2012, a start.

I’m not a fan of people apologizing for not writing on their blog for a long time. It happens, life gets busy, and sometimes you just don’t have the time or the words or some combination of those things.  That’s my non-apology.  I’m hoping I can carve out more time to blog on a regular basis, but I’m not going to make any promises.

 

It’s been a busy year so far. I’ve given a presentation for lab meeting, have a lecture to present to undergrads at the end of the month, have a review article due at the end of the month, have been helping another lab by running samples for them, and attempting to do my own research.  At the end of next week, I’m supposed to meet with my advisor to assess my progress and figure out what I have to do to get a paper out in the next month or so as well. I like being busy, but I will admit that I feel a bit under water at times.

 

As you might suspect, this hasn’t translated into huge amount of free time for me.

 

Sometime last year I got back to running, which I’ve been doing off and on, mostly off, for the past 8 years.  This time it seems to have stuck harder than usual, and I’ve been pretty consistent about it. I found a fun group on Ravelry, and have been enjoying doing monthly challenges with them.  Last month I ran 45 miles, and this month I’m shooting for 50.  I’ll be thrilled if I get there, especially as I ran on January 1^st, and then didn’t run again for almost 2 weeks.  I’m now one of those annoying people who post their runs on Twitter. I do it mostly because I have a virtual running buddy who helps me get out the door on days when I just don’t want to go.  There’s something really satisfying about running these days. I use Nike+, and the graphs are very motivating. I like seeing the numbers increase, and I’m really proud of the fact that I can run for an hour one day, and follow it with a 35 minute run the next day with no adverse effects.  Well, other than being a little hungry and sleepy.  It’s definitely helping my mood though, and every little bit helps.

 

As for knitting, well, it’s happening, just slowly. I had one of my usual bouts of startitis last year and ended up casting on all the things. A lot of stuff has not stuck, but now I am mostly working on the Augusta Cardigan that I started on New Year’s Eve.  I’m using some Green Mountain Spinnery yarn that I picked up at Rhinebeck. It’s been a relatively simple knit, although I have been ripping back quite a lot. Part of that is an inability to count to 16, the other problem is that I have a tendency to drop a stitch when I cable without a needle. I’m pretty excited about this sweater. Not only do I love the color, but there’s something really nice about using special yarn to make something.  Adds some good memories to the experience.  I’m hoping I will get the fronts finished this weekend, and get going a bit on the sleeves. I had knit one already, actually, but ended up undoing it as it was too long, and there were some mistakes that were bugging me.

 

In any case, I’m sort of back. So hi – welcome, and happy new year, just a few weeks late.

Not quite the very end of October

Rhinebeck6 by Terby, on Flickr

I have clearly gotten very behind on the blogging.

Last weekend I went on my annual crazy trip to Rhinebeck. It’s honestly too far to do in a reasonable day trip, but I have done it this way for 3 years now. It’s a fun adventure and I really enjoy going with my traveling group, although I still wish I could figure an easier way to meet up with them.  This year I made more non-yarn related purchases than is typical; there was some fiber for a friend (birthday gift, so I’m not telling right now), some silk hankies to play with, 1 sweater worth of yarn from Green Mountain Spinnery, and the rest was fudge, kettle corn, and lunch. Because the weather was worse, the booths seemed to be way more crowded than usual, and I was unable to check out The Fold or Miss Babs, which were on my wish list. I skipped a few more booths due to overcrowding, and I admit to putting back some sock yarn that really didn’t want to come home with me.  The only thing I sort of regret not getting was some cashmere or interesting blend yarn from a really interesting stall whose name I have forgotten. Not only did they have incredibly reasonably priced cashmere (I just didn’t love any of the colors), they had qiviut blends and Samoyed blend yarns.  Really cool place.

I’m okay with not bringing much home – not only do I feel like I really have enough these days, but I really like my stash and want to make use of it. Variegated yarn, in sock form or otherwise, still seems to be really big at festivals, and I’m craving texture more than color at the moment. Plus, I’m finding that I’m finally listening when I remind myself that I generally like it much better in the skein than knit up.  I guess it goes to show that even I can learn something, given enough repetition.

