Dear Mother Nature,

Please make it stop snowing in Chicago so I can get on a plane to take me to see my husband tonight. Thanks.

Love,

Elisabeth

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I'm heading for California this evening (hopefully). Last night, the undergrad in the lab pronounced me "lucky." To which I said:

"Yes, I'm incredibly lucky that my husband lives in California while I live in Chicago."

He hadn't really considered it like that before. Still, it's better than my husband living in Nova Scotia while I live in Chicago, I suppose.

I've gotten so used to these trips, they barely phase me anymore. I haven't even packed yet because I know I can do so in about 15 to 20 minutes. It helps that I don't have to pack toiletries.

Words fail me

From an article about a toy rental company:

Pope also keeps a close eye on the merchandise, yanking toys that are broken or more than "gently worn" and donating them to needy families nominated by her customers.

"If it has a little scratch on it, we're not going to take it out of the program," she said. But, "we're not going to ever send anybody anything that they're going to feel like is junk."

But apparently it's okay to give "needy" families broken toys. They have to take what they can get after all. I mean, it's practically a waste to give poor people something that's fully functional. Especially poor children. Might as well start them out crap since that's all they're likely to get in their lives anyway. Wouldn't want to raise their hopes and expectations or anything like that.

Okay, maybe words don't fail me.

I finally succumbed

I'm now on Ravelry. My name is E-beth (Elisabeth was taken and it was too late at night when I signed up for me to be more creative). I've managed to put up my two works in progress and entered a few of my books and some of my needles. Nothing listed in the stash or queue, though. And I've joined one group--Scientific Knitters.

I can see how this site could become extremely addictive, so I'm going to try to restrict the amount of time I spend on it. We'll see how well that works!

Mittens Accomplished

I finished the mittens for R:



Specs:

Pattern: Flap-top Mittens, designed by Kim Hamlin, found in Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick.

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulk in Blue Flannel, and Manos del Uruguay #103

Needles: Bamboo dpns size 6 and 7

Total project time: 15 hours and 30 min.

Modifications: There was no way I was going to get gauge with the yarns I had chosen, so I knit a nice gauge swatch, then calculated the number of stitches I would need based on that. Since this is the first time I have ever manipulated a pattern that way, it took me awhile to do the calculations and some test knitting when I got to the flap part. This is reflected in the total project time (as is the fact that I had to rip them out a couple of times!). Also, I put a couple of decreases in the fingerless mitten part that goes under the flap so it would fit more snugly. Otherwise, I knit them more or less according to the pattern.

Next time: Well, I would probably use different yarn. The Manos and the Lamb's Pride, while supposedly knitting up at the same number of stitches per inch did not behave in the same way. Mostly, I think this is because the Manos is a "thick and thin" yarn and that made the fabric it created a bit more loose than the Lamb's Pride which was dense. At the gauge I knit the Lamb's Pride, I got a fairly stiff fabric. While this produced a very warm and more wind-proof fabric, it made it somewhat challenging to incorporate the flap in a way that looked nice. As it is, I'm still not particularly pleased with the way the flap is attached. The pattern calls for double-wrapping your stitches then, on the next round, setting aside every other stitch onto a stitch holder. Those are then live stitches that you use to start the flap. But, those stitches ended up looking very loose compared to everything else. If I make flap top mittens again, I'll have to work on finding a different way to make a flap.

I really do like the Lamb's Pride, though. This is the first time I've worked with it and it's a very nice yarn to work with. It feels good while knitting it and it gives really great stitch definition (which can be good and bad depending on how even your stitches are!). I grossly overestimated how much yarn I would neeed for the project and I have an entire skein of the Lamb's Pride left just begging for me to make something for myself. I really liked the Manos, too. The colors are wonderful and I think that used alone or coupled with a more complementary yarn, it would be great for any sort of warm, winter project. I've got quite a bit of that leftover, too. I haven't decided what I'll do with it yet. I'd love to make a hat for my nephew with it, but it's not machine washable and I really don't like giving babies things that have to be handwashed.

