I decided to join another online swap. This one is "order something for your swap-partner off of Etsy, and also send them a skein or more of yarn."
The issue is, for the "about me" questionnaire, there is this question: "Give a one-word visual description of your style." I was warned by the poster that I would be eaten by velociraptors if I used more than one word. (Some of the suggested things that people might use: "Steampunk," "kawaii," "earthy").
The problem is, I cannot think of one overarching descriptor for myself. Some days I dress kind of earth-mama, some of the accessories I have border on "kawaii" (and I like cute stuff), I also like vintage stuff. I often dress in pretty divergent styles over the course of a week, from ironed khakis and a crisp pastel t-shirt with some kind of pretty picture on it, to a little cotton dress, to a long skirt and arty top, to jeans and an old conference t-shirt.
Kawaii doesn't totally work because I think I've "aged out" of a lot of kawaii stuff. And earth-mama isn't perfect because stuff like hemp necklaces give me rashes. I'm not really "steampunk" because a lot of that is awfully dark.
I snarkily threatened to describe my appearance as PROFESSORIAL but I think that would hamper someone if they were using it as a search term for stuff on Etsy.
I'm leaning towards "quirky" but frankly think that's awfully broad.
So anyway: asking for advice. Because I don't always trust my own perception of myself and would rather see what a group of semi-random semi-strangers think. Most of you have seen pictures of me either on this blog or on my flickr stream.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Three volume set
The field work is done for now. Miraculously, we found five of the six points by finding the tree I had "blazed" with an X using my pocketknife. (This is kind of like finding a quilting needle in a half-bale of hay). The sixth point we were able to get by finding distinctive trees...as in "there were several post oaks, there was one bois d'arc with three trunks, there were no ashes in this sample..." and being able to eliminate spots, but then finding the distinctive multi-trunked trees (and also noting that there were several large trees of a particular species), we were able to figure out where the point was by a process of elimination.
There's something to be said for still being able to use low-tech methods when high-tech ones fail. I "blazed" the trees because the GPS unit conked out and we couldn't get coordinates of the points that way.
I'm still waiting on the other students' ankle to recover but that will be two more days in the field, at most, I think.
I also thought I had an Exciting New Project. On the way out after finding the points, I noticed a population of a wetland plant with magenta-pink flowers...and the first thing I thought was "Purple loosestrife!" Purple loosestrife (well, the one that goes by the scientific name Lythrum salicaria) is a big, bad invasive plant - I remember a few years ago, when I was in Nebraska for some meetings, a lot of the Platt River wetlands were totally choked with it. And there were some areas up near Chicago where the wetland was a monoculture (or so it appeared) of the plant.
So, on the one hand: purple loosestrife appearing would be very, very bad. (It's known from my state but only a few locations up north). But on the other: instant journal article.
So I grabbed one of the plants and headed back to campus, all set to notify the authorities and start writing. And then I thought: wait, it's been a few years since you saw this plant close up. And there are other closely related species that are native. And it would be super, super embarrassing to try to write a paper and have misidentified the main plant.
So I started hunting. In our herbarium, we only had one of the species, so I couldn't compare to know for sure (though the species I had looked kind of like the examples of the harmless native they had). And looking online was useless - there are photographs, but some of them lose something in the enlargement, and also, it's always hard to make out leaves well on those photographs, as they're usually taken in the field and the background is the same color as the leaves.
So I put in an e-mail asking for field ID from someone who would know. But then I thought: Britton and Brown probably have the plants.
Britton and Brown's "New Illustrated Flora (of the Northeastern U.S.)" is a resource I used many, many times back in my grad school days. It has line-drawings of plants, which are often easier for definitive identification than photos. And it has good descriptions of the characteristics.
There are actually two versions of Britton and Brown floating around out in the world: there's the original version from the nineteen-teens (Dover has reprinted this version: I have a copy but found it less than useful) This version, at least the reprints, the line drawings are not that great and are hard to use - it's like the lines are too thick or something. And many of the names have changed (and some of the common names in the 1913 version, are, how shall we say, very politically incorrect). Also, I think these are less complete than the later version, at least, an online copy of them lack several species that I know are in the later version.
Henry Allan Gleason revised the books in the late 50s - this is what I think of as the "good" version (though it may be that the Dover reprints, the quality of the drawings was compromised: there's an online reprint of the older volumes (this is volume 2, here).
The Gleason revision has gone through a couple of printings but I think it's currently out of print (though still under copyright). My mother owned a set of the Gleason revisions; I think she actually won them as some kind of award when she was an undergraduate.
I searched around online when I moved down here (and no longer had access to the copies my mom owned; she did observe that "someday you will probably inherit them" though I hope that doesn't happen for many years...)
I did find a set through a used book dealer; they were $90 or thereabouts but I bought them. I haven't used them as much, but once in a while they certainly come in handy. (A quick check of Amazon shows them going for $300 now, so perhaps I got a deal). My copy is a 1968 reprint. (One year older than I am...)
So I checked the two species the plant could be - the line drawings made it crystal clear; it's the non-invasive native species, not the invader.
So again: score one for the low-tech way of doing things. The photographs I found online were not clear at all.
And again, like a lot of used books I own, they have some kind of interesting history, which the inscription/material inside the cover only hint at.
Volume 1 says, "To Betz: on attaining her majority. Ron" and the date: 4/12/72. There's also a clipping on coltsfoot from the New York Times dated 3/9/75.
Volume 2 says, "To Betz, on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ron."
(I am not sure how that works with the "attaining her majority;" I assumed "majority" to be "21." But maybe not. Perhaps "Betz" either earned tenure or made Professor somewhere, and that was what "Ron" meant by majority. Or maybe he meant a later age than 21.)
Volume 3 says, simply, "To Betz. With love, Ron."
(How touching I find that. Here was a man who knew what his beloved's interests were, and sought out something specific to them. I like to imagine them walking through the forest together, looking for plants. They are probably both gone now, if they had been married 35 years sometime in the early 1970s. Maybe they are walking through forests together still, just on another plane from this one...)
I also find that I have the invoice from buying the books tucked in this volume; I got them through Summer House Books in Pennsylvania. (And I was remembering the price correctly).
There are also a few penciled marginal notations throughout the books; mainly when or where a certain plant was seen. (The handwriting is different from "Ron's," I suspect it must be "Betz'")
I will admit, I made my own addition to the books: I made up (on my computer, and printed on acid-free paper) bookplates with a stylized flower, the quotation "A book is like a good friend. My friends I would forever keep." and my name on it, and carefully pasted them in (away from the dedication; I didn't want to cover up the words of Ron to Betz). I did that just on the off chance I would ever loan the books out, though I find the bigger problem I have with losing loaned books is that I forget to whom I had loaned them. (I did loan these out, briefly, to a colleague, but she kept them in the lab where we work so I knew where they were).
Someday, I suppose, if I get my mother's copy of the set, I'll sell these. (Or, if I have someone who seems really devoted to botany and could use a set, I might even make a very generous gift of them...or maybe donate them to the university library on the condition that they absolutely go into the collections and be used.)
There's something to be said for still being able to use low-tech methods when high-tech ones fail. I "blazed" the trees because the GPS unit conked out and we couldn't get coordinates of the points that way.
I'm still waiting on the other students' ankle to recover but that will be two more days in the field, at most, I think.
I also thought I had an Exciting New Project. On the way out after finding the points, I noticed a population of a wetland plant with magenta-pink flowers...and the first thing I thought was "Purple loosestrife!" Purple loosestrife (well, the one that goes by the scientific name Lythrum salicaria) is a big, bad invasive plant - I remember a few years ago, when I was in Nebraska for some meetings, a lot of the Platt River wetlands were totally choked with it. And there were some areas up near Chicago where the wetland was a monoculture (or so it appeared) of the plant.
So, on the one hand: purple loosestrife appearing would be very, very bad. (It's known from my state but only a few locations up north). But on the other: instant journal article.
So I grabbed one of the plants and headed back to campus, all set to notify the authorities and start writing. And then I thought: wait, it's been a few years since you saw this plant close up. And there are other closely related species that are native. And it would be super, super embarrassing to try to write a paper and have misidentified the main plant.
So I started hunting. In our herbarium, we only had one of the species, so I couldn't compare to know for sure (though the species I had looked kind of like the examples of the harmless native they had). And looking online was useless - there are photographs, but some of them lose something in the enlargement, and also, it's always hard to make out leaves well on those photographs, as they're usually taken in the field and the background is the same color as the leaves.
So I put in an e-mail asking for field ID from someone who would know. But then I thought: Britton and Brown probably have the plants.
Britton and Brown's "New Illustrated Flora (of the Northeastern U.S.)" is a resource I used many, many times back in my grad school days. It has line-drawings of plants, which are often easier for definitive identification than photos. And it has good descriptions of the characteristics.
There are actually two versions of Britton and Brown floating around out in the world: there's the original version from the nineteen-teens (Dover has reprinted this version: I have a copy but found it less than useful) This version, at least the reprints, the line drawings are not that great and are hard to use - it's like the lines are too thick or something. And many of the names have changed (and some of the common names in the 1913 version, are, how shall we say, very politically incorrect). Also, I think these are less complete than the later version, at least, an online copy of them lack several species that I know are in the later version.
Henry Allan Gleason revised the books in the late 50s - this is what I think of as the "good" version (though it may be that the Dover reprints, the quality of the drawings was compromised: there's an online reprint of the older volumes (this is volume 2, here).
The Gleason revision has gone through a couple of printings but I think it's currently out of print (though still under copyright). My mother owned a set of the Gleason revisions; I think she actually won them as some kind of award when she was an undergraduate.
I searched around online when I moved down here (and no longer had access to the copies my mom owned; she did observe that "someday you will probably inherit them" though I hope that doesn't happen for many years...)
I did find a set through a used book dealer; they were $90 or thereabouts but I bought them. I haven't used them as much, but once in a while they certainly come in handy. (A quick check of Amazon shows them going for $300 now, so perhaps I got a deal). My copy is a 1968 reprint. (One year older than I am...)
So I checked the two species the plant could be - the line drawings made it crystal clear; it's the non-invasive native species, not the invader.
So again: score one for the low-tech way of doing things. The photographs I found online were not clear at all.
And again, like a lot of used books I own, they have some kind of interesting history, which the inscription/material inside the cover only hint at.
Volume 1 says, "To Betz: on attaining her majority. Ron" and the date: 4/12/72. There's also a clipping on coltsfoot from the New York Times dated 3/9/75.
Volume 2 says, "To Betz, on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ron."
(I am not sure how that works with the "attaining her majority;" I assumed "majority" to be "21." But maybe not. Perhaps "Betz" either earned tenure or made Professor somewhere, and that was what "Ron" meant by majority. Or maybe he meant a later age than 21.)
Volume 3 says, simply, "To Betz. With love, Ron."
(How touching I find that. Here was a man who knew what his beloved's interests were, and sought out something specific to them. I like to imagine them walking through the forest together, looking for plants. They are probably both gone now, if they had been married 35 years sometime in the early 1970s. Maybe they are walking through forests together still, just on another plane from this one...)
I also find that I have the invoice from buying the books tucked in this volume; I got them through Summer House Books in Pennsylvania. (And I was remembering the price correctly).
There are also a few penciled marginal notations throughout the books; mainly when or where a certain plant was seen. (The handwriting is different from "Ron's," I suspect it must be "Betz'")
I will admit, I made my own addition to the books: I made up (on my computer, and printed on acid-free paper) bookplates with a stylized flower, the quotation "A book is like a good friend. My friends I would forever keep." and my name on it, and carefully pasted them in (away from the dedication; I didn't want to cover up the words of Ron to Betz). I did that just on the off chance I would ever loan the books out, though I find the bigger problem I have with losing loaned books is that I forget to whom I had loaned them. (I did loan these out, briefly, to a colleague, but she kept them in the lab where we work so I knew where they were).
Someday, I suppose, if I get my mother's copy of the set, I'll sell these. (Or, if I have someone who seems really devoted to botany and could use a set, I might even make a very generous gift of them...or maybe donate them to the university library on the condition that they absolutely go into the collections and be used.)
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
the new pillowcases
I finished a little segment of the new pillowcases last night:
These will give me a chance to practice the "loop stitch," a/k/a lazy daisy stitch, which I don't use a whole lot and am not very good at doing consistently well. (The flower "petals" and the leaves are loop stitches). You do it by poking up at the "point" of the loop, going back down right next to that, and then making a small "catch stitch" at the rounded end of the loop. If you do it right, you get a teardrop shape. But it's harder to get the stitch "right" than a plain backstitch or a French knot (at least, for me, it is).
I'm using different colors than what the manufacturer specified here - partly because I just wanted to use colors I had on hand rather than making another trek out to buy more floss.
***
And giant ragweed is indeed giant. It's a different species from the common ragweed and it actually looks quite different. Common ragweed is Ambrosia artemisiifolia, this one is Ambrosia trifida (USDA "Plants" page profile here). It has a three-pronged leaf, rather than the finely-divided leaf of common ragweed.
(Actually, I wonder if the "triffid" name from Day of the Triffids could have come from this plant's scientific name)
Funny story: a friend of my mother's, when I was growing up, had a problem with it growing in her yard. She tried to keep it chopped back but one summer she was extra busy with stuff and didn't get to it right away. She came home from the store one day to find the local police scoping out her yard. Apparently someone had seen the plants and reported her for growing marijuana. I can't remember if the cops thought the giant ragweed actually was pot, or if they were just nonplussed because they had this call they had to check out, and they couldn't find the plants the complainant was talking about. (I do know my sister-in-law, while she was doing her State Bureau of Investigations training, had to grow marijuana from seed so she could learn to identify what it looked like in different stages of growth, though I don't know if a general police-officer - as opposed to someone who actually analyses drug evidence for a living - would have learned that).
These will give me a chance to practice the "loop stitch," a/k/a lazy daisy stitch, which I don't use a whole lot and am not very good at doing consistently well. (The flower "petals" and the leaves are loop stitches). You do it by poking up at the "point" of the loop, going back down right next to that, and then making a small "catch stitch" at the rounded end of the loop. If you do it right, you get a teardrop shape. But it's harder to get the stitch "right" than a plain backstitch or a French knot (at least, for me, it is).
I'm using different colors than what the manufacturer specified here - partly because I just wanted to use colors I had on hand rather than making another trek out to buy more floss.
***
And giant ragweed is indeed giant. It's a different species from the common ragweed and it actually looks quite different. Common ragweed is Ambrosia artemisiifolia, this one is Ambrosia trifida (USDA "Plants" page profile here). It has a three-pronged leaf, rather than the finely-divided leaf of common ragweed.
(Actually, I wonder if the "triffid" name from Day of the Triffids could have come from this plant's scientific name)
Funny story: a friend of my mother's, when I was growing up, had a problem with it growing in her yard. She tried to keep it chopped back but one summer she was extra busy with stuff and didn't get to it right away. She came home from the store one day to find the local police scoping out her yard. Apparently someone had seen the plants and reported her for growing marijuana. I can't remember if the cops thought the giant ragweed actually was pot, or if they were just nonplussed because they had this call they had to check out, and they couldn't find the plants the complainant was talking about. (I do know my sister-in-law, while she was doing her State Bureau of Investigations training, had to grow marijuana from seed so she could learn to identify what it looked like in different stages of growth, though I don't know if a general police-officer - as opposed to someone who actually analyses drug evidence for a living - would have learned that).
the new pillowcases
I finished a little segment of the new pillowcases last night:
These will give me a chance to practice the "loop stitch," a/k/a lazy daisy stitch, which I don't use a whole lot and am not very good at doing consistently well. (The flower "petals" and the leaves are loop stitches). You do it by poking up at the "point" of the loop, going back down right next to that, and then making a small "catch stitch" at the rounded end of the loop. If you do it right, you get a teardrop shape. But it's harder to get the stitch "right" than a plain backstitch or a French knot (at least, for me, it is).
I'm using different colors than what the manufacturer specified here - partly because I just wanted to use colors I had on hand rather than making another trek out to buy more floss.
These will give me a chance to practice the "loop stitch," a/k/a lazy daisy stitch, which I don't use a whole lot and am not very good at doing consistently well. (The flower "petals" and the leaves are loop stitches). You do it by poking up at the "point" of the loop, going back down right next to that, and then making a small "catch stitch" at the rounded end of the loop. If you do it right, you get a teardrop shape. But it's harder to get the stitch "right" than a plain backstitch or a French knot (at least, for me, it is).
I'm using different colors than what the manufacturer specified here - partly because I just wanted to use colors I had on hand rather than making another trek out to buy more floss.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Almost survived it
If I make it through tomorrow's fieldwork (re-finding and taking GPS coordinates of points we sampled on a day when the batteries in the GPS unit conked out*), I think I can safely say I survived the summer fieldwork. (Well, there may be a few more go-out-and-grab-plants days if my ankle-hurt student gets back on her feet. But that's different from the quadrat sampling).
(* Interesting about the batteries on these things. The supposedly-new "departmental" batteries my student picked up from the box we had in the GIS room conked out almost immediately - I suspect someone returning the batteries put the nearly-worn-out ones back in the box that was supposed to be for "new" batteries. But then when she went to the local wal-mart and bought batteries, those ran out super-fast. Finally, when I did the Target run I did several weeks ago, I got a big package of the batteries (they are AAAs). The same set of batteries has lasted us through three sites plus part of a fourth. So I don't know what that says, other than that maybe my student should take the batteries she bought back to the wal-mart and complain.)
Today it was pretty awful. We were in a floodplain area and there was giant ragweed that was over 6' tall (it was at least a foot over MY head, and I'm something like 5'7", maybe even a little more in field boots). And because it was a floodplain area, and we had flooding in 2007, underneath all the giant ragweed and the Polygonum, there was all the flotsam that had washed up in the flood - mostly branches and small tree-chunks. So it was really rough going. And it didn't help that I knew this area to be the one that when I sampled it back around 2002 with a student, we saw a baby rattlesnake. So I went very slowly, probing with a staff as I went, ready to jump back if I heard a rattle or saw movement. And I banged on all the downed trees with the staff as I went by, hoping the vibrations might send any snakes away.
