Someone - I think a professor of a class I once took - mentioned that starlings were introduced into North America because a Shakespeare fancier believed that all birds mentioned by the Bard should be represented on these shores.

The person was trustworthy, so I never bothered to chase down the actual evidence. But a bit of random surfing landed me on a site that verifies that it is true; the person in question was apparently a drug manufacturer: Introduction of Starlings. (Another site with more detail is here. Though I'm not sure I condone that web-siter's plan to take "Americanized" starlings back and re-release them in Britain; that could cause a variety of problems from disease transmission to weird genetic combinations. Though it's also possible that the plan is an elaborate put-on; I can't quite tell.)

The name of the man to blame for starlings being here is Eugene Schieffelin. Though that site says that the Shakespeare connection is "probably not true" (darn). However, they do verify this:  that the so-called House Sparrow was introduced under similar circumstances (it is a different family from most common North American sparrows: it's a Passeridae and they are Emberizidae (though on a higher taxonomic level, they are both considered "passerine" birds). I've actually been told the house sparrow is more closely related to the finches than it is to the "true" wild sparrows.)

Interestingly, apparently both the sparrow and the starling are on the decline in the UK, whereas they are considered pests here (most people blame starlings for the decline of bluebirds: they have similar nesting requirements and the starlings are more aggressive, so they get the nest cavities.)

I'm glad that I tend to be slow about changing the blogroll.

Turns out that Bess (Like the Queen) did not intend to quit blogging; a glitch ate her blog and blog access. And now it's back!  I'm happy to see that.

(I tend to prefer - and I know this is a little selfish, but whatever, I also think it's kind of etiquette - that if someone is going to give up blogging, they put up one last post saying that their life has gotten too busy, or that they've burned out on blogging, or that they are writing a book instead, or whatever. You know, so we KNOW. So many of the blogs I used to read just tapered off...the last post being in 2007 or some time. I know that a lot of people probably intended to go back to the blog and never did. But it makes a person wonder (and sometimes worry) when a blog goes silent unexpectedly. I suspect as the blogging/Twitter/whatever phenomenon continues, and more people who were involved on it pass on - well, there will need to be some way of determining and memorializing. I know a few blogs where the blogger died, a family member goes in and writes a last memorial post.)

I can promise you, if I were to ever to decide to give up the blog (NO PLANS to do that at the moment), I will have a "farewell" post. I wouldn't want to leave people hanging.

Thank you, everyone.

I'm doing a lot better than I expected, I think because I got to say good-bye, and also because I had done a lot of the "crying it out" in advance. (Particularly, Sunday before last, when she was so bad - she was dehydrated and not acting normally and I assumed the end was very close - I insisted on mowing the lawn (usually a job my mom does; she says she needs the exercise) because I both needed to do SOMETHING and also because it gave me a way to be alone, outside the house, and if anyone saw me they would probably assume the water on my face was perspiration.)

I've read that cat years are roughly equated to 5 human years (cats live longer than dogs and seem to age more slowly). So she would have been close to 110. Which seems not unreasonable.

The funny thing is, I've not knitted since I came back (I usually knit a little every day). I think I kind of burned myself out on it a little bit, both because I knitted so much (pictures to come later) and because of circumstances. The same thing happened back in 2004, when over Christmas break I learned my dad's diagnosis, found out that a cousin killed himself, and found out that a good friend lost the man who was probably her true love to a heart attack. I knit like crazy then - partly to keep myself occupied - and then couldn't knit for a couple weeks (IIRC) when I came back after the break.

Fortunately, though, I do feel like doing some hand quilting and hand-piecing. I pulled the Grandmother's Flower Garden stuff back out and mostly finished another patch for it (I need to start laying these out to figure out how many more I have to make; I may have enough fabric cut already). I also worked some on the quilt in the frame.

However, part of the reason I'm motivating myself to quilt more is that I have a second quilting frame on the way. And plans to set it up - yes, have two quilts going at once. I think what that will do will allow me to "trade out" projects when I get bored with one - I seem to be more motivated to work when I have multiple projects going.

My mother's friend Faith, who died last fall, left behind one of those PVC quilting frames (a "Q snap" frame is the brand name).  None of Faith's children quilts, so they didn't quite know what to do with it, so they offered it to my mom. She already had one of those frames but asked me if I wanted it.

I thought about it, and decided I did, for the reasons listed above. (Also, q-snap frames are really light and are relatively easy to transport - so, if, for example, a friend decided to get into quilting but needed to borrow a frame in order to decide if s/he liked it and wanted to buy one, it would be easy for me to lend my extra frame. And it would be easy to take with me - in my car at least - if I ever wound up getting to go on a quilt retreat).

Unfortunately, the longest piece of the frame is about 3' long, so I couldn't easily stow them in my suitcase for the trip back. So they're on their way to me via UPS and should be here Wednesday. I've already decided that I'm going to do the necessary repairs on a vintage top I bought some years back (I only paid $35 for it; probably because it was unquilted and the color combination isn't what a decorator-type would likely go for). It's a Spools quilt, and I think the spools in it are made of feedsack prints. When I get the couple of little repairs made, I'll photograph it - I think I had a picture up here before, but I've noticed some new things recently looking at the fabrics, some fabrics that deserve close-ups. 

The repairs are fairly minor - a couple small holes in the pink background fabric, and I have a matching piece of pink, so I can reverse-applique a patch onto the holes (put it on the back, turn the edges of the hole under, and stitch it on that way. I think one of the feed sack fabrics has a small worn spot that I can probably darn.

I already have a backing for the quilt, and I think I have a batting tucked away that will fit it (I'm going to use a thin cotton batting). If not, the local quilt shop sells batts so I can get one there. I like the idea of using it in the q-snap frame because I think that frame is "gentler" on fabrics (not putting stress on them) than my wooden frame is.

The biggest news of break is not happy news.

I got it just as I came in, and called my parents to let them know I had gotten home safely.

Their not-quite-22 year old cat had been fighting an infection for some time. Apparently it was an antibiotic-resistant infection; several antibiotics worked for a while, then her white count started going up again. She had made several trips to the vet when I was up there, and I kind of whipsawed between hope that she'd get better and a sense that she wouldn't.

The vet had managed to get a culture of the bacteria; it was a Pseudomonas species. She said there was one last antibiotic to try, but it was formulated for humans and she'd have to figure out how best to dilute it.

Well, that never happened. This morning, when my mom woke up, the cat was comatose. Either the infection finally overwhelmed her, or her kidneys gave out. (She had fought kidney disease for years). The vet had originally made plans - even though it was her day off - to meet with my mom to discuss the plan of action for the antibiotic, so instead she met my mom to have the cat put to sleep.

I guess the good thing is she didn't know what was happening. And she had a catheter port already (from an earlier rehydration treatment), so it was easy for the vet to administer.

I'm sad about it, but not devastated the way I thought I might be. (I "knew" this cat from my days in grad school - both she and her sister, who predeceased her, were middle-aged cats at that time).

In a strange way - and some people might find this a little cold - I'm sort of relieved. For one thing, there was no guarantee the antibiotic would work, or that it wouldn't have horrible side effects on the cat (the vet said she had never used that antibiotic on a cat before). The cat had suffered some from nausea in the days before and she had gotten very dehydrated over the weekend I was up there.

And also, there's the sense of, "I knew it was coming some time, now it's over, I can cry about it and then move on." Better now when I have a little free time to process it than while I was actually in the middle of teaching.

And I got to say goodbye to the cat. (Well, actually, before I left I said "Please get better because I want to see you when I visit in August" but we don't always get what we want.) She did purr for me one last time the night before I left, and she purred for my mom one last time last night. I don't know but sometimes I suspect that animals somehow "know" and manage to say goodbye the best they can.

Another thing that's maybe kind of horrible to say, but I'm also relieved this didn't happen while I was up there. Especially that it didn't happen yesterday morning, while I was hurrying around trying to get everything together for coming back. And I'm just glad I didn't have to be there for it. 

This is going to be hard on my mother; she was really the caretaker for the cat, especially lately, where she would put towels down for her (in case she couldn't get to the box in time when she needed to urinate) and gave her all her medicines and everything.

I don't think my parents are getting another cat - at least, they've said up to this point that they wouldn't. That might change, I don't know, but I know it will take a while.

It's still a little bit unreal to me.

Yup, I finished them:



Now I just have to finish packing. The day of a trip is always kind of a strange day; I don't need to leave town until after 2, but there's really not that much to do during the day - I wrapped up most of the loose ends (watering plants, etc.) last night.

I'll be back in 10 days or so.

All my grades have been handed in.

I finished with the last soil sample a few minutes ago.

All that remains for this week is to detach the microscope camera, gather up all its impedimentia, and leave them in my colleague's lab.

And then I can go home, do a workout (it's nice to be able to sleep past 5 am once in a while), finish the socks I'm working on for my mom, and begin thinking about packing for my trip.

Ellen: I just pick them up and periodically shake them off well, maybe even smacking them against my hand (Best to do that outdoors or inside a large paper sack). The dust falls off well enough.

****

My research student successfully finished their paper; I just need to grade it this morning (before 10 am) and turn in a grade. And I have four more soil samples to do, and then I'm done.

****

I did finally find some Arkansas Traveler tomatoes - perhaps the last five in the area - and I have them in my garden now (Along with one "Bradley" tomato, to fill in). I have twelve tomato plants. If they're really super-productive I may be making and freezing tomato sauce, I don't know. It's my experience though, when summers here get really hot, tomatoes kind of shut down production - even ones labeled "heat tolerant." So we'll see.

I contemplated getting a couple watermelon plants but decided that I had had poor enough luck with them in the past that I'd rather go with the more "sure" thing of tomatoes.

****

I am nearly done with my mom's socks. Sixteen pattern rows remain plus the toe; I should be able to complete that this afternoon.

I guess I really have matured a lot in the past 10 years, even though I didn't notice it.

I'm dealing with someone - several someones, actually - who are going through horrible ZOMG meltdowns over stuff. And I'm standing there, being calm, going "There's always a fix to problems like this. It's not the end of the world. There is some way of dealing with this."

I actually had someone in my office in tears this morning. And again this afternoon. And I'm telling them: if you don't finish, don't worry, I will grant an Incomplete. It is not a big deal. It is fixable.You can work on it later. It will be OK.

The truths are this:

1. Barring any kind of academic dishonesty, there are actually very few things in the academic world that are truly THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. I learned that after being asked to leave that first graduate program. It looked like the end of the world at the time but it turned out not to be. (What's the old saying? When a door closes, a window opens?)

2. Sometimes an "I tried my best" B is perfectly fine. Even an "I tried my best" C is sometimes perfectly fine. There's a big difference between trying your best and having things go against you (or just not having the skills or background for a class) and taking a lower grade because you're being lazy. I wound up earning a B in TEM (transmission electron microscopy) because even though I could ace the written exams (it was, after all, just optics, which I had already had in Physics II), I couldn't take a good micrograph to save my life. And I made my peace with that and accepted the B I earned. And was grateful that I would probably never have to do that kind of microscopy again, or, at the very least, could get someone with skills to help me.

(Though I wonder now, with having done so much more fine-gauge knitting and crochet and doing stuff like grabbing tiny soil invertebrates with tweezers, if maybe I've trained my fine motor skills better and I could actually do it now. Not that I'm going to try.)

And the funny thing is, 10 or 15 years ago, I would have been in the opposite place: the person believing it was well and truly the end of the world, that nothing could fix it, that I had F-A-I-L failed.

I guess all the stuff I've been through - even going back 20 years where I was asked to leave the first graduate program I entered, and living through a relative having a potentially life-threatening illness, and living through the congregational split, and applying for and getting tenure, and living through more journal article rejections than I like to count - it kind of raised the bar of what constitutes a "true emergency" to me.

That's not to say I don't still get overwhelmed some times, and want to sit down in private and cry a little. But I've gotten far better at picking myself up a few minutes later and going, "OK, what can I do now to fix this?"

Let's sing the Pink Panther song:

dead-ant, dead-ant, dead-ant-dead-ant-dead-ant


These are the first ants I've encountered, normally the samples have lots.

Dealing with one last desperate phone call from a student. (I should have known).

I'm hoping to get the rest of the samples sorted today and Monday. Then, Tuesday, I get to go for a short visit with my family. I'm already thinking about projects. I will have to take the books for my summer independent-study student and get those finished.