R loved the mittens and put them on right away. I was a little worried they would be drafty where the flap edge meets the rest of the mitten, but she says not.

So, now Christmas is finally over!

Just in time for Lent.

More knitting time?

Everytime I start to get sick, I think, "No problem, just more knitting time!" Apparently, even though I have been sick many times in the last 5 or 6 years since I learned to knit, I have forgotten that being sick does not mean extra knitting time. Being sick means sleeping all day and all night and spending what little time I am awake blowing my nose and taking completely ineffective cold medicine.

All of this to say, I'm sick. :(

I really hate being sick. I'm not sure that many people actually enjoy it, I suppose, but I would just like to state for the record that it is not my idea of a good time. In addition to feeling like crap, I'm missing perfectly good days of work in lab--just when I finally, finally got an experiment to work right. And, on top of that, it finally got really cold in Chicago and I may have missed my only chance to go ice skating this winter.

Yes, I would like a little cheese with my whine. Pass the Brie.

In knitting news, I am still working on the mittens. These are the mittens with the flaps from Handknit Holidays and I just need to knit the flap for the second mitten. Let's not discuss the fact that it'll probably be spring by the time I finish them. At least she'll have them for next winter.

Mittens? What mittens?

So, unless I get really inspired, the mittens will not be done today (which is the last day of Christmas. And since it is--I kid you not--50 degrees here in Chicago today, I sincerely doubt I will be really inspired to knit warm, wool mittens.

The weather has been really screwed up here this winter. Actually, it's been pretty screwed up the last couple of winters. It's rarely below freezing, and sometimes it warms up to the absurd temperature of 50 degrees. We have gotten some snow and there was an ice storm, but those things are anomalies. Mostly, it's been pretty reasonable. You'd think I'd be happy about that but....it's creepy. It's not supposed to be mild. It's supposed to be ridiculously cold. This is Chicago, for cryin' out loud! The past couple of winters, I haven't even been able to go ice skating because there haven't been enough days below freezing. WTF?

1 out of 3 Christmas knitting goals attained

Well, I finished the socks I was making my mother for Christmas. I barely even started the ones I was going to make for my grandmother. I don't know what I was smoking when I thought that I would get those done. I have no idea when/if I'll ever get those done. Finally, I'm still working on a pair of mittens for a friend. Technically, according to the Catholic church, it is still the Christmas season (the days leading up to Christmas are Advent and the Christmas season starts on Christmas day and ends 12 days later on the Epiphany). It is marginally possible I'll finish the mittens by the Epiphany (this Sunday) but I rather doubt it.

I really didn't do much to celebrate Christmas this year. Very little decorating. No baking. No cards. No tree. Just labwork. Always, everyday, labwork. So next Christmas (when I will NOT be in grad school, God willing), I am going to go all out on the Christmas stuff. I'm going to fill dozens of tins with homemade cookies--sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies and spritz and those ones with the Hersey's kisses in the centers. I'm going to send Christmas cards to everyone I have ever met in my life. I am going to have two Christmas trees. I'm going to cover every window and the balcony with lights. I'm going to wrap presents in the most elaborate way possible with fabric wired ribbon and who knows what else. In short, I am going to whoop it up bigtime. Martha Stewart will look at my apartment and say, "Whoa." She will wonder how I find the time to do everything.

That's my plan, anyway.

Going to Iowa

Well, I leave for Iowa in just a few short hours. I never blocked my mom's socks, but that's okay. Grandma's socks were a failure. I don't know what I was smoking when I thought I could get those done in a week. I didn't even finish one toe--and I'm doing them toe-up! It's okay, though. Grandma will understand.

In addition to family Christmas tomorrow, my nephew is getting baptized. And I get to be his godmother! I'm very excited!! Yesterday, I went downtown to the Catholic bookstore to get his present. It's hard buying a religious gift for an infant, let me tell you. I finally settled on a little pin that can be pinned onto whatever he's wearing for the baptism and some books. They're those kind of books where all of the pages are really hard so that kids can play with them. One is little prayers and the other is something like Baby Goes to Church.