Luckily, we didn't see any snakes. But dang, it was exhausting - especially as it was far, far more humid today than it's been before (They promised us storms. I want to see some storms). And we wound up arguing about what direction to go - my "sense" of where I was was all messed up (well, that happens when I can't SEE anything but the stems of plants in front of my face) and we wound up walking around a lot and stopping to consult the GPS unit. (We are trying to sample the corner points of a square: pick a point, get its north and east bearings, sample, then move on keeping the east bearing the same, but change the north, then sample again, then move again keeping the north the same as that last point but changing the east, and then finally, complete the square with the east coordinates of the first point and the north coordinates of the third. Or something like that. I have a headache now and can't visualize if that's exactly how we did it...but we did a big square in each forest.)
I think I was also tense because I am kind of claustrophobic and I sort of freak out a little when I can't see clear to see where I am going. And with the worrying about snakes, or running into hornet's nests, or one of us stepping wrong and stepping into a hole or catching an ankle between downed branches and breaking or spraining an ankle...that kind of "I'm responsible for this working out and nothing too bad going wrong" tension can make me kind of short-tempered.
But at least we're done with that part now. Tomorrow it comes down to finding the second place we sampled (several weeks ago) again, and finding the trees I "blazed" with my pocketknife again. Between you and me, I don't hold out much hope that we will, but we have to TRY.
I'm also kind of sad and unsettled today. My mom called yesterday to tell me that the eye doctor we had all used for years (And I still even went to him when I needed a check-up; I scheduled them when I was up visiting) had died. He was only five years older than I was. I feel sad for his family - he was married (a second wife) and I know he had a young son, maybe another child as well. And his co-workers: all the nurses and office ladies seemed to like him a lot. And of course now there's the challenge of finding a good new eye doctor.
And the fact that he was only five years my senior kind of freaks me out. (He did tell my dad in an appointment once - I think my dad was talking about having had pneumonia - that he had had some really bad strain of the flu some years back and had been told he might not live at that time...so I suppose it could have caused heart damage, or something. But still. When a death comes somewhat suddenly, you think about the last time you saw the person (for me, my checkup over Christmas break) and it's just kind of eerie when it's a case where the person seemed perfectly healthy and OK. Life really is fragile).
I think also the heat, the humidity, the fieldwork, everything, are getting to me a little and wearing me down. (The weather affects me a lot. People talk about getting SAD in the winter when it's chilly and dark but that's actually often when I feel best and most cheerful. It's in the summer when it's hot, it's humid, it doesn't rain, and it's painfully bright out that I start to feel kind of sad and unsettled. (And really, sort of cabin-fever-ish).
For some reason the lack of rain really gets to me. I don't know if it's the monotony, or worrying about my lawn (I really, really don't want to go down the road of having to water it. I never have before and it's survived the summers fine) or what. (And this weekend, the lack of rain worries me because of IDIOTS SHOOTING OFF FIREWORKS. I so don't have the energy to clean the pecan catkins off my roof but I may have to figure out a way. (Maybe get a "concentrator nozzle" for my hose from the Lowe's and try to shoot them down. If nothing else they will get wetted down and will be less likely to burn if someone's errant bottle-rocket lands in them).
The fireworks stands are getting ready to open up here so I guess the authorities are going to look the other way on fireworks even though pretty much the entire state is under a burn ban.
I spent most of last evening sort of moping around. I quilted a little bit, found my extra embroidery hoop and decided to start on the horse pillowcases I bought at the quilt show (they are made in the USA! St. Louis, it looks like - somebody-or-other's Needleart company (ETA: Jack Dempsey Needle Art). That makes me happy, that's one thing you can still find that's made here). But I couldn't settle down and find anything to work on that made me really happy to work on it.
(* Interesting about the batteries on these things. The supposedly-new "departmental" batteries my student picked up from the box we had in the GIS room conked out almost immediately - I suspect someone returning the batteries put the nearly-worn-out ones back in the box that was supposed to be for "new" batteries. But then when she went to the local wal-mart and bought batteries, those ran out super-fast. Finally, when I did the Target run I did several weeks ago, I got a big package of the batteries (they are AAAs). The same set of batteries has lasted us through three sites plus part of a fourth. So I don't know what that says, other than that maybe my student should take the batteries she bought back to the wal-mart and complain.)
Today it was pretty awful. We were in a floodplain area and there was giant ragweed that was over 6' tall (it was at least a foot over MY head, and I'm something like 5'7", maybe even a little more in field boots). And because it was a floodplain area, and we had flooding in 2007, underneath all the giant ragweed and the Polygonum, there was all the flotsam that had washed up in the flood - mostly branches and small tree-chunks. So it was really rough going. And it didn't help that I knew this area to be the one that when I sampled it back around 2002 with a student, we saw a baby rattlesnake. So I went very slowly, probing with a staff as I went, ready to jump back if I heard a rattle or saw movement. And I banged on all the downed trees with the staff as I went by, hoping the vibrations might send any snakes away.
Luckily, we didn't see any snakes. But dang, it was exhausting - especially as it was far, far more humid today than it's been before (They promised us storms. I want to see some storms). And we wound up arguing about what direction to go - my "sense" of where I was was all messed up (well, that happens when I can't SEE anything but the stems of plants in front of my face) and we wound up walking around a lot and stopping to consult the GPS unit. (We are trying to sample the corner points of a square: pick a point, get its north and east bearings, sample, then move on keeping the east bearing the same, but change the north, then sample again, then move again keeping the north the same as that last point but changing the east, and then finally, complete the square with the east coordinates of the first point and the north coordinates of the third. Or something like that. I have a headache now and can't visualize if that's exactly how we did it...but we did a big square in each forest.)
I think I was also tense because I am kind of claustrophobic and I sort of freak out a little when I can't see clear to see where I am going. And with the worrying about snakes, or running into hornet's nests, or one of us stepping wrong and stepping into a hole or catching an ankle between downed branches and breaking or spraining an ankle...that kind of "I'm responsible for this working out and nothing too bad going wrong" tension can make me kind of short-tempered.
But at least we're done with that part now. Tomorrow it comes down to finding the second place we sampled (several weeks ago) again, and finding the trees I "blazed" with my pocketknife again. Between you and me, I don't hold out much hope that we will, but we have to TRY.
I'm also kind of sad and unsettled today. My mom called yesterday to tell me that the eye doctor we had all used for years (And I still even went to him when I needed a check-up; I scheduled them when I was up visiting) had died. He was only five years older than I was. I feel sad for his family - he was married (a second wife) and I know he had a young son, maybe another child as well. And his co-workers: all the nurses and office ladies seemed to like him a lot. And of course now there's the challenge of finding a good new eye doctor.
And the fact that he was only five years my senior kind of freaks me out. (He did tell my dad in an appointment once - I think my dad was talking about having had pneumonia - that he had had some really bad strain of the flu some years back and had been told he might not live at that time...so I suppose it could have caused heart damage, or something. But still. When a death comes somewhat suddenly, you think about the last time you saw the person (for me, my checkup over Christmas break) and it's just kind of eerie when it's a case where the person seemed perfectly healthy and OK. Life really is fragile).
I think also the heat, the humidity, the fieldwork, everything, are getting to me a little and wearing me down. (The weather affects me a lot. People talk about getting SAD in the winter when it's chilly and dark but that's actually often when I feel best and most cheerful. It's in the summer when it's hot, it's humid, it doesn't rain, and it's painfully bright out that I start to feel kind of sad and unsettled. (And really, sort of cabin-fever-ish).
For some reason the lack of rain really gets to me. I don't know if it's the monotony, or worrying about my lawn (I really, really don't want to go down the road of having to water it. I never have before and it's survived the summers fine) or what. (And this weekend, the lack of rain worries me because of IDIOTS SHOOTING OFF FIREWORKS. I so don't have the energy to clean the pecan catkins off my roof but I may have to figure out a way. (Maybe get a "concentrator nozzle" for my hose from the Lowe's and try to shoot them down. If nothing else they will get wetted down and will be less likely to burn if someone's errant bottle-rocket lands in them).
The fireworks stands are getting ready to open up here so I guess the authorities are going to look the other way on fireworks even though pretty much the entire state is under a burn ban.
I spent most of last evening sort of moping around. I quilted a little bit, found my extra embroidery hoop and decided to start on the horse pillowcases I bought at the quilt show (they are made in the USA! St. Louis, it looks like - somebody-or-other's Needleart company (ETA: Jack Dempsey Needle Art). That makes me happy, that's one thing you can still find that's made here). But I couldn't settle down and find anything to work on that made me really happy to work on it.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Two projects going
Well, I have more than two - far more than two - but these are the two I'm working on most actively at the moment.
Yesterday I commented that I had begun doing the outermost border of the quilt, as I continue to work around on the inner border. This does make things go slower, but at the advantage of having to move the thing around less (it's kind of a pain to undo the hoop, reposition the quilt, and then re-do the hoop, getting the quilt in there taut but not too taut).
It's kind of like the Orange Peel quilting design, only squashed into an oval to fit the narrower border:
I'm going to have to put this aside for the evening now; I still haven't redeveloped my "quilter's callus" and my fingertip is sore. (Most hardcore handquilters develop a callused area on the tip of the finger that is under the quilt - the "guiding" finger, that helps the needle move along. I have read of using a thimble on that finger (in addition to the one on the "pushing" finger, on the hand that's on top of the quilt, which you use to push the needle forward), but I find I lose a lot of sensitivity doing that and I can't make my stitches as small and even. So I put up with the soreness. Sometimes putting a medicated cream on the fingertips overnight helps. (Many quilters swear by "Bag Balm," which is actually sold to be put on cow udders. No fooling. I guess udders get sore and chafed...)
I'm pleased with how far I'm getting, though. I can see being done with this before the summer is out.
I also continued some on the Oscilliscope shawl.
This is not quite two full repeats of the pattern, plus the set-up rows. (There are six increasing repeats in all, then you do the repeats over again, but decreasing, to make it a triangle. One of the subtle things I like about knitting is the geometry of it.)
I'm not sure why it's called Oscilloscope; perhaps the person wanted to convey a sort of steampunkish sensibility. Or it could be that the original shawl was knit of a green yarn close to this color, and the person was put in mind of the green colored trace line that many oscilloscope screens used.
I'm a little disappointed that the slight shininess of the "Lustra" yarn doesn't show up in the photo, but the yarn "in person" is very pretty and makes for an interesting shawl. It also shows the individual stitches very nicely, which is a bonus. (Some yarns tend to obscure the stitches.)
***
On an unrelated topic, I was talking a few days ago about being an introvert and that some people don't seem to realize/understand that about me because I am happy speaking publicly, I'm not "shy" in the typical sense, and I am not agoraphobic. Well, one of the people I follow on Twitter posted this:
10 Myths about Introverts Very true. Especially the last one, about how introverts should "fix" themselves and become extroverts. I don't WANT to be an extrovert. I'm pretty happy with how I am and I got really tired in college of people wanting to "fix" me and make me more of a social butterfly.
Oh, also #3, about how introverts are sometimes perceived as "rude" because we don't always do the small-talk-stuff first. I do this. If I call someone on the phone, I will usually launch right away into the meaning for the call; I have to stop and remind myself that most people expect you to ask how they are, what the weather is like (if they are in a different region of the country), etc. I think that's why I got the (probably false) idea at one point that I was maybe slightly Asperger-y, because I'd call someone up on the phone and immediately present my question or problem or whatever and they'd be all, "Wait, wait, back up, aren't you going to ask how my kids are first?"
Of course, the engineers I know don't seem to have a problem with it.
Also, I find I need a "reason" to talk; it's hard for me to come up with "shoot the breeze" topics. But if someone asks me about my research, or my knitting, or what I think of some topic...I can be off and running. But sometimes it's hard for me to come up with topics on my own, I think part of it is that I believe a lot of people aren't interested in my interests or something.
Yesterday I commented that I had begun doing the outermost border of the quilt, as I continue to work around on the inner border. This does make things go slower, but at the advantage of having to move the thing around less (it's kind of a pain to undo the hoop, reposition the quilt, and then re-do the hoop, getting the quilt in there taut but not too taut).
It's kind of like the Orange Peel quilting design, only squashed into an oval to fit the narrower border:
I'm going to have to put this aside for the evening now; I still haven't redeveloped my "quilter's callus" and my fingertip is sore. (Most hardcore handquilters develop a callused area on the tip of the finger that is under the quilt - the "guiding" finger, that helps the needle move along. I have read of using a thimble on that finger (in addition to the one on the "pushing" finger, on the hand that's on top of the quilt, which you use to push the needle forward), but I find I lose a lot of sensitivity doing that and I can't make my stitches as small and even. So I put up with the soreness. Sometimes putting a medicated cream on the fingertips overnight helps. (Many quilters swear by "Bag Balm," which is actually sold to be put on cow udders. No fooling. I guess udders get sore and chafed...)
I'm pleased with how far I'm getting, though. I can see being done with this before the summer is out.
I also continued some on the Oscilliscope shawl.
This is not quite two full repeats of the pattern, plus the set-up rows. (There are six increasing repeats in all, then you do the repeats over again, but decreasing, to make it a triangle. One of the subtle things I like about knitting is the geometry of it.)
I'm not sure why it's called Oscilloscope; perhaps the person wanted to convey a sort of steampunkish sensibility. Or it could be that the original shawl was knit of a green yarn close to this color, and the person was put in mind of the green colored trace line that many oscilloscope screens used.
I'm a little disappointed that the slight shininess of the "Lustra" yarn doesn't show up in the photo, but the yarn "in person" is very pretty and makes for an interesting shawl. It also shows the individual stitches very nicely, which is a bonus. (Some yarns tend to obscure the stitches.)
***
On an unrelated topic, I was talking a few days ago about being an introvert and that some people don't seem to realize/understand that about me because I am happy speaking publicly, I'm not "shy" in the typical sense, and I am not agoraphobic. Well, one of the people I follow on Twitter posted this:
10 Myths about Introverts Very true. Especially the last one, about how introverts should "fix" themselves and become extroverts. I don't WANT to be an extrovert. I'm pretty happy with how I am and I got really tired in college of people wanting to "fix" me and make me more of a social butterfly.
Oh, also #3, about how introverts are sometimes perceived as "rude" because we don't always do the small-talk-stuff first. I do this. If I call someone on the phone, I will usually launch right away into the meaning for the call; I have to stop and remind myself that most people expect you to ask how they are, what the weather is like (if they are in a different region of the country), etc. I think that's why I got the (probably false) idea at one point that I was maybe slightly Asperger-y, because I'd call someone up on the phone and immediately present my question or problem or whatever and they'd be all, "Wait, wait, back up, aren't you going to ask how my kids are first?"
Of course, the engineers I know don't seem to have a problem with it.
Also, I find I need a "reason" to talk; it's hard for me to come up with "shoot the breeze" topics. But if someone asks me about my research, or my knitting, or what I think of some topic...I can be off and running. But sometimes it's hard for me to come up with topics on my own, I think part of it is that I believe a lot of people aren't interested in my interests or something.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Borders of quilts
1. I decided to start quilting the outer border of the quilt currently in the frame, because I came across a spot where my original marking was still intact enough that I could see it to work from, and I can use the worked bit as a reference for areas where it's been worn off. That means I'm moving more slowly, but, once I finish an area, that area is done.
I'm excited to think of getting this quilt finished. Even though it's 100+ degrees out (well, if you count the heat index), I'm still quilting on it. I do have to have the ceiling fan going and take frequent breaks, just because it's too much to have numerous pounds of fabric + batting sitting in your lap for very long.
2. When I do quilt the Dozen Roses quilt top (I think that's the next-next quilt, after I do the Sea Glass one), I found the BEST border for it. This is a quilt that has cutesy animal fabrics in it, right? Going through some of the accumulated quilt stencils I own, I found a bag from the Nancy's Notions shop in Wisconsin. (I'm thinking I stopped there after the Prairie Conference meetings in 2004 - that was the last time I was up that way).
It was mice. A cute, cartoony-simple bird's eye view of mice. And it's just the right width. (Oh, hey, this is the very stencil). So I tucked it in with the top and backing so I'd be able to find it (quickly) and use it when it comes time to mark and baste that quilt.
(I don't know if it's foolhardy to baste quilts any in advance before putting them in the frame - on the one hand, it would be nice to have them just DONE because basting is kind of a pain, but on the other, I'd be afraid of creases and wrinkles getting into the top or backing during the time they are waiting, stored.)
I'm excited to think of getting this quilt finished. Even though it's 100+ degrees out (well, if you count the heat index), I'm still quilting on it. I do have to have the ceiling fan going and take frequent breaks, just because it's too much to have numerous pounds of fabric + batting sitting in your lap for very long.
2. When I do quilt the Dozen Roses quilt top (I think that's the next-next quilt, after I do the Sea Glass one), I found the BEST border for it. This is a quilt that has cutesy animal fabrics in it, right? Going through some of the accumulated quilt stencils I own, I found a bag from the Nancy's Notions shop in Wisconsin. (I'm thinking I stopped there after the Prairie Conference meetings in 2004 - that was the last time I was up that way).
It was mice. A cute, cartoony-simple bird's eye view of mice. And it's just the right width. (Oh, hey, this is the very stencil). So I tucked it in with the top and backing so I'd be able to find it (quickly) and use it when it comes time to mark and baste that quilt.
(I don't know if it's foolhardy to baste quilts any in advance before putting them in the frame - on the one hand, it would be nice to have them just DONE because basting is kind of a pain, but on the other, I'd be afraid of creases and wrinkles getting into the top or backing during the time they are waiting, stored.)
Friday, June 24, 2011
New project time!
But first, more Twitterstream goodness. A guy dresses up as the (in)famous Nyancat and posts it on YouTube.
It occurs to me that a Nyancat halloween costume would not be that hard to construct: a pair of ears, a cardboard sandwich-board sort of thing painted to look like a Pop-tart (or for true non-stop nyan.cat authenticity, a piece of toast), and a rainbow cape. (Aren't the "pride flags" rainbows? A person could buy one of those and use it).
