Proof of sleeve

I finished the first repeat (
36 rows; it's a long repeat) of the pattern on the sleeve last night. I have one more to go with increases, and then I have to check against the other sleeve to see if I'm done - I think I will be (I am making these sleeves a BIT shorter - it's a sweater designed for a man and also my arms are proportionally a bit short).




Here's another photo, without flash, that maybe shows the bas-relief quality of the cabling better:



Other than that....I'm going to be busy for a while. Yesterday I went out and collected the red cedar for the second run of my experiment, and I stripped off 700 g of the needles (well, scales, really - except on the very youngest branches, Juniperus virginiana has scale-shaped leaves) and partitioned them out into flasks that I can fill with deionized water this morning to start the eight-hour extraction.

And today, I need to strip more scales and then plant, apply the first treatments, and set everything up. My first class is at 11 so if I get on campus by 7 I should be able to get all that done in the morning.

I also have to call out to my doctor's new clinic and hopefully make arrangements to transfer my being a patient over to there. (People tell me it's relatively easy to "follow" a doctor to a new clinic, I hope that's right. My parents had to change doctors when theirs left her practice because she became a doctor at Health Services at the university there, and was only treating students, and only working certain days - I think it was that she wanted more time with her kids)

And I have some proofreading to do. (As I joked on Twitter: maybe I really AM Lisa Simpson - in the episode with the rocket taking people from a doomed Earth, she was awarded a place because  the new society would need a proofreader). The Native Plant Society had asked for volunteers, and I did. I couldn't go to the actual MEETING where they proofread, but there were a couple late papers that were electronically transmitted to me, and I can go through them.

(No, this carries no pay. BUT I can put it on my CV, and I am listed in the front matter of the journal as a "technical analyst" or some such and I have to confess: I love different titles like that, and I love seeing my name in print as someone who "helped." So if I get done any early with the experimental set up, I'll get on to that; otherwise, I could do it this afternoon after class)

And of course, the paper to write on - I didn't get any done on it yesterday but then again I had to mess with the cedar. Once the experiment is up I'm getting back to it.

I hope the little bubble I am in personally continues the way it has - I am happiest when I am working on things and making progress and I have some kind of a set goal; a lot of the vague goals like "you need to be planning some kind of future research" are too nebulous for me to be able to work effectively on them. Also a lot of these are small goals that feel achievable; bigger things like "write a grant proposal*" or "Plan a totally new research project" feel overwhelmingly large.

(*Not to go in for political commentary but I suspect Federal grants, in the next few years, are going to be really hard to get if they are even still possible. At least what I do is fairly cheap and I can see a few private groups throwing a few dollars my way for supplies, and I can do the labor myself on my own time. Then again, if getting Federal grants becomes clearly impossible, I would hope universities like mine would push far less for us to try to do that)

I am setting Hillbilly Elegy aside for a couple days because I am finding reading it affects my mood. And also, I tend to do the "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" thing - a couple of crimes being reported on here (one a shooting, one a "domestic") made me start thinking, "I wonder if some of those same dynamics are in play" and being an armchair psychologist is not a good thing for me to be. (But still: I wish just some of the random violence, where someone gets mad about something that's fairly low-level, and then pulls out a gun, or where people beat kids or spouses, would go away). (I thought I was bad at controlling my emotions because I FEEL stuff but I'm beginning to think I control them pretty well because although I FEEL stuff, I also can take a deep breath and go "Meh, it's not worth acting on that")