Double Helix

gift tagged

The Seven Meme: a yuletide rendering

[one]  Being the oldest of five, closely-spaced children, Christmas was a blast when I was young. The day was replete with toys, games and chocolate, and we played together with renewed enthusiasm. Once we passed firmly into the more solitary pleasures of clothes, books, jewelry, and music, I yearned for the communal frenzy of earlier years.

[two]  During an early morning Christmas service in my teenage years, I was surprised by the complete lack of music. Just after communion, I walked back to the sacristy and asked our monsignor if I could lead a recessional hymn. I sang Joy to the World, appealing in its theme and simple musical structure. After Mass, I got a nasty look from an older couple who clearly misunderstood the terms of the situation.

[three]  In college, I spent one Christmas Eve working a small catering job. The money was good and the event generously staffed, particularly because the woman in charge was somewhat notorious for hitting the sauce. My colleagues for the evening included my father and two brothers, so I still shared the evening with family.

[four]  My first Christmas in graduate school, I was disinclined to return to Philadelphia for the holidays, as I had driven from there to Pasadena just a few months before. Instead, I enjoyed Christmas with good friends in Tuscon. Most animal fur makes me wheeze, so I slept outside and checked my shoes for scorpions in the morning. During the Christmas Eve service, the minister chastised those who only appeared in church on holidays. That night, I decided to go cold turkey on formal Christianity.

[five]  Two years later, the temporal and financial pressures of graduate school again kept me west of the Rockies.  My friend Erich and I camped in Joshua Tree National Park, and Christmas Eve dinner was made over a camp stove and under the glorious night sky, remarkable in its complexity due to the cloudless desert and absence of city light.

[six]  In the two years that followed, I met and shacked up with my soul mate. That second Christmas, we spent the holidays with his extended family in Centralia, Washington. My honey - an ambitious astronomer - had secured observing time at Palomar right after Christmas. We hit the road early Christmas morning to begin the 1100 mile trek back to southern California. We enjoyed Christmas lunch at a Chinese restaurant somewhere near the Washington-Oregon border, quite naturally the most appealing place that was open.

[seven]  A few years ago, we invited a Japanese colleague and her friend for Christmas dinner. I was surprised to discover how much sharing Christmas with someone from a distinctly different culture would change the experience. After dinner, I drove our guests back to their homes. Just after I passed the Cambridge Common, and saw a homeless guy with a sign. I rolled down my window and handed him ten bucks. I tell you, they see me coming.

Peace, joy, and light to you all, including the woman who tagged me.

out of the blue

Last spring, I published some papers. Just before the election, Danielle and Mafia sent me a beautiful package to mark the occasion:

Made by Danielle, no less!

Six skeins of Shakespeare by Artful Yarns, in a great colorway.

The perfect gift for a geek who likes miniature tools! Just under four inches each, and with my trademark 0.7 mm lead. Not shown: eight more, including green and black.

Just the card to tie the package together, Big Lebowski style.

Chocolate? Oh sure, there was chocolate. It came in a box clearly labeled "Emergency Chocolate," and there was certainly an emergency since I got the package.

Thank you so much, ladies!

birthday ...

... and time on the planet in terms of US presidents:

infancy, preschool two brothers born	preschool, grade school two more siblings born
grade school started chasing boys	middle school continued chasing boys
high school, college chasing men, lost virginity	grad school met soulmate
grad school, postdoc shacked up, married soulmate	postdoc gave birth to PeachPit
a new call to service I campaign, Mike entertains Peachpit	the next 43 years persuade family to participate in service

vote!

on the way to the polls

things I never see in the dark

a local community organizer

an unusually long line

a ballot finally cast

exit polling

exposure to civics starts early

adorable neighbors on the way to the polls

Julia - a new knitter! -  graciously lets Grafton use her mug

The effort to get out the vote does not end until the last poll closes. It's not too late to volunteer! I'm off to New Hampshire to drive people to the polls. For local peeps, phonebanking is in progress at 179 Lincoln near South Station until at least 8 pm.

deadly sins

We started losing our country to the anger of extremism in the late nineties, when ugly partisan politics drew energy away from national defense. The Republicans used a lurid blue dress to prosecute a case against immorality, galvanizing those who believe in the absolute righteousness of God and country. Did impeaching Clinton make us safer? Did the new president grab the reigns of national security? Not a chance.