Not that I'd actually do that, you know. It's been a long time since I actually dressed up for halloween.
Or I can see a new "superhero" - Nyan Cat. Would have a rainbow "superman" cape. Not sure what its powers would be beyond flying. Maybe annoying evildoers into submission?
****
Anyway, last night, after quilting on the quilt for a while, I decided I wanted to start a new project. I had been flipping through the Fall 2010 KnitScene (which is, I think, the "best" issue, in the sense of having the highest proportion of things I actually want to knit in it). I saw the Oscilliscope shawl (a worsted weight triangular (but knit edge-to-edge) shawl that's actually kind of more like a big scarf.
I had bought yarn for this on my Longview foray last October, so I went and found the yarn, wound it off, and started.
The pattern is one of those patterns that looks wonky at first - or at least it did to me - but once I got going on it I saw how it worked. (There's a lesson in that. I have experienced so many things - lab procedures, ways of playing things on the piano, cooking methods - where you read about it and go either, "That will never work" or "I don't GET it" but when you just try following the directions, suddenly it clicks when you're actually doing it. I don't know if that's true of many people or not, but I do find in some cases just trusting the directions until you're SURE they're wrong (by having tried them) is necessary.)
I'm using a different yarn than the one called for - I'm using Berroco's "Lustra," which is a wool/tencel blend. I'm not sure I'd want it for a sweater or another right-next-to-the-skin type of garment because it has an odd texture - not exactly scratchy but kind of "synthetic-y" feeling. I know they say Tencel breathes but I get the feeling a garment made this way would be very warm and kind of heavy.
However, it's an extremely *pretty* yarn for something like this scarf - the Tencel gives it sort of a sheen (well, hence the name). The color is my standard greyish-green color that I seem to pick for so many things. (Well, the original scarf was kind of that color, and when I saw the Lustra in the grey-green color, I decided I wanted the scarf in that color).
I may photograph it this weekend - I finished the first 28 set-up rows, so it's going fairly quickly at this point.
I also started the right front on Potter a few days ago, I'm up to the point where you begin decreasing, but I want to be sure to work on it only when I can give it my full attention because of the whole "reverse shaping as written for left side" thing. (I also found buttons for it yesterday: JoAnn's has a whole line of "green" buttons, and there was one made of recycled plastic that looked pleasingly like tortoiseshell, so I decided to get those for the sweater. The added bonus is that they are quite lightweight, so they shouldn't drag down the front of the sweater.
It occurs to me that a Nyancat halloween costume would not be that hard to construct: a pair of ears, a cardboard sandwich-board sort of thing painted to look like a Pop-tart (or for true non-stop nyan.cat authenticity, a piece of toast), and a rainbow cape. (Aren't the "pride flags" rainbows? A person could buy one of those and use it).
Not that I'd actually do that, you know. It's been a long time since I actually dressed up for halloween.
Or I can see a new "superhero" - Nyan Cat. Would have a rainbow "superman" cape. Not sure what its powers would be beyond flying. Maybe annoying evildoers into submission?
****
Anyway, last night, after quilting on the quilt for a while, I decided I wanted to start a new project. I had been flipping through the Fall 2010 KnitScene (which is, I think, the "best" issue, in the sense of having the highest proportion of things I actually want to knit in it). I saw the Oscilliscope shawl (a worsted weight triangular (but knit edge-to-edge) shawl that's actually kind of more like a big scarf.
I had bought yarn for this on my Longview foray last October, so I went and found the yarn, wound it off, and started.
The pattern is one of those patterns that looks wonky at first - or at least it did to me - but once I got going on it I saw how it worked. (There's a lesson in that. I have experienced so many things - lab procedures, ways of playing things on the piano, cooking methods - where you read about it and go either, "That will never work" or "I don't GET it" but when you just try following the directions, suddenly it clicks when you're actually doing it. I don't know if that's true of many people or not, but I do find in some cases just trusting the directions until you're SURE they're wrong (by having tried them) is necessary.)
I'm using a different yarn than the one called for - I'm using Berroco's "Lustra," which is a wool/tencel blend. I'm not sure I'd want it for a sweater or another right-next-to-the-skin type of garment because it has an odd texture - not exactly scratchy but kind of "synthetic-y" feeling. I know they say Tencel breathes but I get the feeling a garment made this way would be very warm and kind of heavy.
However, it's an extremely *pretty* yarn for something like this scarf - the Tencel gives it sort of a sheen (well, hence the name). The color is my standard greyish-green color that I seem to pick for so many things. (Well, the original scarf was kind of that color, and when I saw the Lustra in the grey-green color, I decided I wanted the scarf in that color).
I may photograph it this weekend - I finished the first 28 set-up rows, so it's going fairly quickly at this point.
I also started the right front on Potter a few days ago, I'm up to the point where you begin decreasing, but I want to be sure to work on it only when I can give it my full attention because of the whole "reverse shaping as written for left side" thing. (I also found buttons for it yesterday: JoAnn's has a whole line of "green" buttons, and there was one made of recycled plastic that looked pleasingly like tortoiseshell, so I decided to get those for the sweater. The added bonus is that they are quite lightweight, so they shouldn't drag down the front of the sweater.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
This and that
I did go down to Sherman. I needed to get out and away from town for a while.
It was kind of a mixed bag. At the restaurant I went to for lunch, there was a family (parents, grandma, a couple of under-7 kids). One of the boys was acting up - didn't want to eat what he ordered, and was generally being fussy. So his grandmother commented to him, "I am going to stop at the store and buy a dress and sandals for you. Because if you're going to ACT like a girl, you're going to DRESS like a girl."
Wait, what? Wait, really, seriously, grandma, you SAID that?
First off: as a former (chronologically-speaking) girl, and someone who still sometimes jocularly refers to herself as a girl, I take great issue with that statement. Being "fussy" is not girl behavior. It's either fussy, spoiled-human behavior, or overwhelmed-little-kid-who-maybe-needs-some-fresh-air-and-a-few-quiet-minutes behavior.
And second: punishing a child by forcing them to dress as the other gender? That's just all kinds of messed up. I know parents and grandparents can get frustrated and kids can be real pills, but...that just seemed wrong to me.
It made me really sad. I almost went and said something, but I decided it was one of those "discretion is the better part of valor" situations, because it would have been sticking my nose in a situation and if the woman could say that to her grandson, what might she say or do to me?
People make me crazy.
I will say on a happier note, another woman - either a grandma or an older mother - came in with her son/grandson, and when they got their food, he sat and held hands with her while she asked a blessing over it, and then he smiled at her and started to eat.
***
I did buy a few craft supplies - one place I was at had their cotton quilt batts on a good sale, so I got another one to have on hand, since I'm planning to do more hand quilting in the future. (And this is where I go all survivalist: I find myself thinking stuff like, "Well, if the economy REALLY tanks, if things get really bad, at least I'll have supplies on hand to amuse myself by hand quilting." Well, that, and the piles and piles of yarn I have on hand. If we were to get a new Ice Age and wool socks would become as good as currency, I'd be all set.)
I also splurged at the Target on a tiny jar of rosewater-scented cold cream ("Boots-the-Chemist" - Target carries their stuff, and I like it partly because it seems to work well for me, but also partly because of having read in British books about people "going down to Boots'" for something or other.) I thought briefly about how I could buy a big tub of Noxema for less, and it would do about the same thing, but you know...I like rosewater scent. And there's a point where petty economies wear on me. I did also buy my annual (or every year-and-a-half) supply of t.p.: one of those great big multiroll packs. Which is expensive to do all at once, but at least I can put it in my "storage" closet and not have to think about buying any for a long time. (And I guess 24 rolls for $15 isn't too bad.)
***
I noticed a couple of car models I've not seen before. One I just saw briefly, it had what looked like "Kompressor" emblazoned on the back. (that may have been the engine option and not the actual model, according to Google).
It seems like car names are getting odder. (Well, my own car - Edge - is odd enough, but I just tell myself that the engineer in charge of its design was a fan of the slightly-lesser-known members of U2).
I also saw a Nissan Armada, which immediately made me chuckle and think that one of Nissan's competitors (I guess they don't really have a rival, like the Ford-Chevy rivalry) should come up with the RoyalNavy. Or perhaps the LordHoward.
I do wonder if manufacturers will eventually run out of names, or if they'll start recycling names from the past, figuring 90% of consumers won't recognize them, or they'll just do random combinations of letters and numbers (Well, some manufacturers already seem to do this). Or maybe they could use punctuation marks. (Though I suspect there wouldn't be much market for the ":" or the ";" considering what you would have to say when someone asked you what you drove.)
Or maybe they could do the Emoticon. And the particular options package would be determined by the type of emoticon. (Is there an emoticon that connotes jerkiness? Because I think that's the option that a few of my fellow drivers have gone for.)
***
And it's just really hot again. I do not approve of the heat. I do not like to think that this might last until October.
It was kind of a mixed bag. At the restaurant I went to for lunch, there was a family (parents, grandma, a couple of under-7 kids). One of the boys was acting up - didn't want to eat what he ordered, and was generally being fussy. So his grandmother commented to him, "I am going to stop at the store and buy a dress and sandals for you. Because if you're going to ACT like a girl, you're going to DRESS like a girl."
Wait, what? Wait, really, seriously, grandma, you SAID that?
First off: as a former (chronologically-speaking) girl, and someone who still sometimes jocularly refers to herself as a girl, I take great issue with that statement. Being "fussy" is not girl behavior. It's either fussy, spoiled-human behavior, or overwhelmed-little-kid-who-maybe-needs-some-fresh-air-and-a-few-quiet-minutes behavior.
And second: punishing a child by forcing them to dress as the other gender? That's just all kinds of messed up. I know parents and grandparents can get frustrated and kids can be real pills, but...that just seemed wrong to me.
It made me really sad. I almost went and said something, but I decided it was one of those "discretion is the better part of valor" situations, because it would have been sticking my nose in a situation and if the woman could say that to her grandson, what might she say or do to me?
People make me crazy.
I will say on a happier note, another woman - either a grandma or an older mother - came in with her son/grandson, and when they got their food, he sat and held hands with her while she asked a blessing over it, and then he smiled at her and started to eat.
***
I did buy a few craft supplies - one place I was at had their cotton quilt batts on a good sale, so I got another one to have on hand, since I'm planning to do more hand quilting in the future. (And this is where I go all survivalist: I find myself thinking stuff like, "Well, if the economy REALLY tanks, if things get really bad, at least I'll have supplies on hand to amuse myself by hand quilting." Well, that, and the piles and piles of yarn I have on hand. If we were to get a new Ice Age and wool socks would become as good as currency, I'd be all set.)
I also splurged at the Target on a tiny jar of rosewater-scented cold cream ("Boots-the-Chemist" - Target carries their stuff, and I like it partly because it seems to work well for me, but also partly because of having read in British books about people "going down to Boots'" for something or other.) I thought briefly about how I could buy a big tub of Noxema for less, and it would do about the same thing, but you know...I like rosewater scent. And there's a point where petty economies wear on me. I did also buy my annual (or every year-and-a-half) supply of t.p.: one of those great big multiroll packs. Which is expensive to do all at once, but at least I can put it in my "storage" closet and not have to think about buying any for a long time. (And I guess 24 rolls for $15 isn't too bad.)
***
I noticed a couple of car models I've not seen before. One I just saw briefly, it had what looked like "Kompressor" emblazoned on the back. (that may have been the engine option and not the actual model, according to Google).
It seems like car names are getting odder. (Well, my own car - Edge - is odd enough, but I just tell myself that the engineer in charge of its design was a fan of the slightly-lesser-known members of U2).
I also saw a Nissan Armada, which immediately made me chuckle and think that one of Nissan's competitors (I guess they don't really have a rival, like the Ford-Chevy rivalry) should come up with the RoyalNavy. Or perhaps the LordHoward.
I do wonder if manufacturers will eventually run out of names, or if they'll start recycling names from the past, figuring 90% of consumers won't recognize them, or they'll just do random combinations of letters and numbers (Well, some manufacturers already seem to do this). Or maybe they could use punctuation marks. (Though I suspect there wouldn't be much market for the ":" or the ";" considering what you would have to say when someone asked you what you drove.)
Or maybe they could do the Emoticon. And the particular options package would be determined by the type of emoticon. (Is there an emoticon that connotes jerkiness? Because I think that's the option that a few of my fellow drivers have gone for.)
***
And it's just really hot again. I do not approve of the heat. I do not like to think that this might last until October.
Just worn out.
Luckily, not in the field today. My student had Finanacial Aid drama (they messed up, not her) yesterday afternoon, and that prevented her from getting some other stuff on campus taken care of, and campus is closed on Friday...so she said she needed today to clear up the other stuff, and could we go out tomorrow?
At first I was all kind of "oh, OKAY" and annoyed at financial aid for altering our schedule, but after the rest of the day I had yesterday I'm glad I have today off.
First off, a meeting to replace an instructor who is leaving. We may or may not be able to get our best candidate (funding at the level he would be coming in at is pretty miserable). And even at that, because of concerns about unleashing a new, unknown person on the first-semester pre-med majors, the decision was made to reshuffle schedules and have "known quantities" teach the intro pre-meds class, which is known as Principles I.
Guess who may be teaching Principles I for the first time in her life?
THIS GIRL.
I'm a bit...frustrated isn't the right word, because I understand completely the reason behind the decision and I support it. Maybe "dismayed" is better. I really don't want a new prep this fall because I've got lab classes out the wazoo and labs are exhausting to teach. And I'm really not an experty expert on what Principles I covers (DNA, cells, biochemistry). And it's a "hurdle" course, which means you deal with a lot of frustrated and upset people in a semester (I already do that with Gen Bio, but in this case the stakes are higher so I expect the upset will be greater). And maybe it's good for me to cycle out of Gen Bio for a change and not teach it for a couple semesters. (The new guy would handle Gen Bio, with is the basic-level non-majors class)
But, whatever. Just, whatever. If I have to do it I can and I will. (And I hope that the person we hire turns out to be wonderful and totally able to handle Principles I and I will only teach it for a semester. Or, who knows, maybe when our New Interim Chair shuffles the schedules, she'll find she doesn't have to give me a Principles I section after all.)
A brighter spot after that was piano lesson. The teacher deemed me "done" with "Evening in the Country" (though I have it by no means - at least, to my own mind - perfect - and I may continue to pick away at it just for my own satisfaction). The new piece added on (I'm already working on Bach's "Invention #1") is an arrangement of Joplin's "Easy Winners." (I looked in my Joplin book - which is the pieces as he originally wrote them - and the non-arranged version is harder, not least because it's in the key of A-flat, rather than G, which is what the arranged piece has been transposed to).
It pleased me though, to start picking out the melody with my right hand and realize: hey, I know this piece, I've heard it before.
Then there was an evening meeting involving a group I am a part of. It involved some interpersonal drama, not involving me (part of the reason I was upset was that I was completely not expecting the drama). A big issue came out (or what I assume was a big issue, from the reaction), it's always better to deal with that kind of stuff head-on than to let it simmer (and it had been apparently simmering for a while) but this reminds me of a couple things about me:
1. I am the classic introvert in the sense that dealing with other people both wears me out, and gets me keyed up/stressed out to the point where it takes me a long time to calm down. I think some people who don't know me well, or who have the (yes, I'm using the 'Ponies again) "Fluttershy" stereotype of the introverted woman (tiny little girly voice, rarely speaks, afraid of her own shadow) don't get that I'm an introvert. This is because I have absolutely zero problems with public speaking, I am generally pretty fearless about stuff "out in the world," I teach for a living, I can do stuff like cold-call a reserve manager and ask permission to do research on the site (even though I HATE doing that kind of thing, I still can force myself to), and with people I know well and like, I can be quite garrulous.
But - I really do get worn out by what I would term the messiness of human life. People's problems, people's emotions, conflict, all of that - it makes me want to run and hide.
2. I don't do well with displays of strong emotion. I think this is because in my family, we just aren't that emotional. Oh, I've seen my father angry over stuff - either trouble one of us got into as kids, or over some injustice dealt to a student of his - but the anger was short-lived and usually resolved into a "okay, there's a problem that needs to be fixed, how do we fix it?" And I think I've seen my father cry a grand total of four times during my growing up years, and those were all linked to deaths of people he cared deeply about. And even my mother, who you might expect (stereotypically) to be more emotional - I've very, very rarely seen her angry, and only seen her cry a few times. And while I have cried and gotten angry over the years, more often than not it's been in private, when I was alone, and felt like I could release the pent-up emotion. Or with anger, I'm like my dad - a few minutes of frustration followed by an "Okay, what do I need to do to fix this?"
Maybe that's not healthy - I know some people would argue it's not - but it's who I am. I'm just not big on expressing lots of emotion in front of others, and in fact, if I cry in front of another person (excepting things like funerals, where I feel like it's kind of OK), I consider it a personal failure.
So I see displays of strong emotion as a Big Fat Hairy Deal, rather than mere venting, which is what they may be for some people. So I tend to get freaked out when someone breaks down in tears in a meeting and leaves the room, I feel like a bomb has been dropped.
(Speaking of metaphorical bombs - that's also how I feel about strong language. I rarely if ever curse, and rarely if ever use words stronger than "damn." So if someone unleashes an f-bomb, I tend to think of it as a big fat deal. And with some people, that's just how they talk.)
3. I really shouldn't feel bad about wanting to be alone and spending as much time alone as I do. It's a survival strategy for me. (No fooling: it took me a solid half hour of pacing around my house just doing "displacement behavior" stuff - reshelving books, shuffling paper around, paying a few accumulated bills - to calm down enough after the meeting to think about going to bed).
I wonder how people like me manage in situations where, for example, they marry into a very demonstrative family, where people are always shouting at each other and loud and hugging each other and everything. I had friends whose families were like that growing up - where everything seemed very intense and overwhelming to me, but it was SOP for them - and I couldn't imagine living in a house where people shouted all the time and seemed to get angry or upset at the drop of a hat.