And I have to either finish my mom's socks, or take them with me and try to get them done before her birthday.

But I also want to do a pair of fingerless mitts: I have some very bright Opal Schafpate (it's pink and orange) and I think it would be fun to do the mitts in "Not Just Socks" - the long ones, with the sort of diagonal-lace cuff, if you have that book.

And I might take Honeycomb - poor, neglected Honeycomb - with in the hopes of finding time to work on it.

And probably some stuff for amigurumi. There are a couple patterns I've seen lately that were cute: Roly Poly Cats (And I'm going to do it out of greyish blue yarn, and I printed out the best screen cap I could find of Sushi Cat - so I could make the face like Sushi Cat from that game - and have a little Sushi Cat mascot).

And there's one called Perky Puppy (that's a Ravelry download and you must be a member of Ravelry to view it), but it's very cute: kind of a chihuahua-terrier thing.

Oh, man, do I look forward to having time to just relax.

I did manage to get to the quilt shop here in town today. (I tried last week, they were closed because of a family emergency - I suppose that's a problem for a lot of small businesses, especially those where several family members are the main employees). But I got there today. And I got the big piece of white for the Flower Show quilt, and a yellow Moda Marble to use with my pink and yellow fabrics for a Mixtape quilt. And I bought a really cute green fabric to use as backing on the Dozen Roses quilt - I had been hoping one of their closeout "sale" fabrics would work, but none did.

The green fabric in question, though - it has a pattern of white viney things on it that then outline a squirrel. Stealth squirrels! It's an appropriate color, it's cute, and I like it, so I bought it.

I also found out that the owner of the shop will soon start doing machine quilting for people - she is actually taking her classes to learn the use of the new machine she got right now. So I'm thinking, when she gets that up and running, of taking my quilts to her, both because of the convenience and because it gives me a chance to support a local business.

***
I didn't get a lot done on the new scarf, even if I gave three exams this week. The pattern goes somewhat slowly, it takes me longer to knit while walking (I can knit faster sitting). And also, as soon as a critical mass of people finished up (meaning: no places where two people were sitting next to each other, even though I do a Form A and Form B where the questions are scrambled), I did start grading. Technically, it's not good practice to grade an exam while people are still taking it (for a variety of reasons, the main one being it could be a problem if you started cursing midway through grading because people were misinterpreting the question or something). 

But here it is:



The color, as I noted before, is called "Tea Party" but it actually reminds me more of a type of candy called "Roman Nougat." (I don't know if it's just Russell Stover that has it/calls it that: it's a cherry nougat with nuts in it, covered with either dark or light chocolate. It is my favorite chocolate that that company offers).

I like the pattern: it's complex enough not to be boring, but repetitive enough that it's easily memorized.

I drank a cup of hot black tea (full caffeine, as much as tea has - which I know isn't much to the hardcore coffee drinkers) and I actually feel a lot better and my breathing is easier.

One of the reasons I'm glad I never developed a real caffeine habit is that I can still use it medicinally when needed. I'd much rather try drinking a cup of hot tea first, rather than using an inhaler.

Argh. I have just not felt well today. I think I know what I can blame it on, though. I've been keeping track of "low" moods and when I "hurt" and things like that: and it seems always to be worst on days with a high dewpoint.

(The dewpoint, when I got up this morning, was 72. That's pretty miserable. It's 70 now, which is not much better).

I admit I had a couple minutes while giving the exam this morning that I really felt like I wanted to run screaming from the room. I'm just tired. I think I've been pushing myself a little much and having a long meeting last night (which got a bit acrimonious in one part and I'm praying they don't ask me to serve on the committee that will be formed to investigate the issue, because (a) I can honestly see both sides of the argument and cannot come down on a side as being "better" than the other and (b) this is that kind of "peacemaker" stuff I've decided I don't want to be part of any more, because being the peacemaker only means that the two aggrieved parties are angry with YOU instead of angry at each other any more.

So I didn't sleep well last night, either. I got up at 4:30 as I often do, started getting ready to work out, felt how humid it was, said, "bag it" and went back to bed for another hour and a half. I'm going to try to do the workout this afternoon.

Annnnnd....I declared the rest of the post a tl:dr. Basically the upshot is "I feel fat and icky though probably part of that is that it's really humid. And it stinks that women in this society are taught to base a large part of their self-worth on their dress size."

I guess Bess, formerly of "Like the Queen," took down her blog.

I dunno. Some days I think I'll be the last person in blogknittingland. I'll turn out the lights for the rest of you after you've gone. The only sad thing is that if I finally do give up the blog there will probably be no one left to mourn it.

The biggest critters are about 2 mm. (As this one was). Scale is a difficult thing with this type of microscopy, slide scopes often have micrometers built into one of the lenses but dissecting scopes do not. (And frankly, it's hard enough to get the thing positioned right, and have it not be carried away by the "current" of preservative, to take a photo - sticking a ruler under there would complicate things. I might have to try, though.)

Though, mainly, these are for decoration on the poster I will be presenting; the real information is the species diversity (well, actually, order diversity, because of identification challenges) and the patterns over the seasons. (The diversity is really low in this sample, but that's not surprising - it having been a cold, wet winter that had not really warmed up yet when I took the samples).

Springtails seem to be the most abundant things in the samples.

The little camera is one of the most fun research tools I've ever used.

I'm not entirely sure what this is - I key it out as something in Neuroptera but it would have to be a larva, then - but it's cool. (ETA: The more I look at it, the more I think it's actually some kind of Coleopteran larva)

I finished the first of the Retro-Rib socks last night:



It's going to be tight whether I get the second one done before going up to Illinois. (I may be either working on it on the train, or clandestinely working on it when my mom's not around). Or, she may just have to accept it late - that's happened to her with gifts she was making for people.

I forget how much doing a rib with k 1 tbl slows me down.

Success!

Though for some reason, flickr either won't let me upload from work, or won't let me upload from my hard drive, or won't let me upload right now. I don't know which it is. But let's try Blogger's photo functionality:

Those are the three most "photogenic" of the critters I've been photographing. A beetle of some sort, what I think must be a protruan, and a hypogastrurid collembolan (aka "springtail.")

