The temperature in the lab is back to its usual 23C. Still cooler than I would prefer, but I can't complain.

I have a pair of finished socks!



Pattern: Pomatomus
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Gothic Rose
Needles: KP 2.75mm
Mods: None, though one is a bit longer in the cuff than the other. Not sure what's going on there, but I don't care.

Love the yarn and the pattern. They fit me well, so I am not sure where my earlier doubts came from.

I think I left my cell phone charger in MN. I may have to buy a cheap one to get me through the next two weeks.

In the lab last week it was about 19C until Friday afternoon when we got to around 23c. Now it is 33C or approximately 90F in the lab. I much prefer too cold to too warm. I really hope they figure out this temperature regulating thing soon.

Apparently I have a talent for puncturing my extremities with sharp object purely by accident. First there was my foot; then, today I knocked over a smallish Erlenmeyer flask while washing a gigantic Erlenmeyer flask which broke into 3 pieces one of which viciously attacked my poor hand in retaliation. Yesterday I donated blood and they poked me twice! I guess I did volunteer for it, but my finger still hurts!

I am having trouble deciding what yarn to keep unpacked to entertain me for the next month before I move. It's really hard. I should probably just focus on stuff I have already started, but I kinda don't want to. Oh, and the whole "I am getting rid of yarn" thing kinda backfired. After the person bought the yarn, I had money in my PayPal account; well, it couldn't just stay there it had to do something. That money went and bought more yarn. Granted it's pretty yarn in some lovely saturated colors.

It is currently 19C (~65F) in the lab right now. My nose is so cold and my toes aren't happy with the situation either. I really wish I had brought my fingerless gloves. They are unable to regulate the temperature in our building and the power plant for the university is still not at full capacity. This means our water pressure is low, the autoclaves aren't operational and we have no deionized water, which is pretty critical for most experiments. It will be an interesting week. I am definitely wearing socks with my shoes tomorrow (no socks with my shoes today) and maybe a sweatshirt instead of my little hoodie. I do have one completed sock in my bag. I could alternate feet. I just started the heel flap on it's mate as I was waiting for the bus this morning.

Dang! I think our lab assistant was just fired. I better go wash some dishes to make up for the lack of lab assistant.

Canceled?!?!?! They canceled classes again. Twice in one year! Only the second time in my 6+ years at the UI. Weird.

Here, look at my too small mittens while I recover from the shock.

Work has been terribly frustrating lately. I can't seem to get the simplest reactions to work. My cloning projects are stalled at one step or another because I either planned it poorly or something didn't work for whatever reason. I haven't gotten anything accomplished in the last two weeks!

Knitting on the other hand has been going well. My Inga Hat has performed beautifully during the last few days of below zero wind chills and sideways snow. It was a little tight initially, but it has stretched a bit and fits nicely now. I have started some Pirate Mittens in purple and white, but the first one is sooooo tiny. I guess the problem could lie with my gigantic hands, but I am going with the pattern on this one. I think I will be adding a total of eight stitches, going up a needle size and adding an extra skull and cross-bones so they will fit me. Now I need to find someone who wants purple pirate mittens and has small hands. Of course they will have to wait a bit as I stopped at the thumb of the first small mitten. Oh, and Hat Attack starts soon! It's like Sock Wars but with hats.

My second Sockapalooza 4 pal received her package. Along with the socks, I included two skeins of sock yarn, a little bead like the one I use for my stitch markers and other stuff, a pencil box, a candle and some soap as well as the yarn remaining from her socks in case repairs are needed.

In other Chelsea Knitting News, I have volunteered to teach some Girl Scouts to knit next Friday night for TPP's Craft-A-Thon. I have yet to ever donate anything to TPP, but I have made stuff. I am forgetful and often lazy. I do love teaching people to knit though. If you are in the area, go check it out. It's an all day even and details are in the link above.

Ok, I think I have decided on the camera I will get. In the interest of saving some money,instead of the Canon PowerShot Pro S5 I will get the Canon PowerShot SS100 IS It's $100 cheaper and still has many of the features I want in new camera.

Huh?!

I am completely baffled. The university has canceled classes due to the weather. The last time this happened was when we had a tornado the night before. I attended or worked at the university since 2001 and and this has never happened. Funny thing is, I am supposed to have a class this afternoon. I am supposed to give a presentation in it. Classes are even canceled on the medical campus, which, since it is associated with the hospital, is even stranger. I just talked to the head of my lab and he says they have only canceled classes one other time in the 20 years he has been here, which I guess would be the tornado.