4. I still need to work on not getting all stiff and uncomfortable when people want to hug me. (At the end of the meeting, one of the people wanted to hug everyone to show that she still loved them). I know, I know, it's an expression of love but I'm not terribly comfortable hugging people I don't know WELL. I will hug family members but that is usually as part of a greeting after we've not seen each other for a long time, or part of a leave-taking.
5. I always thought I was thin-skinned and took stuff personally but I guess I'm not so much. At least, comparing how I would react to a given situation to how I see other people react sometimes.
So anyway. I'm going to go in this morning and do a couple of soil samples, then I think I'm going to do the grocery shopping I need to get done before the weekend. I might even go to Sherman, I don't know. Gas has come down a little bit here and I almost feel like I need some time away from town.
At first I was all kind of "oh, OKAY" and annoyed at financial aid for altering our schedule, but after the rest of the day I had yesterday I'm glad I have today off.
First off, a meeting to replace an instructor who is leaving. We may or may not be able to get our best candidate (funding at the level he would be coming in at is pretty miserable). And even at that, because of concerns about unleashing a new, unknown person on the first-semester pre-med majors, the decision was made to reshuffle schedules and have "known quantities" teach the intro pre-meds class, which is known as Principles I.
Guess who may be teaching Principles I for the first time in her life?
THIS GIRL.
I'm a bit...frustrated isn't the right word, because I understand completely the reason behind the decision and I support it. Maybe "dismayed" is better. I really don't want a new prep this fall because I've got lab classes out the wazoo and labs are exhausting to teach. And I'm really not an experty expert on what Principles I covers (DNA, cells, biochemistry). And it's a "hurdle" course, which means you deal with a lot of frustrated and upset people in a semester (I already do that with Gen Bio, but in this case the stakes are higher so I expect the upset will be greater). And maybe it's good for me to cycle out of Gen Bio for a change and not teach it for a couple semesters. (The new guy would handle Gen Bio, with is the basic-level non-majors class)
But, whatever. Just, whatever. If I have to do it I can and I will. (And I hope that the person we hire turns out to be wonderful and totally able to handle Principles I and I will only teach it for a semester. Or, who knows, maybe when our New Interim Chair shuffles the schedules, she'll find she doesn't have to give me a Principles I section after all.)
A brighter spot after that was piano lesson. The teacher deemed me "done" with "Evening in the Country" (though I have it by no means - at least, to my own mind - perfect - and I may continue to pick away at it just for my own satisfaction). The new piece added on (I'm already working on Bach's "Invention #1") is an arrangement of Joplin's "Easy Winners." (I looked in my Joplin book - which is the pieces as he originally wrote them - and the non-arranged version is harder, not least because it's in the key of A-flat, rather than G, which is what the arranged piece has been transposed to).
It pleased me though, to start picking out the melody with my right hand and realize: hey, I know this piece, I've heard it before.
Then there was an evening meeting involving a group I am a part of. It involved some interpersonal drama, not involving me (part of the reason I was upset was that I was completely not expecting the drama). A big issue came out (or what I assume was a big issue, from the reaction), it's always better to deal with that kind of stuff head-on than to let it simmer (and it had been apparently simmering for a while) but this reminds me of a couple things about me:
1. I am the classic introvert in the sense that dealing with other people both wears me out, and gets me keyed up/stressed out to the point where it takes me a long time to calm down. I think some people who don't know me well, or who have the (yes, I'm using the 'Ponies again) "Fluttershy" stereotype of the introverted woman (tiny little girly voice, rarely speaks, afraid of her own shadow) don't get that I'm an introvert. This is because I have absolutely zero problems with public speaking, I am generally pretty fearless about stuff "out in the world," I teach for a living, I can do stuff like cold-call a reserve manager and ask permission to do research on the site (even though I HATE doing that kind of thing, I still can force myself to), and with people I know well and like, I can be quite garrulous.
But - I really do get worn out by what I would term the messiness of human life. People's problems, people's emotions, conflict, all of that - it makes me want to run and hide.
2. I don't do well with displays of strong emotion. I think this is because in my family, we just aren't that emotional. Oh, I've seen my father angry over stuff - either trouble one of us got into as kids, or over some injustice dealt to a student of his - but the anger was short-lived and usually resolved into a "okay, there's a problem that needs to be fixed, how do we fix it?" And I think I've seen my father cry a grand total of four times during my growing up years, and those were all linked to deaths of people he cared deeply about. And even my mother, who you might expect (stereotypically) to be more emotional - I've very, very rarely seen her angry, and only seen her cry a few times. And while I have cried and gotten angry over the years, more often than not it's been in private, when I was alone, and felt like I could release the pent-up emotion. Or with anger, I'm like my dad - a few minutes of frustration followed by an "Okay, what do I need to do to fix this?"
Maybe that's not healthy - I know some people would argue it's not - but it's who I am. I'm just not big on expressing lots of emotion in front of others, and in fact, if I cry in front of another person (excepting things like funerals, where I feel like it's kind of OK), I consider it a personal failure.
So I see displays of strong emotion as a Big Fat Hairy Deal, rather than mere venting, which is what they may be for some people. So I tend to get freaked out when someone breaks down in tears in a meeting and leaves the room, I feel like a bomb has been dropped.
(Speaking of metaphorical bombs - that's also how I feel about strong language. I rarely if ever curse, and rarely if ever use words stronger than "damn." So if someone unleashes an f-bomb, I tend to think of it as a big fat deal. And with some people, that's just how they talk.)
3. I really shouldn't feel bad about wanting to be alone and spending as much time alone as I do. It's a survival strategy for me. (No fooling: it took me a solid half hour of pacing around my house just doing "displacement behavior" stuff - reshelving books, shuffling paper around, paying a few accumulated bills - to calm down enough after the meeting to think about going to bed).
I wonder how people like me manage in situations where, for example, they marry into a very demonstrative family, where people are always shouting at each other and loud and hugging each other and everything. I had friends whose families were like that growing up - where everything seemed very intense and overwhelming to me, but it was SOP for them - and I couldn't imagine living in a house where people shouted all the time and seemed to get angry or upset at the drop of a hat.
4. I still need to work on not getting all stiff and uncomfortable when people want to hug me. (At the end of the meeting, one of the people wanted to hug everyone to show that she still loved them). I know, I know, it's an expression of love but I'm not terribly comfortable hugging people I don't know WELL. I will hug family members but that is usually as part of a greeting after we've not seen each other for a long time, or part of a leave-taking.
5. I always thought I was thin-skinned and took stuff personally but I guess I'm not so much. At least, comparing how I would react to a given situation to how I see other people react sometimes.
So anyway. I'm going to go in this morning and do a couple of soil samples, then I think I'm going to do the grocery shopping I need to get done before the weekend. I might even go to Sherman, I don't know. Gas has come down a little bit here and I almost feel like I need some time away from town.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Gave me giggles
Okay, I admit this is one of those other things (like the nyan-nyan cat edited into a scene from Star Wars) that some people would consider somewhat "blasphemous." But, as someone who actually watches the show referenced here (and yes, likes it, and yes, might react just that way to unexpectedly finding it coming on the television), this gave me the giggles.
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see more Lol Celebs
Dodged a bullet
We were supposed to have huge storms last night. ("With hail to the size of ping-pong balls," one of the meteorologists prophesied. I, having spent my formative years watching "Captain Kangaroo" every morning, thought of Bunny Rabbit and his eternal practical joke...)
We did get horrible wind last night. There are dozens of small branches down in my yard, a neighbor's weeping willow split, and it looks like part of a sycamore down the street broke off and fell.
We also had a couple brief power outages. One of them happened WHILE the airconditioning unit was running, which I have learned is a Bad Thing. (Once, when the thing quit working - blown circuit or somesuch, I forget what it was but I had to get the HVAC dudes out to fix it - it was after it experienced a power outage while running (or perhaps it was the power surge when the power went back on).
I tried not to think too much of it and go back to sleep. Then I heard some funny sort of thumping noises.
Damn.
Yeah, something had happened to the AC unit. It wasn't running evenly, it was making noise, and it was not producing cool air. (I can check that by going and feeling of the vent in the bathroom - if the tiles in front of the vent don't feel cold on my bare feet while the AC is running, something's wrong.)
So I shut the thing down from the switch on the thermostat and thought about how on earth I would find time - with all the fieldwork - to get people out to fix it.
I slept badly for the rest of the night.
I got up, found out via e-mail that one of my research students may have a broken ankle (thrown from a horse, argle bargle). I called the other to see what her preference was...she remarked on the downed branches and speculated that the research area, if they had any branch losses, might be inaccessible until the roads were cleared. Also, there was a chance (well, there still is) of us getting another morning storm. (we haven't yet, but the sky is darkening)
So we decided to bail on research for today.
So I called the HVAC guys I use. Had to leave a message as they were not there yet for the day. Then I decided on a whim to try turning the breaker to the AC off, letting it sit, then turning everything back on to see if the noise was still happening. Kind of like rebooting a stuck computer.
But I also started cleaning. My house had got in a state and (a) I needed to clean it and (b) I can't stand having some workman out to the house without me at least making a PRETENSE of cleaning it. (Also, I clean while they're there, it's a "displacement behavior" to cover my distress over having strange people in my house)
I tried the power-down, power-back-up on the AC. It came on. Didn't make weird noises. Started blowing cold air.
I continued to clean and let it cycle a couple of times, gradually inching the thermostat back down to where I normally keep it (even though it was not TERRIBLY warm out, it had gotten up to 80 in the house during the time I had the AC off.)
So far, so good. I called my dad, who knows marginally more than I do about how these things work and he thought I should be safe - that the unit just needed to reset itself.
I still decided to accept the service call when the guys called back. I figured it was better to pay the charge of a service call and be safe, than to risk looking at buying a new AC unit later on this summer. (It's been incredibly hot here - like August hot - and the thing has been working hard since its last checkup).
They pronounced it good - nothing wrong with the electrical system, sufficient refrigerant. They did clean it, and clean out the drain, which I could have done, but at least that gave them something to do as part of the call. I don't feel bad about paying for a service call to hear that the unit is all right; I'd much rather have the peace of mind.
And I have a mostly-clean house. I'm done with the "public" rooms (well, other than the bathroom, which I'm going to tackle next), and then I'm going to do a little bit in my bedroom and the guest room.
If I work up the energy later on - after lunch - I have a chapter to evaluate for a textbook (which will more than pay the cost of the service call...)
We did get horrible wind last night. There are dozens of small branches down in my yard, a neighbor's weeping willow split, and it looks like part of a sycamore down the street broke off and fell.
We also had a couple brief power outages. One of them happened WHILE the airconditioning unit was running, which I have learned is a Bad Thing. (Once, when the thing quit working - blown circuit or somesuch, I forget what it was but I had to get the HVAC dudes out to fix it - it was after it experienced a power outage while running (or perhaps it was the power surge when the power went back on).
I tried not to think too much of it and go back to sleep. Then I heard some funny sort of thumping noises.
Damn.
Yeah, something had happened to the AC unit. It wasn't running evenly, it was making noise, and it was not producing cool air. (I can check that by going and feeling of the vent in the bathroom - if the tiles in front of the vent don't feel cold on my bare feet while the AC is running, something's wrong.)
So I shut the thing down from the switch on the thermostat and thought about how on earth I would find time - with all the fieldwork - to get people out to fix it.
I slept badly for the rest of the night.
I got up, found out via e-mail that one of my research students may have a broken ankle (thrown from a horse, argle bargle). I called the other to see what her preference was...she remarked on the downed branches and speculated that the research area, if they had any branch losses, might be inaccessible until the roads were cleared. Also, there was a chance (well, there still is) of us getting another morning storm. (we haven't yet, but the sky is darkening)
So we decided to bail on research for today.
So I called the HVAC guys I use. Had to leave a message as they were not there yet for the day. Then I decided on a whim to try turning the breaker to the AC off, letting it sit, then turning everything back on to see if the noise was still happening. Kind of like rebooting a stuck computer.
But I also started cleaning. My house had got in a state and (a) I needed to clean it and (b) I can't stand having some workman out to the house without me at least making a PRETENSE of cleaning it. (Also, I clean while they're there, it's a "displacement behavior" to cover my distress over having strange people in my house)
I tried the power-down, power-back-up on the AC. It came on. Didn't make weird noises. Started blowing cold air.
I continued to clean and let it cycle a couple of times, gradually inching the thermostat back down to where I normally keep it (even though it was not TERRIBLY warm out, it had gotten up to 80 in the house during the time I had the AC off.)
So far, so good. I called my dad, who knows marginally more than I do about how these things work and he thought I should be safe - that the unit just needed to reset itself.
I still decided to accept the service call when the guys called back. I figured it was better to pay the charge of a service call and be safe, than to risk looking at buying a new AC unit later on this summer. (It's been incredibly hot here - like August hot - and the thing has been working hard since its last checkup).
They pronounced it good - nothing wrong with the electrical system, sufficient refrigerant. They did clean it, and clean out the drain, which I could have done, but at least that gave them something to do as part of the call. I don't feel bad about paying for a service call to hear that the unit is all right; I'd much rather have the peace of mind.
And I have a mostly-clean house. I'm done with the "public" rooms (well, other than the bathroom, which I'm going to tackle next), and then I'm going to do a little bit in my bedroom and the guest room.
If I work up the energy later on - after lunch - I have a chapter to evaluate for a textbook (which will more than pay the cost of the service call...)
Monday, June 20, 2011
Lucked into treasures...
One of my research students is in the process of "downsizing" a bit. (Her eventual plan is to take a Corps of Engineers position where she will be moving about a good bit - she has bought a large "self-contained" travel trailer and plans to move into that. That's not the life I'd want, but she seems to be excited by the prospect, so...)
Anyway, she's shedding a few things that she either bought over the years or that came down to her. She was asking my advice on getting rid of some of the items and I suggested seeing if some of the antique shops (many of them are vintage kitchen items) would take them. She replied that she'd rather find someone she knew who would use and/or treasure the items, and just pass them on.
So she gave me a glass rolling pin she had had as a decoration in her kitchen. These are cool old things: you can fill them with ice (this pin has a zinc (? I think) screw cap on one end, so you can open it up, put ice in it: all the better for making delicate dough). Do I ever make pie crust? Not really, but I've kind of wanted a glass rolling pin for a while, so I said I'd take it when she offered it.
Well, one day last week when we were driving back from a field site I was talking about having gone to the quilt show here in town and about how I did some quilting. She didn't say anything at the moment but came in this morning with a good-sized bag of items her grandmother had left - some finished blocks, some pieces cut for blocks (some look like feedsack prints), lots of patterns, some designs drawn out on stationery from the M-K-T Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. (I don't know how old it is, but it's probably not super old, as there are ZIP codes on the stationery, and I think those started up in the 60s). There's even a large old embroidery-transfer design for a peacock with a sort of Asian-style background. (If I want to use it I will probably wind up needing to trace it, as the transfer dye has bled to blank areas of the paper over the years).
I will have to go through all of it and look at it (and possibly air it out a bit; my student is a smoker) but it looks like there's some wonderful stuff there.
I was exclaiming over it and thanking her and she kind of shrugged and said, "There's no one in my family who would be even interested in it. And I don't really sew myself, and I won't have much room..." So I'm now the steward of yet another person's quilt history. I don't mind that at all. I might try to finish up (hand sewing; her grandmother had hand-sewn the blocks that are together) the unfinished blocks.
Another thing I'm contemplating: taking one of the finished blocks, handquilting it, making it into a throw-pillow top, and giving it to her as a graduation present (she is supposed to graduate in December). I don't know if she'd want something like that in her new smaller quarters, but it might be a nice memento of her grandmother. I already see one block in there that would be nice for that.
I'll post photos of some of the blocks once I've gone through them. Some look like 60s-era fabric, some look earlier. (The block I'm thinking of doing up into a pillow for my student looks like earlier fabric.)
Anyway, she's shedding a few things that she either bought over the years or that came down to her. She was asking my advice on getting rid of some of the items and I suggested seeing if some of the antique shops (many of them are vintage kitchen items) would take them. She replied that she'd rather find someone she knew who would use and/or treasure the items, and just pass them on.
So she gave me a glass rolling pin she had had as a decoration in her kitchen. These are cool old things: you can fill them with ice (this pin has a zinc (? I think) screw cap on one end, so you can open it up, put ice in it: all the better for making delicate dough). Do I ever make pie crust? Not really, but I've kind of wanted a glass rolling pin for a while, so I said I'd take it when she offered it.
Well, one day last week when we were driving back from a field site I was talking about having gone to the quilt show here in town and about how I did some quilting. She didn't say anything at the moment but came in this morning with a good-sized bag of items her grandmother had left - some finished blocks, some pieces cut for blocks (some look like feedsack prints), lots of patterns, some designs drawn out on stationery from the M-K-T Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. (I don't know how old it is, but it's probably not super old, as there are ZIP codes on the stationery, and I think those started up in the 60s). There's even a large old embroidery-transfer design for a peacock with a sort of Asian-style background. (If I want to use it I will probably wind up needing to trace it, as the transfer dye has bled to blank areas of the paper over the years).
I will have to go through all of it and look at it (and possibly air it out a bit; my student is a smoker) but it looks like there's some wonderful stuff there.
I was exclaiming over it and thanking her and she kind of shrugged and said, "There's no one in my family who would be even interested in it. And I don't really sew myself, and I won't have much room..." So I'm now the steward of yet another person's quilt history. I don't mind that at all. I might try to finish up (hand sewing; her grandmother had hand-sewn the blocks that are together) the unfinished blocks.
Another thing I'm contemplating: taking one of the finished blocks, handquilting it, making it into a throw-pillow top, and giving it to her as a graduation present (she is supposed to graduate in December). I don't know if she'd want something like that in her new smaller quarters, but it might be a nice memento of her grandmother. I already see one block in there that would be nice for that.
I'll post photos of some of the blocks once I've gone through them. Some look like 60s-era fabric, some look earlier. (The block I'm thinking of doing up into a pillow for my student looks like earlier fabric.)
Probably a Photoshop
But it still made me laugh. (And arguably theologically correct.)
