Tuesday, July 19, 2011

More sleeve done

I managed to start on identifying/counting the animalcules yesterday. I was worrying about this...it was one of those chain-of-things-needs-to-happen things:

1. When they replaced my office computer, they did not transfer over the drivers/image analysis program for the microscope camera

2. The CD for those drivers had been stored improperly and was warped.

3. The files were available online as a download, but I had no idea if the person who really owns the camera had already registered it or not.

4. He is somewhere (Colorado River, I think?) totally incommunicado until August 3 or so.

5. I tried flattening the CD under my "Britton and Brown's New Flora" but that didn't do it well enough for it to work.

So, I decided to try the last-ditch solution the computer dudes suggested: heat the thing up with a hair dryer and try to flatten it. So that meant asking around if there were a hair dryer in the department. (We do use them for things: for example, if you are trying to dry a paper chromatograph, a hair dryer is handy, because you don't want to put things like that in an oven).

Turns out my colleague the ornithologist had one, which he uses when he cleans bird specimens (the less said about that, the better). So I went and found it, remembered to gently flambe and not roast the CD, and got it to flatten sufficiently that I could re-load the drivers and start work.

I got about a quarter of the samples done yesterday and plan to do as many today. (I can knock one out in about a half-hour once I get going). I also want to try to do my syllabi today. I don't NEED them until August 12 or so, but I feel better when I have them done. (Well, I can do two of them: I still do not know what time or days of the week I'm teaching Principles I. But at least I have a sample syllabus from a colleague to work off of.)

So I decided I could relax when I got home last night.

The first sleeve of Potter is about half-done now. (And I still have a few yards of yarn left from that first ball). It makes me happy to think about having this sweater finished. (And I think the leftovers from the second ball will be used to make watchcaps or mittens, to be donated to a group that provides charity-knit items.)

I also looked at the Ropes and Picots cardigan again and I think that's going to be my next sweater. For one thing, the sweater I'm knitting now is essentially brown, and the Hampton cardigan will be essentially brown. The Ropes and Picots will be blue-green. Also, I've had the yarn in-stash longer for Ropes and Picots. And I just bought a new size 4 circular needle - for another project I'll start at another time, but still - and the pattern for Ropes and Picots calls for a 4. (Hampton calls for a 7, and my 7 is currently in use on Potter.)

So I could go ahead and at least swatch for Ropes and Picots whenever I felt like it.

In fact, I might do that this afternoon/evening...I have a follow-up meeting tonight to a meeting I went to last month where there was some...unpleasantness. Nothing involving me, nothing that I did wrong causing the unpleasantness - it was all tension between two people I thought were friends, and then it turned into a "let's Air Our Grievances" and I find that kind of thing unhappy to be a witness to. So thinking about a new project and a new sweater will be kind of like carrying a smooth stone in my pocket, something to rub my mental thumbs over if things get tense and remind myself that this meeting really doesn't matter that greatly in the Grand Scheme of Things.

Also, if I wind up taking it with me on break...well, this is yarn my parents gave me as a Christmas present a couple years ago and I kind of like the aspect of "Hey, look, I actually do knit up the yarn you give me!"

No comments: