Quantum Tea

PhoeKnits posted recently about the seeming forced happiness on knit blogs. I keep most of the personal stuff off these pages and I have reasons for that. This space is about knitting and science and news and spinning and writing, stuff that bounces around my head that I want recorded. I do get tired and discouraged and happy and excited and the blog persona is a façade I can hide behind. Sometimes the person behind it shows through a little, and sometimes she needs a break. Right now I'm letting some of me show through.

So here's the whine:

• A headache that lasts for two and a half days, what's up with that?
• Eris the cardigan is not complete and I fear it will be too big or long or misshapen thanks to my row gauge and overcompensating for it.
• Sucky ongoing expensive thing (don't ask).
• My sleep is screwed up, so I'm very tired.
• Haven't even submitted the citizenship forms to the INS yet and I'm sick of the whole process. I think we've killed a whole tree so far with copying all the supporting evidence.

On the cheese side of the equation, I have a new pair of jeans that fit properly (Eddie Bauer Curvy fit, for women that have an actual shape). My dragons are surviving and I get to try breeding them, though I draw the line at back-crossing. The book chosen for the 40 Days of Faith program at church this year seems to be a good, non-guilt-inducing one (Outflow by Steve Sjogren and Dave Ping). I have 2 nights to myself to knit and spin and drink coffee to my heart's content, because Hubby's at the Vineyard Regional Conference this week, being held at our church. I finished the were-goose story and it doesn't suck. The ending needs work, but it's a decent story.

Back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Myer's House is having a Spin-In on Saturday 11th October from 11am to 3pm! I'll be there with my Louet S10 wheel and probably a spindle too. I'll probably be working on some Cormo fibre.

If you've never spun and are interested, this would be a good time to check it out because people will be happy to demonstrate. I've never met an unfriendly spinner yet.

The 2008 Ig Nobel prizes are out! I have experimental proof of the physics prize with my iPod headphone cable. There's a summary in the BBC News, and here are the winners:

Nutrition
Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
Reference: "The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips," Journal of Sensory Studies, vol. 19, October 2004, pp. 347-63.

Peace
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.
Reference: "The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake"

Archaeology
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
Reference: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.

Biology
Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
Reference: "A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)," Veterinary Parasitology, vol. 92, no. 3, October 1, 2000, pp. 239-41.

Medicine
Dan Ariely of Duke University, USA, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.
Reference: "Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy," Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.

Cognitive Science
Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
Reference: "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.

Economics
Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
Reference: "Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81.

Physics
Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
Reference: "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 42, October 16, 2007, pp. 16432-7.

Chemistry
Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA), for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.
Reference: "Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility," New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351.
Reference: "The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola," Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6. [NOTE: THE JOURNAL LATER CHANGED ITS NAME. NOW CALLED "Human & experimental toxicology"]

Literature
David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK, for his lovingly written study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations."
Reference: "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations," Organization Studies, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1625-40.

I'd ordered the Fratello kit from Yarnissima on Sept 24th, thinking it would take a while to get here from the Netherlands. It turned up on October 3rd, a mere nine days later, and packed with goodies:

It comes with a skein of coveted Wollmeise yarn in a rich brown, and some chocolate. Quantum was very interested in the feather. The pattern looks very detailed and it was all packaged like a gift.

The Fratello kit was still in stock on Friday, along with a couple of others. I like the blue of the Spina di Pesce kit. The yarn feels a lot like cotton and it smells like fruit, same as my other skein of Wollmeise. Given the size of my feet, I'd have a LOT of yarn left over from a pair of socks, 574 yards is way more than most sock yarn skeins.

It's October now. My novel idea has more shape, my good guy has a face, and a sidekick, and a couple of minor quests to pull off before she faces the bad guy. I have a way to tell a bunch of back story and experiment with writing first person. The cast is getting assembled and there's a serious amount of scribbling in my plot notebook. I'm a few caramel latte's away from having it all sorted out. I love this part of NaNo. All is potential, and the grind of weeks two and three is a distant memory. We start on a Saturday this year, which is perfect for racking up a serious head of steam.

The re-designed NaNoWriMo website is online. For one month, I'll be almost an extrovert, going to weekly write-ins, posting in the regional forums, and encouraging the troops. I still have the Word Wrangler's Pointy Stick from last year.

And the Eris cardigan I planned to wear to the NaNo kick off is not finished. I have work to do...