But, before I can go to Iowa I have to:

• Pack
• Go to lab for lab meeting
• Pick up the rental car

That's a lot to do, so I'd better get to it!

It only took 3 hours

But I finally got the toe of the second sock done, with the exception of the grafting. I ripped it out several times and ended up having to rip back some of the foot because I realized that the second sock had one extra pattern repeat in it. Ugh! I left the grafting until today because it was pretty late when I finisheed the toe and I wanted to make sure that, in my sleepiness, I didn't completely screw things up. I haven't had the courage to look at it yet in the light of day....

I also wound one of the hanks of yarn for the next pair of socks into a ball. I really need a swift.

Sock Toes

When I get to the toe of the sock, I like to do paired decreases at each side,* sometimes with a round (or two) of no decreases in between and sometimes not, depending on how long I need the toe to be. In other words, I just make it up as a I along. The smart thing to do would be to record what I did on the first sock so that when I come to the second sock, I can do the same thing. But noooooo, I just wing it, don't write anything down, then try to figure it out when I come to the toe of the second sock. Why on earth do I do this? I really need to keep better notes on my knitting. I need a lab notebook of knitting. Perhaps I should start that today.

A solution that I had come up with was to knit both socks at the same time using magic loop (I prefer magic loop to dpns for most circular knitting). I stopped doing this because I mostly knit socks on the go. Because they are so small socks make a good travel project. Well, knitting two socks at the same time means two balls of yarn which would sometimes get messy (I also tried using one ball of yarn and knitting with both ends at once and that was okay, but still not ideal) and could be especially problematic when I was knitting during a seminar (because they have the lights down so we can see the slides). Having to carry around enough yarn to work on two socks at once also make the project a bit more bulky. Finally, it felt like it took forever to make progress. I usually knit socks with fingering weight yarn on size 0 needles which means A LOT of stitches. And since I was only working on the socks on the go, I would only be able to knit a little at a time and therefore it seemed like I was making no progress at all. Still, I might go back to it because it does make it easier to make identical looking toes and it's a good way to avoid Second Sock Syndrome.

I bring this up because last night I was working on the toe of a second sock and had to take the time to minutely inspect the toe of the first sock to see how I did it (and I really wanted to know exactly how I did it because I thought I had done a really good job on that toe). I finally gave it up and started to wing it. We shall see how the toe of the second sock turns out! I can't show you a picture because it is a present for Christmas. I'll show you a picture after I give them to the recipient.
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*What this means is that, using the magic loop method, I divide the stitches evenly on the two needle points. I knit until the last three stitches, do a left leaning decrease, knit one, switch to the other side in the manner of the magic loop, then knit one and do a right leaning decrease. I then knit on that side until the last three stitches and decrease in the same manner as before. Therefore, I decrease four stitches per round.

Holiday Knitting

*Kristen over at Procrastinating in Pittsburgh just had to put to sleep a beloved pet. Go give her some love.

My family is celebrating Christmas early this year. On the 15th, actually. Needless to say, this is not conducive to knitting gifts. It is, in fact, really the opposite of the ideal scenario for a knitter. Ideally, if your family isn’t going to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, then a knitter much prefers it to be celebrated later. After New Year’s maybe. Certainly not 10 days early in any case!

Unfortunately, while I knew my family was celebrating Christmas early this year, that fact did not connect to what my knitting deadline was until a couple weeks ago. I knew Christmas was going to be on the 15th, and yet I was still somehow thinking I had until the 25th to finish making my gifts. Once I put 2 and 2 together I realized I was not going to be able to make all of the gifts I had intended to make. The one that got cut was nephew Benjamin’s baby bunting. It’s this really cute little winter weather thing from Dale of Norway and I was very excited about it, but I hadn’t even started it and since it is a large item, there was no way I was going to finish it by the 15th. I still plan on making it, just not for Christmas.

