A spinning milestone:

Yarn I'm happy with. There are a couple of components to the definition of "yarn I'm happy with". Part of it is the fiber I'm working with, a wooly mutt of a roving I like better than the hair-like Border Leicester I started with. Also, my spinning still isn't perfect but it's a lot more even and smooth. I can prevent the singles (the individual strands that make up a yarn) from thinning out to nothing, now. Lastly, this yarn is so springy, and has a wonderful hand. I think this is a combination of the wool, and luck of the technique, since I'm still mostly focused on just keeping everything together. I definitely don't know enough to intentionally make a springy or dull yarn.

Data for those who care: The yarn is wool roving from Blackberry Ridge, which I've seen around locally though they don't appear to sell it online. The yarn is 2-ply, about 100 yards, roughly 2 ounces (or at least, looks like about half of a 4-ounce ball of roving) between 12 and 14 wpi, depending on where and how I measure, though it's mostly leaning towards the small end of that scale. About 80% of the yarn is beautifully springy, of medium loft, and pretty soft. The rest of it is not so lofty, probably a bit overspun, but it doesn't seem to have affected the behavior of the overall fabric too seriously. The final product is quite comfortable against my skin, though I have a high tolerance for scratchy wool, so I may not be the best judge.

Another spinning milestone:

Something knit from handspun. (Also, apparently I have a big nose. I haven't seen myself in profile enough to have realized this. Oh, well.) It's just a very basic little ribbed hat, worked on size 3 needles. One funny thing I've found is that the yarn is almost too elastic; this hat is teeny tiny when it's not on my head, but when I wear it it's not even really snug.

I knit the hat thinking that I needed a little hat for capoeira. In capoeira, there's a lot of headstands, spinning around on your head, going from a headstand to a handstand (or not quite making it and bonking your head on the floor), etc. It can make your brain hurt. So if we're working on head-related moves, or if we're playing, a lot of people have hats that they wear as a cushion.

I'm particularly happy with the final product because I bought the roving, thinking it would knit up to look like blue jeans, mostly dark blue with a few strands of white. And it does! So, I prefer to be vague-to-tightlipped about work stuff, but two really wonderful things just happened.

1: The project I've been working on intensely since the summer (and that I've been working REALLY intensely on for the last month) has stopped being boring. I mean, I put together a really rough graph to see how the data was coming out, and said to myself "Huh. That's going to be the keystone to my thesis, isn't it?" And then J had to deal with me dancing foolishly and doing lopsided capoeira shadowboxing. Interesting data! Huzzah!

2: The first academic paper with my name on it is coming out soon. I'm only second author, but it's second out of three, and I put a lot of time into the writing of it my second year, and it's going into a perfectly honorable journal, so I'm very pleased. I have a not-completely-empty CV!

There's one person in my group that will be defending very soon, and a woman who's been here for both her Ph.D and postdoc who will be leaving pretty soon. When they leave, I'll be the person in the group that's been here the longest (except the profs, of course). About a month ago, I thought of this and almost hyperventilated. I... I'm just a dopey kid. How can I be the senior ANYTHING?

But this week has helped. Some recent meetings where I realized I knew more about the topic than anyone in the room has helped. I'm going to a conference in April, and will very specifically be networking for postdocs and other jobby goodness. That'll help, too. This sounds silly, but I've been critically eyeing my wardrobe for the last month or so, shedding some sloppy jeans and buying some inexpensive button-down shirts and dark pants. Dressing the part is helping more than I care to admit.

I'm becoming a professional. I guess that's all right. I was thinking about the quality of my hearing last night at capoeira, but I'll get to that part of the story in just a minute.

My hearing is bad. My right ear hears about 60% of what it ought to, and I hear less than that in the upper range. There's actually a pretty easy way for you to see what that means--cupping a hand over your ear does a good job of deadening the top end of your hearing. Just watch tv like that for five or so minutes and you'll get the idea. You'll probably also understand why I prefer to walk with someone to my left side.

It gets kind of rough in a place with a lot of background noise. If I'm at a bar with friends, one of them might turn to us, say

"I'm going ow-eye-for-moat. Back in a minute."

It's moments like this that are the reason it takes me a few minutes to understand what someone has said. Here's the thought process I go through.

The first two words and the last bit I get almost instantly, because A: "I'm going" is a pretty easy-to-lipread phrase, B: It's consistent with the fact that the person walked away, as is saying "back in a minute".

Knowing that they said "I'm going", the next word is probably "outside". Makes sense. Now I've got:

"I'm going outside for -moat. Back in a minute."

Moat? For a moment? For some oats? I must have misheard that t. Could've been a k or a c--a person's mouth looks about the same saying either, and they all have the sort of sharp sound I can usually catch.

"I'm going outside for -moak. Back in a minute."

Oh, yeah, smoke! This person likes to combine their beer with nicotine, and Madison bars are now smoke-free.

"I'm going outside for a smoke. Back in a minute."

Victory! Until the next sentence.

