two more things

 Busy day today - put my manuscript in the expected format for the journal (that mostly meant some adjustments to the literature cited), did a little cleaning in my office, got videoed for another set of "virtual labs" (yes, I know: these are not as crucial now as they would have been last year, but grants move slowly and maybe there will be some use for them? At any rate, I can put it on my faculty development plan). There is more filming tomorrow, but then I think that part's done and I just have to help them edit/suggest captions for the still photos, etc. 

Then after all that, I ran out to my field site to see if it was flooded. Nope! So I could go out Thursday morning and try to get started - or at least put down some surveyor's flags to mark my transects. I figure if I leave home around 7 (which requires getting up early, but okay), I can work for four or five hours before it gets too hot, and I can just stick a flag in where I leave off so when I come back I can quickly find where I was. I will be out there alone BUT the departmental secretary said I should text her when I leave, give her an ETA for me coming back, and if I don't show/text by then, she'll send her son (a sheriff's deputy) to look for me. So I feel *fairly* safe. I will have to work slowly as it's very humid and I'm not used to it, but if all I finish in a day is half a transect (which is like five or six samples), I will get them done handily enough and will still be able to go see my mom in late July. (Haven't bought tickets yet but am planning on it).

Anyway, two more finished things:

These are the "rusty unicorns" (from an "Autocorrect Fail" themed line of yarn, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it's an autocorrect "fail" for) socks. As I got partway on them I realized I didn't love the colorway but I persisted and when I had the first sock done and sitting out my mom looked at them and said she liked the color combo - so I gave them to her. (she and I wear about the same shoe size). 

Anyway, I have a lot of my own socks, and a lot of "simple" socks, so I'm happy that she likes these and will wear them.

I also crocheted a little thing, something that was surprisingly complicated and took MUCH longer (the better part of 3 days) than I thought:

It's a leaf-sheep sea slug! You can buy the pattern from the designer on Etsy. I just used some simple acrylic (Basic Stitch for the body (cream colored) and the "leaves," and some scraps of grey for the "ears," which I think are really antennae. The eyes and "nostrils" are embroidered.

It's sort of a clever pattern, maybe not how I'd have designed it - you crochet the "leaves" directly onto the body (attaching the yarn with slip stitches, and slip-stitching back at the end of each row so you are always starting from the same side). I did add an extra row at the end up by the head, because I felt like I started too far back and it didn't look right. But yeah, it was very time consuming to make for such a small thing (that's my hand, and I have small to average sized hands for a woman).