The next day in Chicago was Aquarium day. We took the blue line into the centre of town from the airport. At least, we tried, there was a section of line closed so everyone was dumped off the train and onto shuttle buses to reach the next train. After some walking around, we made it to Museum Campus and joined the line for the Shedd Aquarium.

The Oceanarium is closed until June 2009, but there was plenty else to keep us occupied. There were some huge turtles, four foot long sharks, rays, electric eels (none of them went off), and huge crabs. But the star for me was the sea otter, because he was showing off and Hubby got video:

(More otter here)

I love otters! When I was a child, we went to the Otter Trust (which was so successful it's now closed to the public and scaled back their breeding program), but there were no tanks you could see them swimming in, and this otter was swimming upside down, flipping off the glass wall of the tank, and gliding to the other end and flipping again. He took a breath every few laps.

We wore out the boggle gland before we ran out of fish. Two cultural experiences in one day would have been overload, so we trekked back to the hotel via train, bus, and car. We'll see the T-Rex next time we're in Chicago.

Friday morning we drove out to The Fold, about an hour from our hotel, going from city, to suburb, to country. It was a nice sunny day and we were driving past cornfields and farms, and houses. We almost drove straight past The Fold because it looked like just another house. There were whole walls filled with fibre. Dyed and undyed, blends and colours, soft and not so soft. Spindles I've heard of but never seen (Avi Wasserman and Cascabeles), and lots of spinning wheels.

We lined up a Majacraft Rose, a Lendrum, and a Majacraft Suzie Pro. Toni said I had to try the Lendrum but I started with the Rose and some merino roving from my stash. Spinning was almost effortless, treadling was easy and I was spinning really thin without trying. Next up was the Lendrum, which I admit is a nice wheel. The weird lean towards me and the bobbin poking out the back were odd at first, but it was easy to spin on, just not much of an upgrade from a Louet S10. The Suzie Pro and I did not get along. The treadling was more difficult, couldn't spin as thin, it just didn't feel as good as the Rose. I'm sure I could have mastered her in time, and I know it's a good wheel, but the Rose was just more me, and I spun for a while longer on the Rose after putting the Suzie Pro aside.

The price tag on the Rose is a fair chunk of change to dump down on a spinning wheel, especially when you already have a spinning wheel. I dithered and wandered off to explore the Socks That Rock mill ends and rare gems being packed for Rhinebeck, picking out a sky blue mill-end that was almost but not quite the blue of my old school uniform. Wandered through the rest of the store looking at yarn and fibre, picked out 2oz of gorgeous tawny Polwarth, and came back to the main room a shade too early. A minute later and Hubby would have had the box with the Majacraft Rose in the car, packed and ready to go. He'd decided while I was off dithering. He'd decided before we even left St Louis. Toni sent us off with a pillow-sized clump of Targhee fibre and threw in the skein of Socks that Rock too. The Rose is now safely ensconced in a top-secret location until Christmas. Roll on Christmas!

Driving back to the hotel, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. We ended up at a T junction we hadn't seen before, turned around and finally found a sign pointing back to the highway a different route than we came in on. I thought we'd never get out of there! The roads weren't always labelled and I was starting to panic because all we had were written directions and no map. Happily we made it out alive, though I'd love to go back and visit another time.

We're going to Chicago for a long weekend. Plans are to visit the Field Museum and see Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and visit the Shedd Aquarium.

Hubby is also taking me to visit The Fold, I'm excited! I have budget to spend from my failed attempt to visit the Maryland Sheep and Wool this year. The Fold have some great fibre, plus Socks That Rock yarn and spinning wheels... I want to try the Majacraft Rose and Suzie Pro. The Schacht Ladybug would be fun too but I'm not interested in buying one of those. I've spun on an Ashford Kiwi and a Louet S10 so far, Rose and Suzie feel like they would both be an upgrade.

I've wanted to try Majacraft wheels for a while because they're made from rimu wood. When I went to university, Dad made me a jewellry box from a piece of rimu wood he picked up when we were living in New Zealand and carried around ever since. It's beautifully made with a slightly curved lid and a lock set into the front. I keep the key on my key chain even though I never lock the box. It's not the hardest of woods, and Majacraft wheels seem susceptible to dings and dents because of it, but it has a lovely orange glow. I've looked for rimu spindles but no-one seems to make them.

Please click on the dragon eggs while I'm gone:

Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.