It took quite a bit of fiddling to get things sorted, but in the end, I am doing the identification and counting in my office, at a dissecting scope where I can swap out the camera on one of the eyepieces as needed. (I need to be able to use binocular vision to find these things or I wind up getting a headache.)

It's actually a lot more fun looking for stuff when you can photograph it.

Oh, Charles: If I had wanted to read the instructions for the camera thing, I couldn't have until I got the software installed. The "quick start instructions" (28 pages of them) were as a .pdf file that couldn't be opened until after the software had all been installed. Yeah, probably not the best planning on the company's part.

And I'm off to look for soil critters and hopefully photograph some today...

This is where I spent part of yesterday evening:



(I'm OK and my house is OK. But you probably guessed that. We didn't get a tornado)

Yes, that is my bathtub. I don't have a basement or a "storm shelter," so this is the next-best thing (though in a really deadly tornado, it probably wouldn't afford much protection. Then again, it is at the exact center of my house and is surrounded by several walls on all sides)

They tell you to get under a mattress in the bathtub if a tornado is threatening, but I can't lift any of my mattresses, so I wound up dragging all the bed pillows in there and a couple of quilts (luckily I had had the foresight to dry out the tub after my shower that afternoon) .

At first it looked like we were going to miss all of that, then a storm came through - they blew the sirens so I figured I should at least sit in the bathroom. Then they started talking on the local news - which I had on and turned up (we never lost power) about the severity of the storms, I wound up sitting in the bathtub, mostly covered with the pillows, with another one to stick over my head if I heard that typical "freight train" sound everyone says they hear.

I didn't hear it. I did hear the sirens (even with the bathroom door closed). And heavy rain, and what was probably hail (though if it was, by the time I deemed it safe to peek outside, it had melted).

The storm hit around 7:15 pm, by 8:30 or so it was gone. There was another small wave that came through after 9 but it seemed less likely to be severe. I let myself sleep in this morning - I don't have any exams to give, this day is going to be a research day - and I was kind of keyed up after the storm (and also my weather-alert radio kept going off).

Tornadoes are an old, old fear of mine. I grew up in Ohio, which, while it has fewer tornadoes than Oklahoma, still has tornadoes. And I'm just old enough to remember the 1974 outbreak in Xenia, which, while it wasn't close to me (Xenia is, IIRC, closer to Cincinnati than it is to Cleveland), still, was scary from the standpoint of number of people killed.

(An aside: it's fairly amazing when I think about it, how much weather forecasting and things like storm prediction have improved just in my lifetime - going from old, black-and-white blips on a radar that look like it's WWII vintage, to the new "Doppler" radar. And in some localities, they can tell the specific towns or even intersections of roads in the path of the worst of the storms. I would be willing to bet tornado deaths have declined sharply in the past 40-50 years).

I remember as a kid, my parents calling to me and my brother (usually it was summer late afternoons or evenings) and grabbing the cat and we'd all go down into the basement as the sirens went off. (If I had a moment, I would always grab my stuffed Snoopy. And if there wasn't time, I'd be quite upset the whole time). At that time, I think really my biggest fear was "losing all our stuff" (hence my distress over the stuffed Snoopy). I don't think I quite processed until I was a bit older that "tornadoes can kill you." Which is my fear now, especially after having driven past Moore in May of 1999 as I was on my way here to look for apartments. (My mother was with me at the time. After seeing the damage to the second stories, and the fact that ground floors were mostly intact, she informed me: "You're renting a ground floor apartment." Even though I was 30 at the time. (I was already planning on doing so anyway.))

Anyway. Tornadoes are still something that scare me.

And I will admit, last night, I did a lot of preparation - I had my purse in there, figuring that if the not-quite-worst happened and I lost my house, having my drivers' license and credit cards and what cash I had on hand would make things easier. And I had shoes and more-sturdy clothes (I had changed into pajamas after the shower). And I had my knitting bag, and was able to knit at least up until the time I figured it was safest to sit in the bathtub. And I will admit, perhaps a bit in memory of those old childhood days, I grabbed a couple of my favorite amigurumi (Rupert the baby deer, Boris the whale, the three Rebecca Danger monsters) and had them in the bathroom with me. Just in case. Because just as the practicality of having my purse would make life easier if the not-quite-worst happened, having a couple of familiar objects would make life easier, psychologically speaking, in that situation.

Thank God, though, none of those things needed to be put into practice. The bad storm ended, as I said, somewhere around 8:30 or so, and the follow-up storms were not severe. (They still had thunder and lightning, so I did not get to sleep as early as I had hoped.)

Apparently there was a "tornado aloft" near Kingston, which is a bit over 20 miles from me. And they were saying last night that the Sundowner Arena (a rodeo facility near Coleman) was destroyed - I've driven past there on my way up to Ada.

I guess there were no serious injuries or deaths in my area, which is a good thing. But I think, by and large, Oklahomans know to respect the danger of tornadoes.

It's funny, I don't think of myself as a highly technical person (I can't write code, I'm not an 'early adopter,' nothing like that), and yet, sometimes, I can get stuff working that other people can't.

One of my colleagues got a digital camera for a microscope set-up. I wanted to borrow it to photograph my soil critters. He and I (mostly he) spent about a half hour trying to install the software on his computer (with the idea of eventually installing it on the more portable departmental laptop, so we could take it to labs and such). No go. Finally, with other stuff to do (I was done for the day), he passed it off to me with a "Here. You play with it."

Within 15 minutes, I had the software installed on my computer and the camera running. I was even able to photograph (badly) myself with it. A little more fiddling and I got it hooked up to a dissecting scope, ready for when I have critters to photograph. (And my colleague needs to use it for a fish study he's doing).

So, I'm kind of proud of myself, even though I think of myself as non-technical. I think it's mainly because I'm patient, and I consider the different possible options (with the menu boxes) before just clicking and going. (It could also be my colleague has a bad USB port on his computer - it didn't seem to want to recognize the camera, as well as not installing the software).

So, it's been a pretty good day: got the abstract for the NAPC accepted, had a student who has struggled a bit in the past earn an A in my class, and got the camera working. I have no exams to give tomorrow so I'm going to start critter identification and hopefully, photography, if there's cool stuff I run across.

Well, knock on wood, I missed getting contact dermatitis this time after working in the yard. It's now been ~48 hours since I was out there, and no rashes. By this time last time, my eye was swollen and I was starting with the rash on my face.

