One larger project

One big thing I finished over break was the Ostrich Plume Fern stole from "Knitting Nature."



This is a pretty simple pattern - you just do a couple rows of garter first, then you set off on a number of repeats (I forget how many across) of the old Shetland pattern called Ostrich Plumes.

Actually, Ostrich Plumes is one of my favorite lace patterns to knit - it looks good and looks interesting, but it's a fairly simple knit and is easily memorized. There's a rhythm to it that, for me at least, keeps me from making errors in the pattern. (I only had to unknit part of a row once or twice in this project).

The yarn is a Phydeaux designs fingering weight. (I think it's the plain-merino-wool one, maybe Chausette? Or maybe Beurre, I don't remember). The colorway is called Thistledown, which she doesn't currently show on the site (she periodically discontinues colors). It took every bit of two skeins but I just kept knitting until I was nearly out.

Here it is on:



That's one of my simple go-to dresses. It's brown stretch velour, though now it's kind of showing its age - it's at least a dozen years old. I like it because it has no waistband, it's just an over-the-head sort of thing, so it's simple first thing in the morning. And I kind of laughed to myself yesterday because one of my colleagues declared, "It's 'scientific method' day in my non-majors class, so I am dressing like a scientist." (he had on his lab coat, which, being an ecologist like me, he rarely actually wears for research). And that got me wondering, and then slightly annoyed: Oh, so there's something a scientist is SUPPOSED to look like? I thought about my clothing for the day: the brown dress, the Live Oak shawlette (I decided I wanted to wear that), a pair of dress flats, my Eeyore watch, a little bracelet on the other wrist that's three colors of (electroplated) gold in sort of a Celtic knot design, my old high school class ring (I got in the habit of wearing it years back and just never stopped; it's fairly subtle so it doesn't scream "someone hanging on to their high school 'glory days'") and my threepence pendant.

(This is the threepence pendant - it's an old British threepence coin from 1938 (there is a portrait of George VI on the other side). I bought it off of Etsy. It's the kind of jewelry I like - not flashy, not expensive, a little quirky. And I wonder about the history of the threepence before it came to me - what was it spent on, who carried it around?)



The flower there on the front was described as a thistle, but frankly, it looks more like a flowering onion to me.

At any rate: What's a scientist "supposed" to look like? And isn't that a notion we are actually trying to disabuse our non-science-majors students of, that there's a particular set of sartorial or appearance markers that denote a scientist?

And frankly, what I look like in terms of dress kind of depends on what KIND of science I'm doing on a given day. If my day is going to be teaching plus maybe a little data entry/number crunching or background reading or grant writing, I dress how I would like to dress: usually in a dress or blouse and skirt and then I sort of ad lib things like jewelry or accessories or shoes.

If I'm working in the lab and there's likely to be glassware and hazardous chemicals, I make sure to wear closed-toe shoes, and I usually wear older clothes. If I'm working with soil, I wear the old lab coat that one of the profs from my grad school gave me when he retired - I actually should wash it, it's been a long time, but at this point I suspect the soil spills are part of what's holding it together, and washing might make it fall apart.

And if I'm going in the field or even planning to, I wear jeans and a t-shirt and often a long-sleeved shirt over it (maybe not the long-sleeved shirt into class; most of the field shirts I have are old shirts of my dad's and they're quite big on me). And I wear either old tennis shoes or boots depending on the terrain I will be in.

(And yeah, I get that the guy was probably making a joke out of the "need to look like a scientist" bit, but still - especially as a woman, and especially given the old stereotype about women scientists' appearance (or that of "educated" women in general) - it annoys me, the idea of "needing to look like a scientist.")

Because I'm betting the stereotype is, scientists don't wear shawls.

And here's an attempt at the artsy, Cheryl-Oberle-style back view of the shawl. (Except I am a much larger person than Cheryl Oberle is...)