Lust may be bad, but pride is worse. Hubris permitted both the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent failure to bring the terrorists to justice. Distracted by greed for oil and power, George Bush armed himself with outright deception and the bludgeon of fear, and prosecuted an unjust war. In his pursuits, Bush has squandered our wealth, our reputation, and our security.

John McCain supported Bush's war and aims to further it, indulging himself at the expense of true honor. "Country First" is his rallying cry, and narrowly interprets this as the righteousness of American dominance. He is selling this to his supporters as moral clarity, and using nostalgia to promote intellectual sloth.

There's a difference between self-sacrifice and being suckered. John McCain is asking people to sacrifice the future of the country for his antiquated ideas of American leadership. Money is power, and our national profligacy has ensured that using wealth to secure power is a losing proposition. Terrorists will only gain more power as we doggedly pursue success in Iraq, and we will only become less powerful as we plunge deeper in debt. Only through sacrificing the dubious notion of wining an unjust war can we reclaim respect and security. Only through sacrificing the extremes of material wealth can we hope for a strong and moral future.

travelogue, Niagara

All of these were taken inside the Butterfly Conservatory. Not shown: a moth the size of your head, but if you are feeling courageous, I can send you the picture.

rhymes with snark

While brunching and knitting last Saturday, I heard that a particular LYS was holding a 20% sale. I popped over in search of very dark colorways for my current Kureyon dalliance.

The LYS in question is not really my kind of place. Give me cerebral, practical, crunchy, or decadent and I'm pretty happy. Give me manufactured chic and I am out of my element.

After looping around the store a few times, I realized that the Kureyon stock was restricted to half a dozen skeins, keeping company with a few other oddballs. While deciding on notions, I noticed a customer negotiating at length during checkout. The clerks discussed the transaction after her departure, though with limited eavesdropping powers I could not plumb their attitude.

While a clutch of beading enthusiasts was clearing the register hurdle, I noticed a small sign clarifying the terms of the sale.

SUZE: So the discount is 15%, and the Massachusetts tax holiday this weekend brings it up to 20%?

Clerk: Yes. There's been a lot of confusion about it, which is why I made the sign.

SUZE: I can certainly understand why. You know what the problem is? Yarn isn't taxed.

Clerk: It's not?

SUZE: No, it's not, or at least you shouldn't be taxing it. Yarn is not taxed anywhere else in Massachusetts. Anyone buying yarn would expect a true 20% discount based on the advertised terms of the sale. However, you are only offering a 15% discount on tax-free items.

The Kureyon leftovers contained mostly skeins of 172, a colorway of black, dark charcoal, pine green, and reddish brown fairly suitable for my purposes. I bought three skeins, and additionally two crochet hooks and some row markers.

• Tax holiday savings (on hooks and markers): $ 0.41
• Cost: $28.70, with discount of $5.05.
• Discount expected: $6.75

I've concluded that there's little reason to return to this store, and not over the cost of a tall coffee at Starbucks. These days, I poke my nose into yarn stores looking for inspiration or camaraderie. Feeling suckered pretty much squashes any chance of finding either.

travelogue, sturbridge

trifecta

The "Quotes of the Day" gadget is installed on my iGoogle page. Typically, I find one quote that resonates. Today, I enjoyed all three, especially as a set:

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
  - Aldous Huxley

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
  - Ray Bradbury

back to back

This year, I've been knitting up the mountain of Sheep One I picked up last summer on deep discount, seduced by the price and the colors. After much hand-wringing, I concluded that the colors best suited a blanket.

