Sick

Well, I'm sick. So, while I can't run around, read papers, or do much that requires more than half an hour of attention (because that's about when I fall asleep again), I have been sitting here plotting and planning. Real surprise, right? Since all I do is plot and plan, especially here in the blog.

Current plots and plans are:
I've got a draft of a thesis proposal due in less than a week and I'm too sick to work on it. whee. That's going to end well. But even if I have to push it back by a few days, I've got about a month until the presentation. I don't know if I'm ready but.... it feels like getting there is feasible. No mouth-parched-with-fear, breath-caught-in-throat moment whenever I think about it. That's good. that's... new. Sure, there's lots of other stuff lurking around that I should do, that I should have done, but for now--one thing at a time, one thing before me. Just gotta act. I've got to plot and plan my holiday season traveling. Always fun. Always complicated. Knitting. knitting knitting knitting. When I was in the worst of my fever, I couldn't even manage k2p2 ribbing, but over the past few days I've gotten a bit better. I sit in my chair by the window, swathed in blankets, poking away at easy projects. I finished up the cuff of a sock, wove the ends in on a pair of mitts, did 4 rows of stockinette for my sweater... The problem is, the holidays are coming. And according to my last calculation, I have 2 pairs of stranded colorwork mittens, one pair of tufted/thrummed mittens, all 500 ends to weave in from the intarsia blanket, 2 manly pairs of fingerless mitts, one scarf (mostly done) and one pair of heavily cabled, detailed fingerless mitts. Oh, and a baby hat, though that's a more general gift. And I'm involved in some end of year KALs, which involve 2 other fingerless mitts (to make pairs), 6 more thumbs (I frickin hate thumbs), buttons for a fourth pair of mitts, and a partridge in a pear tree. Jeez. I like how fast mitts go compared to socks, but seriously--thumbs suck. Meanwhile, my eyes, ears, and nose are all oozing, so knitting is slow. Oh well. Time for more sleep. I hope your plans for the holidays are not hampered by illness.

V-A-C-A- tee eye oh en

This vacation would be a lot better for knitting if we weren't having record high heat indices and a chance at death every time we drive somewhere in the black, humid, un-air-conditioned car. *sigh*. But I've done some great stuff while I've been here--went swimming in a lake, saw lots of family members, caught the movie Brave, ate delicious foods, did a boat ride on the river, etc. Tomorrow I go to my favorite farmer's market with my mum and get a little bit of peaceful time to myself. 

The problem (aside from the crazy heat) is that this is supposed to be a working vacation, and getting myself riled up to do work when I have the chance to see people I love whom I only encounter twice a year.... well, let's just say it can be challenging.

But today I am writing. Writing about the type of science I'd like to do, and hopefully making calculations to go with it. Busy, busy.

If I weren't writing I'd be working on my Summer Solstice Mystery Shawl KAL, though I only have three rows of the latest clue remaining. I'm working it up in Mountain Colors Bearfoot in the Thunderstorm colorway. I only have one ball, and it is vacation yarn from my trip to New Mexico, so I am hoping it will last through the KAL, since I can't precisely get more with ease.

My LYS has Bearfoot, but not in the right colorway. (Theirs is on sale, though. now that I've knitted with this and it turns out to be so delightful, perhaps I should go stock up). Thunderstorm is--well that picture certainly does it no justice. It's a dark purply grey shot through with bright sky blue and spring green, an occasional snippet of grey or dark purple in there as well. Normally I would consider this to be highly variegated and not appropriate for a shawl at all (unless you like variegated shawls. I don't. Not usually. Hitchhker/sideways garter stitch shawls aside). I chose it for this KAL because 1) it had 400 yards and I needed 420 but it was possible to scale the pattern down and removing one repeat dropped the yarn requirements to 400 yards, so, perfect. and 2) because I figured Wendy has been on a sideways knit shawl kick, so this would probably be a garter stitch sideways shawl with a little bit of lace on the edge. When I saw that it was supposed to be crescent shaped I jumped to the conclusion that the KAL would definitely be a sideways shawl.

well, I was wrong. It's bottom up, with a ~250 st cast on (bleh) and I won't know if I have enough yarn until I finish (as opposed to halfway). Good thing it's such a cute pattern and I'm liking the nupps that much. I started with 5 stitch nupps but began to worry about running out of yarn so I dropped to the 3 stitch nupps a few rows in. They look pretty cute nestled among the YOs and double decreases. Also 3 stitch nupps appear to be significantly easier to make (though further experimentation needed to verify this result; it's possible 5 stitch nupps are perfectly easy to make once a threshold of practice has been reached).

But I must abandon this shawl, three two and a half rows from its current conclusion, and get back to explaining why CO 3-2 is the perfect line to do the science I want.

Travel Yarn

This post might be a bit fractured because the kitten  two-year-old cat, Sunshine, is being incredibly hyper and skittering across the floor after bits of paper. I've stopped buying her toys except for the occasional crinkly ball because her favorite things remain the rings off of milk bottles and scrunched up bits of receipts and yarn band balls that she can carry in her mouth (and catch).

Sunshine, looking much more adult-like and innocent than she truly is

Anyway, I wanted to talk a bit about travel yarn, vacation yarn, or souvenir yarn.

I wouldn't use those terms interchangeably. I'd save "travel yarn" for something you could take with you on the road easily and "vacation/souvenir yarn" for something you picked up at an LYS to which you normally wouldn't be able to travel.

For me, travel yarn has two important characteristics.
Firstly, it has to be ready for use. I don't have a swift or ball winder, so it's either got to be already balled up by hand or I had to have put it into a cake at the store. I have to have a project in mind for it and want to actually be working on that project (baby items in particular are likely to be half-finished but relegated to the bottom of the interest heap); I have to have the needles to go with it and the pattern printed out or available in some fashion, and, preferably, have the whole thing already cast-on. I usually take socks-in-progress with me because even if I finish the one I have an easy toe-up cast on memorized. Starting a shawl mid-airplane is no fun at all, and if I find myself just freakin' done with that pair of fingerless mitts, they won't be coming with me.
Firstly, it needs to be as unfrustrating as possible. If I'm using it while actively traveling, I'm already in frustrating situations (traffic jams, the passenger seat, a very long train ride, or on a damned airplane). Now my definition of "unfrustrating" also varies given the situation (and my mood). I definitely want the yarn to be as smooth and non-splitty as possible. Splitty yarn just doesn't give me any of the soothing properties that I need from knitting while traveling. But I also want a yarn that is satisfying, and that is highly dependent on my mood. Often all I need is some soothing stockinette in the round for travel (since anything else requires more attention than I have to spare) but occasionally some easily memorized 8 row lace does the trick. If I find my current project unsatisfying, or inaccessible for some reason, I'm likely to scrap the whole thing and just improvise.

This happened with a pair of mitts I knit for a friend. I followed the pattern instructions for the cast-on and got into pattern just before I left on a 7 hour bus trip, but forgot to bring the pattern with me. The resultant mitts are a horribly bastardized version of what I thought the pattern might call for (and the thumbs.... my first thumbs. I shudder to think of them). In cases like that I am overwhelmingly unlikely to undo what I've done, and I'm just lucky my friend didn't care that they'd the worst implementation of the concept of picot edging ever.

WTF even happened here? I can't really remember.

So, to summarize: for me I want accessible simple knits that give me joy while traveling but don't drive me to numbness. Often this is why I do socks. They're so easy to improvise, they're so easy to carry around, and they make such quick progress, they're satisfying and hard to resist.

(this did, however, lead to my first pair of socks having to have the cuffs redone three times because I'd "improvised" mid travel. *sigh*. On the other hand, they got to do this:

Sandhamn, on the Baltic Sea

So they can't really complain, and neither can I.)

edited to add: I can't resist analyzing my current WIPs. I've joined the Knit Girllls stash dash 2012, which is basically about using up stash and making FOs. My primary goals are, as always, to finish a lot of my WIPs. I just finished a baby sweater today (barring some blocking and a ribbon), so that is off the list. I need to put a thumb on two separate fingerless mitts, and knit another one to match one of them; a third set needs only an inch or so of knitting and a thumb as well to be complete. I've started the second sock of a pair of lacework socks that I'm greatly enjoying, and I suspect I'll finish that quite soon, since socks are so fun and portable. I also finally busted out that HUGE blanket I've been working on for over a year now. If I can put three or four more balls of yarn in it I will consider myself done and bind that sucker off. That might take me the rest of the summer, though. I got the beads for my Shipwreck shawl from Knitty Spring 2009--I've already knitted the middle portion, and I get the sense that the netting will be a simple and easy project once I figure out how to get all the beads on and once I finally find my appropriately-sized needles.

So what to work on next? there are things that I consider obligation knitting--some rewards for the Spatterdash KAL (easy; done in a weekend); some toys for my last Knit It Forward 2011 project and for a few friends; a hat for a friend's mum who has cancer; a baby or toddler jacket for my coworkers who have produced offspring. Then there are the fun knitting things I am planning: I want to re-write the pattern for Knitty's Hex shawl for dk/worsted weight instead of fingering/lace, since that's what I have. I want to participate in the mystery shawl KAL starting on the solstice. I have the yarn and patterns in mind for at least three pairs of socks, two pairs of fingerless mitts, and a frickin partridge in a pear tree at this rate. Then there are the sweaters that I've wanted to knit for a while but have never started. Sweaters take foresight, planning, swatching, calculating, and understanding--I prefer to plunge headlong into my knitting when the whim at last seizes me, which is tough to do and still get a fitted garment. Oh, and then there's the spinning--I have probably 20 oz of fiber I'd like to spin up into pretty yarn, but since I can only seem to produce a bulky weight I don't want to waste any of it.

All the difference

So, when you're a yarn afficionado, when do you know when to draw the line at *too much* yarn?

Is it when you run out of storage space?

When you reach SABLE (stash acquired beyond life expectancy)?

When someone else in the household starts to complain that you could be featured on hoarders?

When someone else in the family thinks you have too much?

When you can't carry it home?

When you can't knit it all in a year?

For me it isn't any of these things. I am not uncomfortable having a lot of yarn. Yarn is light and doesn't take up too much space and is decorative and gives me a hobby to fill my snerk free time and produces a useful product. It is a post-apocalyptic survival skill and an expensive way to expand your sock collection. It can be like admiring art, a way to appreciate textures and colors. One of my favorite artists is Van Gogh and the first time I saw a real Van Gogh in person I was struck--not only by the style of his work, the swirls and semi-fantastica interpretation of position, landscape, sky--but by the chewy slathered texture of the paint, like someone had slapped frosting on the canvas, and by the drenched colors. I like both of those things together. I can't make art and I can't own a Van Gogh, but I can buy yarn, and use it, and appreciate it.

So for me, the point at which I have too much yarn is when I cease to appreciate it. Not that it just becomes about acquisition or anything like that, no--it's just that I am easily distracted and when something new comes along it's all I think about. I forget the charms of this sock yarn

(Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Fingering in Mardi Gras)
which I made my sister turn around and drive back to the LYS for because I couldn't get it out of my head, and which comforted us through the miserable gray expanse of Indiana and Ohio by being bright and cheerful and non-monotonous on our dashboard

as soon as this one came into my life

(Green Dragon Yarns Sock(tm) in Somerset)

I love it and squish and want to call it George. It's a huge 490 yd hank--big enough for a pair of socks and something else, or a shawl of some sort, but I really want to turn it into a pair of Leyburns and then some sort of mitts.

So I am not interested in stashing down, in losing the weight of my yarn. I love the lot of them. I just want some way to make myself go back and regain that optimism that I had when I first picked these balls up. I spend time trolling on ravelry, searching for patterns to match old yarns, but inevitably, unless that yarn is already balled up and I am feeling particularly antsy, I cast on for something else, something fresher in my mind.

I think I'll try that Yarn Harlot's sock club idea--putting pattern + yarn in an opaque bag of some sort and then when one needs to cast on something new (or at least once a month) one goes and plucks something out, and is surprised. I think that would be fun. The only problem is that 1) not everything I'd put in bags is in a ball--a lot is still hanked, since I don't have a swift yet.  Oh, and 2) I also don't have enough needles to cast on everything. I really need more stitch holders or a bigger collection of needlesthataren'tcrap if I want to pull this off.

Case in point, it took me forever to cast on my Shipwreck because I had no size 4 DPNs. Eventually I used size 3s and that worked fine--the middle section is actually a bit looser looking than when I switched to my size 4 circular.

I want to invest in a set of Hiya Hiya Sharp Interchangeables, but it's tough to justify the money in my head. I think it is a wise investment, but my brain keeps going, "$80?? for needles? holy crap! are you serious??" To which I can only sigh, because the size 4s cost me at least 6 bucks and these would give me a range of 10 needles, PLUS three different cables, the equivalent of 30 sets of needles, and it's such a better deal and they're such good needles, I really should suck it up and just get them.

While we're on the topic of sucking it up I should order beads for my Shipwreck and buttons for my Spatterdash. I am running a bit behind on that sort of thing.

While we're on the topic of getting things, I slipped and ordered a new sock yarn on etsy, and three braids of fiber to spin. Odds on me getting distracted halfway through my next sock once this arrives, and ripping it off carelessly to never be touched again while I ruthlessly cast on a new one? Oh wait, no swift! I win!

(This reminds me that I have no project for airplane knitting in a few days. Hm... this is problematic. Shipwreck is at the beads, but no beads. Baby sweater is short on yarn. Spatterdash only needs buttons. The sock is about to be hemmed and needs to be tried on 45 billion times while I find a good hem that is stretchy enough. Guess I have to start something new. I wonder what it shall be. I'd better go play with stash.)

Flail

equally busy. Today is packed, and doesn't include time for things like blogging or cleaning the house, which is all I really want to do. Clean house, play video games, knit. Instead I have

First, in the morning, I will find my passport and bring it in with my box of envelopes to make a copy and mail in my voter registration.
Then I will arrange that meeting later this week
Then I will set up a car appointment to get the former problem fixed
Then I will email L+P
Then I will set up an appt with caps bobdammit
Then I will look into the proposal deadline for APO and its requirements, and see how much I can write up in 1 hour
Then I will work for 1 hour on the TPT essays
Then I will work for 1 hour on an abstract of the paper + a draft of the email to the BH conference
Then I will look into how much $ remains and if I should be arranging any other travel
Then I will contact: 1) T@London about VLT proposal 2) M@DARK about visiting talk 3) C@Arecibo about visiting talk? (but access data first somehow)
Then I have a 2 hour or less meeting with Dr. D
Then I should work on R's research for 2 hours

Today is going to be a kickass day. Though I wish I'd gotten laundry done over the weekend :P

Proposals and Abstracts and Papers and Plots and...

Things are running the busy end of the circle here. I have a telescope observing proposal due in 4 days and my advisors want a draft by tomorrow (which is totally reasonable to have it ahead of time but I am so not near done yet that it's driving me a bit mad); I fixed a lot of my master's work stuff from the last blog post and just need to do some serious curve fitting and then I should be able to finish that up--but the problem is that if I want to finish either of those I'll need to put all my energy into it and I can't put all my energy into two things, I can only put at most half into each. So one of those is probably going to fall by the side of the road and it will probably be the master's work again. Also the paper I should have finished. But there's an abstract due for my second conference this week so I can't ignore that either--and the TPT application, and I have to get the rental car and hotel arranged for my conference coming up at the end of May.

I can't ignore it all and I can't do it all. I guess the only thing to do is to drink a lot of soda and knit on a sock and get ready for my doctor's appointment tomorrow and plan my date.

Wait, that's not a plan at all. That's procrastinating. AGH!

For some reason I don't feel terrified about all of this. Maybe it all still feels feasible. Maybe I just haven't made a good enough list yet. Or maybe this super squishy merino yarn is just that soothing. Who knows!

for the proposal:
-construct sample population: finish calculating limiting declination range; figure out what RA range is reasonable for fall; use the resolution of the telescope to calculate the maximum redshift I can go out to and still resolve down to ~500 pc; and then try and figure out how to find objects that are probably agn-ish, cover the span of agn luminosity (well I can probably use total galaxy luminosity because if it's over 10^44 erg/s it's probably at least a LIRG. right?); and also get a cross over with possible radio feedback sources. And things that can be studied with ALMA if we're lucky enough to get time. Oh, I am so doomed, this is the easiest step

-get the required .cls version of the proposal form and download it and make sure it all compiles and then fill them out, or at least the local-TAC required parts; let's see, that means:

All cover page sections, namely:

• proposal term info
• PI
• abstract
• Observing run
• scheduling restraints
• target list
• PI approval

Experimental design: include how a brightness translates into an estimated required time and any constraints or instructions not included in schedulingconstraints{}.

