The mildly insane thoughts of a mildly sane graduate student

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Fun with fibre









On a packing break this weekend, I spent some time at Amanda's playing with natural dyes.

Here are our results (we've used indigo, cochineal and black-eyed susans on wool and cotton (the cherry red and greyish green tiny bits are my first attempts at hand-spun with the drop spindle.

I also got totally freaked out by Pepper the horse head-butting me in the bum (I'm a city kid: as this was happening, I was getting the mental image of the horse head-butting the cowboy from behind and sort of flipping the cowboy backwards onto its back. I'm not a cowboy, so I shreiked).

My fuzzy pink mitts are coming along. The pattern came out uneven (apparently because of something funny in the transcription of the pattern rather than my errors, meaning that the second mitt should match) - it looks kind of cool in its uneveness. I'm really happy with the shape of the mitts from this pattern. The top is nice and rounded which I think looks good.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Blanket done, cat packed




Casey thinks this packing thing is great fun. I now have a cat who plays Jack-in-the-box and randomly pops out of half-packed boxes.

Pastel blanky is officially complete - yay!

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Insanity as always







It's been a busy week (as always).

The highlights:

Casey had dental surgery. 3 teeth extracted (poor baby) because they were rotting (apparently, one canine actually had a nerve exposed). She was feeling very sorry for herself but is totally digging the post-operative spoiling (especially when it involves Fancy Feast).

Packing. Lots of packing. My moving day is in under 2 weeks. I found myself movers who had availability for my move and aren't charging an arm an a leg (just a couple of fingers).

Work. The doc-jock got her first publication, folks. I'm first author of a letter to the editor coming out in the Journal of Nutrition. I'm taking a quick work break doing this then I'm submitting our requested changes tonight.

Knitting. Got a lot done on gender neutral baby blanket (not that it needs to be gender neutral anymore: a little boy named Gabriel was born earlier in the month). I'm trying to push that (I'm also tired of pastels, note to any friends contemplating pregancy: you aren't getting pastel knits, I'm going for bright colors). Also started some fuzzy pink mitts for a portable bus project. They're for one of the girls from our lab spending the next semester in Northern Ontario if I get them done in time.

Hair. I chopped it off yesterday. Love it.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Great Ontarion Road Trip 3: Flying Solo


























My last stage of the trip was just me, heading up the coast of Georgian Bay, basically beach-hopping. I decided to avoid the heavily populated beaches and look for places where I could just wander and think. Beautiful place.

Before heading back landwards towards my last stop at Bancroft, I stopped at a National Wildlife Conservation area (Wye Marsh) figuring on a walk on the boardwalks and a short hike on one of their trails. Apparently, part of the trail I chose was closed for repairs and instead of turning back, I took what I understood to be a detour and ended up on an endless loop of cross-country ski trails. 4 hours later, I stumbled back upon the parking lot, muddy up to my knees.

Got to love that I chose that night to splurge on my accommadations and had booked a B and B with a hot tub...

Great Ontarion Road Trip 2: Collingwood or life on Mars









Andrea sometimes refers to Collingwood as Mars. Let's just point out how scenic Mars is with lots of nice beaches.

Andrea and I spend much of the long weekend working hard at doing nothing on the beach. We stopped at a second hand book shop for some mindless trashy girlish novels (note: that is what Jim is reading over Andrea's shoulder) to help us in our quest to successfully do nothing. We also took a scenic drive (note the driving pics: this is Andrea's daily commute) to Owen Sound where we played on some train tracks (note to my mother: the tracks ended 3 feet from where I was lying, I did not put myself in any danger during that photo) went shoe shopping and ate at Boston Pizza.