Finding this at work would not seem at all odd to me:


see more

Yup, that's life in a biology department. (I also once won the undying gratitude of the ornithologist at my graduate school - who just happened to be on my committee - because I found a dead sora rail and actually sent the person who was with me to go get a paper bag to pick it up and carry it in so I could deliver it to the ornithologist).

Actually, one of my colleagues has a fridge that is labeled something like "FRUIT FLIES ONLY - NO FOOD!" I think the photo above actually might violate OSHA law.

Here's the finished "Dozen Roses" quilt:



I really like how it came out. I like the regularity of the pattern - it looks really good all together. (And it makes it easy: once you figure out a good layout for the first row, the rest of the layout of the quilt is set). I could see making another quilt like this but in different colors and fabrics. (Maybe Christmas fabrics...I have some of those tucked away).



The outer border is a pink "Dimples" fabric (the dimples don't show up in the photo...they are a very regular pattern of small dots; the story is the fabric designer printed the first trial fabric for the line using a golf ball...and the pattern of dots does look like the pattern you see on a golf ball). The inner border is a marbled fabric I had a small piece of in stash, no plans for, but it worked well here.

The other big thing I did this weekend was to spend several hours Saturday working in the yard. (I wore gloves and a long-sleeved shirt this time, and I also worked in an area where I've not seen poison ivy before (though I did find one plant of it, and carefully cut it out at the very end, right before I went back inside and washed my hands and arms and face with cool water - which is supposedly a good way of removing the oil if it's not been on very long). I cleared out most of the little narrow garden on the north side of the house. It's hard to know what to put in there because it's a lot shadier than the rest of the garden. (fennel seems to seed itself in well, though, so I'm thinking maybe I should just buy some more perennial herbs and plant them there. I like having an extensive herb garden, even if I rarely cut them to cook with).

I also bought six tomato plants: three romas, and three of a variety called German Queen (it's an heirloom and is supposed to have large, purplish-red tomatoes). I tried three places in town and none of them had my old favorite Arkansas Traveler. But I may be running to Sherman one day in the coming week, so I could try at the big nursery there - and if they don't have 'em, I'll just buy three more of some other variety to fill in. Maybe Heatwave, that one seems to do well here.

The house is almost clean, and that delights me. That was just what I needed to make me happy.

Also, I called my mom briefly (while taking a break) to tell her a sad story of student entitlement that I was party to. And she gave me a piece of very good news. She took the cat out to the vet for a re-check, and when the vet got the results of the bloodwork, she (the vet)  "almost did a Homer Simpson 'Whoo-hoo'" (in my mom's words). Yeah, apparently the blood numbers are A LOT better. And the cat has apparently recovered. She's still on antibiotics for a while just to be safe, but it looks like she's beaten the infection.

I also like that the vet is invested enough to have that reaction. I mean, it's probably awful to lose an animal when you care that much, but at the same time, I think that does show how motivated she is to do the best possible care for them.

People ask me how I learned to match fabrics so well for quilting.
Well, it may have something to do with gender. 

(I could also make a sociological observation on how so many color names in things aimed at women are named after foods, and a lot of women - because of dieting and all the crazy-making food "rules" - become obsessed with food, especially those they "can't" eat because of dieting, and a lot of the color names are specifically those foods. But that would make me grumpy.)

I did get the borders sewn on the "Dozen Roses" quilt yesterday, but I got done too close to time to having to leave for the AAUW meeting to be able to photograph it. Maybe later today. It turned out very cute.

I spent some time thinking about what would make me happiest this weekend. And I realized that it would include getting my house all cleaned up (I've been so busy I've kind of neglected it) and getting my tomato plants and putting them in and then just staying home and knitting or quilting. So that's what I'm going to do. I think this afternoon after classes get done, I'm going to clean house, then I'm going to mow the lawn (it needs it) and maybe do some other yardwork (this time with gloves and a long sleeved shirt) and then tomorrow, I'm going to go out early in the day and get my plants (or actually, maybe better to do that this afternoon - my mom always claimed it was best to transplant late in the day because it shocked the plants less).

I also think I'm going to make a trip to the local quilt shop and get the needed sashing fabrics. And possibly take along the newly finished quilt and consider backings for it (I'm not sure I have a big enough piece of "just the right" fabric - and as my state income tax refund came in, I feel like I can spend it (it's a small refund) on an extra-nice backing for this quilt).

(ETA: Nope. The local quilt shop is closed today and tomorrow because the owner had a family emergency - I ran down there late this afternoon and found it closed. I'm trying hard not to be overly sad about it; after all, it is a family emergency for the owner, but I hate that, when I have something really nice and really fun planned that I was looking forward to, and I don't get to do it. It's not QUITE enough to tempt me to drive to McKinney, though.)

One thing I do think I want to do - as I have time and inclination - is to work down the fabric stash a little. I've been flipping through my quilting magazines and finding quilt tops I'd like to make - and as I figure out either a stack of fabrics on-hand or a single "focus" fabric that I want to use, I put it aside with the magazine. (If I have a "focus" fabric but no others, then I can hunt the stash for fabrics that go). I have a pattern in mind for the "traveling gnome" fabric I bought a while back. And a pattern for some semi-vintagey fabrics (I think some are from the Katie Jump Rope line, and the others from the Peas and Carrots fabric line) that are deep in the stash. And I found a simple "pinwheel" quilt where I think I can use the yellow sashing I rejected from the Mixtape Quilt - I'm thinking either using blue fabrics for the pinwheels (oh, I think I have a fat quarter packet of yellow and blue teacup-themed prints that would work - will have to look for that) or using 1930s reprint fabrics.

And I've been pressing off and stacking up the 1930s reprint vintage fabrics as I tidy the sewing room bit by bit: I also want to start cutting again for an eventual Tumbler quilt - big enough to cover my bed this time - all out of 1930s era reproduction prints.

So, rather than driving to McKinney through frustrating-making traffic, I think I'm going to shop my own fabric stash this weekend - maybe put together packets of stuff I want to work with, maybe do some cutting for when I want to just sit and sew, and probably wind up delighting myself by finding something wonderful I had bought and then forgotten about.