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see more Memebase and check out our Troll Face lols!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Some weekend oddments
I picked away at various things this weekend. I had thought of going in to work on soils on Saturday, but the intensive work on Thursday and Friday led to something like a repetitive-stress injury (at any rate, the shoulder of the arm I use to "stir" the soil was sore and feels kind of stiff). So I worked on other things, changing out projects as I decided what I was working on was making my shoulder uncomfortable.
I did do a little housecleaning and also took down the Easter decorations from the mantel (I know, I know: it's practically Independence Day. But I was busy and it was one of those things that was pushed away from my concentration).
I did leave the little clay bunny (It's not white clay - more like the heavy "everyday" sort of pottery made of earthenware, so I can't really call it 'china' or 'porcelain.'). I like the bunny; there is something about it that I find aesthetically pleasing - the shape, the smoothness, the color. So I left that, put up a few more artificial flowers, moved my tealight holders back to center stage, and called it good.
I also worked some on the borders of the quilt (Sadly, that quilting doesn't show up at all well in this photo - I'm just doing sort of a diagonal in-the-ditch quilting along each patch). It goes a lot faster than the quilting of the blocks did; I can see being done with this in not too much longer.
When that began to wear on my shoulder, I switched to sewing on the current quilt top. This is one out of fabrics gleaned from my stash, and I'm not sure how it's going to work in the end, the fabrics might come out all clashy, but we'll see. Here are a couple of the blocks (they are just very simple rectangles, then they are sewn into strips, and the strips are joined by sashing).
It may still surprise me. Actually, those blocks sitting together look nicer together than each did sitting alone.
I also finished off by working some on the embroidered pillowcases I've had in the hoop for a couple years. Like the quilt, I can now see the end of these, and so I've gained more motivation to work on them. (I just have some of the green outlining of the leaves, and some gold outlining of the "fence" left to do. Also that one butterfly.)
I did do a little housecleaning and also took down the Easter decorations from the mantel (I know, I know: it's practically Independence Day. But I was busy and it was one of those things that was pushed away from my concentration).
I did leave the little clay bunny (It's not white clay - more like the heavy "everyday" sort of pottery made of earthenware, so I can't really call it 'china' or 'porcelain.'). I like the bunny; there is something about it that I find aesthetically pleasing - the shape, the smoothness, the color. So I left that, put up a few more artificial flowers, moved my tealight holders back to center stage, and called it good.
I also worked some on the borders of the quilt (Sadly, that quilting doesn't show up at all well in this photo - I'm just doing sort of a diagonal in-the-ditch quilting along each patch). It goes a lot faster than the quilting of the blocks did; I can see being done with this in not too much longer.
When that began to wear on my shoulder, I switched to sewing on the current quilt top. This is one out of fabrics gleaned from my stash, and I'm not sure how it's going to work in the end, the fabrics might come out all clashy, but we'll see. Here are a couple of the blocks (they are just very simple rectangles, then they are sewn into strips, and the strips are joined by sashing).
It may still surprise me. Actually, those blocks sitting together look nicer together than each did sitting alone.
I also finished off by working some on the embroidered pillowcases I've had in the hoop for a couple years. Like the quilt, I can now see the end of these, and so I've gained more motivation to work on them. (I just have some of the green outlining of the leaves, and some gold outlining of the "fence" left to do. Also that one butterfly.)
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Some quality time
I hopped back and forth between projects yesterday afternoon and evening: got a fair amount done on the borders of the quilt in the frame, I also knit some on a pair of simple socks (the "teeny tiny giraffe" socks I mentioned before). And I knit some on the Miss Marple Shawl.
I do think I'm going to run short of yarn. And, the original pattern calls for doing a single-crochet border 'round the outside after it's done. I'm not sure I would want to do that even if I had enough yarn...I kind of like the looks of the plain garter-stitch edge.
But I do have an e-mail in to Allison at Simply Sock Yarn just to see if she might still have any of the same dyelot of the Silk Garden Sock that I have. (If not, fine. I probably will still order a "backup" ball anyway. But it would be super-nice if I could get the same dyelot). She's come through on customer service stuff before so I trust that if she has any of color S268, Lot A, she'll let me know and I'll be able to order it.
I also did a wee small bit of housecleaning and may do some more today.
I also might run down to the quilt shop...I think it's time for a new rotary-cutter blade. (And I have a full "discount card" - you buy a certain amount of stuff and then you get $20 off your next purchase of $20 or more. So I could also look for a backing fabric for one of the tops I completed recently...) I don't know. It's awfully hot out and going outside is not quite so appealing, however.
I do think I'm going to run short of yarn. And, the original pattern calls for doing a single-crochet border 'round the outside after it's done. I'm not sure I would want to do that even if I had enough yarn...I kind of like the looks of the plain garter-stitch edge.
But I do have an e-mail in to Allison at Simply Sock Yarn just to see if she might still have any of the same dyelot of the Silk Garden Sock that I have. (If not, fine. I probably will still order a "backup" ball anyway. But it would be super-nice if I could get the same dyelot). She's come through on customer service stuff before so I trust that if she has any of color S268, Lot A, she'll let me know and I'll be able to order it.
I also did a wee small bit of housecleaning and may do some more today.
I also might run down to the quilt shop...I think it's time for a new rotary-cutter blade. (And I have a full "discount card" - you buy a certain amount of stuff and then you get $20 off your next purchase of $20 or more. So I could also look for a backing fabric for one of the tops I completed recently...) I don't know. It's awfully hot out and going outside is not quite so appealing, however.
Friday, June 17, 2011
it's SpongeBob MushroomPants
Charles posted this on his Twitter stream and it was too wonderful not to re-post here: Newly discovered mushroom is named Spongiformia squarepantsii
They named it after SpongeBob! Part of it, I guess, was because it looked like a sea sponge, but it also has the odd property of being able to soak up water, be wrung out, and go back to its original size.
This is just evidence against the stereotype of scientists having neither senses of humor nor whimsy. (I suppose it's possible one of the researchers was thinking of his or her child and their fondness for the show when the fungus was named...but I've met enough adults who like SpongeBob to also believe that the namer could have been a SpongeBob fan).
And I bet Stephen Hillenburg(SpongeBob's creator, who is actually a marine biolgist) is delighted by this. (I remember the Far Side comic author Gary Larson was delighted when an entomologist named a species of sucking louse after him.)
They named it after SpongeBob! Part of it, I guess, was because it looked like a sea sponge, but it also has the odd property of being able to soak up water, be wrung out, and go back to its original size.
This is just evidence against the stereotype of scientists having neither senses of humor nor whimsy. (I suppose it's possible one of the researchers was thinking of his or her child and their fondness for the show when the fungus was named...but I've met enough adults who like SpongeBob to also believe that the namer could have been a SpongeBob fan).
And I bet Stephen Hillenburg(SpongeBob's creator, who is actually a marine biolgist) is delighted by this. (I remember the Far Side comic author Gary Larson was delighted when an entomologist named a species of sucking louse after him.)
Friday is now.
A few days of no-schedule time between now and the next sampling.
I already mowed the yard this morning - it needed it, and I find I am less prone to have serious problems from the heat first thing in the morning than last thing at night. (I use an old-fashioned reel-type mower, so I don't wake the neighbors if they're not up yet. And yes, I was out mowing before 7 am, so probably some of them weren't).
Now, I'm going to sort a few soil samples. Then go home and, I think, spend some "quality time" with the quilt. (I worked some on the Miss Marple shawl last night. I do think I'm going to run short of yarn but I'm waiting a bit - I might still be able to order more from Simply Sock Yarn, probably won't be the same dyelot, but it's probably better to have a slightly wonky dyelot (it's Noro, so it won't really show with the striping) than to do the other thing I thought to do and just truncate the shawl and have it be a three-pointed shawl I always fold in a certain way (to hid the missing fourth point).
I also thought some more about the shawl I want to make from the stripey "Pegasus" yarn. I found the lace pattern I was thinking of (it's actually called something like "Fern Stitch" but it looks like little falling feathers to me). I need to get out the graph paper and start charting - I can see how I'd increase for the shawl (basing it on other triangular shawls, like the Icarus shawl, where there are four increase points each increase row: one at each edge and one on either side of the center stitch) but I want to see if that will work for working in new repeats of the pattern. (I may play around a bit on a small scale with some leftover sock yarn, just to see what happens).
I also found a feather-inspired edging that I might try to work onto the shawl (Though I don't know: it's a pretty detailed lace that might fight with the color changes; the main feather pattern is pretty simple and will probably look fine).
If this actually WORKS, I will try to find some kind of free (or cheap)charting software I could use that would work with converting the file to a .pdf, and I will upload it as a free pattern on Ravelry. (This is probably a year or more out if it happens. And of course, if you're not a ravelry user, I could e-mail you a copy).
I will first have to do the pattern version of a literature search or examination of the "prior art," just to be sure no one else has come up with this; I don't want to seem to be inadvertently plagiarizing someone else's work, but so far I have not found any shawls exactly like what I am thinking of.
I'm kind of excited about this. I've designed socks before but socks are really pretty basic: you take the sock "blank" pattern and plug in your stitch or colorwork, adjusting the number of stitches as needed. But a shawl where you're going to have to work in new repeats of the pattern as the shawl grows, that's something different for me.
I already mowed the yard this morning - it needed it, and I find I am less prone to have serious problems from the heat first thing in the morning than last thing at night. (I use an old-fashioned reel-type mower, so I don't wake the neighbors if they're not up yet. And yes, I was out mowing before 7 am, so probably some of them weren't).
Now, I'm going to sort a few soil samples. Then go home and, I think, spend some "quality time" with the quilt. (I worked some on the Miss Marple shawl last night. I do think I'm going to run short of yarn but I'm waiting a bit - I might still be able to order more from Simply Sock Yarn, probably won't be the same dyelot, but it's probably better to have a slightly wonky dyelot (it's Noro, so it won't really show with the striping) than to do the other thing I thought to do and just truncate the shawl and have it be a three-pointed shawl I always fold in a certain way (to hid the missing fourth point).
I also thought some more about the shawl I want to make from the stripey "Pegasus" yarn. I found the lace pattern I was thinking of (it's actually called something like "Fern Stitch" but it looks like little falling feathers to me). I need to get out the graph paper and start charting - I can see how I'd increase for the shawl (basing it on other triangular shawls, like the Icarus shawl, where there are four increase points each increase row: one at each edge and one on either side of the center stitch) but I want to see if that will work for working in new repeats of the pattern. (I may play around a bit on a small scale with some leftover sock yarn, just to see what happens).
I also found a feather-inspired edging that I might try to work onto the shawl (Though I don't know: it's a pretty detailed lace that might fight with the color changes; the main feather pattern is pretty simple and will probably look fine).
If this actually WORKS, I will try to find some kind of free (or cheap)charting software I could use that would work with converting the file to a .pdf, and I will upload it as a free pattern on Ravelry. (This is probably a year or more out if it happens. And of course, if you're not a ravelry user, I could e-mail you a copy).
I will first have to do the pattern version of a literature search or examination of the "prior art," just to be sure no one else has come up with this; I don't want to seem to be inadvertently plagiarizing someone else's work, but so far I have not found any shawls exactly like what I am thinking of.
I'm kind of excited about this. I've designed socks before but socks are really pretty basic: you take the sock "blank" pattern and plug in your stitch or colorwork, adjusting the number of stitches as needed. But a shawl where you're going to have to work in new repeats of the pattern as the shawl grows, that's something different for me.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Eventually I'll learn
I had mentioned my dread of this meeting (which is now over) and also my having been blindsided by a very bad meeting that I wasn't expecting back in grad school, and a friend commented, "Once that kind of thing [being blindsided by an unexpected bad meeting] happens to you, it takes a long time to get over it fully."
With me, it may be even more difficult, because, to quote two different people in my life: "You're exceptionally good at dreading things, aren't you?" and "Don't borrow trouble, Erica." (That last from my father. I probably heard it a couple times a month for the 18 or so years I lived with my parents growing up). I have either a genetic (I'd argue genetic, because it showed up early, and also, I think more aspects of our personalities are genetic than we might care to admit) or learned tendency to expect things to be bad in the absence of information clearly to the contrary.
Yeah, to use an internet phrase, "Everything went better than expected." It was just a chit-chat type of meeting, coupled with a "who do you think would be a good candidate for the next chair?" (It threw me a bit that she wanted to meet over that; she had originally sent an e-mail asking for us to e-mail our suggestions.)
I had also been concerned because no one else in the department mentioned being invited to meet with her - but, derp, if she were going in alphabetical order, my surname would be the first one ANYWAY. (And also, a few folks are out of town).
I figured it was a "good" meeting because when I walked into the outer office, she came out of her inner office, all smiles, and said, "THERE she is!" (I was, for the record, a few minutes early.) And the first thing she did was to congratulate me again on the full professorship. (I guess it is kind of a big deal: another friend remarked that I had achieved that at an age some 10 years younger than most of the people she knew in academia.)
My mind had gone to all KINDS of bad places in the dark of night the days before the meeting. Even though the most potentially-embarrassing photograph of me on the internet is one I took myself, as a joke, of me (fully dressed) with a pancake on my head. And that when I Google search my name, 90% of what comes up that's linked directly to ME (and not another woman by the same name) is papers I've written, and the remaining 10% is pretty innocuous.
And my other big worry: that there'd been some kind of complaint against me, well, that probably would have involved HR more than her, or my department chair would have spoken to me first, or whatever.
And it wasn't even an arm-twisting session of "This person suggested you as the new chair and I REALLY WANT YOU TO DO IT." (I did subtly - or, *I* think, subtly, sometimes my "subtle hint" is something that flies over other people's heads - hint that I do not want it because of the volume of field research I do)
Then again: blessed are the pessimists, for they shall often be pleasantly surprised. Or something like that.
So now it's done. And four more of the soil samples have been gone through to find the remaining invertebrates in them. (I think I'll try to do three or four more tomorrow, as well: I want to get these done and also, I find I'm happier when I spend part of the day working on something and part of the day relaxing, than if I spend a whole big day working and then a whole big day relaxing.)
With me, it may be even more difficult, because, to quote two different people in my life: "You're exceptionally good at dreading things, aren't you?" and "Don't borrow trouble, Erica." (That last from my father. I probably heard it a couple times a month for the 18 or so years I lived with my parents growing up). I have either a genetic (I'd argue genetic, because it showed up early, and also, I think more aspects of our personalities are genetic than we might care to admit) or learned tendency to expect things to be bad in the absence of information clearly to the contrary.
Yeah, to use an internet phrase, "Everything went better than expected." It was just a chit-chat type of meeting, coupled with a "who do you think would be a good candidate for the next chair?" (It threw me a bit that she wanted to meet over that; she had originally sent an e-mail asking for us to e-mail our suggestions.)
I had also been concerned because no one else in the department mentioned being invited to meet with her - but, derp, if she were going in alphabetical order, my surname would be the first one ANYWAY. (And also, a few folks are out of town).
I figured it was a "good" meeting because when I walked into the outer office, she came out of her inner office, all smiles, and said, "THERE she is!" (I was, for the record, a few minutes early.) And the first thing she did was to congratulate me again on the full professorship. (I guess it is kind of a big deal: another friend remarked that I had achieved that at an age some 10 years younger than most of the people she knew in academia.)
My mind had gone to all KINDS of bad places in the dark of night the days before the meeting. Even though the most potentially-embarrassing photograph of me on the internet is one I took myself, as a joke, of me (fully dressed) with a pancake on my head. And that when I Google search my name, 90% of what comes up that's linked directly to ME (and not another woman by the same name) is papers I've written, and the remaining 10% is pretty innocuous.
And my other big worry: that there'd been some kind of complaint against me, well, that probably would have involved HR more than her, or my department chair would have spoken to me first, or whatever.
And it wasn't even an arm-twisting session of "This person suggested you as the new chair and I REALLY WANT YOU TO DO IT." (I did subtly - or, *I* think, subtly, sometimes my "subtle hint" is something that flies over other people's heads - hint that I do not want it because of the volume of field research I do)
Then again: blessed are the pessimists, for they shall often be pleasantly surprised. Or something like that.
So now it's done. And four more of the soil samples have been gone through to find the remaining invertebrates in them. (I think I'll try to do three or four more tomorrow, as well: I want to get these done and also, I find I'm happier when I spend part of the day working on something and part of the day relaxing, than if I spend a whole big day working and then a whole big day relaxing.)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Site 3 done
We finished up the third site today. (We have five to do - two sites left, two weeks left in June. I like how that is working out.).
This was an interesting site; the place we sampled Monday was awful (crawling bent double under greenbriar - "nature's barbed wire" as I remarked that day - and dealing with dense vegetation). Tuesday was an improvement. Today, we were in a very open area (I suspect it of flooding regularly - most of the trees there seemed older, as in "established before the lake filled in 1948" older). We found a bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), which surprised but pleased me because it's an "old friend" from Illinois forests. (We have some of the same species down here, but not many. I think this is the first bur oak I've seen in my sampling since I've lived here).
So we got done. Punted on going to see another area the invasive-species biologist excitedly told us about yesterday, because when we asked how to get there, we found out it was an hour's round trip (!)
So for the rest of the week, it's back to sorting through the soil samples I gathered BEFORE all of this started, and looking for the soil invertebrates. (I did one sample this morning while waiting on people to arrive for us to drive down to the site. I can do at most 3 samples in a day, because after that my eyes "go" from looking at the brightly-lit sample through the 'scope, so it's hard making time to get these done...I can't just knock them all out in a single long day like I could with some things.)
I'm also wondering if part of my malaise means I should start a new project...have something new to get excited about. I don't know. I really "should" start the right front of Potter, with all its dreaded "work as for left front BUT reverse shaping and DON'T FORGET TO PUT IN THE BUTTONHOLES" bit. Or try to finish the Miss Marple shawl (I knit on that a bit last night, wound up attaching the final ball of yarn. It's going to be very close whether or not I have enough (and if I was unlucky and this last ball turns out to be one of those wonky, few-yards-short balls that you sometimes get from Noro, I will not have enough).