In knitting news, I have finished two hats and a mitten and have plans to knit a couple scarflets to complete the sets. Since these are all gifts, I am going for small things that require small amounts of yarn and small amounts of time. I have a lot of car time over the next few days so I should be able to complete some stuff. I am on a stitch pattern hunt for the scarflets, so if you have any good ideas let me know. I want something that doesn't curl and looks interesting with minimal work. i want to stay away from cables and lace, but other than that I am open to anything.

If I could knit as fast as this woman I would be golden.

As long as I don't also fall off a cliff.

In other news probably very few who read this blog will care about, my fave UFC ref has retired.

I spent my weekend taking care of frog embryos, screwing up my knitting projects and playing Zelda. I think I may have messed up a chocolate cake too (may have only added half the amt of sugar!). At least the chicken pot pie turned out well. I can't forget the huge amount of laundry we did either. It included all the bedding and pillows! And three baskets of laundry, or was it four? Either way, it was a lot! I still didn't get to make pumpkin butter.

I finished the crown section of Foliage, but I keep messing up on the body of the hat. I am not sure how it is happening. I tinked back to the end of the crown and am starting over for maybe the 4th time. So much for my plan to have it done by today. The Malabrigo arrived on Saturday so I stared my scarf last night and screwed up almost immediately. I gave up and went back to playing Zelda. I didn't even attempt to start the second sock or work on Wicked. My Ravelry shirt also arrived! I was worried it would be too small, but I think it will fit. It may just be one of those shirts I wear under a zippy hoodie.

Speaking of Ravelry, I was lucky and am getting a chance to test the Ravelry progress bars. now I just have to figure out how to integrate them into my blog's code. my first try was unsuccessful, but I may try again today when I get tired of making my presentation on in situ hybridization.

Go to Melanie's blog and try to win some of gorgeous yarn she dyes!

ETA: I got the Ravelry progress bars working. I will play with them some more so they don't take up so much room. Maybe no pics.

I saw my breath!

Yay it's cold! Well, sorta... if you consider 60F cold, and I don't. Anyway, I could see my breath while I was waiting for the bus this morning and I wore part of my winter jacket. I wish it could be fall all year. I guess that would probably make fall less enjoyable though.

I am missing one of my Fetching, so I must make some new ones and I don't like how short the finger portion is. I need to finish some socks before I do that though. Very little progress on Wicked as the rows are getting longer, but after about 10 more I should be starting the sleeves.

I am making shepherd's pie tonight! Can't go wrong with mashed potatoes on top of ground beef and veggies. I don't remember liking it when my mom made it, but then again, I never liked what she cooked when I was a kid except for her stir-fry, egg rolls and crab rangoons. Well, anyway, I love it now and it is perfect for this weather and is great as leftovers. I am bad about eating leftovers. Just ask Josh.

Oh! I almost forgot! We have a two-headed tadpole in the lab. It is really interesting because it has two sets of eyes and when I looked at it under the dissecting microscope it looked perfectly symmetrical.

I love looking at micrographs and the Small World competition always has some neat ones. There is even one from the UI.

I am switching my fall/winter clothes for the summer stuff tomorrow!!! I couldn't find a hooded sweatshirt this morning and I really wanted to wear one. It's perfect hooded sweatshirt weather. It's also perfect Ribby weather, so I really want to finish it!! I am still afraid of the zipper though. My hand sewing is not all the pretty.

I am sick of work. I have gotten some good results and some interesting results lately but I can't seem to get as excited about them as everyone else here does. Sometimes I just don't want to be in the lab anymore. Today's interesting result led to more questions that we don't know the answer to and the grad student I am working with is all excited about figuring out the changes in the chemical structure of the compound I used that produced this result, but I could care less. I really need to have a better attitude about this stuff.

I am on the armhole shaping for Ribby and am still on my second ball of yarn. I added 1.5" to the length to accommodate my long torso, but I didn't take that into account when I ordered yarn so I ordered two more balls along with 4 in another color in case the dye lot is way off so I can make the sleeves a different color. I got a light blue which, interestingly, is about the same color of the blue trim on the black fleece jacket I am currently wearing. I also happened to order enough yarn to make another sweater because there was still a sale on the yarn plus a discount when you order more than 6 balls as well as free shipping so I saved almost $20. I intended to make another sweater anyway so I figured I might as well get the yarn now when it's cheaper.