I got the remaining rows of the "Dozen Roses" quilt sewn together and put on, but I didn't get the borders on it yet. I also laid out and planned the rows for that turquoise "Flower Show" quilt and I'm considering - since I have a shorter day today - going to the quilt shop and getting the white fabric for the wide sashing (Yes, I decided on white. I think it's the color that will go the best.)

****

I also need to get some new sashing material for the Mixtape Quilt (I've had the fat quarters for this in my stash for over a year) because I realize I didn't buy enough. Oops. Well, the upside is the yellow sashing I didn't buy enough of will work for another quilt.

I think I am going to try to "cut ahead" the pieces for quilts when I am in the mood to do cutting - it is nice to have the pieces all ready to go when I feel like sewing.

****

My "unavoidably delayed" book from Amazon? Showed up yesterday. One day after the "promised" time. Seriously, they didn't even need to notify me if the delay was going to be that small. I hope that means life is starting to get back to normal for people in and around Nashville.

I can see that it's a considerably revised version of the book I used at Michigan circa 1990: it's about twice as thick.

****

A terribly fun and cute little time-suck game (link courtesy of someone on Ravelry): Sushi Cat (requires Flash to play). Can you fill the cat up with sushi to make him heavy enough to trigger the pressure-panels to open the sliding door so he can be with his love?

I like a video game that tells you you "cleared" a level with the message "Full Belly Achieved."

****

I'm still thinking about the weekend. There really aren't a lot of "fun" places close by that I haven't found yet. Though there is Davis...which has some antique shops...and is closer than McKinney (and has less horrific traffic). And I think there's a good restaurant near there. And of course, it's close to Chickasaw National Recreation Area. And if I felt like going a bit further north, there's a chocolate factory, though I'd have to check to see if they did tours or anything, I think they just have their retail shop.


I'll have to think more about that.

Whoa.

I can't quite believe it. I'm essentially "done" until exams come back in.

Over the weekend and Monday morning, I updated the first two exams. This morning I rewrote the third one. The ecology papers are all graded, the soils lab books are all graded. What remains of this week is listening to (and grading, but that's not so hard) the rest of the ecology presentations, and doing one last class of soils (on soil taxonomy) and one last class of gen bio (and, as we'd say on CPAAG, it's penis day: human reproductive system).

I'm also done for the semester with piano lessons. I won't stop playing completely (and I am taking summer lessons), but there's less pressure to get that huge amount of practicing in each day (my teacher didn't give me any new assignments; she said "a break is good" but stopped at saying "I don't care if you don't practice between now and then") .

I do have one more soil sample to sort (and since the rash is mostly gone, I think I'll do that tomorrow afternoon) and of course there's always research work and reading....but it's strange to think of a few days with no grading hanging over my head.

So, I think I'm going to devote this evening, and Friday evening (I have a meeting Thursday) to relaxing. Maybe doing more work on the quilts...I have two that are almost done. (The tops, that is).

Saturday, I'm unsure. My usual plan is to go to McKinney, but right now the main attraction of there (considering all the shops that have closed) are the two quilt shops...and tidying my sewing room reveals to me the real horror of how much SABLE (stash acquired beyond life expectancy) I actually have.

I might go to Denison and go antiquing, I don't know. I do think I want to take Saturday as a 'go out and do something' day.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I gotta get back to the grading. But I was reminded of an unintentionally funny government acronym this morning.

One of the (former, it's now a liquor store I guess) gas stations on my drive to work- the parking lot is all torn up and it looks like the construction guys are removing something.

"Uh-oh." I said to myself. "They're another victim of LUST."

LUST = Leaking Underground Storage Tanks. It's a big problem with gas stations; it can also be an issue in places that had oil heat if they had a big reservoir to hold the heating oil. This legislation concerning their removal and mitigation of the problems (mostly contaminating groundwater) came in in the 1980s.

The unintentionally funny part of it? Some years back, the church my parents belonged to got an offer of some vacant land from a local landowner. My dad is a geologist and has also taught short-courses on environmental hazards and such, so the pastor asked him if it seemed like a fair deal. My dad did a little checking and found out that the site was once a gas station (long before legislation saying that the tanks had to be removed) and that if the church accepted the donation, they could also get stuck with the liability of having to remove leaking underground storage tanks.

For several months after that, my dad went around proudly telling people that he had warned his pastor about the dangers of LUST.

This is interesting. I just got this as an e-mail from Amazon:

"We're writing about the order you placed on April 30 2010 (Order#

[redacted]). 
Delivery of your package may be delayed due to weather conditions or an unforeseen
natural event. UPS will deliver the package as soon as possible. We apologize for
this potential delay and appreciate your patience. The items listed below are
included in this shipment (Tracking Id '[also redacted]'):

  Jonathan Silvertown, Deborah Charlesworth "Introduction to Plant Population Biology"


Huh. I guess the Kentucky flooding is even hurting Amazon. 

(A lot of the stuff I get from them seems to come from the Kentucky warehouse).

Either that, or being an Oxford Press book, it was flying in from England

and the volcano with the name I can't pronounce (which is giving off ash again) is delaying its trip. 

Edited to add: This is the tracking info from Amazon:

May 3, 2010	08:00:00 PM	Whites Creek Hub TN US	Delay in delivery due to weather or natural disaster
May 3, 2010	11:00:00 AM	Memphis TN US	Possible delay in delivery due to extra carrier processing
May 3, 2010	10:00:00 AM	Oakhaven Hub TN US	Delay in delivery due to external factors
May 3, 2010	06:10:00 AM	Nashville TN US	Arrival Scan
May 3, 2010	04:20:00 AM	Nashville TN US	Departure Scan
May 1, 2010	02:32:00 AM	Nashville TN US	Arrival Scan
April 30, 2010	10:03:00 PM	Lexington KY US	Departure Scan
April 30, 2010	09:05:00 PM	Lexington KY US	Shipment received by carrier
April 30, 2010	03:17:31 PM	Lexington KY US	Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

You really don't want to see "Delay in delivery due to weather or natural disaster" on the tracking info

of something you ordered.

I suppose it could be worse: it could have been a mother's day present I was sending. 

Lynn put up a list of the "10 most unloved foods":

Liver
Blue (or bleu) cheese
Eggplant
Okra
Sardines
Lima beans
Brussels Sprouts
Grits
Hard boiled eggs
Beets

I can understand how most of those are not-well-loved in general (Even though I like beets, at least as long as they're prepared in particular ways). Hard-boiled eggs puzzles me a little bit, but maybe hard-boiled eggs are so often prepared badly (either overcooked, or the yolk gets that weird gray-green coating on it) that people are turned off of them. (I like hard-boiled eggs; they make a convenient snack, and they're a good addition to a salad).

Some of those others - Brussels sprouts, liver, beets, limas - might be things people were FORCED to eat as a kid, and swore they'd never eat as an adult. (My parents were not big on the "forcing" to eat. They would suggest my brother or I "try" a couple bites of a new food but didn't press the issue if we didn't want to. And if they were having something one of us hated, we were welcome to go in the kitchen and make ourselves a peanut butter sandwich, or just eat the dishes served that we DID like).

Most things on that list are things I don't eat, or at least don't eat regularly. I don't think I've ever eaten liver or sardines. (I think I'd find sardines far too salty, and I'd be put off by the bones). And the one time I ate eggplant (in moussaka) I got really sick afterward, which makes me wonder if I have a food intolerance to eggplant like I do to carrots and celery.

I avoid blue cheese because I'm allergic to the very fungus used to produce it (I got really sick after consuming miso, which is made with another fungus to which I am allergic, so I figure it's smartest to avoid them).

And I won't touch Brussels sprouts. I'm sorry. I can't get past the smell. Maybe if they were roasted rather than boiled, but I have just too many memories of being pressed to eat "just two bites" and not being able to get them down.

The rest of the things on that list I'm OK with. Okra, I prefer in its pickled form, and if fried okra is a side dish option I'll typically pick something else, but I'm not violently opposed to it.

So maybe I need to make a list of my 10 foods I dislike the most:

1. Broccoli and all its kin (with the exception of red cabbage and cabbage salad and sauerkraut). I know, I know, these are really really good for you. And the healthists will probably tell me if I get cancer it's my own dang fault because I didn't stuff down tons of the stuff. But I cannot get past the smell. I've tried it on occasions and I just can't do it.

2. Asparagus. I know, this one is strange, but I just don't like it.

3. Mussels, oysters, whole clams: Did too many dissections in college. I find myself thinking of the gonads and livers and such inside the unfortunate little creatures and I just can't eat them. ("Clam strips," on the other hand, I can eat: it's just a single muscle out of the clam)

4. Green and red bell peppers. I think this is actually a food intolerance issue - every time I've eaten them in something I've gotten bad indigestion.

5. Mangoes. They taste like turpentine to me. Apparently they do to some people. (There are also people who hate cilantro because it tastes soapy to them. I'm not one of those but I'm not a fan of coating things with so much cilantro that it's all you taste)

6. Organ meats. Again, I think it's the ick factor here. I know, sweetbreads are probably delicious but really?the thymus of a calf?

7. Mustard. Again, I think this is something that upsets my stomach. I'm weird about it though: once in a while I will eat honey-mustard dressing on stuff, and I put the dry mustard in devilled eggs. But I don't like the mustard-on-a-sandwich thing.

8. Cucumber pickles. I like almost every other pickled vegetable, but for some reason, I don't like the "most common and original" pickle.

9. Coffee. I know, it's what America runs on. I know most people love it. But I just don't care for the taste, and it does weird things to me. I don't mind the way it smells, though.

10. Beer and other alcoholic beverages. Even before I figured out that wine gave me migraines, I never drank more than a half of a glass at a time - and that was being polite, and trying to look like a "grown up" at grown-up parties. Fermented drinks taste like something died in them to me. (And it wasn't just that people served me cheap wine....it was good wine they served, it's just my taste buds don't tolerate it). I've never drunk beer - can't get past the way it smells. (Yes, I know, that's funny, considering my two main heritages are Irish and German.)

I think I also need to make another list, of foods I hated as a child, but now like as an adult. I was a tremendously picky eater as a kid (though not as bad as one of my cousins, who, for about 2 years, would only eat pancakes, or peanut butter sandwiches, or grilled-cheese sandwiches). But I'm a lot better now as an adult, probably because as you mature, your tastes change:

1. Beans (like from dried beans). I would not touch these as a child, but now I always have a few cans on the shelf for those times when I don't have a chance to get to the grocery, or when I decide I want bean soup. And I really like the "fat free" refried beans (How they can call them "fat free" and "refried," don't ask me)

2. Sweet potatoes

3. Beets.  Never eaten them "straight," but I do like them as Harvard beets or pickled beets. One of these days I'm going to try them cold, cut up, in a salad, because I've read that's good.

4. Salad. Yup, wouldn't eat it as a kid. Salad of ANY kind. I was the little kid who always asked to substitute cottage cheese or applesauce at the restaurant

5. Mashed potatoes. Yeah, for some strange reason I didn't like these - and lots of kids are "supposed" to.

6. Tea. That was our pediatrician's home-remedy for upset stomach - weak, cool tea. I couldn't stand tea as a kid. (I also disliked most sodas...and another of his recommendations was 7-up to settle stomachs but I didn't like it.)

7. Most Asian food and most Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food. I didn't like spicy. I didn't like things being mixed together, like in a stir-fry.

8. Egg salad. I used to think it was made out of leftover scrambled eggs and that grossed me out for some reason.

9. When I was really small, nuts. I got to like them when I was a bit older, but my brother NEVER liked them, so I grew up eating brownies and chocolate-chip cookies without nuts in them.

10. Tomatoes or tomato sauce, at least for a while: for some reason, for a few years as a kid, I had a real aversion to tomato sauce. When we'd go out for Italian food, I'd ask for spaghetti with just butter and parmesan cheese on it. (Perhaps it was not for simple reasons of frugality that my family didn't eat out often when I was a kid, I see that now).  Yes, there was a period of my childhood when I wouldn't eat pizza. I don't understand that now.  

This is how I feel right now:

(I figured Impact and some kind of LOL-speak ungrammaticality would not work for Snape. And I think it's probably just a wee bit too mean to put on my office door, much as I'd like to)

Though, speaking strictly, this is really MORE correct (Even if they ask it as "Can I have...")

Posting in this coming week will probably be light. I collect the "big" ecology papers on Monday, along with the Soils lab books - so I have those to grade. And I also have final exams to write. And I am still battling the rash. I decided not to take the Zyrtec/Zantec combination yesterday to see how I'd fare without it.