Some knitting

Despite being very busy in lab (where I'm certain I'm going to do a real experiment any day now), I have managed to get a little bit of knitting done. I decided to bite the bullet and knit myself a sweater.

I'm knitting the cover project from the fall Interweave Knits magazine. Well, I will if I ever get gauge. I've knit 2 swatches and I'm still going down needle sizes. I'm even being good and blocking the swatches. Normally I don't go in for this whole swatch thing, but I figure when knitting such a big item it's comforting to know that you did your best to make it come out right. The yarn is Andean Silk in Sangria from Knitpicks. It's an alpaca and silk blend and very soft. On my screen the yarn looks more purply than in person.

In other news, my nephew is the cutest baby ever!

Iowa trip

Last weekend, I went to Iowa for a craft festival. The festival was held in Van Buren County Iowa which is in southeastern Iowa on the Des Moines River near the Missouri border. This is the part of Iowa my step-father grew up in and he and my mom go every year. For the last four years, I have gone with them. The festival mostly consists of various craft and antiques/junk vendors who set up in the towns of the county. The towns themselves organize some events, including a parade and covered wagon rides and, in my step-father's hometown, a lunch consisting of bean and ham soup slow-cooked in a big black kettle over a bed of coals and cornbread baked over coals. And homemade pie. Yum.

None of Kelly's (step-father) family lives down there anymore (his parents have migrated to Arizona and his sister lives in Des Moines) so we stay at an inn/bed and breakfast in the town of Bentonsport. Bentonsport is home to about 35 people (and that's if you include the people up on the hill). The inn is less than 100 yards from the banks of the river has been there a very long time and on the side of the inn; there's marks on the side of the inn commemorating various floods and how much of the inn was under water.

While trying to navigate the roads to Bentonsport on Friday night, I got a phonecall from B who now lives in South Carolina and who I haven't talked to in quite some time. This is how our conversation went:

The usual hi, how are you's and what's going on, then

Me: Oh my God, that's a deer!

B: What?

Me: A deer just ran out in front of the car, oh wait, there's another one, is it going to cross the road?

I successfully navigate past the deer and we talk a little longer, then

Me: Wait, I think I'm supposed to turn here, but it's so dark, I can't see the road sign.

B: I feel like this is the beginning of a bad horror movie.

More driving and talking, then

Me: Hey, I'm in a town I recognize, I guess I'm going the right way.

B: Is it deserted?

Me: No, there are people here.

B: Are they zombies? (B has an obsessive fear about zombies)

Me: No, they seem to be perfectly normal people.

We continue talking and then I'm really close to Bentonsport.

Me: Okay, I'm getting close to town and in the past I haven't gotten any cell phone signal in town near the inn, so if you suddenly don't hear from me, that's why.

B: Where the hell are you?! Is this some sort of Bermuda Triangle of Iowa???

Me: No, it's just a really small town and the only way to get cell phone signal is to go out on the bridge in the middle of the river--Ben, Ben?

I had lost the signal. So, I go in to the inn, check in, then walk out onto the bridge, call B and leave a message saying that I'm fine but I have no signal in town. I'm wondering what he thought of this whole conversation.

It was probably a good thing I didn't tell him that the inn is haunted.

Cute Baby in Jack-o-lantern Hat

Last weekend, when I was in Iowa, I got to see my little nephew for a very short time and he graciously agreed to model the hat. But the flash hurt his eyes (his grandma was snapping pictures every few moments) so he closed them. The little mittens he has on have ghosts on them.

My sister has gone back to work so he's been going to a sitter where he seems to be doing well. He is a little bit bigger, of course, but still so tiny, although he has very big feet. I've got to get working on some socks for him--can't have my nephew going about in store-bought socks! My mom has made him a little sweater and is in the process of making a matching hat. Between me and my mom, the kid will never have to wear a store-bought hat.

Not that there was ever any doubt

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

The code doesn't seem to be working right on my blog so you can't see the little bars for how much I am each of those choices. I'm probably about 90% of a obsessive-compulsive bookworm and 10% of a fad reader.