-email it to my advisors before 10am tomorrow morning
-Spend a significant amount of time laughing ridiculously and maybe do one of those 5 hour caffeine things even though that will mean I will be insane tomorrow and possibly fall asleep during my possible date

Life/organizing:
-feed cats
-set up hotel at the conference
-set up rental car at the conference (priceline?)
-mail lease to landlord for next year with requested fixes (hedge, new window screens, repainting of back door so the paint doesn't flake off and get eaten by cats, new kitchen floor tile as it is currently scarred and puckering, removal of vines that are rather quickly eating the house, chopping down the dead pine tree in back)
-mail voter registration
-mail gift + letter to my aunt
-do laundry so I don't smell like I rolled in something dead
-arrange to have car fixed before I leave town
-find place to park car for Twin to pick it up.

Paper:
-make a collection of MIPS overlaid with my VLT images
-recalculate 2 numbers
-make lots of plots and put them in the paper
-add background section
-redo references
-add analysis section

Masters work:
-look into fitting with gnuplot (from .txt, which I can construct from tempcompare.pro)
-read C.'s thesis for comparison/fitting ideas


So. I'm a bit busy.  Everything italicized needs to be done ASAP, preferably today. Shit. No wonder I am knitting a sock.

EDIT: Magically, the travel company that got the flight set up for me also set up my rental car. Woot!
EDIT2: And I'll share a room with someone who has already arranged a hotel. Sweet! Now I just need to feed the cats and do... the entire.... proposal....... dammit.

Still plottin'

I'm still in a plottin' and plannin' mood.

currently just trying to focus on these questions:
figure out how to extract GBT temp data-- mrdfits? fxposit? other mechanisms? each .fits should just be one temperature or something like that. mrdfits it is; just need to get it to recognize the extension index of 1 instead of the default 0.
plot GBT data and compare it to plots of gainometer data
write one program that calls on tempextract and whatever program I write for the gbt data and plots/compares them both (??)
figure out how to compare them
write first draft of essays for TPT
fill out voter registration form
mail lease to landlord
write first draft of abstract for competitive conference at the end of July
figure out what I would need to observe for my thesis and which telescopes to use.

most of my plotting and planning about knitting has died down a bit, possibly because I'm so close to the end on several projects. My Spatterdash mitts need only buttons and a blocking (though I've given up trying to finish them by the end of the day tomorrow--I've got too much work to do); my Wee Pumpkin Hat needs only a quick blocking; my gift mitts still only need 3 buttons and button loops (aaaaaaaaaaagh fine I will try and do that tonight before I sleep--oh, it's already 11. another time); and I am on the infinitely long bindoff of the Tiny Green Leaves that I am making (took just over 2 skeins; I had to join the third in after a quarter of the bindoff had been completed). Even though startitis is still pretty strong, and I want to cast on about 42 colorwork projects and eight shawls and three sweaters, I seem to be focusing on finishing. I even took out, oh, the second or third thing I ever knit--a cotton dishcloth--and looked into seaming it shut and stuffing it with fluff and catnip to make a kick pillow. I didn't have any other cotton to seam it with so I abandoned that right away, but my point is that I picked up a 4 year old hibernating project to finish it and gave it serious consideration, and it's back on my radar.

we'll see what wins. For once, it might be work--I've spent hours programming and plotting today, and have made a fancy couple of pictures (though not fancy enough; only half the data, and I need the other half from the completely different source before it means anything. See list of questions above).

With that in mind, I'd better get back to the work before this and knit-plannin' become too distracting. But I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of something I finished recently:

Susie's Reading Mitts (formerly retired, now returned to existence on ravelry) in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. One ball of the yarn produced a (slightly shortened) pair of mitts, which I love to pieces--and which were sent off to my LSG swap partner. *sigh* I miss them. But I got something really neat in return

gorgeous and starry, a lace shawl with beads. <3!