(The joke in that case is "knit faster so you don't run out of yarn." Heh. Sometimes I do wish the world operated on Gracie Allen logic a little more than it does.)
I have three balls of the KnitPicks' "Chroma" sockweight yarn in the color called "Pegasus" (heh...bought before the current fondness for the MLP cartoons). I want to make some kind of a swoopy shawl out of it...it's a striping yarn, so I don't want the pattern to be too complex, or to be one of those picture-pattern shawls. So I don't know. I've still not run across anything that appeals. I picture a triangular shawl, but I wouldn't be averse to a rectangular one. I keep looking in my stitch dictionaries to see if there's something I could "plug in to" an existing triangular shawl pattern to have my "own" lace design in there. Maybe a leaf-lace? Or a feathery looking lace, seeing as the yarn is called "Pegasus"? (I know there's a feather pattern somewhere. I will have to find it. That might be what to do.)
This was an interesting site; the place we sampled Monday was awful (crawling bent double under greenbriar - "nature's barbed wire" as I remarked that day - and dealing with dense vegetation). Tuesday was an improvement. Today, we were in a very open area (I suspect it of flooding regularly - most of the trees there seemed older, as in "established before the lake filled in 1948" older). We found a bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), which surprised but pleased me because it's an "old friend" from Illinois forests. (We have some of the same species down here, but not many. I think this is the first bur oak I've seen in my sampling since I've lived here).
So we got done. Punted on going to see another area the invasive-species biologist excitedly told us about yesterday, because when we asked how to get there, we found out it was an hour's round trip (!)
So for the rest of the week, it's back to sorting through the soil samples I gathered BEFORE all of this started, and looking for the soil invertebrates. (I did one sample this morning while waiting on people to arrive for us to drive down to the site. I can do at most 3 samples in a day, because after that my eyes "go" from looking at the brightly-lit sample through the 'scope, so it's hard making time to get these done...I can't just knock them all out in a single long day like I could with some things.)
I'm also wondering if part of my malaise means I should start a new project...have something new to get excited about. I don't know. I really "should" start the right front of Potter, with all its dreaded "work as for left front BUT reverse shaping and DON'T FORGET TO PUT IN THE BUTTONHOLES" bit. Or try to finish the Miss Marple shawl (I knit on that a bit last night, wound up attaching the final ball of yarn. It's going to be very close whether or not I have enough (and if I was unlucky and this last ball turns out to be one of those wonky, few-yards-short balls that you sometimes get from Noro, I will not have enough).
(The joke in that case is "knit faster so you don't run out of yarn." Heh. Sometimes I do wish the world operated on Gracie Allen logic a little more than it does.)
I have three balls of the KnitPicks' "Chroma" sockweight yarn in the color called "Pegasus" (heh...bought before the current fondness for the MLP cartoons). I want to make some kind of a swoopy shawl out of it...it's a striping yarn, so I don't want the pattern to be too complex, or to be one of those picture-pattern shawls. So I don't know. I've still not run across anything that appeals. I picture a triangular shawl, but I wouldn't be averse to a rectangular one. I keep looking in my stitch dictionaries to see if there's something I could "plug in to" an existing triangular shawl pattern to have my "own" lace design in there. Maybe a leaf-lace? Or a feathery looking lace, seeing as the yarn is called "Pegasus"? (I know there's a feather pattern somewhere. I will have to find it. That might be what to do.)
One more day
One more day of fieldwork this week (we are going out at the later time today - one of the students, who doesn't always need to come and work, has a child that needs to be dropped off at daycare). At least I know that today the area we will be finishing up in will be an easier area to sample.
My first piano lesson is today.
The meeting I am dreading but probably should not dread is tomorrow. I am assuming that because my dean is super-prepared and has stuff together, if she had wanted me to bring anything (like something related to a grade challenge or student complaint), I would have been told. I also got to thinking, it's possible she wants to do a "here are our expectations for everyone who makes Full Professor," considering the fact that in some circles tenure is kind of under attack by commentators because they come to believe - from a few individuals who do this - that once people get tenure or promotion or something like Full Professor, that they stop working and stop producing and refuse to serve on committees and suchlike.
I would hope the fact that (a) I found myself much busier after I had achieved tenure and (b) it was hard to schedule this meeting even though I'm not formally teaching this summer, shows that I'm not one of those people.
But, she may need to express those expectations all the same, which is fine, and I understand that. (Hopefully that's what the meeting will be.)
I suppose it could also be "someone wants you to be chair," which, I think I have enough ammunition (without referring to my personality quirks) to suggest why I shouldn't do it, at least not know. (If I inherited my father's knee genes, I probably have about fifteen more years before they start to go. Let me do field research for that time and then I'll serve as chair, when I'm too beat-up to go in the field any more.)
Yeah, I know, I'm obsessing about this. I think this stems from the fact that our previous administration was SO hands-off (which I admit I kind of liked) that the only time you were asked to meet with someone was when there was some problem. And also, back when I was asked to leave grad school the first time? From the Big Research I school? I was blindsided by a meeting where I was not expecting to get that news. And one thing I've learned about myself is that I look to past experience as prognostication for the future, and I usually wind up hitting on the worst possible situation. (I don't, for example, think of my dissertation defense - which was successful and my committee didn't even deliberate that long, or what a colleague told me about the meeting to decide my tenure - that he almost didn't show up because he took the letter from the committee chair to mean "We only need to meet if someone isn't 100% sure of voting "yes.")
But whatever.
I also think I'm having my typical summer problems. It's not quite what Churchill referred to as the "black dog," perhaps it's more of a black puppy or black chihuahua. But I don't like heat, my allergies get to bothering me (I am once again to the point of developing random inexplicable hives), and I develop a case of Can't Really Be Bothered To and also a little bit of Nothing Much Interests Me.
At least once I get home. I can work up enough enthusiasm for the work in the mornings, but in the evenings...of late, I've been going to bed early and reading old Maigret mysteries instead of working on much. (My house is kind of in a state. And I wound up freezing some of the food I bought on a grocery run over the weekend because I don't have the energy to cook it right now.)
This happens in the summer. I think the heat - and the fact that I can never quite get the house as cool as I'd really like it to be (I'd love for it to be 72, but I'm afraid of the energy usage that would cause, and I'm afraid of burning out my older airconditioning unit, even though the HVAC dudes have pronounced it sound). So I sleep kind of badly, and the heat and the antihistamines I have to take every day give me kind of intense dreams (Not really scary or what some medications euphemise as "vivid," but just all kinds of junk thrown around in my mind overnight and I wake up sort of tired.) One dream last night: I was hosting what was termed an "intelligent but at-risk" teenaged girl at my house (I was also, for some reason, living with my parents and brother and sister-in-law). The girl had seemed very studious when I met her, interested in sea shells, wanting to learn, but by the time she got to my house, she was wanting to "go out" and asking me what people did for "fun after dark" in my town. And she had a bunch of health problems I was expected to deal with, and it was just exhausting and frustrating.
(I wonder if part of the whole having-dreams-packed-with-stuff is related to the fact that one of my co-workers is a talker. I realize how little I actually talk, except when I need to be talking, when I get around someone who is a real talker. She's a good worker and I like working with her, but I admit I find the constant talking a little overwhelming. I don't think I can say anything, though...)
I will feel a lot better when tomorrow's meeting is over and I know what it's about though.
My first piano lesson is today.
The meeting I am dreading but probably should not dread is tomorrow. I am assuming that because my dean is super-prepared and has stuff together, if she had wanted me to bring anything (like something related to a grade challenge or student complaint), I would have been told. I also got to thinking, it's possible she wants to do a "here are our expectations for everyone who makes Full Professor," considering the fact that in some circles tenure is kind of under attack by commentators because they come to believe - from a few individuals who do this - that once people get tenure or promotion or something like Full Professor, that they stop working and stop producing and refuse to serve on committees and suchlike.
I would hope the fact that (a) I found myself much busier after I had achieved tenure and (b) it was hard to schedule this meeting even though I'm not formally teaching this summer, shows that I'm not one of those people.
But, she may need to express those expectations all the same, which is fine, and I understand that. (Hopefully that's what the meeting will be.)
I suppose it could also be "someone wants you to be chair," which, I think I have enough ammunition (without referring to my personality quirks) to suggest why I shouldn't do it, at least not know. (If I inherited my father's knee genes, I probably have about fifteen more years before they start to go. Let me do field research for that time and then I'll serve as chair, when I'm too beat-up to go in the field any more.)
Yeah, I know, I'm obsessing about this. I think this stems from the fact that our previous administration was SO hands-off (which I admit I kind of liked) that the only time you were asked to meet with someone was when there was some problem. And also, back when I was asked to leave grad school the first time? From the Big Research I school? I was blindsided by a meeting where I was not expecting to get that news. And one thing I've learned about myself is that I look to past experience as prognostication for the future, and I usually wind up hitting on the worst possible situation. (I don't, for example, think of my dissertation defense - which was successful and my committee didn't even deliberate that long, or what a colleague told me about the meeting to decide my tenure - that he almost didn't show up because he took the letter from the committee chair to mean "We only need to meet if someone isn't 100% sure of voting "yes.")
But whatever.
I also think I'm having my typical summer problems. It's not quite what Churchill referred to as the "black dog," perhaps it's more of a black puppy or black chihuahua. But I don't like heat, my allergies get to bothering me (I am once again to the point of developing random inexplicable hives), and I develop a case of Can't Really Be Bothered To and also a little bit of Nothing Much Interests Me.
At least once I get home. I can work up enough enthusiasm for the work in the mornings, but in the evenings...of late, I've been going to bed early and reading old Maigret mysteries instead of working on much. (My house is kind of in a state. And I wound up freezing some of the food I bought on a grocery run over the weekend because I don't have the energy to cook it right now.)
This happens in the summer. I think the heat - and the fact that I can never quite get the house as cool as I'd really like it to be (I'd love for it to be 72, but I'm afraid of the energy usage that would cause, and I'm afraid of burning out my older airconditioning unit, even though the HVAC dudes have pronounced it sound). So I sleep kind of badly, and the heat and the antihistamines I have to take every day give me kind of intense dreams (Not really scary or what some medications euphemise as "vivid," but just all kinds of junk thrown around in my mind overnight and I wake up sort of tired.) One dream last night: I was hosting what was termed an "intelligent but at-risk" teenaged girl at my house (I was also, for some reason, living with my parents and brother and sister-in-law). The girl had seemed very studious when I met her, interested in sea shells, wanting to learn, but by the time she got to my house, she was wanting to "go out" and asking me what people did for "fun after dark" in my town. And she had a bunch of health problems I was expected to deal with, and it was just exhausting and frustrating.
(I wonder if part of the whole having-dreams-packed-with-stuff is related to the fact that one of my co-workers is a talker. I realize how little I actually talk, except when I need to be talking, when I get around someone who is a real talker. She's a good worker and I like working with her, but I admit I find the constant talking a little overwhelming. I don't think I can say anything, though...)
I will feel a lot better when tomorrow's meeting is over and I know what it's about though.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
81 @ 5 am
NOT looking forward to today's fieldwork. Even though we're leaving extra early. Because of how hot it is already.
I'll be really glad when we're done with this. Probably two more weeks after this week if the other guy comes through with the permits for his site. Then I can turn the students loose on doing analysis, and get back to my soil stuff and to revamping classes for the fall....and maybe relaxing a bit. One of my students is in a short-course from the 11th to the 22nd of July so I have some free time then; I tentatively have a meet-up with a Ravelry friend scheduled in Longview for the 15th of July.
But wow, I didn't realize how taxing the constant fieldwork is. Especially on top of doing other life-stuff.
I'll be really glad when we're done with this. Probably two more weeks after this week if the other guy comes through with the permits for his site. Then I can turn the students loose on doing analysis, and get back to my soil stuff and to revamping classes for the fall....and maybe relaxing a bit. One of my students is in a short-course from the 11th to the 22nd of July so I have some free time then; I tentatively have a meet-up with a Ravelry friend scheduled in Longview for the 15th of July.
But wow, I didn't realize how taxing the constant fieldwork is. Especially on top of doing other life-stuff.
Monday, June 13, 2011
busy week ahead
Someone, somewhere, is laughing at me for having declared, back in April or so, that "It will be so nice only doing research this summer; I will have so much more free time."
I'm in the field about as long (maybe even longer) than I'd be in class. And while there are no pesky office hours to pick up or grading to do, still - doing a 7:30 or so until noon stint in the heat four days a week does wear on a person.
Also, this week I have CWF tonight, an AAUW executive-council meeting tomorrow afternoon, piano lessons Wednesday, and then Thursday, a meeting with my dean.
(Eeeep. I don't know what it's about. I'm telling myself because the e-mail said, "the dean would like to meet with you" and told me to tell what times were convenient for me - rather than "you need to meet with the dean" and giving me a short list of times - that it's going to be something neutral to positive. Maybe it's just a rehash of "how did you find the promotions process to be?" I don't know. I THINK - I hope - if a student complaint had been filed (the most likely "bad" thing my brain can conjure up) that I'd be warned ahead of time, because it would be only fair to allow myself to prepare a defense or bring in supporting materials. I don't know. It could also be, OH HAI DO YOU WANT TO BE NEW CHAIR NAOW? because our chair is stepping down. (I don't want to be chair. Not on your sweet bippy. I'm far too much of a people pleaser, far too prone to get overwhelmed by having too much to do, and to use the My Little Ponies Personality Scale, I'm too close to the "Fluttershy" end of the spectrum. (I'm not sure if the opposite end would be more Applejack or more Rainbow Dash.)
On a more serious note, I think I have too much active research going on to be able to handle being chair, too. (Really, the ideal kind of person for academic chair? Would be someone with experience in the field but who was all-but-retired: doesn't have research ongoing, doesn't teach many classes, can devote the time to the putting out of fires that so much of a chair's job seems to be. Also someone who isn't easily bulldozed by more aggressive types.)
But yeah, my mind immediately goes to the bad place whenever someone who is higher-up than me wants to meet with me, like I've done something wrong and I just can't remember what it was. Too many years of being a fairly meek and easily intimidated schoolgirl. (Seriously: when a teacher once THREATENED me with detention if I didn't stop whispering to a friend in class, I burst into tears. I still fight down that tendency as an adult any time someone chastises me for something.)
So yeah, not a happy week. I'm going to be kind of burnt out by the time it ends.
Also, this is really hard going, where we're sampling now - incredibly dense vegetation (and stuff like eastern red cedar that doesn't shed its lower branches), lots of greenbriar. And dang but it was humid this morning. (And it's a bit of a hike in to the sampling area. (And to begin with, the site is a half-hour's drive away. So that eats up time).
Evidence I do still knit, though: I finished the left front of Potter last night. I want to start on the right front but (a) I need to mark where I'm going to put the buttons on the left front so I know where to make the buttonholes (Actually, I still need to GET buttons. I'm thinking of going with antler or tagua nut, because both of those are super light, and I don't want something that will drag the front of the sweater down) and (b) have enough time when I'm starting it so I can think intelligently about the "work same as for left side but reversing shaping." (I know I'm not the only knitter who groans at the "but reversing shaping" direction. It's not that it's so HARD for me (it is for some people with less of a developed spatial sense), but it takes more concentration than just motoring along and following the pattern as written.
I'm in the field about as long (maybe even longer) than I'd be in class. And while there are no pesky office hours to pick up or grading to do, still - doing a 7:30 or so until noon stint in the heat four days a week does wear on a person.
Also, this week I have CWF tonight, an AAUW executive-council meeting tomorrow afternoon, piano lessons Wednesday, and then Thursday, a meeting with my dean.
(Eeeep. I don't know what it's about. I'm telling myself because the e-mail said, "the dean would like to meet with you" and told me to tell what times were convenient for me - rather than "you need to meet with the dean" and giving me a short list of times - that it's going to be something neutral to positive. Maybe it's just a rehash of "how did you find the promotions process to be?" I don't know. I THINK - I hope - if a student complaint had been filed (the most likely "bad" thing my brain can conjure up) that I'd be warned ahead of time, because it would be only fair to allow myself to prepare a defense or bring in supporting materials. I don't know. It could also be, OH HAI DO YOU WANT TO BE NEW CHAIR NAOW? because our chair is stepping down. (I don't want to be chair. Not on your sweet bippy. I'm far too much of a people pleaser, far too prone to get overwhelmed by having too much to do, and to use the My Little Ponies Personality Scale, I'm too close to the "Fluttershy" end of the spectrum. (I'm not sure if the opposite end would be more Applejack or more Rainbow Dash.)
On a more serious note, I think I have too much active research going on to be able to handle being chair, too. (Really, the ideal kind of person for academic chair? Would be someone with experience in the field but who was all-but-retired: doesn't have research ongoing, doesn't teach many classes, can devote the time to the putting out of fires that so much of a chair's job seems to be. Also someone who isn't easily bulldozed by more aggressive types.)
But yeah, my mind immediately goes to the bad place whenever someone who is higher-up than me wants to meet with me, like I've done something wrong and I just can't remember what it was. Too many years of being a fairly meek and easily intimidated schoolgirl. (Seriously: when a teacher once THREATENED me with detention if I didn't stop whispering to a friend in class, I burst into tears. I still fight down that tendency as an adult any time someone chastises me for something.)
So yeah, not a happy week. I'm going to be kind of burnt out by the time it ends.
Also, this is really hard going, where we're sampling now - incredibly dense vegetation (and stuff like eastern red cedar that doesn't shed its lower branches), lots of greenbriar. And dang but it was humid this morning. (And it's a bit of a hike in to the sampling area. (And to begin with, the site is a half-hour's drive away. So that eats up time).
Evidence I do still knit, though: I finished the left front of Potter last night. I want to start on the right front but (a) I need to mark where I'm going to put the buttons on the left front so I know where to make the buttonholes (Actually, I still need to GET buttons. I'm thinking of going with antler or tagua nut, because both of those are super light, and I don't want something that will drag the front of the sweater down) and (b) have enough time when I'm starting it so I can think intelligently about the "work same as for left side but reversing shaping." (I know I'm not the only knitter who groans at the "but reversing shaping" direction. It's not that it's so HARD for me (it is for some people with less of a developed spatial sense), but it takes more concentration than just motoring along and following the pattern as written.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
OM NOM NOM
Once in a while, I use a recipe that turns out surprisingly better than I had expected.