I think I'm going to need to take them until the rash goes away. The rash seemed to get worse, and I woke up around 3 this morning itching badly.

Sometimes I hate plants.

I did finish one thing this weekend. This is the first pair of socks that is for my mom's birthday:



It's one of the Online yarns, I forget which line it's from. They're just simple socks but I think the colors in them are pleasing.

I also spent a little time tidying and ironing fabric in my sewing room. I think one of my summer projects is going to be to get the room cleaned up again. (If I ever get it REALLY cleaned, to the point where it wouldn't be too annoying to move stuff out/move stuff to the center of the room for a couple days, I'd really like to wash down the walls and then paint them some kind of pretty color - maybe sort of a shell pink. Right now the walls are off-white. I've seen a lot of sewing and craft rooms where the person did something really creative and pretty with it, and I'd like to do it with this room. But there are enough spiderwebs in the corners I'd have to wash the walls first, and before that I'd have to be able to move stuff out/move stuff around well. I suppose what I could do is temporarily move to the guest room from "my" bedroom (I'd want to do that anyway until the fumes from the paint were gone: the sewing room is right off my bedroom) and then I could stack boxes of fabric on my bed and in the bedroom. (Most of the space is taken up with the fabric/yarn storage boxes.)

Another thing I want to do is go through all the old accumulated magazines (I am bad about getting rid of old magazines) and ONLY save the ones that have projects I am likely to make in them. (But I will be saving all the old Interweave Knits. And all the "Pieceworks.")

I suppose if I decided to get rid of the run of Knitters' and of Vogue Knits, I could probably swap them on one of the Ravelry "destashing" groups. Or sell them outright.

(I also have a lot of stuff like old Better Homes and Gardenses. What I really need to do with those, is, if on the first read, I see a recipe I want to make or a decorating idea I like, tear the page with it out and put it in a notebook and chuck the rest of the magazine, instead of filing it and assuming I could find that thing again. I think I was also saving them with half a thought I would donate them to the hospital or something, but that's one of those good intentions that paves a bad road...I have a couple ugly stacks of dusty magazines now).

I also wound off some yarn to have ahead:



The rightmost yarn is an indie-dyer sockyarn in a colorway called "opal." I haven't decided on a pattern for it yet but I may look in that "Knitting Socks from Handpainted Yarn" book to see if anything appeals to me.

The middle ball is a variegated pink (no colorway name given, just a color number). I'm going to use this for a second pair of the "Weasley Homestead" socks (I just like that pattern - it's on Ravelry but you can also find it here. It's sort of an elongated basketweave - not hard to knit but it's more interesting than plain stockinette (or rib). Since this yarn is pink, I'm going to call them "Redheads Should Not Wear Pink." (because the Weasleys were all redheads, and supposedly that's an old fashion rule).

The two left-most balls are going to be used for another one of those Lace Ribbon Scarves. It's a Knitpicks sockyarn. The colorway is called "Tea Party."

Wait...

No, I don't think KnitPicks was making a political statement AT ALL. IIRC, this line came out in early 2009, before that movement was on the national radar. And also, it's from a line of yarns designed to evoke childhood memories (There's another one called "Tree Fort," for example).

Yes, that kind of tea party. The stereotypical little-girl activity, where you dress up in borrowed necklaces and your mom's high heels, and pretend to serve your dolls or stuffed animals.

I actually did those as a kid - well, not in the dress-up clothes; my mom actually didn't have that many pairs of high heels and really, she wasn't a big dress-up person, so for me, the super-feminine dressing-up-and-borrowing-lipstick thing didn't happen for me as a kid. But I did have some of those little china tea sets (which broke distressingly easily; I think one of the ones I had had two of the plates glued back together, and the other one had the teapot with a big crack in it). And I liked to set up some of my stuffed toys (I was not a big doll fan as a kid; I vastly preferred stuffed animals for some reason) and pretend they were having a tea party.

Which may be part of a reason why I'm so fond of the teeny tiny food from Re-Ment: they remind me of those happy childhood days of playing with my stuffed animals, or playing with my dollhouses (I think I've mentioned those before: I had two, one inhabited by a family of toy mice [many of them named from characters in books I'd read: there was Amos, the father - named for the mouse in Ben and Me, the mother was Caroline, from the Little House books. One of the children was Raymond - there were a couple of books, I forget the title and author, but they featured either mouse detectives or mouse spies (or maybe mouse gangsters; I just remember them sneaking around a lot - maybe it was actually this last, because I seem to remember them planning to "knock over" a cheese shop*) that had a Raymond Mouse in them]. Later, I had another one with an Edwardian-era family (dolls this time) living in it, and I used to try to research : would they have had a telephone yet in the nineteen-twenties? What kind of toys would the children have had?)

Part of it I think was the simple appeal of tiny things, but I think another part had something to do with having a tiny world, where the inhabitants had everything they needed, courtesy of you, the creator of the world. I actually made salt-dough food to put inside the icebox, and I tried to find tiny real books to go on the shelves...and the beds had sheets on them that I sewed out of my dad's old handkerchiefs.

So the Re-Ment stuff makes me smile, because it reminds me of my childhood. (And oh, how I would have loved it if it had been available when I was a child!)

And I admit it, sometimes, to amuse myself, I will take a few of the pieces out (I have a box I keep them on, on my coffee table - I really want to get something like one of those "typesetter's boxes" with all the tiny cubbies to hang on my wall so I can put the things in there) and set up a little tableau.

Like, "Sunday afternoon at the coffee house." (Though to be really ideal, I'd need a couple of tiny Re-Ment laptops with wi-fi access, and maybe a couple magazines or books to stack on that table):



It amuses me that Thalia (the "perky Goth chick") has a beverage that superficially resembles Caf-Pow.

(*ETA: yes, mouse gangsters. The book - and I remember it as being part of a series - was called The Great Cheese Conspiracy And my Raymond wore "glasses" (made from wire) like the Raymond in the book)

Still having to "reject" obvious spam comments where the spammer tries to "hide" the link (to an NC-17 site, I'm guessing) in a long ellipsis.

It's a bit disappointing to see you have several new comments and find that every last one of them is spam.