I am sleeping better, but I still wish I was sleeping more. It has been torture to get up in the mornings. All attempts to sleep in this weekend failed (stupid car alarms)and now my body wants to sleep in.

I hope my Friday gets better

I got to bed a little later than I intended and, for some unknown reason, I kept waking up during the night. Considering how tired I was from lack of sleep on Wednesday night I should have slept like a log, but sadly, that was not the case. Whenever I get a cold it completely throws off my sleep schedule.

I got to work and first thing the head of the lab tells me that I messed up one of the treatments for the embryos. I told him yesterday that I had never done it before so he told me the recipe for the solution and to put it on the embryos. Well, I did that, but what he failed to tell me and what never occurred to me to ask, was how long I was supposed to let this solution sit on there. I assumed he would have told me if I was supposed to change it or do some washes. It should only be on for 5-10 minutes and it was left on for almost 6 hours. Needless to say, the embryos were ruined. The embryos are for my project, so now I don't have any to work with and will have to wait until we can make more embryos.

At least I have the IC BrewFest to look forward to tomorrow as well as the arrival of the yarn for my sweater today. It's the last day for Summer of Socks so I hope I can get the second Fawkes done tonight.


Update:

My yarn made it! I freaked at first b/c one of the packages had a slice through the plastic and the ball band, but it looks like all the yarn is intact. Our new DVD player/burner/VCR combo thing also arrived. Yay UPS!

Josh went for two motorcycle rides yesterday. He had a lot of fun and I am jealous. I didn't feel comfortable riding with my cold and Sudafed in my system. I didn't even feel comfortable driving my car! Josh was very kind and took me to work yesterday afternoon so I could get some bacterial colonies growing for today. I need to get a pic of the bike. It has been painted and has a new seat. It looks so much better than it did.

As for knitting, I didn't get a lot done. At least not as much as I thought I would. I knit the heel on Anastasia 3.5 times. I gave the short-row heel another try, but had a gigantic hole where the heel and instep met before the start of the cuff. I switched to Wendy's toe-up slip stitch heel and it worked much better. The cuff and most of the heel flap are done on Fawkes. Oh yeah, my reason for not knitting a ton was this.

Heather, a pediatric cardiologist at UIHC and my boss, and I want to take a microscopy class at the university. We thought it would be cheaper to do our research while taking this class since the fees for all the microscopy use and staff time are covered by the tuition. Yesterday, I decided to determine if our assumption that the class was cheaper is true. I emailed the microscopy core's business manager to get the hourly fees for use of the microscopes. I figured that this was a simple question, but apparently I was wrong.

We are already considered enrolled in the class, we have an account at the core and we have pre-paid for use of the microscopes as a way to use some grant money before we lost it. Anyway, the woman I emailed made a huge deal of me asking for the fees because of all this other stuff and was completely confused about why I wanted to know since all fees are waived while you are in the class. Even after I explained, she didn't get it. She emailed Heather, the professor, the core's administrator and the core's staff person we usually work with. I then received an email from the professor because she was worried that we weren't going to take the class and there are people waiting to take it. She would need to let them know soon if there is an opening. She did end up sending me the info I needed, but soon after i received another email from her because she was confused about something else. I replied saying I was sorry for causing her so much confusion with what I thought would be a simple question to answer. She then replied to say she knew what I was asking. I still don't think she did.

Later, Heather emailed her to ask if we could transfer money from our pre-paid account to pay for our tuition and that started another round of emails among Heather, this woman and the head of the microscopy core. She is hard to talk to in person, through email, and on the phone. The administrator finally stepped in and relieved Heather of the business manager and they are going to figure out something tomorrow.

Today, I went to the cafe in the building the microscopy core is in to get a Diet Coke and the business manager was standing in line at the register. I was so glad she doesn't know what I look like. I am sorry if this didn't make any sense, but I had to vent. I wasn't feeling well yesterday due to an oncoming cold, and she put me over the edge.

And here's a little knitting content:

I did a short-row heel on the Anastasia sock and I think it is too shallow. I have higher arches and so does the recipient of this pair so I think I will try a toe-up gusset heel instead. I did start Fawkes last night. for some reason I decided to try it on magic loop and quickly decided that wasn't going to work. The cord drove me nuts.

edited to add:
Crap! I just bought more yarn! One's for my mom, I think.

I guess there has to be a little letdown after the success. I screwed up the gel twice (Using electricity we run our DNA and RNA samples through gels to tell us how big they are. DNA and RNA are polar, so they have a "+" charge at one end and a "-" at the other.) when I was analyzing the mRNA I made from my clone. At least it wasn't the same mistake. I will do it again later today. I also dropped two vials of embryos I am staining. I think I recovered most of them, but I don't know which embryos were stained for which thing. Yesterday was not a good day at the lab for me.

After work Josh picked me up and we went to the Field House to work on some kicks. It was nice to kick the paddle after the crappy day at work. I am not even sore today! That doesn't mean I won't be tomorrow. We didn't do a lot because it was so hot and humid. Of course, the temperature dropped 10 degrees by the time we drove back to the apartment.

I haven't done a ton of knitting lately. I finally turned the heel on the second Leyburn socks and frogged the Charade sock to start again on slightly larger needles. It was just a little tighter than I wanted and the stitches were too stretched when I put it on. I have used up the yarn I frogged so I am about where I was before frogging. Liz, I am using bamboo needles because my other set in the size I need are in use for the Leyburn sock. They aren't so bad after awhile.

I had a dream last night that I was in a flood, not sure where, but I was carrying three bags, one of which is my project bag with the Leyburn socks. I was being pulled through the water by something and I could see i was losing stuff from my bag. I saw my crochet hook float away and something else. Well, I just pulled out my sock from that same project bag to turn the heel and I noticed I am missing a needle. I am sure it is on the couch or in my other bag, but then again, it may be lost in the flood..

Ok, I am seriously considering culinary school for baking and pastry. That one is near the town that has a brewing course Josh is interested in. It's also the school my cooking hero Alton Brown went to. That's not the only reason I chose it though.

Does getting a six-pack of Guinness as payment for proofreading make me a professional? I am getting paid for my work after all.

Oh yeah, because I am sure you all are wondering, my cloning was a success. Now it's just a matter of making some mRNA so we can inject it into the embryos and make the frogs glow!

Supposedly we are getting some cooler weather starting today. I really hope so. At least we are getting a good thunderstorm today. I think my subcloning may have worked! I am not getting my hopes too high because I can never get any of my cloning projects to work the first time.

I have an excess of knitting time because there is no more tae kwon do this week! I only had to teach two classes on Monday night and I am free for almost two weeks. This means I may be able to finish a pair of socks in a week. I am going to make some brownies tonight to celebrate.

The start of the first one is the pic on the right. The pattern and yarn are working really well together. It's almost twice as long now. I have one more pattern repeat and then will start the heel. The stitch pattern is really easy to memorize. I had it down after the first time. You have to borrow some stitches from the next row and the previous row during each repeat which creates a little jog in the pattern but it is barely noticeable.

My upstream sock pal is torturing me. She told me my socks are done and they are on Ravelry. That means I may have looked at them or could possibly find them and not know it! I just want to look at all the socks on there and figure out which ones are for me. Not that I think it's really possible, but you never know. We also have some of the same things in our queues so I could easily stumble across them while looking at other people's stuff. Torture!!!!

I meant to take pictures of my socks yesterday, but my camera batteries died and I didn't have any charged ones lying around. My computer is also driving me nuts. I need a new one but am not quite prepared to spend that much money right now.

I am so glad I took the 4th off. I almost started a project at work that would take 3 days, i.e. through Wednesday, but decided against it. I got to sleep in, play Zelda, and get a modest amount of knitting on my Sidewinders and Sockapalooza pal's socks done. I just need to graft the Sidewinders, and I am on the heel flap of the Cable Twist socks. I think I will wait to do my second Sidewinder until Maia writes her tutorial on how to eliminate one of the grafts by using two circs.

I know research is supposed to be frustrating, but when your controls aren't cooperating it gets that much more frustrating. I can't seem to get anything to work correctly in my current cloning project. First I was given incorrect information about my vectors and now the insertion of a small piece of DNA, which should be simple, is becoming increasingly complicated. I did make a stupid mistake initially, but i corrected that and it's still not working. Even my PI is confused.