I've become more "opportunistic" of late in the choices of meat I buy. I used to be "If it's not a steak, I don't really want to look at it" but that often led to me taking steaks that only looked sort-of OK, and turned out to taste less-than OK. So I've gotten pickier about the appearance of the meat, but less picky about what cuts I buy.
Yesterday, the Kroger had some decent looking beef short ribs. I'd never actually cooked short ribs myself, but had eaten them a number of times (They are one of the dinner choices sometimes on the Texas Eagle). I also thought I remembered seeing a recipe in either Cuisine or Cook's Country. So I bought them.
A quick check of the recent issues of either magazine failed to turn up what I was looking for, and a consult of Mark Bittman's big book didn't turn up anything that seemed appealing (Yes, probably any pot roast recipe would work, but I wanted to try my first go-round on a recipe designed for this cut).
SO I checked he good old Settlement Cookbook. They had one recipe for Spanish-style boiled short ribs. (I don't know about boiled beef; I mainly think of it from some of the British novels I read, and the description given there is not very appealing). But they also had a braised recipe, which sounded pretty good.
They call it "Oven Barbecued Short Ribs," though barbecue purists would probably not consider it true barbecue, especially because of the braising style of cooking. But it is very, very good. I will give the recipe as written first, and then list my changes to it.
2-3 pounds beef short ribs
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup tomato sauce (the plain unseasoned kind, not spaghetti sauce)
2 Tablespoons chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 Tablespoon prepared mustard
dash of cayenne pepper
Brown the ribs on all sides (You probably won't need to oil the pan, short ribs are pretty fatty). Place the browned short ribs in a Dutch oven, covered casserole, or other covered ovenproof dish. (I used a Corningware roaster). Mix all the other ingredients and pour over the short ribs. Cook 2 hours or until tender at 350 degrees.
I modified the recipe by doubling the wine, sauce, onion, and vinegar. That was partly because I had a 2-cup can of sauce and a 1 cup bottle of wine (those little serving-sized bottles are nice if you like to cook with wine but don't drink it yourself: it's much easier to use up.) However, I also used a much larger container than I needed for my four short ribs, so they needed more liquid to cook in .
And I don't like mustard, so instead of it and the salt, I used maybe about a half tablespoon of Penzey's Adobo Seasoning - which has salt and cayenne in it along with other flavorings.
After I put it in the oven, I thought, "They say "barbecue" but there's no sweetener in there" and I was concerned it would not be very good, but it was. (I think sweetener would have detracted from it. I used a merlot wine which I suppose is sweeter than some).
I also cooked it longer and lower (about 3 hours at 275 degrees) but that was partly because I planned on working out in the yard and didn't want it to get done too early.
It was *excellent.* One of the better recipes I've made and something I'll definitely make again, provided I can find short ribs. (They can be hard to come by). I have a little more than half of the batch left over, I expect it will probably make good sandwiches later this week.
I've become more "opportunistic" of late in the choices of meat I buy. I used to be "If it's not a steak, I don't really want to look at it" but that often led to me taking steaks that only looked sort-of OK, and turned out to taste less-than OK. So I've gotten pickier about the appearance of the meat, but less picky about what cuts I buy.
Yesterday, the Kroger had some decent looking beef short ribs. I'd never actually cooked short ribs myself, but had eaten them a number of times (They are one of the dinner choices sometimes on the Texas Eagle). I also thought I remembered seeing a recipe in either Cuisine or Cook's Country. So I bought them.
A quick check of the recent issues of either magazine failed to turn up what I was looking for, and a consult of Mark Bittman's big book didn't turn up anything that seemed appealing (Yes, probably any pot roast recipe would work, but I wanted to try my first go-round on a recipe designed for this cut).
SO I checked he good old Settlement Cookbook. They had one recipe for Spanish-style boiled short ribs. (I don't know about boiled beef; I mainly think of it from some of the British novels I read, and the description given there is not very appealing). But they also had a braised recipe, which sounded pretty good.
They call it "Oven Barbecued Short Ribs," though barbecue purists would probably not consider it true barbecue, especially because of the braising style of cooking. But it is very, very good. I will give the recipe as written first, and then list my changes to it.
2-3 pounds beef short ribs
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup tomato sauce (the plain unseasoned kind, not spaghetti sauce)
2 Tablespoons chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 Tablespoon prepared mustard
dash of cayenne pepper
Brown the ribs on all sides (You probably won't need to oil the pan, short ribs are pretty fatty). Place the browned short ribs in a Dutch oven, covered casserole, or other covered ovenproof dish. (I used a Corningware roaster). Mix all the other ingredients and pour over the short ribs. Cook 2 hours or until tender at 350 degrees.
I modified the recipe by doubling the wine, sauce, onion, and vinegar. That was partly because I had a 2-cup can of sauce and a 1 cup bottle of wine (those little serving-sized bottles are nice if you like to cook with wine but don't drink it yourself: it's much easier to use up.) However, I also used a much larger container than I needed for my four short ribs, so they needed more liquid to cook in .
And I don't like mustard, so instead of it and the salt, I used maybe about a half tablespoon of Penzey's Adobo Seasoning - which has salt and cayenne in it along with other flavorings.
After I put it in the oven, I thought, "They say "barbecue" but there's no sweetener in there" and I was concerned it would not be very good, but it was. (I think sweetener would have detracted from it. I used a merlot wine which I suppose is sweeter than some).
I also cooked it longer and lower (about 3 hours at 275 degrees) but that was partly because I planned on working out in the yard and didn't want it to get done too early.
It was *excellent.* One of the better recipes I've made and something I'll definitely make again, provided I can find short ribs. (They can be hard to come by). I have a little more than half of the batch left over, I expect it will probably make good sandwiches later this week.
Friday, June 10, 2011
It's my "Saturday."
I'm glad that (for this week at least) we hewed to the summer university schedule of Monday through Thursday on, Friday off.
As I said yesterday, fieldwork is intense. I was extremely tired last night (put in a longer day yesterday: one student had an emergency on Wednesday and was not able to complete her part of the research. I worked with the other student exclusively on Wednesday, then the first student came out yesterday and we spent a longer day getting caught up on her research). But yeah, I was worn out. I think I was approaching heat exhaustion as we were finishing up - starting to get shaky and feel chilled, even though it was really hot out in the forest. Fortunately I was able to power through it (we were nearly done, and I stopped and drank the rest of the gatorade* I had brought) without ill effects.
(*Because the little coconut water packages seem flimsier (like they'd break or puncture if something heavy pressed on them), I've gone back to carrying Gatorade for electrolyte-replacement in the field. Unfortunately, I grabbed what I thought was the fruit punch flavor the other day, but it was actually strawberry - the strawberry flavor is disgustingly sweet. Well, all gatorade kind of is, but I find the fruit punch flavor less disgusting than some)
Today I need to go down to Sherman - one of the other sites we are doing, I need to fill out some paperwork in advance in re: permitting to go on site, and I also want to get a map so I can figure out where is the best place to go. So I'm going to piggyback going shopping on top of that. (I can go out to the site first, because they open early). I need to buy some of the supplies (like the special hypoallergenic laundry soap I use) that are more easily found in Sherman.
And I'm going to the craft stores there. No, I don't "need" anything, but it is fun just to look. (Well, actually, there is one small piece of fabric I need if I'm going to do a project I'm thinking about doing). And I need a day out.
And I'm going out to lunch somewhere. Not sure if I'll go to the Chinese buffet, or, if I'm thinking now, "It would be nice to eat lunch somewhere where they take your order and bring you your food" - maybe one of the Mexican places there, I don't know.
***
One last project-from-over-break I forgot to post about. I made another Amineko. This time, I used the book that's been published (I think the pattern is still free on the Internet).
One thing about the book - or at least the version I have - there are a few typos in the pattern (one place where it doesn't explicitly tell you to increase, but it's clear you need to, based on the number of stitches you're supposed to have). I would say the Amineko pattern, as written, is probably best for someone with some experience making amigurumi. (Also, I made the nose "wrong" as per the photographs - I thought you stuffed it, but now, looking at the photos, I see the original Amineko did not have stuffed noses. So my cat has a smaller but more projecting nose.)
Anyway. This is "Azalea."
I think I used a G hook to crochet her. And I used the just-plain "Vanna's Choice" yarn in a spray-dyed hot pink color. I also stuffed her partly with those stuffing pellets - of course, with a crocheted toy, you need to enclose them in some kind of a cloth bag so they don't slip out through the stitches. (I used bits of an old pair of nylons)).
I made Azalea in part because I thought Umeboshi needed a girlfriend. (I guess it's OK for your girlfriend to be taller than you).
I think I must have used a smaller hook to make Umeboshi; that's why he's shorter and slimmer.
As I said yesterday, fieldwork is intense. I was extremely tired last night (put in a longer day yesterday: one student had an emergency on Wednesday and was not able to complete her part of the research. I worked with the other student exclusively on Wednesday, then the first student came out yesterday and we spent a longer day getting caught up on her research). But yeah, I was worn out. I think I was approaching heat exhaustion as we were finishing up - starting to get shaky and feel chilled, even though it was really hot out in the forest. Fortunately I was able to power through it (we were nearly done, and I stopped and drank the rest of the gatorade* I had brought) without ill effects.
(*Because the little coconut water packages seem flimsier (like they'd break or puncture if something heavy pressed on them), I've gone back to carrying Gatorade for electrolyte-replacement in the field. Unfortunately, I grabbed what I thought was the fruit punch flavor the other day, but it was actually strawberry - the strawberry flavor is disgustingly sweet. Well, all gatorade kind of is, but I find the fruit punch flavor less disgusting than some)
Today I need to go down to Sherman - one of the other sites we are doing, I need to fill out some paperwork in advance in re: permitting to go on site, and I also want to get a map so I can figure out where is the best place to go. So I'm going to piggyback going shopping on top of that. (I can go out to the site first, because they open early). I need to buy some of the supplies (like the special hypoallergenic laundry soap I use) that are more easily found in Sherman.
And I'm going to the craft stores there. No, I don't "need" anything, but it is fun just to look. (Well, actually, there is one small piece of fabric I need if I'm going to do a project I'm thinking about doing). And I need a day out.
And I'm going out to lunch somewhere. Not sure if I'll go to the Chinese buffet, or, if I'm thinking now, "It would be nice to eat lunch somewhere where they take your order and bring you your food" - maybe one of the Mexican places there, I don't know.
***
One last project-from-over-break I forgot to post about. I made another Amineko. This time, I used the book that's been published (I think the pattern is still free on the Internet).
One thing about the book - or at least the version I have - there are a few typos in the pattern (one place where it doesn't explicitly tell you to increase, but it's clear you need to, based on the number of stitches you're supposed to have). I would say the Amineko pattern, as written, is probably best for someone with some experience making amigurumi. (Also, I made the nose "wrong" as per the photographs - I thought you stuffed it, but now, looking at the photos, I see the original Amineko did not have stuffed noses. So my cat has a smaller but more projecting nose.)
Anyway. This is "Azalea."
I think I used a G hook to crochet her. And I used the just-plain "Vanna's Choice" yarn in a spray-dyed hot pink color. I also stuffed her partly with those stuffing pellets - of course, with a crocheted toy, you need to enclose them in some kind of a cloth bag so they don't slip out through the stitches. (I used bits of an old pair of nylons)).
I made Azalea in part because I thought Umeboshi needed a girlfriend. (I guess it's OK for your girlfriend to be taller than you).
I think I must have used a smaller hook to make Umeboshi; that's why he's shorter and slimmer.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Wrong, yet amusing
I have to admit, I hesitate to post this, because for people like me - who grew up with the "classic" Star Wars movies (the ones generally now termed "numbers 4, 5, and 6" in the supposed trilogy-of-trilogies. And don't get me started on the "prequels." Just, don't. I don't know if it was because I was a cynical adult by the time they came out or if Lucas lost some of his storytelling wonder or what...but I remember watching the first prequel with my brother and sister in law, and leaning over to him and whispering, "This is like watching a stupid U.N. session. Where are the heroics?")
But anyway. I have deeply fond memories of the first movies (especially the first one), and Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of my favorite characters in them, so as I said...this almost seems like a bit of blasphemy.
But it made me laugh so hard. Check out their reactions at the very end. I find this kind of thing hilariously funny, for some reason - when two things that should not go together are put together, and the dialog or the reactions or whatever seem to work.
But anyway. I have deeply fond memories of the first movies (especially the first one), and Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of my favorite characters in them, so as I said...this almost seems like a bit of blasphemy.
But it made me laugh so hard. Check out their reactions at the very end. I find this kind of thing hilariously funny, for some reason - when two things that should not go together are put together, and the dialog or the reactions or whatever seem to work.
Quick Thursday Random
This summer schedule is kicking my butt. Yesterday, left the house around 7, got back here for lunch and a shower around noon, then ran over to the department around 1 and went through two soil samples. Ran an errand, came back home, practiced piano, and then went out to a meeting that was supposed to start at 6 pm but wound up not starting until 6:30.
I'm taking tomorrow off. For one thing, I have to run down to Hagerman and do some paperwork re: the permitting to go on-site, but also, I really, really, really need a day doing something different. Fieldwork is INTENSE.
***
Also, I think I've been spending too much time outside - last night I dreamed that I was LIVING outside - I mean, sleeping outside, and trying to find all my food from natural stuff. And I was miserable. (I think it was for some kind of contest or reality-show thing). I just wanted to be inside where it was clean and I could control the air temperature and where I could take a shower....
***
I'm slowly picking away at the current quilt top I'm sewing (which is different from the quilt I am quilting). I'm still not sure how it's going to turn out; some of the colors seem maybe a little fighty. Oh well.
I also started cutting a few pieces for the OM NOM NOM quilt, and I figured out that for a minimal size I would need 99 blocks. I have just over 50 fabrics, so I might add an extra row on the bottom (108 blocks) and do two blocks from every fabric I have (plus, I cut three sets of block-pieces from the fabric that was the first one I acquired; the one that inspired it all).
The nice thing about the patterns in this book (Marsha McCloskey's Block Party) is that the vast majority of them, she shows you how you can rotary-cut the "bits" for the blocks. This block has some triangular pieces in it, but you can cut them by cutting squares to the right dimensions (which she gives) and then diagonally cutting them - to get two half-square triangles.
It's a lot easier and faster to rotary cut (for the non-quilters: this is a thing that looks kind of like a pizza cutter. You use it along with heavy plastic rulers and you can cut very straight edges and things like very precise squares. The one thing you have to be careful of is that the rotary cutter is crazy sharp and you can cut yourself - they tell you if you have children, that you should either keep it locked up or in a very high place when you're not using it.) The older method of cutting quilt pieces is to trace around a template (now we mostly use plastic templates - and you can buy plastic you can cut to any shape) with a pencil or chalk pencil, and then cut out with scissors. This has a couple drawbacks: quilt fabric, even though it's a woven, can stretch if you put much pressure on it (And the pencils drag and can distort the fabric), and if you cut a lot with scissors it can be tiring on the hands or lead to blisters. The upside of "fussy cutting," as it's sometimes called, is that you can make use of very tiny scraps of fabric. And you can also orient the pieces so you get design elements that you specifically want to capture. (Though there are some rotary-cutting methods - some of the Stack and Whack methods - that may also incorporate this).
In the "really old days," people used to use cardboard templates (often cut from cereal boxes). The big problem with those is they wear away over time....so the 50th piece you trace off a template might be a hair smaller than the first you traced, and that can lead to inaccuracies.
I used not to like rotary cutting; some of the patterns I saw, it seemed like a lot of fabric was wasted - so for the first few quilts I made, I fussy-cut everything (but using plastic templates). But now I'm a convert to the rotary method: for one thing, it's more accurate. For another, it is a lot faster - fewer steps to worry about. And it's less hard on your hands than tracing and then cutting is. And there are a lot of quilt patterns designed to work with in - in fact, if you want to do any kind of "strip" quilting, like where you make the individual subunits of nine-patch blocks a bunch at a time, you really kind of need to cut those strips using a rotary cutter.
***
I found the template I need if I'm going to re-trace the outer border on the quilt I'm currently quilting. I have a LOT of hand-quilting templates now; I have a lot I bought because at one time it seemed like they were hard to find, and I got concerned that maybe "everyone" was going over to machine-quilting and that if I wanted specific templates, I would need to get them NOW and hang on to them. Also, I bought some "oddball" ones (bunnies with dandelions) as I saw them at a quilt shop or somewhere - it's interesting how different the stock of two quilt shops in the same part of the country or even the same town are, but they do all carry different things (which is what makes quilt shops interesting). I also have the templates I inherited from Faith. And now I have a big stack from another of my mother's former-quilter friends. Helen is still around, though - she just realized her arthritis was too bad for her to continue to hand quilt (Though now I think - that would be kind of a horrible thing for a person, I think, to realize they could no longer do a hobby they'd done for a big part of their lives). So she passed her templates on to my mom, and it turned out my mom already had most of them, so she passed them on to me. I've not really gone through them to see if they duplicate any that I have (and I really need to go through and reorganize my quilting templates - they're scattered all over my sewing room and the closet I store supplies in). I don't know anyone who is a beginning hand-quilter in my town or I'd see if they wanted any duplicates I had.
(Hm. I don't know but maybe quilting templates are a bit like that Amish Friendship Bread starter, where they expand over time and you have to find new people to give them to).
I'm taking tomorrow off. For one thing, I have to run down to Hagerman and do some paperwork re: the permitting to go on-site, but also, I really, really, really need a day doing something different. Fieldwork is INTENSE.
***
Also, I think I've been spending too much time outside - last night I dreamed that I was LIVING outside - I mean, sleeping outside, and trying to find all my food from natural stuff. And I was miserable. (I think it was for some kind of contest or reality-show thing). I just wanted to be inside where it was clean and I could control the air temperature and where I could take a shower....