Who knew?

My blog is worth $3,387.24.
How much is your blog worth?

Not as much as some people's but still a respectable amount. Sadly, the labwork blog is only worth around $500. I guess knitting pays better than science. Who knew?

October

In honor of the first day of October I bring you:

Pissed Off Black Cat with Jack-o-Lantern Hat

I almost laughed myself silly when I downloaded this picture. I didn't see Ghiradelli's expression when I took it because I was too busy trying to keep the hat on him.

The hat is actually for Benjamin. A slightly better view of the hat:

If you can

My brother, Eric, (not the one who just got married, a different one) is doing a charity walk for NAMI, an organization dedicated to helping people with mental illness. From their website:

NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness) is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons living with serious mental illness and their families. Founded in 1979, NAMI has become the nation’s voice on mental illness, a national organization including NAMI organizations in every state and in over 1100 local communities across the country who join together to meet the NAMI mission through advocacy, research, support, and education.

He is looking for donations for this. Here is his fundraising page.

We all have causes and organizations that are important to us in some special way for one reason or another and this is one of those for me. I have mentioned on occasion (I think) that I suffer from mental illness. I talk a bit more about it here (this post was part of a web-ring called the ABC-along which I unfortunately flaked out on less than halfway through).

Please donate if you can. Thanks!

Not even interesting to my husband

What does it say when your husband doesn't read your blog? I set up this other blog for lab stuff because he wanted to know what was going on in lab and if I'm making progress and it's too hard for me to talk about. But he hasn't said much, just mentioned my first post. And you know how, if nobody ever comments, you start to feel like maybe you're talking to yourself? (That was NOT a hint for comments, btw) Here's how the conversation went:

Me: So, having you been reading my blog?
J: Well, I read that first post about your paper, did you put more on it?
Me: Yes! Lots more!*
J: I didn't realize you were going to post so frequently
Me: It said right there on the blog that I was going to post frequently!!**
J: Oh, I wish I had known, I was bored up there on the mountain sometimes, it would've been nice to have something to read***
Me: Well, I thought you would just check it to see if I had posted anything new!
J: I never think to check things like that.
Me: I had a cold! I got a cold, had the cold, and now I'm mostly over the cold and it was all there on the blog and you never even knew!!****
J: Sorry.
Me: You said you wanted to know how things were going and here I am telling you and you're not even reading it!
J: I'm sorry, I'll read it more often now.
Me: You need a newsreader.
J: (silence)
Me: (accusingly) It has an RSS feed!
J: Oh.

Carrol, if you're reading this, I know you're sitting there shaking your head and thinking, "That's John." Or laughing your ass off. Or both.

ANYway, the point is, now that I have the blog, it's like it's one more way for him to not pay attention to what I'm saying. I mean, I can't force the man to read it. I'd give the whole thing up except that now I enjoy writing it. *sigh*

*There are now fifteen posts there
** From my first post, "I'm hoping to post daily or every other day about what it is I'm doing in lab. " My first post was on the 6th.
***He's been in Hawaii the past week for an observing run (astronomer, remember?) and the telescope is at the top of the mountain
****We don't talk on the phone much when he's observing because of the time difference and because he's either at the summit doing work, or sleeping

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In knitting news, I'm going to see the Yarn Harlot at her book signing this Sat. in LA! I missed her when she was in the Chicago area because it was out in the burbs and lab and all that, but I'm heading to LA tomorrow (to visit my husband who doesn't listen to me) and there's no way I'm going to miss her twice.

Speaking of going to LA, I have the vacation knitting dilemma. You know how it goes, you want to make sure you have enough projects to work on while you are away. This number is not necessarily the number of projects you think you'll finish plus one but more like the number of projects you need in case you get bored with one or more of the ones you are working on. And then there is the knitting on the plane. It's quite a long plane ride (plus time at the airport) so you don't want to run out of stuff. But, it needs to be easy to work on while crammed into a small space. Decisions, decisions.

Great.