was sort of a "fluster*" It's a new-to-me dyer named BB Knits. The color is "Le Jardin" though it actually looks more like a grape arbor to me (very dark winey purples, with some brown and tiny hints of green). I'm again just doing "simple" socks of it - but sometimes that's just what you want to use a sock yarn for. And it's a nice, well-behaved yarn that I don't have to watch every stitch I am knitting, so it's idea for knitting while I read journal articles.

(*Again with that word and its mystery. Growing up, in my family, the word was used - other than from its typical meaning - to mean a small gift, usually after the recipient had endured something rather unpleasant, like a series of vaccinations or having to walk home from school in the cold rain because your friend's mom promised to pick you up but then forgot. My dad claimed it was German (it came from that side of his family) but NO German speaker I have ever asked about it knows of the term. So I don't know if it's something one of his ancestors made up, or if maybe it's a tradition by a different name that someone misheard and started calling a "fluster. Anyway. Internet searches fail to turn anything up so I lean towards, "Weird family tradition that only the Huttmans did")