Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival part 1

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

ripped it all out

Stupid pillow plan. Instead of being a gorgeous waterfall of night artpiece to install in my kitchen, it looks... twee. Definitely twee. Like victorian sitting room twee. Fuck that noise. I'm ripping the whole thing out.

Wait. what if I tea-stained the white?

would that make a difference?

I kind of want to tea-stain it anyway.

found it

found the damn needle, but not before I'd sorted all the laundry that needed to be done, rearranged my bookshelves, tidied up the cat's area, made the bed, cut up a set of ripped sheets for maybe use as a couch cover, figured out which cross-stitching magazines I wanted to keep (not many of them; anybody want some magazines?), ripped out one unfinished object (mohair, too, and I kept it from tangling until I got to the cast on stitch, sigh), figured out what to *do* with the now-wound mohair (it's green; gonna knit a lacy green and purple shawl out of it. something striped and airy), worked three rows on another unfinished object and moved it back into the works-in-progress space, sorted out all the yarns I would be okay swapping or selling, and took out a load of trash.

If it'd been lost for a few more minutes I would've sorted the finished object pile and maybe started another load of laundry or vacuumed or something, but now I'm going to go cast on and knit to my heart's content.

I cannot find my 10" straight needles

To be precise, I can find *one* of them. But not the other.

I really badly want to cast on a facsimile of the Pillow of Sei Shonagon and finally (finally!) use the ribbon yarn that's been deep stash and untouchable for three straight years.

The photo doesn't remotely do it justice. It's 100% silk ribbon. The edges are frayed and disastrously catchy, but the color is a deep, deep purple and blue, and has tones and depths and layers like paint. I love it with an unholy passion, and this pattern actually might show it off. I'm not even sure if I'll make it into a pillow--I might just frame it.

Anyway, I can't cast the project on because I've only got one needle in the right size. I've spent two hours cleaning my bedroom in an attempt to find it, to no avail. It's more than a foot long--where the heck could it have gone?

flail

If you don't know by now, it is the usual nature of me and this blog for there to be a lot of flailing about how much work I have to get done.

basically this, but with less happy and more anxiety

Anyway, I KNOW that if I don't work on a presentation ahead of time that it is crap. and I KNOW that I feel bad about how crappy it goes, and I get all awkward and flushed, and I fumble a lot of words and feel like a science failure.

Despite knowing this, my enormous 40-minute talk to the entire department for Monday is NOT. YET. DONE.

In fact it's barely started.

So I'm over here, flailing, but also planning simultaneously a million other things including trying to get someone to live with in fall and arranging to visit Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival next weekend. And, you know, worrying about money because taxes. etc.

Anyway, the best solution for flailing is burying my head in the sand until everything goes away, right? that's why I'm playing with yarns on ravelry and thinking of projects to knit. And actually knitting, and watching a podcast.

Lies. I keep wanting to do those things but I keep bouncing around off of them as I panic. So little bits and pieces of the presentation are done so far. I hope if I can get myself to crack down for an hour now that I can break the back of it

(hell, just structuring my thoughts for this should be easy enough; what take away points do I want to have? a talk should have just a few take-away points, not like 5 or anything. Hmmm, let's see, the most valuable output of my research is that high resolution imaging reveals diverse circumnuclear morphology in my objects, which suggests different stages or fueling mechanisms of the mid-infrared luminosity. Or really, that if this nesting of processes that somebody suggests is the thing going on, then the circumnuclear regions are in different points in their evolution/different stages. Point like circum-nuclei are settled/have not interacted with their surroundings in ... a while? and diffuse-emitting circum-nuclei have more recent interactions and may be funneling fuel into the very nuclear region OR preventing fuel from reaching it, or simply be influenced by the same process that does the funneling or preventing. but is that really what we can conclude from my results? no, will have to cast it in the bigger picture to be able to say anything like that. My results *support* but do not *create* this idea.)

my *conclusions* from my research are: we calculate 2-20 msol/yr sfr for these objects; this sf is not restricted to a central point source but can take a more extended/diffuse form, including a circumnuclear spiral; and this circumnuclear sf can account for a major portion (31% on average) of the total infrared luminosity of these objects.

my results are 1) pretty images of each object's circumnuclear region; 2) measured NeII flux and calculated SFR (use Ho+Keto graph! also Kennicutt graph!) 3) E_L_neii as measure of distribution of sf/morphological analogy or pt src/extended and 4) nuclear/total SFR

so then, I just need to think about: my sample/experiment design/observations; and the motivation behind this all. and right now I'm getting embedded in the motivation a lot but I've a lot more to write up. and I need graphs and equations and things to say and bullet points that don't cover everything but summarize them.

wow this was helpful. off to work. flailing reduced. thanks blogolandia!

Miscellany + Mavericks Review

1) Hubble Space Telescope proposal turned in Friday, plus a big meeting Tuesday. This past week has been nuts. But very science-y.

2) Not so much knitting lately--finishing up a few things here and there. I'll post more in a bit

3) Upgraded my computer to Mavericks, the new Mac OS. So far I am not a fan. There's still a way to do multiple desktops, though it's a bit trickier than before (also hard to make them have the same background image. Seriously?). My main complaint is the changes to Finder, which is the GUI that lets you browse your files. It is customizable, but my favorite thing to do was sort by date (on the Snow Leopard version, your options were Today, Yesterday, Last Week, and maybe Last Month, I don't really recall). Since I'm usually working on so many things at once (I used to have 6 desktops, for pete's sake), Today and Yesterday were essential for finding the latest draft or program. Now instead, one clicks on "All My Files", and indeed everything is listed. Then you can sort by date created or modified. Not a huge problem, just not as convenient.

They also seem to have made Photo Booth completely useless. Instead of holding the pictures in a folder that allows them to be, you know, uploaded, it holds them in the Photo Booth Library, which is... an application that displays them. So no uploading. You can click and drag them to the desktop and they'll become real files though, which is kind of funny and a huge clutter.

ALSO. If you use LaTeX or TeXWorks, be warned! putting Mavericks on my computer changed... something. So TeXWorks was no longer properly referencing the TeX folders, so basically it didn't run any more. I did download TeXShop instead and no problems yet (and it has the benefit of a) color coding your .tex file and b) putting FREAKING LINE NUMBERS on the page so when there's an error you can actually find it, hallelujah).

Now, for the pros of Mavericks...

well, it allowed me to download the proposing tool that submits proposals to StSci, so I guess that's good. And I'm sure it's nice to have the software up to date and not complaining. The new download notifications are less intrusive, appearing in the upper right corner. They seem to be more persistent. There's also this Notifications thing in the upper right corner that... might be useful. I haven't fully explored it yet.

Rainbowy yarn of glee (Knit Picks Felici)

It's been a sort of miserably cold winter (for the south). Now don't get me wrong. I know the north has it worse. I grew up in the midwest, and I grew accustomed to snow from October to April. But after a while I grew disappointed in it, and bitter, and unhappy. Mostly because instead of staying inside I had to trek everywhere in it. Walking half an hour on fresh snow, or old snow, or snow packed down hard enough that it's icy and dangerous, but not remotely even because nobody shoveled it, or snow that sort of melted yesterday afternoon but has refrozen over night and has a hard crust on top of it that you have to stomp through or you'll slip off it, or snow that's hard and crinkly and gray because it's been half destroyed or buried by the disgusting filth left by traffic but it's too cold for it to actually melt so instead it's a field of razor blades--just to get to work or class--that took the love of winter out of me. And always being cold, and my feet always being wet, and having to prepare a half-dozen layers, put them all on, take them off at my destination, store them in a method that won't have them mold or let them stink or drip on something, then transport them between locations (if I was lucky enough to stay in one building for a whole day) so that I don't lose anything, always dropping a hat or scarf and having to go back for it, and then having to shove the sodden, cold, stinky gear back on for another half an hour trek back to the house... that, too, took the love of winter out of me.

and the gray sky and the gray snow banks. And cold so deep it makes your lungs ache, and makes your flesh cold for hours. Cold so deep it sucks the moisture from the air, and your face and your hands and your lips chap and peel and bleed. For months.

These things took the joy of winter out of me. I grew up with it, and I grew out of it, and I moved south. Not too far south (not far enough for fire ants), but far enough that winters are shorter, and spring exists, and the snow and the cold have their teeth removed.

Not this winter, though. This winter has had weeks where I look around and go "wait, didn't I move south?" My car's been snowed in for the past week and this has been one of them.

(although I will say being a knitter I'm now better prepared. Hand knit socks keep your feet warm after you've stepped in an icy puddle and it's soaked in through your boot and saturated your footwear, as long as you have the circulation to provide your own warmth.)

So what do you knit when that old gray misery is huddled round you and it's cold out?

Rainbow socks, of course.

This is Knit Picks Felici in the Rainbow colorway. It is as bright as Starbursts and utterly perfect (except for the purple. there's something off about it. But I don't mind) for knitting in winter. Especially because I have enough for knee-high socks out of it.

By the way, if you're wondering what one spins when it's gray and wintery out, the answer is this:

A bump of 100% merino in the Intrusive colorway from one of my favorite etsy sellers, Spinnerettas Studio. Half my fiber stash is from her shop and I'm eagerly awaiting new exciting colors. The prep and the dye job are always great and she does colors in blends that seem to speak to me.