packing up

Over the weekend I packed most everything that I don't require in the next two weeks so that I can more easily move on July 5 & 6. It turns out that I don't require my yarn, so all of it that was hiding in closets or laying at the foot of my bed and wasn't already in the Big Trunk o' Yarn or the new Little Red Trunk o' Yarn went into boxes.

there's a sweater on the needles in that blue/black bag; there's also some stuff to be felted hanging out in that knitting pile.

I have determined that I have entirely too much yarn for a frugal graduate student. This was further confirmed when I ran across some old receipts from the yarn store for yarn I had forgotten I'd bought... Eeks.

And, with that decided, I pulled out the Nadia yarn, knit up a swatch (because I already have two sweaters and a sock on the needles...the sweaters having been there for nearly a year each...and of course that's not enough projects to have going concurrently...!), and am trying to determine how much more of it I should go buy...

sights of pittsburgh

Things you might see if you spend a day with me in Pittsburgh...

The unique facade on an apartment building...Al Kaline up to bat at the 1974 All Star game - shown on the big screen at PNC Park during a rain delay...An appropriately licensed Saturn Ion in the parking lot of my workplace...Wild turkeys snooping around the gardens of Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, just two miles from my current home...You just never know what you'll need a camera for!

welcome, summer!

Summer is here!!! It sure feels like it, too. We've had a week full of 80+ temperatures, and it's been rather muggy. I can't wait to move into my air-conditioned new apartment (moving occurs in two weeks, by the way!!)

In celebration of the start of summer Because I was getting so hot and my dinner plans for Wednesday fell through, I went and got my hair cut back up to my ears. I still have to figure out a way to style it so it stays how I want it to.While getting the cut, the hair stylist reminded me that it was the summer equinox. So I celebrated with my roommate Michelle by visiting the newly opened Mercurio's Mulberry Creamery in the shopping district of Shadyside. The gelato was good - I had "rum raisin" and sampled lychee - but nothing compared to that purchased from a street vendor on a hot afternoon after walking around Venice (which I have done). Nevertheless, it was good, and I will probably go back but eat a different type of gelato. Mine was also really soft, and that's not right for gelato, either. It certainly wouldn't stand up to the heat of the Italian sun!

Happy summer!

stash enhancement

Since Pittsburgh Knit and Bead is going out of business, I've dropped in every now and then to see what yarn I want to waste my money on. I rationalize in my mind that I'll never find the yarns at a better price than now, since the prices keep falling from 25% off...to 30% off...to 45% off... Deeper discounts as the final days of the store approach.

I have pretty much decided that I need not visit there anymore since I've spent far too much on yarn and, judging from my inability to finish any of the four projects I've got going, I won't be wanting for yarn any time soon. I trust that this little enhancement to my stash (displayed in a vintage train trunk I picked up for cheap at a garage sale and that will go nicely with either my living room or bedroom decor) will last me for quite some time - time enough to refill my bank account! (Click for notes on what's in the trunk.)

football is full of movie stars

I watched the Italy vs. U.S.A. World Cup game on Saturday and noticed that there are many players on the U.S. team who resemble actors from the movies. My friends and I were thinking that the people in Hollywood could easily make a movie about this team with look-alikes. See what you think (and if you don't agree, watch some of the games on t.v. for way better shots of the players.)<

matt damon
brain mcbride
chris rock
damarcus beasley
tom cruise
carlos bocanegra

And I'll leave that discussion about how good-looking people seem to succeed in sports open for comment...

the future of imagination and time wasting

I was pleased to note the other day that my favorite means of completely wasting time will soon be improved by something I've wanted for a long time. The magnificent product that eats up hours upon hours is "The Sims 2," and they supposedly will be adding a pet expansion to the PC software. !!!!! It's the next best thing to having an actual pet. Er...well, I guess there are other next-best things - like caring for living animals at an abandoned/confiscated pet shelter...or pet-sitting...or helping people take care of their pets when they are ill or cannot get around very well... Okay, so silicon-generated pets are simply a total waste of time, but at least they could potentially be a fun waste of time. And it would come close to meeting my desire to have a dog of my own. For the record, I believe I asked for a dog at every birthday and Christmas until I was 18. I never got one. Now...I am never at home/can't have a dog in my living quarters, so I'm still dogless. But at least I'm able to recognize that I am currently not equipped to properly raise and train and interact with a dog.