***
I'm slowly picking away at the current quilt top I'm sewing (which is different from the quilt I am quilting). I'm still not sure how it's going to turn out; some of the colors seem maybe a little fighty. Oh well.
I also started cutting a few pieces for the OM NOM NOM quilt, and I figured out that for a minimal size I would need 99 blocks. I have just over 50 fabrics, so I might add an extra row on the bottom (108 blocks) and do two blocks from every fabric I have (plus, I cut three sets of block-pieces from the fabric that was the first one I acquired; the one that inspired it all).
The nice thing about the patterns in this book (Marsha McCloskey's Block Party) is that the vast majority of them, she shows you how you can rotary-cut the "bits" for the blocks. This block has some triangular pieces in it, but you can cut them by cutting squares to the right dimensions (which she gives) and then diagonally cutting them - to get two half-square triangles.
It's a lot easier and faster to rotary cut (for the non-quilters: this is a thing that looks kind of like a pizza cutter. You use it along with heavy plastic rulers and you can cut very straight edges and things like very precise squares. The one thing you have to be careful of is that the rotary cutter is crazy sharp and you can cut yourself - they tell you if you have children, that you should either keep it locked up or in a very high place when you're not using it.) The older method of cutting quilt pieces is to trace around a template (now we mostly use plastic templates - and you can buy plastic you can cut to any shape) with a pencil or chalk pencil, and then cut out with scissors. This has a couple drawbacks: quilt fabric, even though it's a woven, can stretch if you put much pressure on it (And the pencils drag and can distort the fabric), and if you cut a lot with scissors it can be tiring on the hands or lead to blisters. The upside of "fussy cutting," as it's sometimes called, is that you can make use of very tiny scraps of fabric. And you can also orient the pieces so you get design elements that you specifically want to capture. (Though there are some rotary-cutting methods - some of the Stack and Whack methods - that may also incorporate this).
In the "really old days," people used to use cardboard templates (often cut from cereal boxes). The big problem with those is they wear away over time....so the 50th piece you trace off a template might be a hair smaller than the first you traced, and that can lead to inaccuracies.
I used not to like rotary cutting; some of the patterns I saw, it seemed like a lot of fabric was wasted - so for the first few quilts I made, I fussy-cut everything (but using plastic templates). But now I'm a convert to the rotary method: for one thing, it's more accurate. For another, it is a lot faster - fewer steps to worry about. And it's less hard on your hands than tracing and then cutting is. And there are a lot of quilt patterns designed to work with in - in fact, if you want to do any kind of "strip" quilting, like where you make the individual subunits of nine-patch blocks a bunch at a time, you really kind of need to cut those strips using a rotary cutter.
***
I found the template I need if I'm going to re-trace the outer border on the quilt I'm currently quilting. I have a LOT of hand-quilting templates now; I have a lot I bought because at one time it seemed like they were hard to find, and I got concerned that maybe "everyone" was going over to machine-quilting and that if I wanted specific templates, I would need to get them NOW and hang on to them. Also, I bought some "oddball" ones (bunnies with dandelions) as I saw them at a quilt shop or somewhere - it's interesting how different the stock of two quilt shops in the same part of the country or even the same town are, but they do all carry different things (which is what makes quilt shops interesting). I also have the templates I inherited from Faith. And now I have a big stack from another of my mother's former-quilter friends. Helen is still around, though - she just realized her arthritis was too bad for her to continue to hand quilt (Though now I think - that would be kind of a horrible thing for a person, I think, to realize they could no longer do a hobby they'd done for a big part of their lives). So she passed her templates on to my mom, and it turned out my mom already had most of them, so she passed them on to me. I've not really gone through them to see if they duplicate any that I have (and I really need to go through and reorganize my quilting templates - they're scattered all over my sewing room and the closet I store supplies in). I don't know anyone who is a beginning hand-quilter in my town or I'd see if they wanted any duplicates I had.
(Hm. I don't know but maybe quilting templates are a bit like that Amish Friendship Bread starter, where they expand over time and you have to find new people to give them to).
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
All the blocks
I finished the quilting the blocks on the "Chimney Sweep" quilt (that's the name, or at least the name that Martha McCloskey gave to the quilt in the book where she had its pattern. This is a quite old picture of it but here it is as a reminder:
I still have the borders to do. I'm working around the pieced border, just quilting 1/4" away from some of the seams. I also had originally traced a design on the outermost border of interlocking circles (when the design is used on a large block of space, it's called either Wineglasses (because you can make it by repeatedly tracing around one) or Orange Peels). I still haven't decided 100% whether to do that border that way (because I'd have to try to find the stencil and re-draw the areas where the chalk pencil got brushed off over the years) or whether to just do a simple line 1/4 away from the seam, just mainly in the interest of anchoring things. I have a while to think about it though because I think I want to finish the inner border first.
***
Second day of fieldwork done. We're mostly done at the first site, but the "replacement" batteries my student grabbed from the GIS lab for the GPS unit were worn out. (Arglebargle. I'm guessing what happened was that one of the students in the class, when they returned the unit, just put the worn-out or nearly-worn-out batteries back in the box of "new" batteries.) So we're going to have to go back to get the coordinates of the sample points. IF we can find them again. I didn't have any surveyor's tape to mark with (and besides, there's some evidence that deer will eat surveyor's tape), so I "blazed" a tree in each sample...like the oldtimey GLO surveyor guys (The General Land Office survey, done in the early to mid 1800s in much of the country...it led to the township and range and section system of designating locations, so settlers could find their land and to hopefully cut down on land fights.) I used my pocketknife (and it was lucky I had it with me) to score a large "X" in the bark of the marker tree. (I also tried to score in the number of the sample, but after "1" it gets very hard to do).
I think the GLO guys actually had a proper blazing tool, that would cut deeper and more surely than a pocketknife would, but whatever.
We saw a deer. It startled me at first - I just saw this brown SHAPE running through the underbrush and I didn't know if it was a deer or a coyote, or even a dude in one of those shaggy sniper suits. I admit I screamed a little bit, it changed course, and I could see it was just a deer. (I have seen coyotes out at this site, but they've always run in the opposite direction from me when they saw me. The one non-human animal I'd really worry about running into out in the field is wild boar. Coyotes will generally run the other way, bobcat will usually run the other way, we're too built-up to have mountain lions right where I am (or at least, no one I know has ever reported seeing any), but wild boar can be mean and aggressive...and one boar can weigh more than both my research students and me put together (and none of us is a tiny woman: we're all fairly tall and fairly densely muscled).)
Even snakes don't worry me that greatly - I have a big stick that I carry and use like a walking stick, and I figure that that probably will scare any snakes out of my path. (Besides, with the exception of the black rat snake yesterday, I've never seen any snakes out at this site).
I would also worry about other people out at the site. Most of the people you will run into will either just be guys walking out to the lake to fish, or possibly birdwatchers or mushroom-hunters, but it's also possible that there may be some unseemly activity going on...we often run across piles of beer bottles (probably high school kids partying, and you're unlikely to run across the kids at 8 in the morning), but it's also possible people could be doing stuff out in the woods...back when I lived in Ohio, one of the volunteers who worked in the Cuyahoga Valley parks used to warn backpackers away from certain areas...he had lived there all his life and knew those were the areas where the pot growers had their crops, and he also suspected they defended them with things like punji stakes and pit traps. (Though I'd like to SEE someone try to dig a pit trap in the soil here...)
So I do admit some apprehension going "way backcountry" in this site, like we did today...we went to an area I'd never even been in before.
One other thing we saw, that was weird and I had never seen before - at the base of a tree, a small brown bird (wren-sized or slightly larger, and it was sort of a red brown, like the Carolina wrens here) flew out from a little "cave" of leaves at the roots. I carefully peeked in...and there was at least one tiny white egg. I don't know of any forest birds that are ground-nesters; I wonder if this was a cavity nesting species that couldn't find a tree cavity? We were very careful around the nest and moved out of that area as soon as possible so the bird could return to its nest. (oooh, a quick internet search says that ovenbirds will ground-nest. Yes, this could have been an ovenbird. Cool! In fact, this site says they are called ovenbirds because their nest is shaped like an oven...and is found on the ground, at the base of a tree.).
We also saw dog-vomit fungi on a log, and a polyporus fungus on a tree that fungus beetles were feasting on. Sadly, they were just plain black fungus beetles and not the "shining fungus beetle" or the "pleasing fungus beetle."
I still have the borders to do. I'm working around the pieced border, just quilting 1/4" away from some of the seams. I also had originally traced a design on the outermost border of interlocking circles (when the design is used on a large block of space, it's called either Wineglasses (because you can make it by repeatedly tracing around one) or Orange Peels). I still haven't decided 100% whether to do that border that way (because I'd have to try to find the stencil and re-draw the areas where the chalk pencil got brushed off over the years) or whether to just do a simple line 1/4 away from the seam, just mainly in the interest of anchoring things. I have a while to think about it though because I think I want to finish the inner border first.
***
Second day of fieldwork done. We're mostly done at the first site, but the "replacement" batteries my student grabbed from the GIS lab for the GPS unit were worn out. (Arglebargle. I'm guessing what happened was that one of the students in the class, when they returned the unit, just put the worn-out or nearly-worn-out batteries back in the box of "new" batteries.) So we're going to have to go back to get the coordinates of the sample points. IF we can find them again. I didn't have any surveyor's tape to mark with (and besides, there's some evidence that deer will eat surveyor's tape), so I "blazed" a tree in each sample...like the oldtimey GLO surveyor guys (The General Land Office survey, done in the early to mid 1800s in much of the country...it led to the township and range and section system of designating locations, so settlers could find their land and to hopefully cut down on land fights.) I used my pocketknife (and it was lucky I had it with me) to score a large "X" in the bark of the marker tree. (I also tried to score in the number of the sample, but after "1" it gets very hard to do).
I think the GLO guys actually had a proper blazing tool, that would cut deeper and more surely than a pocketknife would, but whatever.
We saw a deer. It startled me at first - I just saw this brown SHAPE running through the underbrush and I didn't know if it was a deer or a coyote, or even a dude in one of those shaggy sniper suits. I admit I screamed a little bit, it changed course, and I could see it was just a deer. (I have seen coyotes out at this site, but they've always run in the opposite direction from me when they saw me. The one non-human animal I'd really worry about running into out in the field is wild boar. Coyotes will generally run the other way, bobcat will usually run the other way, we're too built-up to have mountain lions right where I am (or at least, no one I know has ever reported seeing any), but wild boar can be mean and aggressive...and one boar can weigh more than both my research students and me put together (and none of us is a tiny woman: we're all fairly tall and fairly densely muscled).)
Even snakes don't worry me that greatly - I have a big stick that I carry and use like a walking stick, and I figure that that probably will scare any snakes out of my path. (Besides, with the exception of the black rat snake yesterday, I've never seen any snakes out at this site).
I would also worry about other people out at the site. Most of the people you will run into will either just be guys walking out to the lake to fish, or possibly birdwatchers or mushroom-hunters, but it's also possible that there may be some unseemly activity going on...we often run across piles of beer bottles (probably high school kids partying, and you're unlikely to run across the kids at 8 in the morning), but it's also possible people could be doing stuff out in the woods...back when I lived in Ohio, one of the volunteers who worked in the Cuyahoga Valley parks used to warn backpackers away from certain areas...he had lived there all his life and knew those were the areas where the pot growers had their crops, and he also suspected they defended them with things like punji stakes and pit traps. (Though I'd like to SEE someone try to dig a pit trap in the soil here...)
So I do admit some apprehension going "way backcountry" in this site, like we did today...we went to an area I'd never even been in before.
One other thing we saw, that was weird and I had never seen before - at the base of a tree, a small brown bird (wren-sized or slightly larger, and it was sort of a red brown, like the Carolina wrens here) flew out from a little "cave" of leaves at the roots. I carefully peeked in...and there was at least one tiny white egg. I don't know of any forest birds that are ground-nesters; I wonder if this was a cavity nesting species that couldn't find a tree cavity? We were very careful around the nest and moved out of that area as soon as possible so the bird could return to its nest. (oooh, a quick internet search says that ovenbirds will ground-nest. Yes, this could have been an ovenbird. Cool! In fact, this site says they are called ovenbirds because their nest is shaped like an oven...and is found on the ground, at the base of a tree.).
We also saw dog-vomit fungi on a log, and a polyporus fungus on a tree that fungus beetles were feasting on. Sadly, they were just plain black fungus beetles and not the "shining fungus beetle" or the "pleasing fungus beetle."
Monday, June 06, 2011
One day down
Well, I survived the first day of summer fieldwork. Tomorrow one of the students and I are going to start even earlier (7:30) and the other student, who is working on a shorter and quicker (well, in the field at least) side project will join us once her child is at day care.
I almost went into asthma mode in the field - got one point towards the end where I got very, very short of breath (it was extremely humid and we had been climbing up a hill). I wound up writing down the data for the last sample site down on one knee, because standing upright made me dizzy. (I recovered fast enough, and the walk back to the cars - maybe a mile - wasn't that hard).
I coated myself with Ivy Block before going out (Even to the point of smearing it on my torso and stomach, where my shirt would normally cover) and I used the tecnu wash (which is essentially deodorized mineral spirits - not great for the skin, I suspect) before getting back into my car after the fieldwork. (And took a shower immediately I got home).
I really, really hope I can avoid getting poison ivy. Or, if I can't avoid getting it totally, I would like these parts of my body to be free of the rash:
My face (especially around the eyes; been there, done that, don't recommend it)
My hands (I want to still be able to knit and sew in my free time)
And, um, another place, one ladies don't mention in public, but a place where it would be very painful but also would be very unlikely to contract poison ivy unless one had to answer the call of nature out in the wild, which I WILL NOT be doing, if I can at all avoid it.
I suspect today's site was the worst one, in terms of poison ivy, based on what I know of the other sites we're going to. So if I could avoid it today (and I won't know for a while...I find it can take up to a week for me to fully rash up), I might be able to totally avoid it.
I will say it felt darn good to be out in the field working, even with the humidity and the poison ivy and the fact that we saw a snake (I'm virtually certain it was non-venomous; it was sort of a charcoal gray above and looked like it was maybe white on the belly and it didn't have the pit-viper sort of head - and yes, we got close enough to it to see that detail and it didn't even move*. We thought it was dead but since it was gone when we went back through that area, maybe it was just staying really still in the hopes we wouldn't see it, and then took off when we were out of the area.). This is the kind of thing I'm good at - identifying plants, collecting data - and it's nice to be able to do it without worrying about "I have to get back for classes or office hours" or having to work my schedule around the students' (They are both taking their other classes online, meaning they can work on them in the afternoons).
(*Based on what I remember of its appearance, it was probably a black rat snake - a non-venomous snake and actually one I'd welcome hanging out in my yard, because they eat nasty rodents.)
***
So now, it's time for me to sign off for the day, and relax. I think it will take me a while to be really accustomed to the idea of "oh hey, I have the afternoons to do what I want" (I did go back up to campus and sorted one soil sample. I think I can only do one a day before my eyes fail on me, because of them being affected by allergies in the field. But still, just doing one a day still means one gets done each day... And I went to the grocery store, figuring I could avoid the 4 pm rush.)
I think I'll do some handquilting this afternoon. I want to finish the long-term quilt in the frame, because I found my "sea glass" top again and decided I want to quilt THAT next, before the "Dozen Roses" quilt top.
I almost went into asthma mode in the field - got one point towards the end where I got very, very short of breath (it was extremely humid and we had been climbing up a hill). I wound up writing down the data for the last sample site down on one knee, because standing upright made me dizzy. (I recovered fast enough, and the walk back to the cars - maybe a mile - wasn't that hard).
I coated myself with Ivy Block before going out (Even to the point of smearing it on my torso and stomach, where my shirt would normally cover) and I used the tecnu wash (which is essentially deodorized mineral spirits - not great for the skin, I suspect) before getting back into my car after the fieldwork. (And took a shower immediately I got home).
I really, really hope I can avoid getting poison ivy. Or, if I can't avoid getting it totally, I would like these parts of my body to be free of the rash:
My face (especially around the eyes; been there, done that, don't recommend it)
My hands (I want to still be able to knit and sew in my free time)
And, um, another place, one ladies don't mention in public, but a place where it would be very painful but also would be very unlikely to contract poison ivy unless one had to answer the call of nature out in the wild, which I WILL NOT be doing, if I can at all avoid it.
I suspect today's site was the worst one, in terms of poison ivy, based on what I know of the other sites we're going to. So if I could avoid it today (and I won't know for a while...I find it can take up to a week for me to fully rash up), I might be able to totally avoid it.
I will say it felt darn good to be out in the field working, even with the humidity and the poison ivy and the fact that we saw a snake (I'm virtually certain it was non-venomous; it was sort of a charcoal gray above and looked like it was maybe white on the belly and it didn't have the pit-viper sort of head - and yes, we got close enough to it to see that detail and it didn't even move*. We thought it was dead but since it was gone when we went back through that area, maybe it was just staying really still in the hopes we wouldn't see it, and then took off when we were out of the area.). This is the kind of thing I'm good at - identifying plants, collecting data - and it's nice to be able to do it without worrying about "I have to get back for classes or office hours" or having to work my schedule around the students' (They are both taking their other classes online, meaning they can work on them in the afternoons).
(*Based on what I remember of its appearance, it was probably a black rat snake - a non-venomous snake and actually one I'd welcome hanging out in my yard, because they eat nasty rodents.)
***
So now, it's time for me to sign off for the day, and relax. I think it will take me a while to be really accustomed to the idea of "oh hey, I have the afternoons to do what I want" (I did go back up to campus and sorted one soil sample. I think I can only do one a day before my eyes fail on me, because of them being affected by allergies in the field. But still, just doing one a day still means one gets done each day... And I went to the grocery store, figuring I could avoid the 4 pm rush.)
I think I'll do some handquilting this afternoon. I want to finish the long-term quilt in the frame, because I found my "sea glass" top again and decided I want to quilt THAT next, before the "Dozen Roses" quilt top.
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