Since I last posted, I have finished a few things, ripped a few things, and started knitting a thing or two as well.  In the finished pile is a Stripe Study Shawl, a super quick, mindlessly relaxing garter shape shawl that’s remarkably wearable. I used 2 different skeins of Madtosh sock, as I really like the colors. I was less than happy with the pink skein (color Lepidoptera) as I had several knots and a few breaks. The breaks are most likely not the fault of the yarn – I discovered some carpet beetles in one of my knitting baskets, and I think they got into this skein too. I had to toss a sweater’s worth of yarn, but at least what I did toss is not something I loved, and I had picked it up on sale. I’m still irritated, but it feels less tragic this way. In the middle are some BFF socks by Cookie A. Yarn is Everlasting Sock by Dream In Color. Some people love their yarn, others hate it. I like it, as I really love the dye on these.  This particular yarn is a little tricky, as it’s multiple tight plies of merino wool. It’s soft, has a really interesting texture, but will split if you don’t pay careful attention. As for the pattern, Cookie does some clever things. This one is dead simple, but she’s smart in placing increases and decreases. My socks do not fit perfectly. I should have gone down a needle size on the foot or decreased more stitches. I still am happy with the product, and will like them even better once I wash them.  On the far right is a knitted cowl that was so simple I don’t even feel like it deserves much comment. It’s a tube, out of moss stitch. Yarn was 2 skeins of Malabrigo.  It’s soft. Really soft. That’s about all I can say.

I ripped back a couple socks, some lace, and probably another thing or two but I can’t remember.  I’m starting to be better about knitting things I genuinely like, especially keeping in mind that I want a finished garment. Makes some differences in what I knit, and what I actually contemplate knitting. Generally, simple is good. Soon I should be casting on sleeves for a sweater KAL I joined back in May. That’s required my doing a provisional cast on, which doesn’t come easily to me as I use a crochet hook badly. I have ordered buttons to finish off my Tea Leaves cardigan – which also needs some crochet up at the collar to give it more stability. I still have 2 other sweaters in progress, but I think I may actually get around to finishing them, although some smaller projects also need to be taken care of. I did start one more sweater, Loppem in some black yarn that has been long marinating. I’m about to start the arms, so I’m hoping that will be done in about a week more or so.

Everything else is still pretty much going as it was. Still working a lot, not home much, not sleeping enough. How’s everyone out there?

Weekends are for relaxing

Now that the temperature is dropping a few degrees, its’s easier to think that knitting. Is a fun thing to do in my spare time again. On Saturday I went into the city to knit at a friend’s place, where I made a truly minimal amount of progress on my sock yarn blanket. I think I managed to add a single square to it, which is not much, but more than I had before I went over there.

Today I cleaned and did a little cooking, although i did not get to the exciting cooking I had planned on. I made chocolate chip cookies for the boys, with leftover chocolate and butterscotch chips, but they are nothing special. I made pizza for dinner – whole wheat crust, pesto made from basil from my garden, and mozzarella cheese. Super simple. The garden has not produced much other than some awesome basil, but that alone has almost been worth it. Speaking of basil, my plan is to make some basil ice cream, but I forgot to put the bowl in the freezer, and I was too tired to make the base this afternoon, but I will post about it if it is any good at all.

I borrowed a set of size 7 dpns from my friend, so I am back to working on some of the cardigans that have been taking up space in my project bags. Although I could be working on the sweater for Julie’s KAL, I am still not sure what I want to do with the sleeves. It’s a basic v-neck pullover, with a hemmed end, and my gut says I should make hemmed, long sleeves with a slight flare, with the sleeves slightly longer than usual so I can wallow in the sweater, but I worry that I would drag the sleeves in everything. Thus, I am still thinking about sleeves and trying to finish the Tea Leaves cardigan. I don’t love knitting sleeves in the round, a moving all the fabric around makes my hands hurt but I love the minimal finishing I’m going to be left with. I’m really hoping to finish this up in the next. 2 weeks, then move on, as I need sweaters for this fall.

Of course though, I have the attention span of a flea, and have too much on the needles, so I have also started, kind of, the Beekeeper’s quilt. I have knit, but not stuffed one hexagon (I refuse to call if that silly name), and I have to admit it really is perfect mindless knitting. I plan on finishing that quilt by the time I am about 75 years old, but what the heck – why not.

Monday is work again. I lack extreme enthusiasm, but I might as well make the best of it. Going to run in the morning, even if it means going to work tired. It’s time to get back to that, even if it will be a slow and hard start to the day.

…I guess not.

The ability to do still does not mean more blogging, necessarily, working on it. I’m still in the process of finding out what this new toy/tool can do. I’ve had a bit of a rough time lately, following up a fall down the stairs that resulted in a bruised tailbone with a really rotten summer cold. Now work is picking up as the semester is once again upon us.