Now, granted, this happens a little bit faster and more naturally, since I've been playing this game pretty much constantly since early childhood, but that's a pretty good example of the tools I use to make up for not being able to hear consonants when it's loud. This would drive my family crazy when I was little, because they'd ask me a question, and I'd say "what?" because I wasn't as good at guessing from context and would always be missing a key word or two. But if they didn't respond for 10 or 20 seconds after I asked them to repeat what they said, I'd answer the question, because my brain kept working on it and I'd've figured out the important missing word. They'd look over at me and say "So, did you hear what I said or not? If you heard it, you shouldn't ask me to repeat it." At the time, my hearing hadn't been tested and I didn't even realize that most people don't have to figure out what other people are saying all the time, so I couldn't explain my disconnect between hearing and understanding.

(Side note: How do I know that my hearing was poor at that age, when I hadn't been tested? Because the noise of cicadas bothers me when I'm trying to fall asleep in the summer, and I've always simply laid on my left side to make the high-pitched screeching go away. Paying attention to word patterns also explains why I could hear my name across a crowded room, and go over there to find out what people were saying about me. There aren't many other words that go ee-ee-sah.)

Because context is so important, this also means I understand a person better the longer I know them, because I can predict what they're going to say, and how they're going to say it.

Last night at capoeira we were learning a new song. Usually whoever's teaching puts the words up on a chalkboard or says them slowly before we start playing, but last night he just sang a line and we copied him as we played our instruments.

And my beautiful system fell apart completely, because I can't figure out words from context WHEN THEY'RE ALL IN PORTUGUESE. Was that letter a g? Maybe an L? Did the word end in "o" or "or" or something else entirely?

Mostly I faked it, but it made me realize how much I get from context.

Here's an update on the progress of my Fair Isle sweater. Hasn't changed a whole lot, although it's officially 2 full repeats in. Also, it might be because I have it arranged as it would be if I was wearing it and facing the camera, but in this picture, I notice it's finally starting to look like a sweater. It's turning into a real thing I'll wear to conferences and dare the people I'm asking questions to ask about the polymer chains running up and down my sleeves. It's something that will keep me warm in the office. (But not in the lab. I try to keep my handknits away from corrosive chemicals. Fortunately, the labs are usually pretty warm.)

I've been thinking a bit about cardigan-closing methods; it's the only bit of the design I haven't given much thought to yet. I'm leaning towards buttons, but only if I can find perfect buttons. What's a perfect button? I don't know yet. Maybe something hexagonal, to gild the nerdy lily, but I'm open to suggestions. There are a few fabric and yarn stores with a good button selection near me. Perhaps it's time to visit.

My hair is going through an annoying phase, especially when I'm spending a lot of time in front of the microscope with my head slightly tilted forward--my hair gets in my eyes so's I can hardly see. So I whipped up a little headband.

I started as I would for a hat, casting on enough stitches to fit my head, and worked about 5 rows plain. Then I worked one row of *k2tog, yo*, worked a few rows plain, then went through the color chart above. A few more plain rows, another picot-edge row, and enough plain knitting so that the cast-on and bind-off edge met exactly in the back without making the front bulge out. Then I did what I guess I'd call a "2 needle 3-needle bind off", picking up one stitch from the cast-on row, knitting it together with the stitch on the needle, and binding off that row.

Very easy, fairly fast. A nice knitting snack. I think I'll make a few of these--I have a good amount of Dale Baby Ull that would be just right. I know complaining about spam email is, like, SO passe, but something in my inbox this morning gave me pause.

Is the phrase "make your unit so big it drags on the ground" even remotely appealing to anyone? I have a new obsession: bento boxes.

The simplest definition of a bento box is just a Japanese lunch box, with a complete lunch inside. So, some rice, some veggies, some protein, and a dessert.

The thing is? It's not just a bunch of food mooshed together, but like most of Japanese culture that I (an uncultured white girl) have come across, it's got a wonderful aesthetic. Or sometimes, a crazy aesthetic. The crazy aesthetic is most present in kids' lunch meals, and from this article, I gather that it's often a moms-in-competition thing. The level of intricacy goes from pretty on up to "Does this person spend their time doing anything else?" I mean, if you're buying Hello Kitty-shaped nori to get your kid to eat, or impress the other mothers, then maybe it's time to take up model ship building or something.

Even though I recognize that it's completely crazy, though, I love it. I'm finding bento blogs and bookmarking them. This weekend we went to my favorite Asian grocery store and sought out adorable sauce holders, and although we didn't find any (I think Madison's Asian population is mostly Chinese and Hmong), we did find sticky rice, so I'll probably try to make onigiri this weekend.

What's so appealing to me about these little lunches? First, I'm terrible at putting together a meal that looks nice--I tend to realize 2.9 hours into a 3 hour weekend cooking spree that I've made several brown foods, and will wreck the taste by throwing in a carrot stick or something. So I appreciate someone putting together pretty food every day. Especially for lunch, when I usually microwave an ugly-but-tasty lump of leftovers.

Secondly, I appreciate a little bit of entertainment in my day. The thought of eating rice shaped like an octopus makes me feel silly and content.

And then, my mom has a thing about lunches, which seeing all these food dioramas reminds me of. She often mentions how from a very young age (a few months into first grade, I think), I made my own lunches, and how sad and lonely my little cheese sandwiches seemed. I've never been as bothered about it as she was, but looking at these little handcrafted worlds, ready to eat, feels like looking into a culture even more foreign than one only half a world away. I finished a bunch of stuff this past week, so this will be a FO-heavy week.

Here's a baby blanket for my friends' new son. First I knit the big square blocks, which consist of 4 mitered squares sewn together, and for the rectangular bits, I picked up stitches along one side of a put-together square, worked until it was long enough, and then grafted the last row to the neighboring square. For the border, I picked up stitches the same way but bound off when I'd knit enough.

The amount of finishing was fairly annoying. I don't usually mind finishing, but it was exceptionally tricky getting everything right and making it look good on both sides. Just as I'd get into the swing of knitting, it'd be time to start sewing ends in again. After I got into this I looked at similar projects and discovered that hey, other people already figured this problem out and came up with less finishing-heavy ways of doing it.

So, a lesson in this object, that things that seem like a simple throw-together project might only be so if I carefully think the whole thing through. A first, as far as I can remember: I laughed myself to sleep last night. The joke is hardly worth telling--just the sort of thing that makes one laugh to tears when one is very very sleepy. And yet, saying "you had to be there" always feels like such a copout, so here's the gist of it: Monkeys and other primates are funny, especially ones with neat little beards.

Dreaming was fun, anyways. AAAHHHHGGGHHH!!!

WTF? CANDY? Coming out of what's supposed to be.... dear lord. As if I needed proof that the people at Lion Brand have all gone insane. I was double-checking our taxes this weekend, and since I had all the financial stuff out anyways, decided to look at how we did this year. Just looking at the bank statements compared to last year, it looked like we ended up the tiniest smidge ahead. There's no shame in grad students breaking even, but for a super-anal-with-finances person like myself, it made me sort of nervous--what is this not-saving-money you speak of?

Then J pointed out that we'd put some money into an account that wasn't associated with the bank.

Then I realized we were getting a decent tax refund.

I feel like I just found a big stash of my own money in the couch cushions.

No huge progress on the Vertical Cardigan, though you can see it in its entirety (including the back side, which has a pretty inverted color thing going on). That checkerboardy bit on the left side is the cardigan steek.

It's coming along. I'll probably get back to it this weekend once I finish a baby blanket for some friends of mine (and their baby, who will presumably be my friend once he joins us). Dear Journalism:

Every time you take the week off and slap together a puff piece about what group X really wants from a significant other, chances are that someone who's S.O. is from group X will get confused, or feel inadequate, or start to calculate love based on the given variables. Meanwhile, members of group X will wonder if there's something wrong with them because they couldn't care less about this thing that is supposedly Very Important to them.

It's not news, it creates nothing good or worthwhile, and it causes behavior that's exactly contrary to what 49% of the sample said that THEY want. So cut it out already.
--------------------
Apparently there was a story about how women want men to make exactly 2/3 more than they do. J and I are about even at the moment, and once I get out of school I'll probably make more than him until we retire. I couldn't give a flying crap, so long as he's doing something he finds fulfilling and isn't spending all of my money and all of his too. What do I care about is that I get to spend some relaxing time with him almost every day, that both our lives are unstressful enough to contribute significantly to house-stuff, that our combined resources are enough to have a clean safe place to live, and, um, that he actually loves me and is generally nice to me. Of those 4 things, 1 has nothing to do with money, 1 is directly influenced by money (but only to the just-past-minimum-wage level), and two are actually negatively correlated to having a high-powered big-bucks job.

But if the newspaper said so, that must mean he's a bad husband for not bringing me diamonds, and I'm a bad wife for not demanding them. *forehead slap* No wonder we never fight and love each other and want to do right by the other. That's not what married people do! Clearly we must be stopped! After my first, somewhat disappointing purchase of a "real" spindle, I was sort of put off by spinning in general for a while. Unlike knitting, where you pretty much just need some sticks and yarn to try lots of different things, the expectation among spinners seems to be that you'll put a lot of money into the initial investment of a spinning wheel (mostly in the few hundred dollar range), or several high-quality spindles (mostly about 50$ each). There's a lot of things I'd like to try, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money on something I'm not quite sure I love yet.

Welcome to the world of toy wheels. And dowels. Oh, and some glue and a hook.



All the bits were available at either my local random-stuff craft store or at the Ace Hardware down the street. I specifically wanted something very lightweight, so I could spin thin enough to knit some nice lace, but the pieces were so inexpensive that I bought one of each wheel they had, out of curiosity.

They work pretty well! I really liked that I was able to make some "design decisions", like making the spindle shaft extra long so my clumsy self could reach for it without looking.

I'm spinning some laceweight yarn on the smallest one now, and am totally obsessed. This yarn is so nice--the roving is mostly dark red with a few small streaks of blue, black, and white in it, which gives the yarn this beautiful depth of color. I've spend almost all my spare time spinning since I finished the spindles, because I want to make something with that fantastic yarn!

So yeah, I had a lot of fun with it. If you're looking for a goofy craft project, this is a good one. (I also recognized my finished product out in the real world. I spent way less than that, and had a lot of fun.