Anyways, as I was investigating the claim that EA Games has hinted at releasing a Sims 2 Pet expansion pack, I stumbled upon this from the upcoming EA NCAA Football '07. I was simply impressed with the graphics.

go green!

and the world marches on

There are many things changing in my world right now, and many things that are making me feel old.

I will be moving in a few weeks to a new apartment in a new neighborhood on a new bus route.

I've been visiting a new church, meeting new people, and planning to go to a new Bible study this evening.

I have been trying to get several new techniques working in the lab, and they work and then they don't and then they do - nothing is constant, it's all about doing and redoing and tinkering around.

The "new" (end of second year) students are in the middle of comprehensive examination time, which, aside from defending one's thesis, is probably the least enjoyable period of graduate school because you can potentially be tested during your oral exam on every detail about everything you might have been taught. And, the day has finally arrived when I'm an "old" graduate student and the younger ones are calling upon me to help them prepare by acting like a tough professor. It's an honor and a privilege, and I hope I can meet expectations.

i finally finished something!

Hooray!! Finally this weekend I finished the edging of the Wave Skirt. I woke up on Saturday and said to myself "I am going to finish this today!" and then plunked down on the couch and knit away while watching "Wild America." It was long after that show ended that I actually finished. But - nevertheless - it's done! Here I am modeling it in our kitchen. Don't mind my pasty white legs or the fact that my shirt totally doesn't match. I also must add that somehow this photo got squished as I edited it down to an acceptable size, so...it looks rather squatty - sorry.

floccinaucinihilipilification

I have been a subscriber to "AWAD" (A Word A Day) for more years than I can remember. It's a service run by a great person named Anu Garg who sends words to the world every weekday. (BTW, my most favorite part of Anu's site is the anagram server. You must check it out!) I started getting this delivered to my email box because of the quotes at the bottom of each email. But I also enjoy the words and their definitions and etymologies.

Today's word is floccinaucinihilipilification. What I appreciate most about this word is that it really is not as complicated as it seems (the fact that it means, in essence, "nothing," is also enjoyable). It's actually just the running together of four Latin words that all mean basically nothing. And being that I was a student of Latin in high school and am still a huge fan, I can remember that.

...One item that troubles me, however, about floccinaucinihilipilification is the first part of the word. "Flocci" (plural, I believe, of "floccus") means "tuft of wool." Hey!! Wool is not nothing. Although, I guess one couldn't make much of anything with simply a tuft. A little bit of thrumming is all, I guess.

knitting update

The other great thing about going to Europe is I will potentially have the opportunity to purchase some wonderful yarn! ...Can I think of nothing else??? I'm very much interested in scouting out a place in Munich to score some (cheap?) Regia Canadian Color sock yarn, which I've been coveting ever since I saw it over on Alison's blog.

What have I been doing with the yarn I already own...?First, I started making this sock using the Retro Rib pattern from Interweave Knits Winter 2004, which happens to be the first IK I ever laid eyes on. I got pretty far (incidentally, I can't figure out how I got this far...the leg was almost done!) but then realized it was waaaaaaay too small. I'm using Brown Sheep Wildfoote, and it's a lot smaller gauge than what the pattern calls for, so I had to improvise. As usual, because I'm so lazy and don't ever feel like making a proper gauge swatch, the gauge I had minimalistically swatched out before beginning the project was wrong, and I really needed to insert an additional pattern repeat or two in order to make the sock be an appropriate diameter. So I ripped apart my sock, wound up my yarn, and am now back to this (oh, I apologize for the cruddy pictures you'll see below; I forgot to have the flash turned on when I took these pics):Next, the Wave Skirt is a..l..m..o..s..t done. It has this picot edging, and I have never before experienced how heart-wrenching such edging can be. I got to the end of the piece a few weeks ago (...maybe even a month ago!!) and was excited because I was done, and I only had to plunk a little edging on and make a crochet chain for a waist-tie and I'd be done. Only! Yeah - that edging is really taking me a long time. It's 66 repeats of a 8-row pattern. The pattern isn't awful, but the skirt is so big (and, actually, heavy, too!) that I can't drag it with me anywhere, so I have to work on it at home, and I haven't been there a whole lot lately. At any rate, as of today there are only 17 more repeats to do. Hooray!With the closing of my preferred yarn shop imminent, I stopped in the other one by my house. I had heard rumor that they hosted charity knitting on Sunday afternoons, and so I came to see. I was the sole charity knitter, but they hooked me up with a comfy chair and some big yarn and I whipped out a fairly long portion of a scarf. I was amazed. I don't really do big yarn, but I might just have to try it - the quick results are really quite encouraging. By the way, I did NOT knit the scarf up on the needle those stitches are hanging out on. That's a supposedly size 4 (more like a size 2), but the 10.5 interchangeable I was using I needed the cable for to do the edging of the Wave Skirt. More motivation for me to finish that edging...

I think I particularly enjoyed the big, results-quick yarn because I have been working on this guy for so long:Honestly, I love it. It's beautiful. ...But it takes so long, and I can't memorize that 16-row pattern... What I need to do is sit down and work solely on it for a couple weeks, and it will be very much closer to being done. ("It", by the way, is a sweater. That picture is the front or back, I don't remember - I'm working on both at the same time.)

And finally...much to my happiness...It's the finished body of the Starry Night sweater!! It needs some blocking and proper end-weaving-in due to my inability to seek guidance about doing intarsia, but the front and back are done now, and I'm in the middle of the ribbing for the sleeves. THIS is the project I should really devote myself to, not the Aran above, because I have wanted this sweater from the moment I laid eyes on it, and the nights are going to start getting balmy and certainly not sweater-wearing-ish pretty soon around here.

So...that is what I've been doing. Yay, knitting!

i'm going to amsterdam!

Superb news arrived in late May: I received a travel grant to attend the AIDS Vaccine 2006 scientific meeting in Amsterdam, Holland!!

Being a descendent of Dutch people, I have always wanted to visit the Netherlands, and I was hoping to get the opportunity to go to this meeting on a travel grant. Getting a travel grant is always nice for one's curriculum vitae, but it's always wonderful for the professor for whom one works who would otherwise probably pay the way for his or her student to attend the meeting. Thus, I am happy that I have saved Dr. Gupta, my boss, money!

In addition to presenting a poster about my research at this conference and attempting to sneak out and see some of the city and country, I am looking forward to a whirlwind tour of some eastern European countries. My co-worker Lori and I are going to join up with a Cosmos tour in Munich, Germany. We will then motor around with a group of travelers to visit Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. I've heard marvelous things about Prague and Vienna and know absolutely nothing about Budapest, so I'm ready for an informative adventure.

Now, all I've got to do between now and when I leave on August 20 is...

• pack!
• learn Dutch
• find some books about the places I'm going
• save some money
• find someone to feed Sheamus while I'm gone...

a poem for rachelle

Rachelle was born in Alaska,
Which town, I don't know - I'll ask her.
I wonder if my sister ever gave her those Old Navy socks.
If not, I have some at my house in a box.
I can ship them to her via USPS.
They have Eskimos, so they are the best.
I drove Rachelle from Pennsylvania to Michigan,
A 12 hour experience in the snow I don't wish to repeat again.
It wasn't her that made it so bad -
It was the five of us girls and all the stuff that we had.
Rachelle reads my blog and missed my point of view
So I wrote her this poem just to say "Thank you!"

what am i doing?!?!

Eeks... Yes, it has been a while since I posted something here. Let's just say I've been really busy. Not an adequate excuse, but...well, it's my excuse.

What have I been up to?

• working a lot doing many experiments
• planning MVM Day, the day every year where my graduate program (Molecular Virology and Microbiology) gathers for showing off our work and hearing invited speakers and eating food and trying to have a party outside. It went over fairly well on Friday, May 26
• sort of attempting to start packing my belongings so I can move in July
• knitting now and again
• trying out various churches in my area - I'm trying to find one that's closer to my house than the one I have been going to
• planning a trip (much more in a future post!!)
• pursing true love...er...not really

Many a thing - plus I went to Ren's bridal shower, taught someone how to drive a manual through the hills of Pittsburgh, met with the head of Young Life in my area, and attended various festivities for Memorial Day. I also managed to do this to my leg thigh:

this is after a week of recovery

rider strong

Do you remember this guy? For me and my friends from high school, it's unthinkable that we'd ever forget Shawn Hunter, semi-bad-boy and best friend of Cory Matthews on ABC's Boy Meets World. (Honestly, IMHO, he was the most realistic character... He didn't get everything handed to him in his lap like so many, and he wasn't totally crazy like certain other characters...)

So I had to laugh when I was watching the WB's new sitcom Pepper Dennis with my roommate. (This makes it sound like I watch tons of television. That's not true - BMW, yes, I did watch that faithfully for five years, but nowadays the only intended-for-people-over-the-age-of-13 t.v. exposure I get is what my roommates are watching when I'm in the living room knitting or eating ice cream before bed.) I have a really hard time with identifying actors and actresses, but I knew I knew this person portraying "Chick" (what an awful name...give the guy some mercy, eh?). I asked my roommate, but she had no idea. I decided, thus, that it must be Harry from a kids' PBS show I watch since obviously my roommate would never have seen that (I love kids' shows!! but rarely am home when they're on. When I can, though...). Kind of strange...going from PBS to the WB...quite a jump.

But, of course, I was wrong. When I finally got to watch the credits, I realized...Chick is Rider Strong!! Ohhhhhh! Personally, I feel kind of bad. Rider is so likeable...why does he have to play this poor picked-on guy? So not right. The switch from Shawn to Chick is just as drastic as the conjectural Harry-to-Chick swtich.

Well, I suppose that's the way show biz goes. Rider, if you happen to read this, which I highly doubt: I'm still a fan. And, by the way, I think you used to have a really cool website with poetry and stuff - what happened to it?

This all reminds me of a fun time in college where Amber (she's my oldest, bestest friend) and I saw an episode of The Wonder Years where we saw a kid who, again, we knew we knew. We bugged our eyes out staring at the end credits to figure out his name, but that still didn't help. So then we spent the evening searching for him online (this was before Google and many useful online movie/t.v. databases) until we cross-matched Chad Allen as the actor in both The Wonder Years and...good ol' Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman!

...Oh the amusement that a lack of memory causes...

Also amusing that, probably because I was thinking about writing this post before I went to bed, I had an incredibly strange dream last night in which Rider, who informed me his name was actually Dean and was about 6 inches taller and had a twin brother and looked nothing like the actual Rider Strong when I think about it, and I met while standing next to each other in line for something. While we waited, I had my ear inspected by a very scientifically-savvy Mr. Strong who apparently toted around a hand-held microscope specifically for examining people's earlobes. ????? Yikes! In this case, reality is better than dreams.

I thought about putting some pictures up, but I decided to be moral and not swipe them from some site and use them. Copyright laws, I respect you.

the joy in knitting

Happiness abounds...

Last night while shopping for much-needed groceries I paused by the magazine rack and was astounded to find the summer edition of Interweave Knits, my favorite knitting magazine. I've had that issue's release date on my calendar for a month now, and it's listed as March 16. It even still says that on the website! But...much to my enjoyment, the magazine was there at least a day early, so I scooped it up and even paid full price. I then was able to peruse the many knitted-tee patterns while washing my mountain of laundry into the wee hours of the night.

...I gotta get some more yarn. Hee hee.

the happy ending

Throughout my looooooooong day Thursday, I (and I'm totally serious here...) kept thinking to myself, "You can do it...just a few more hours...and then maybe when you get home your Sockapaloooza socks will be in the mail!" I was just trying to amuse myself, but...imagine my delight when I got home and found the following items in my mail pile (sorry for the totally cruddy pictures...it was past midnight, and I'd been up at 5a.m.):

money owed me by the university!an invitation to ren's wedding!MY SOCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, they arrived!! I ripped open the package, pulled off my boring white socks from my exhausted feet, and jumped into the papasan to put on my new socks!

feet, meet socks. socks, meet feet

Brynne, my S'ploooza pal, knit me good. Just look...

A beautiful cabley rib, and a heel with slipped stitches - the texture is way cool!Shaped toes so I know which sock is for which of my different-sized feet.I don't know what this heel is called, but I really like it.
A shaped calf...very thoughtful!! And look at how the pattern is maintained...excellent workmanship...!!

Brynne's the best. It's amazing to see how much work went into the socks. The colors are gorgeous and happy and spring-like and go with many clothes I have, including my new favorite pink fleece sweatshirt. And I was also presented with some sock yarn to make summer socks, too! Yay!!!