I picked up some plum and deep teal to ground the wild palette. Even with a mitigating influence, I had too much watermelon pink. PeachPit's taste offers a handy option for any surplus of pink yarn.

Shortly after presenting her with the angora vest, PeachPit gently suggested that my next project for her should involve several colors. After removing much pink from the equation, I achieved a pleasing color balance for the blanket and was disinclined to subtract anything else. To flesh out PeachPit's sweater, I picked up more darks. (Wrong direction on stash-busting goal: two deep teal, three plum, and two olive.)

Plan A was executed twice.

The first time, I plunged in and knit to Ann Budd's dimensions for a child aged six, calculating stitch and row dimensions based on a stockinette swash. Good on length, bad on width; front and back frogged.

The second time, I calculated the proper dimensions more carefully, but I ignored the shortening effect resulting from the garter ridges. Bad call! Front, back, and sleeve frogged, the last of which illustrated painfully well my error in judgment.

Plan B retains the math from Plan A.2, shows off the darker colors to better advantage, but uses less pink.

Next moves:

• Block pieces.
• Seam sweater.
• Add bottom edging, cuffs, and collar.
• Finish blanket.
• Make seed stitch scarf with inevitable remnants.

makeshift

Anyone who's been here knows that, in the classic battle of steps versus weather, our steps had been getting trounced. The spring came, and brought the carpenter.

Our porch held the mailbox, as porches often do. We felt disinclined to ask our mail carrier to vault the construction site. The only approach to our front porch involves crossing the driveway and passing the enormous maple tree, which certainly predates the paving around it.

Mail Tree!

trading down

Sunday, I was poking around web sites looking for suppliers of Kertzer Super 10, and discovered that one local yarn store is running a pattern contest this summer:

Design - must call for yarn carried by the store (natch)

Prize - $40 gift certificate, publication in the store's zine

Cost - "Patterns must be the entrants’ original, previously unpublished work and all entries become the property of (the store), will not be acknowledged or returned and may be used by (the store) in any manner or media in perpetuity without compensation."

I don't think so.

If I come up with an original idea, make the object, and commit the pattern to paper, there's no way I'm giving that up for $40 and a modicum of publicity.

Surprisingly, you must relinquish copyright just to get into the game. Even Cell, Science, and Nature release manuscripts they decline so you can publish elsewhere.

the new eye

I am fond of technology, especially in theory. Wanna whisper sweet nothings in my ear about nanotubes? I'm yours. But give me a lovely little camera for my birthday in the fall, and I will gain a minimal conversancy the following spring.

triplicate

In wild dreams, I get through whole experiments without snags. In waking life, not so much.

Like many academic labs, ours lacks a manager to ensure smooth sailing. The result is pretty much what you would expect, and favors those who are self-seeking by nature.

In lieu of a manager, we each have specific jobs that serve the lab broadly. Mine is to order all reagents and supplies, and I've got a form for eliciting the necessary details:

• Who are you?
• What do you need?
• Who sells it?
• What's the catalog number?
• How much do you want?

Niggling as it might seem, my absolute minimum is answers to the first two questions. Some will happily divulge their identity, but the minority must be harangued.

The binder where we keep the orders has been falling apart progressively. I got a new binder, and decided on a mascot:

 

For much of the movie, the audience is under the impression that Roz is an irritating bureaucrat who wants to keep Mike Wazowski from getting laid. At the end, we discover that she is the mastermind of a sting operation. Hey, does her sweater have a seed-stitch border?

reproduced

As the AntiToast points out, results are only valid if an experiment can be repeated. Here's the scoop.

A couple of months ago, I was test-driving BlackTabi's scarf. When collecting PeachPit at school, her classmate Kiwi expressed deep admiration for the scarf. Small boys with a passion for color should have a hand knit scarf, don't you think?

My first attempt was a striped scarf with Noro odds and ends, but the colors just weren't jiving. Sideways seed stitch scarf, perhaps? After trying experiment on myself, I concluded that the texture would suit Kiwi. Would braided fringe at the end would be masculine enough? For a boy who wears his hair in corn rows and braids, the fringe should be fine.

Kiwi really loves his scarf, and it has a little room for growing.

Specs

• 96 grams of Noro Kureyon
• US5 Addi Turbos (47 inch)
• each strand 15 wraps around a CD case, sided to side
• 187 stitches
• 15 rows
• fringe at 5 and 6 inches long

thoughts while walking

Wouldn't monkeys be good at picking peaches? How could you get them to bring them down instead of eating them?

Why won't these people wait for the WALK sign?

Too bad that astronomical thingie is installed in front of a brick wall - I'll never get a good picture of it.

I hear you, black-capped chickadee! Where are you?

I didn't really imply that 59 is a possible solution of x times 3, did I? Well, there are 57 rows in this scarf, so x = 19, and that must be why I am remembering a nine - from the unspoken 19.

Not!

Thanks, Lucia, for catching that!

trompe l'oeil

Here are those odds and ends I was telling you about:

Seed stitch knitting with contrasting colors in every row gives the woven look, which I love. Knitting in the long direction gives one something to do with all of those ends, namely fringe.

Now I'm not big on fringe in general. I suspected that Kureyon fringe would not wear too well, so after knotting at the base of the fabric, I braided it and knotted it again.

The only thing that had begun to constrain my Kureyon addiction was the partial balls. Now that I have a reasonable solution for the loose ends, I have no mechanism for restraint.

Specs

• 175 g Noro Kureyon
• US5 Addi Turbos
  
• crocheted cast on 291 stitches (odd)
• 59 rows total (x times 3, where x is odd)
• gauges
• before bath: 4.2 st per inch
• after bath: 3.9 st per inch
• after bath: 11.2 rows per inch
• Fringe length: alternately 6.5 and 5.5 inches (could add one inch)
• dimensions excluding fringe: 74 by 5.25 inches

rescued

Two posts back, I implied that I would be mixing two oddly matched colors of Noro Kureyon, namely 164 and 102.

As Dave surmised, stripes it is.

This is clearly another riff on Jared Flood's brain child - the fourth, if you must know.

This particular scarf was made with yarn spree yarn, picked up to celebrate this. For a little while, I really thought it was mine. After it was off the needles, though, my abundant collection of Kureyon odds and ends started giving me fits. Once those bits and pieces started emerging as something equally pleasing if stylistically different, I became inclined to send the above scarf out into the world. So, if you want to get a better look at it, you'll have to ask BlackTabi.

fever

If you donate to the Obama campaign, you are invited to send this email around to a bunch of friends:

I don't usually send these emails, but I just made a donation to Barack Obama's campaign and I want to invite you to join me.

It's clear that Senator Clinton wants to continue an increasingly desperate, increasingly negative -- and increasingly expensive -- campaign to tear us down. That's her decision. But it's not stopping John McCain from going on the offensive.

Right now, it's essential for every single supporter of Barack Obama to step up and help fight this two-front battle. In the face of attacks from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, we need to be ready to take them on.

Join me in supporting the campaign by making a donation now.

Now, I am indeed hoping that Obama refreshes and expands his message a bit, as the pundits suggest he should. On the other hand, the skewed diatribes run out of the Clinton campaign are beginning to grate on me almost as much as the smug or petulant missives of GWB.

rescue

On the web, I stop at Diana's frequently. Recently, she described a particular colorway of Noro Kureyon sock yarn as "the butt-ugliest color of Kureyon sock yarn ever seen." Hmm, didn't I drop a double-sawbuck on exactly the same thing?

Maybe the problem is that 164 is only half a colorway. Here's some of the stuff (different weight, though) unwound and hanked up:

What happens if I mix it with some of this?

The peeps I saw on Sunday already know.