I got out today to enjoy some knitting time with my local friends, spent a bit of time working on my sock yarn blanket, I didn’t add much to it, but it was nice to pull it out and work on it again. Once I got home this evening, I picked up my minimalist cardigan and have had fun working on it while watching Downton Abbey.

Testing a concept

Dude! I got an iPad as compensation for my summer intern mentoring. Bring on the mobile blogging! This thing is actually pretty cool.

I wandered into my bedroom one afternoon and found several strings of dinosaurs exploring my bedroom.  Life is full of surprises when you live with a small boy.

Somehow, it’s already the middle of the week.  Honestly, I’ll be glad when this one is over, as there’s been a lot of unnecessary drama at work. I’m not going to write much about it, as that’s just not okay – there’s no need to tell stories about this – but suffice it to say that it’s tiresome, and not good for morale, when there are major personality conflicts and when people try to take advantage of the kindness of others.  Let’s just say that stress levels are high, tempers are short, and patience is low.

Shortly, I’m going to finish my coffee and leave my computer for a run. (Where run is defined loosely as a combination of running/walking, as I’m still horrifically out of shape. Working on it.)  It’s already almost 80 outside (26 C to you, Bells) and the sun has been up for not quite an hour. The next 2 months are the hardest part of summer for me – I really have to fight the urge to hide inside until things cool off.  On the plus side, I’m off on vacation shortly, after which I only have a little more time with summer interns, and my work schedule becomes more my own again – or at least more devoted solely to research and frantically trying to collect data for a manuscript that needs to be submitted this year. Seems like time keeps going faster and faster these days.

My payment for teaching services this summer is likely an iPad. I’m excited about this as I am hoping it will not only be useful for reading and annotating pdfs I need for work, but that I can use it for writing and blogging on the go. Part of me would really like to do NaNoWriMo, but if I am writing a manuscript, that may just not happen.

Anyhow, hopefully I’ll soon have 2 sweater fronts to show for my efforts, and I’ll cast on for some sleeves for Julie’s KAL in the near future. I still have to wind that yarn.

Making stuff with sticks and string.

Julie has been hosting a KAL for an EPS sweater for a few weeks now. I think it officially started in May, but I’m a little loose about these things, and I don’t quite remember when I cast on.  Yes, I know Ravelry can do that, but I have a long history of ripping things out about 5 minutes after I cast on.  It takes a while before I admit that I am really committed to a knit. In this case, I’ve now finished about 13 sone odd inches of the body, and soon need to deal with the arms and neckline – the total body length should be 14.5 inches for this particular sweater, so I have a little farther to go, and obviously, this photo is a little old. My hands aren’t that long. Yarn is Cascade 220 heathers, in a pretty inky purply-blue color.  It’s nice to knit with, but I think it is giving me a little bit of contact dermatitis on my hands where I tension the yarn. Fingers are good now, though, so I keep going.  I need to wind another skein of yarn now, and fix one minor issue – when I made the hem, I lost a stitch which needs to be reunited with the body of the sweater.  It’s clipped now, but I need to make sure I fix it before I forget it.

Also being worked on, sort of, is this cardigan, Tea Leaves, which is another mostly mindless knit.  Right now I have sleeves to go, which aren’t as portable.  I should probably get back to this one sooner rather than later, but there’s something about sleeves that I don’t get excited about.  I will be happy to have this done for the fall, however, as I think I can get some use out of this sweater. It’s Cascade 220 Heathers again, which I apparently have a whole lot of marinating in my stash.  I have enough for another 2 sweaters, which is good, as there are at least 2 more sweaters I would like to make in the near future.

This is an actual recent finished item, despite looking sort of rumply in the photo.  I had an urge to knit this vest pattern, which was a free download from Interweave.  Normally I don’t go for chunky knits, or cables, and I don’t combine the two, but there was something about this that struck me as kind of cute.  It’s better on than you might think, but as it’s around 90 outside, I’m not modeling it until fall. I need some kind of clasp for the front, preferably a pretty wooden stick pin like this, or with beads on the top or whatnot.  Simple would be ideal.  I tried it on using a dpn to hold it, and that looked fine to me.  I didn’t actually complete the pattern as written, and left the armholes unfinished – because there’s no shaping, the shoulders are already too broad on me, and adding a few rows of garter stitch would have not helped out much.

I also knit a bulky cowl (on Ravelry, if you care), and have now gone back to working on my Minimalist cardigan.  I posted a while back that I had messed up one of the fronts, and I finally picked it up again yesterday, ripped back the offending front, and resumed knitting the one that was already on the needles. I probably have added an inch or two of seed stitch, but it doesn’t look like much. I’m enjoying the large projects, but the downside is that progress is slow and too incremental to often post about.

I’m off for vacation in about a week, and have to decide if I am going to start new knitting, or finish up the gloves, socks, scarf, or sweaters that are already in progress. I’m dreaming of lace, so we’ll see. Or I could buy a spinning wheel on the way. Who knows yet!

 

A very grumpy post at 11pm…

To my summer students:

You have a 10 minute presentation due tomorrow. In our Monday meeting, we discussed your slides and content for the better part of 45 minutes. I said I would answer additional emails. I responded to the email Student 1 sent me late Monday night, and I prepared a long and thoughtful answer to a lot of questions (some of which, btw, you could have answered by consulting Google or Wikipedia.)Student 1, you are an upperclassman, and my guess is that participating in this program means you have pretty good grades – I expect better from you.

Student 2 sent me a copy of the presentation and two additional questions around noon today.  I responded, and only now had a chance to look at the talk.  You get points for sending this in a timely manner.  However, you lose points by being the second student this summer to write an acknowledgement slide thanking my PI, Dr. Boss, and thanking me, Terby.  I put a lot of work into getting that degree, and it really irks me if you don’t thank me as Dr. Terby.  It’s the same degree, even if I don’t have a faculty position.

Student 1, yes, you again – you suck for sending me an email at 9pm tonight. I responded, which was dumb on my part.  You have no excuse for not sending those questions earlier. You also suck for continuing to argue with me that the control experiment I told you to run isn’t necessary.  Go ahead and try it your way – you’re still going to have to run the control. You can do it the easy way or the hard way.  I could make things more difficult if you would prefer…

I did not go for a run today, and it shows.  My bitter, cranky self is now off to bed.

I scream…

My dad did not cook, but he enjoyed eating. This was one of the sad things about his getting oral cancer – towards the end of his life he was robbed of even that small pleasure. My father was also a fan of gadgets. He loved computers and I think he would have been intrigued by the Kindle and the iPad. Mostly though, he loved to buy my mother toys for the kitchen.  My mom is less excited by the toys, but she liked making my dad happy. When my husband and I moved into our first house, my mom gave me the ice cream maker. She didn’t use it, my dad thought ice cream was too sweet and creamy, and since I have a small boy and husband who like all things sweet, she thought I might put it to good use.

Although I admit that the waffle iron has gotten much more of a workout, I have made an effort to use the ice cream maker more. Last year I toyed with the idea of mostly eliminating processed food from my diet, and going with Mark Bittman’s theory that you can eat whatever you want, provided you are willing to make it yourself.  Reality set in, however, and that idea got tossed out the window when I realized how many hours a week I tend to work.  In the meantime, I’m trying to cut back both on the hours I’m working as well as junky food. Since I eat less homemade ice cream in one sitting than I typically consume when I have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, I think it works out well, despite the sugar and full fat dairy I tend to use.

Over the last few years, I have become enamored with smitten kitchen. I try out a lot of her recipes, and am excited about her upcoming cookbook (2012, I think). Last year I picked up a copy of The Perfect Scoop after a recommendation on her blog. I think I made one or two things from it last summer, then forgot about it until I pulled it out last weekend. I think I may even have blogged about this book previously. The first ice cream of this season was a chocolate peanut butter ice cream. It was ok, but not my favorite thing ever. The balance seemed off to me – too much peanut butter, not enough chocolate.  For the next batch, green tea ice cream sounded perfect to me but I didn’t get an enthusiastic response from the rest of the family. So I went with chocolate ice cream – you can’t really go wrong, and this is a darn good recipe.  It’s dark, not too sweet, and tastes almost like brownie batter.

Chocolate Ice Cream, Philadelphia-Style

2 1/4 cups heavy cream

6 T cocoa powder – I used Hershey’s Special Dark, a mix of dutched and natural cocoa

1 cup sugar

4 ounces chocolate, chopped – the recipe calls for 6 oz unsweetened, but I only had 2 oz of baker’s chocolate, so supplemented with leftover dark chocolate bars from Trader Joe’s and a Lindt bar. This was plenty of chocolate for my taste.

1 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract – I used vanilla bean paste, and I estimated 1 tsp

Whisk together the cream, cocoa, sugar and salt in a saucepan. Heat, whisking frequently until it comes to a full rolling boil.  Remove from heat, and whisk in chocolate until it’s completely melted. Lebovitz then blends the mix for 30 seconds in a blender, until very smooth, but as I wasn’t using all bitter chocolate, I didn’t have any trouble getting this smooth.  Chill, then prepare in your ice cream maker.

But wait – there’s more. I was feeling inspired, so I prepared a second ice cream.  This one took slightly more planning ahead, but it’s dead simple, and the results are delicious.

Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups sweetened condensed milk

1 1/2 cups strongly brewed coffee – I used cold brewed coffee made from 1/2 cup of ground Cinnamon Swirl flavored coffee from my favorite coffee vendor, Steep & Brew in a little less than 2 cups of water (yeah, I know but, I’m not always a purist)

 1/2 cup half and half

Big pinch of espresso powder

Whisk, chill, and freeze. Eat.

Go get the book, go make some ice cream. Go do it now.  Thank me later.

Time to post

It’s been quiet around these parts lately, but not from a lack of interest in blogging or writing.  I’m still dealing with a mismatch of the available time and the number of things I would like to do.  Since I work on a college campus, you would think that summer (where summer is defined as the period after graduation and before the fall term starts up again) would mark the start of a slower, more relaxed time, but this year, that’s far from the case.  I have a high school senior working with me in the lab for the month, which comes with an interesting series of challenges.  After she wraps things up, I have another 2 students I will be working with for the rest of the summer, although these are college students, who will be less-time consuming as they’re part of an organized summer program, and I have fewer day-to-day responsibilities with them.  From an outside perspective, having students in the lab sounds like it is a mutually beneficial activity, but the reality is that they aren’t in the lab long enough to learn how to do things well, require a lot of training, and can lack a lot of basic skills that you need for my job.  I don’t mind training them a little, and introducing them to what I do, but it would be helpful to be a little less under the gun with deadlines, but I suppose that’s the nature of the beast.

One of the things that I love about living here is that there are so many options of things to do on the weekends here.  Sometimes it means that the weekends can be as exhausting as the week, but they’re a lot more fun.  At the beginning of this month, my mom and sister visited, and we went up to Longwood Gardens again to see the spring blooms.  I posted some of the pictures here, and there are more in my Flickr set.  We drove to Princeton a few weeks ago to check out a plant sale and wander around the town a tiny amount.  This weekend is a big birthday weekend for the youngest member of my family, which is going to mean a trip to the zoo, and possibly some other outings.  We took him to the Lego store last weekend to get his presents, and I think my husband and I may have liked the store as much or more than my son.

And during the rest of the time, I’ve managed to sneak in a little bit of knitting. If the weather ever cooperates, I finished a vest this month, which will hopefully get some use this fall, and will eventually show up on my project page on Ravelry. I’m doing a KAL, which looks like it’s going to go at a nice relaxed pace, and will eventually get me another sweater. The number of actual projects getting my attention has dramatically dropped, although the number of things in my basket hasn’t changed too much – many of them need to be ripped, fixed, or redone, although some will make it to completion eventually.

My latest obsession is my garden.  I have a decent number of plants in the ground now, a good mix of herbs and vegetables, and I’ve been having fun puttering around outside digging up weeds, looking to see if things are growing, and generally enjoying the outside.  We’ve had a lot of rain for a while now, and I’m actually starting to wonder if it’s getting to be too much.  I’m happy to not have to water, but I’m hoping my plants won’t rot, too. I’ll get out there with a camera eventually. All my reading has been escapist drivel, so I have nothing to say about that right now.  My brain’s too fried for literary merit, so I’m just attempting to read things that are at least reasonably well written as well as entertaining.  I’ve been catching up on a few shows in the evening; since we don’t have cable, I don’t watch anything that isn’t available on Netflix or Hulu.  We started Sherlock recently, and I really enjoyed the 2 episodes I have seen so far.  I’m also still very fond of Parks and Recreation and Community, but I think 30 Rock has dropped in quality.  I still have to catch up on Castle, so please don’t spoil me!  I’m also still following the train wrecks that are House and Bones, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll watch either of those.

So, that’s the update.  Mostly the same as usual.