I am afraid I may love my new socks a little too much. I wore them to work on Friday...and then I wore them on Saturday...and on Sunday... Hey, they're nice, okay? And they deserve the upmost care...and love. What better way to love socks than to wear them?

more mischief at work - a chain reaction

Before I begin, let me assure you that this story has a happy ending.

I seem to have acquired a Thursday Curse. For the past month, every Thursday has been incessantly busy at work. I, of course, make my schedule, so I am really the only one to blame. There are other factors - when certain people are available to aid me, when reagents can be shipped to me, and at what times I can use various machines. But truly it's me, and for some reason I seem to have decided that since I don't have anything to do on Thursday evenings, that means I can stay at work for 16 hours and do ridiculous amounts of work. It is thus no surprise that it is on Thursdays (or in preparation for Thursdays) that bad things occur.

Last Thursday was one of those days... I shall present to you the amusements of my life in pictures:

It all started with this tube.

I put some stuff into the tube, and moments later it transformed into this. This was not supposed to happen. The pointy end inverted into the inside of the tube, and then the pointy part got so disfigured that it broke open, so the stuff I put into it came out.

The culprit - a centrifuge...

...because of this...

...and not this.
Since the stuff I had put into the tube was bacteria, I really needed to clean up everything upon which it had leaked through the pointy-end hole. Fortunately, when you put tubes into that centrifuge, they sit in a bucket, so that meant I just needed to clean the bucket. I washed it out, and then I reached to get a wipe to dry the bucket.I reached over this.And then this happened. That meant the water went everywhere. Amazingly, it did not get on me, just the floor. Also amazingly, the glass beaker that I knocked over did not break!

Not as traumatic as a near-fire, but it was fairly amusing and caused many more problems than I had anticipated. However, like I said, in the end there was a happy ending to my long and tiring day at the lab. But that will have to wait for tomorrow...

what's in the bag

Here's all the objects I crammed into the "bag" I sent to my sockpal. As mentioned before, Pittsburgh Knit and Bead is closing, so...I bought a few things from them to send along. Sockpal, I hope you enjoy!!!!

pictured clockwise, starting from the top: hand-dyed and ??handspun?? merino laceweight yarn made near pittsburgh; the socks made in pittsburgh and baltimore and columbus and colorado and probably some other places; a pen from pk&b; a stitch marker made at pk&b

the socks are in the mail

Today is the official Mail-Your-Socks-To-Your-Sockapaloooza-Pal Day. My pal lives across the ocean, so I actually sent the socks a couple days early so they should arrive around the same time that all the domestically-delivered socks do. I have a nice picture of the other stuff I sent along with the socks, but of course I left my camera with the pictures at home today, so...oops. Check back tomorrow!

The other wonderful thing about this being MYSTYSP Day is that...in a matter of days I should be getting socks!!! I hadn't given this much consideration, being way too involved in making sure I got the socks done and blocked and sent. I procrastinated on the blocking, and when I finally did it took forever for the socks to dry because I not-thinkingly left them to dry in our basement, which isn't the best place to try to dry things. After a couple days of waiting, I realized this and brought them upstairs and they finished drying in no time.

...Can't wait for the mail to come these next few days...!!!

the flowers in my garden

I don't exactly have a garden, but when I moved into my present house, my mom ensured that I get some bulbs and other plants planted. It's quite a meager garden, if I can even venture to call it that. Every year it's an adventure to see what will return. For example, the second spring I lived in the house, I waited eagerly to see if the iris would return - the previous spring our neighbors weed-wacked it when they were trying (very kindly) to help us limit the out-of-control weed problem in that particular flower bed and they didn't notice that I was actually attempting to culture something that wasn't a weed. It didn't.

But...in the same flower bed, I still get these tulips.

they're leaning because they don't get enough sun. tough in the city.

Right next to the tulips is a huge pricker plant. I suppose I should dig that out someday soon.

Along the edge of the flowerbed are these little violets, which are weeds, really, but are so cute.On the side of the house along the driveway are the remnants of the daffodils that have come and gone, having bloomed right after the crocus made a very brief appearance (the week I was in Colorado, of course).There is also another tulip...

one is the loneliest number...

...and some grape hyacinth.I grow lots of this ground cover (weed???) without trying very hard......but what I'm super great at doing is getting these guys to sprout: