photos and films

I took the promised photos on Sunday but haven't had time to upload them and it's too late to do it tonight. We spent the evening watching the documentary "Why We Fight" which, while dated, is documentary about the industrial military complex as evinced by post-Vietnam wars in the U.S. (with an obvious focus on Iraq). None of the information was new (at this point although had we seen it when it came out we would have been more than a bit outraged -did you know that over one billion dollars of our defense budget between 2002 and 2003 was spent on domestic advertising?).

I'll upload the photos of my knitting projects tomorrow and everyone can see why I must rip out nearly half of the linen stitch afghan I've been working on for the past year (on and off). Sadly I haven't spread it out much in the past couple of months and so only noticed some really bad pooling when I took the photographs. So now it will be the project that takes me forever and a day to finish.

score one for procrastination!

So I still haven't broken out Marius' nice fancy dSLR camera to take photos of my knitting (but I will by the end of this upcoming weekend Martha!) . But I must share my small victory today.

In Santa Barbara we didn't have a very big apartment. In fact it was so small that my desk doubled as our dining room table. Well we're in a bigger place now and had bought a second hand table from a grad. student who was leaving town right before we moved. However, we have been lacking dining room chairs since we moved into our new place. Since our new table has gray metal legs, I've been wanting to find something like this:



















Now this chair is being sold at DWR for $370/chair. It was on some t.v. show and is insanely expensive now given what it is. Hunting around online however, I found these:

Which are nearly identical to the above chair. The biggest difference is that the front legs are round as opposed to squared off (and the chairs are bolted together as opposed to being all one molded piece). I agree that the first chair looks better, but how much better? Certainly not the $330 difference in price. That's right. The cheaper chairs are just $40 at kmart of all places (just FYI: our table does not look like the one in the photo).

So I procrastinated on going out and buying the chairs for weeks until last night. I drive out to the nearest store and find that they are sold out of the chairs. This is not because people saw the chairs on t.v. and realized how similar (but much cheaper) the ones at kmart are, but because they didn't sell and so were placed on clearance. At the store I'm at they can't even tell me what the new price is since they don't have any information on them now that they are all gone. I go home a bit discouraged because I assume that this will be the case at all local kmarts. They are still available online for the original price as a last resort (for a $35 shipping fee) but I decided to brave near rush-hour traffic today and try another kmart today. They HAD them! They not only had them in stock, they had almost 100 of them. And the best part is their clearance price is just $8/chair. Yup, I spent a total of $32 on these bad boys, less than what one chair would have cost me if I had bought them at their regular price.

So I have learned my lesson for the week. Procrastination pays.

I LOVE Denise needles

So I contacted them (last night!) about sending the broken cable for a replacement (and mentioned that it has happened once before -both time with heavy projects). I also asked if they had thought about reinforcing this part with a bit of metal (both breaks were at the exact same place) even though I realize that such a suggestion is a bit presumptuous. This was their response.

Hi Erin,

I'm so sorry to hear about a SECOND cord tip snapping!

One is unusual, but two is miserable. Occasionally, a kit that is exposed to extreme heat or cold somewhere during the course of its travels can exhibit this type of fragility. Another possibility is that the machine that forms the cord tips was not venting properly when your kit was being manufactured. This can allow air bubbles into the material and cause weak spots. Either way, we'll send you out a new set of cords right away.

Our manufacturer has made some hidden improvements to the tips over the past year, and he's also being extremely careful with the air/material mix as well as humidity in the material when he's making them, so these new ones should do just great on even very heavy projects. We have considered making the cord tips metal, or having the internal part be metal, and I'd like to see something like this happen, because though the breakage is normally very rare, it's still NO fun when it happens!! Thanks for your input on this.

We'll get the new cords right in the mail to you. The post has gone for today, but these will be in tomorrow's. Many apologies again, and please let us know if you ever have other questions or feedback. Happier knitting ahead!

All the best,
Emily McKeon

info@knitdenise.com
http://www.knitdenise.com
888-831-8042




How fabulous are they?!??? It makes me glad given how much I tell people to buy these things. Last night I was having a moment where I was worrying that I had given away many of my INOX and that I was now going to have to buy a new set for my heavy projects. Nope. I'm perfectly happy to believe them that these tips are stronger.

At least until one breaks on me. :)

My very first project

Once that last post went up I realized that my blog was sadly lacking in photos. So, since we haven't taken any new pictures (that I still have), I dug up a photo of the very first thing I ever made out of yarn. Of course it is crochet (how many people knew I learned that before knitting?) and it is Red H***t, but it was before I knew any better. Plus it went to a dear friend of mine who likes to machine wash things to death so I'd probably still use an acrylic yarn to make her a blanket today (just not that acrylic). She and her husband use it to cover and frightening chair they own from the late 60's/early 70's that is in no possible way ever going to be "retro."

Note: I think that yarn is excellent when used for dog blankets that will be seriously abused so I don't completely hate the stuff.

Denise needles breakage

Today I had a cable from my Denise needle set break. This is the second time this has happened to me. Both times, I was over half-way done with an afghan (so the project was getting heavy) when the black connector piece just snapped in half. I'm generally a huge fan of these needles but I'm beginning to wonder if anyone else has experienced this. Perhaps I need to keep my heavier projects on other needles from now on (even though I know the company will replace the cable asap and I own both of the super long cables that they make just for afghans).

Of course this happened at a knit group I was visiting in Santa Monica and anyone who heard the snap immediately started checking to see if they had a substitute needle that I could borrow. Fibery people are really wonderful sometimes. For all they knew I could have made off with their needle and never shown my face again (because you know that's just the sort of person I am).

an unpacking extravaganza

It's been an exciting Saturday night in the van der Brien household but I have finally reached a point in unpacking where the place just looks messy as opposed to unpacked. We are very excited about this as it means that the floors can finally be cleaned (Marius has been living here with the fortress of boxes for just over a month -yuck!). Even the patio is beginning to look like a place where one might choose to spend an hour with a glass of wine.

There will be photos eventually although not of the NYC trip as I had been promising several posts back. It seems that our point and shoot digital camera is the major fatality of the move and I hadn't downloaded the photos yet. urgh! Cameras can be replaced, the photos cannot -the lost shots also include the lovely cake Susie baked for me.

The other fatality was the lid of a semi-high-end commercial (an oxymoron right?) yixing teapot that M got me several years ago as a Valentine's Day present. He, being the sweetheart that he is, said I could get any other pot I wanted to replace it (sadly it cannot be replaced as only a few were ever made). Where upon I pulled up the website that is selling the teapots of one of the craftsmen of factory 1.

Now this may not sound like much but there are only two "factories" that are recognized as producing authentic yixing teapots (factory 1 is the "original" and the other one is supervised by someone who spent most of his career at factory 1). This is where the masters work. The lowest rung on the ladder is craftsman. The teapot by one of these lowly craftsmen that I lust after sells for $425. As dear as M is, he did say that he meant one of the less authentic teapots.

Wanna see it?

Here's another one by the same guy.

So you see, it could be worse...

note to readers: Please don't go and buy the first pot (I know you're all running around with $400 burning a hole in your pocket!). It has been for sale on this site since I started collecting and I live with the pipe dream that some day I might actually be able to buy it. Of course, then I'd probably break it in a move and lose what little sanity I have left.

A true collector would scoff at this as people in Taiwan have been known to sell their homes to buy a one of a kind pot by a dead master. This would be the little sanity I still have that I mentioned above. House=higher priority than pretty clay teapots. See -that must count for some form of sanity.

I'm still sad though as the one that broke was one of my nicest yixing pots. Murphy's Law I suppose. It couldn't have been the machine made pot my mother got from some museum catalog not knowing anything about them other than the fact that I have a small collection, the one that, if I really loved it, could be replaced with a simple internet search (and Mom, if you're reading this, I REALLY appreciate the fact that you even thought of getting me one at all). No... it has to be the one that NO ONE on the planet can get for me again unless by some odd twist of fate I run into one of the few other people who bought one when they were made.

Okay, so I'm having a little pity party for myself here when I have a nearly equally fine and unbroken pot still in my collection.

Oh yes, poor me.

-although I have to wonder what it is about me, teapots, and moving. My brown betty and another mass produced teapot broke in the move from Chicago to Santa Barbara. I suppose they're beginning to sound like a bad thing for me to collect. Odd.

our niece

Okay our house is still a mess. I'm not going to upload photos of anything even located in the place as it is just depressing how many boxes still need to be unpacked after two weeks.

So, in lieu of anything about our life, I bring you Liza, our niece (Marius' niece to be precise). How cute is she?

And Cossett (my bil's dog) is the reason we would really like a whippet one day. She is great with Liza as you can tell from the photo. We've really missed Liza's first few years since they are in Kansas but we got super cheap plane tickets for Thanksgiving so we'll get to see her then. I guess people don't fly to Kansas for the holiday -perhaps they all vacate the state. It should be interesting...

photo from Memphis trip

Some of you know that I had to go to Memphis early in August for a conference. At the opening evening they had an Elvis wandering about and taking photos with folks.

What you may not be able to tell from the photo is that the black on his chest is all hair. This must be the most hairy chest I have ever seen in my entire life (and most of you don't know how hairy my PhD advisor was/is). This leads me to share my moment of embarrassment with you all.

The Elvis walked up to me to shake my hand but I caught a glimpse of the chest first.

And I COULDN'T look away!!!!!

I swear it was just like when a guy stares at your chest without once looking up at your face when you're talking to him. I was shaking his hand and he was talking to me and I was still staring at his chest!

Except for the fact that it wasn't in the least bit sexual. It was just pure astonishment that a chest like that even exists in our world. Fortunately the folks around me explained that he clearly thought it was sexual and enjoyed my reaction. Go figure. It makes me wonder if guys and breasts are like that ever.

So the folks from left to right are: my friend Tony from grad school, the Elvis, my friend Sophie from UCSB and then me laughing my a** off. It's grainy because it's a scanned Polaroid. Gotta love it.

moving

Okay, I had no time to blog this weekend since we were moving the other half of our stuff and, yet again, we ran into problems.

We are moving less than 200 miles away and yet eight things have managed to go wrong during the move. Now if they had ruined the move or destroyed our belongings it would be sad and frustrating. Fortunately it somehow all managed to work out in spite of all of the bad stuff that kept happening which turns a poor me story into a great cocktail party story. It almost verges on being hysterically funny if you know me well enough to imagine my face as each new thing happened. Hint, I do not handle stress well.

Three weekends ago we rent a Uhaul van and schedule movers to help us unload the van when we get down to Claremont (Pomona area just east of Pasadena for those not familiar with the area).

We get to the Uhaul place just before 10am (when they are supposed to open) to find a sign on the door saying that they are experiencing a power outage and will open once ComEd has fixed it. The only problem being that the place had power as did the rest of the building. I called Uhaul in a panic and they couldn't get me another truck until 2 pm, way too late to meet the movers. The folks on the phone promise to try and find another truck. Meanwhile I am also desperately trying to reach this guy that we bought a sofa from and had made arrangements to see once we had the van to pick up the afore mentioned sofa. So we had no truck and I couldn't reach the guy with the sofa OR our movers to make sure that the delay wasn't ruining our chances of moving that day.

At around 11am, this guy shows up and opens the store. He tries to support his sign by claiming that the locks are electric and that he can't open them until the power comes on and uses his car key in the lock to show that it won't open (charming fellow clearly). Marius is really ticked off at this point and starts lambasting the fellow who tries to argue back -very badly I might add given that we've just seen him try to use his car key to open the door. Since none of the yelling was getting us our van, I interrupted to suggest that we would file an official complaint and start the paperwork so we can get the van. He claims that he can't print anything out due to the power outage and so begins to fill out paperwork by hand. By the time we leave the place, it is noon and, as we will later find out, we are missing a second copy of our rental contract.

We do manage to get the sofa and get the van loaded but the delay has put us smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon traffic and it takes us an extra hour to get down to Claremont where the movers have been waiting for us for hours at this point. They were very kind and did really wait in a fast food place near our new complex until we got there at 5:30pm (2.5 hours later than our contract with the movers stated). They didn't have the third person I had paid for but it turned out they could get everything into the apartment in plenty of time and we even had time left over to go and pick up a used refrigerator that we got off of Craig's List. We then drive to drop off the van. I'm sitting in the van trying to see all of the paperwork before locking up and depositing the key in the drop box when I hear what sounds like gun fire (it wasn't but I won't tell you what it was or you'll laugh at us). Marius suggests we get moving and we discover that we don't have the second copy of our contract to deposit with the key and there is a $50 fee if you don't deposit a copy of your contract with the key. We finally decide to drop our only copy of the rental agreement and figure we'll be completely over charged and will have no evidence to support our claim but hope it will be less than $50.

This was our first weekend in the place. Marius drove me back to Santa Barbara after we dropped off the van and life was good (once we had gotten the light bulbs that exploded upon our arrival replaced and put in a request for new keys since the first set we got didn't fit).

I drove back down the following Sunday for a new faculty orientation.

The orientation was fun and useful. The apartment was not. During the 48 hours I was there, the clothes washer flooded the closet and guest room that it was in (to the point of water seeping through the ceiling below), a stove burner wouldn't turn off and got stuck on high for several hours and we lost several more light bulbs, each one in sequence timed to a few hours after the previous one had been replaced by our lovely new maintenance man, Jorge. He really is nice and we should know given the time the poor man had to spend in our place.

It turns out that the stove has a faulty wire that was quickly fixed. The washer was a different story. Jorge checks the installation and there is nothing wrong with it. The official appliance repair guy comes and says that the pipe feeding water into the washer is cracked. Marius takes a closer look and realizes the "cracks" are actually rodent teeth marks. Oh yes. That's right, a mouse is eating our clothes washer. To make it even better, we think that we may have brought the mouse down with us when we moved as we had stored a few boxes in a shed that then developed a rodent problem. But we really have no idea about the mouse except that, of course, it is the one mouse that our cats have no interest in killing.

Move forward to this weekend. Uhaul has confirmed our van rental. I talk to a woman who tells me that the only truck available is in Oxnard (45 minutes down the highway) but that the office will open at 7am and we can pick it up at any time from then on. A few hours after this phone call, I get a second one from the Oxnard office confirming our pick-up for 2pm!!! When I pitch a fit (albeit a polite one) the guy tells me to call back in an hour to see if they are expecting more vans that might be available earlier. I do and am told that there should be one free around 10:30 or 11ish and that we should just call to confirm before we leave to pick it up.

I call the following morning and the woman on the phone has no clue that I was told this but manages to arrange for a van for us within 40 minutes. We show up, get the van and one block away I realize that they didn't confirm that they had put the utility cart we had rented into the van. I stop and open up the back to see. No cart. So I run back to the place and ask for one and just as I get it, Marius pulls up to make sure that I got the van and everything. This is a very good thing as it means I can just throw the cart into the back of his car and run back to the van before getting a ticket for parking in a no parking zone. We get back to Santa Barbara around 2pm. We had scheduled a mover to arrive a 2pm. The last time when we had used movers to help unload, they called us repeatedly to verify time, location and other fun details. We didn't hear once from the mover in Santa Barbara. We were beginning to think the guy wasn't going to show. We were right.

Fortunately we really only had half a van worth of stuff to take down so Marius managed it all without developing back problems to match my own. Moving is fun!

P.S. The mouse is now dead and the gun fire we thought we heard was a big fireworks display that was timed to only have one explosion at a time. We did eventually look up.

Susan G. Komen 3-day

Okay. I don't think blogs are a good way to fundraise but you never know, it's worked for some folks. A dear friend of mine is doing the Susan G. Komen 3-day walk in Chicago (for the third or fourth time -she'll correct me if she reads this) and has been having a hard time raising funds this year.

So if you feel like supporting a good cause (it's tax deductible) please support Jeanette in her efforts here. They will even spread out payments over a number of months if you use a credit card.

Thanks everyone!

Adventures in the front country

Given that I have yet to post photos that I've been promising, I'm going to use Thuy and her lovely shots from our hiking adventure this past Sunday. I'll try and post other photos this weekend when I'm down in Claremont with the fast connection and the computer with all of our photos.

Thuy and I decided to go on a short hike up to Inspiration Point. Thuy had tried to hike there earlier this summer but ended up on another trail and wanted to try again. In the morning, I surfed the web and found topo maps and felt relatively confident that we could find our way and Thuy said she knew where the trailhead was so we thought we were set. We were wrong.

The trailhead that Thuy was familiar with was for the Tunnel Trail (also goes up to Inspiration Point) which isn't the way that I saw on the maps (but didn't realize it at the time). The hike up was uneventful. It seems that the very little walking I had to do in Memphis last week helped my endurance quite a bit as well as my heat tolerance so I was feeling pretty good when we got to the top.

Then it was time to descend. When we started out we had mistakenly gone along an access road but were redirected by a woman and her dog. At the top we appeared to cross the same access road. Thuy, using deductive reasoning, determined the correct direction to go on the road (her reasoning was very sound, I'm not mocking her at all). Unfortunately the road quickly ended at a locked gate with a sign indicating that the owners of the land beyond the gate would not enjoy our company. We turned back and almost immediately found a sign for the Jesusita Trail with "cars" and an arrow drawn on for good measure. This trail ultimately skirted the private property which would normally be a good thing.














Not yet realizing that we had taken Tunnel Trail up to Inspiration Point, we figure we can take this as an alternative way down. After all, some helpful person had indicated that it was the way down to the cars...

So we walk down, and down and down. We're passed by some mountain bikers who must clearly be headed toward their cars so we don't worry. About the time the trail dumped us off on a private road with no indication of being near a public road, we began to worry. Thuy gets on her cell phone and calls Jaeson for navigation help. Given that we have no idea of where we are, he really couldn't help us. Now wishing that we had a GPS with us, we decided to continue down on the path where it picked up again a little way down the road. We did this for two reasons: 1. the mountain bikers went that way and 2. it is late enough that we don't have enough time to go back the way we came before the sun sets. I must admit that it was a much more scenic route that crossed the creek several times and was nicely shaded by dense trees the entire way. If we hadn't been so worried about the fact that we had only a couple of hours before sun down, it would have made for a very pretty walk.















Nearly an hour later we happen across a lone jogger who we stop and ask for directions. He very kindly indicates that we are a fifteen minute stroll from the road. The road being one that is about five miles from the road we parked on, but a road none the less. After one more nearly disastrous wrong turn at a fork in the trail, we come out at the San Roque water treatment facility and Thuy gets back on her phone to call the infamous Gina (a good friend of Thuy's whom I had never had the pleasure of meeting despite hearing a great deal about her). Gina basically drops whatever it is that she is doing and comes to pick us up and drive us back to my car. Gina is my hero. And like any good hero, she pulled up in a hot car and only laughed at us a little. Okay, she laughed quite a bit but certainly less than many others would have in a similar situation. While Gina is now my hero, I suspect I did not make an equally good first impression on her.

The lesson from all of this is that one should take the same trail down and one took up a mountain, particularly when everyone else you see on the trail is doing exactly that. We were very lucky that we didn't spend the night out in the woods. If we had taken one more wrong turn we would have been in bad shape. Granted, in SB front country, you can only walk so far while still being on the same side of the mountains. But, we could have spent the entire night walking parallel to a road and ended up who knows where. Least you think we were in mortal peril, there were occupied houses around the trail and if we were still lost come dusk, we could have braved the poison oak and left the trail to go ask for help from one of the local residents. However, it isn't very nice to think of that as your only option. It's much better to just know exactly where you are going instead of walking nearly six miles away from your car. We were lucky. Next time we will be smart so that we don' t need to be so lucky.

Yes I'm lame

I didn't post the photos and I probably won't get to it tonight because of the concert. Bad blogger, bad!

Why do I suddenly have a social life?

I'm not going to make it to knitting tomorrow night. I'll be going to the Toad charity concert instead since a friend of a friend has an extra ticket. It's a benefit for the SB Rape Crisis Center so you if like the group at all, it's worth the $30 ticket. I will be there next week though.

We (Brian, Dawn and Kathleen) went to see Glenn Phillips yesterday at Soho and he was good as always but without A/C, the temperature was a bit insane. It may be a bit much to see him twice in one week but they should be very different concerts.

After I get back from my softball game (and end of season pizza, beer and ice cream binge) I'll post the photos from the NYC trip. AND!!!! Marius gets back this weekend from S. Africa and none too soon given the phone bill we've racked up while he's been over there. Since he's been away for a month there may be a longer than normal period without posts. :)

back but it doesn't feel like it

For those of you who have no access to national news outlets, California is experiencing a severe heat wave. I got back from D.C./NYC less than a week ago to 100 degree days in Santa Barbara. Now it's hot and the sea layer has moved back in (hopefully to cool things off a bit at some point) so it's hot, humid and hazy. I feel like I'm back on the east coast!

I had an excellent time on my trip. We managed to grab tickets to Spamalot with my brother and his girlfriend and had some excellent Italian food and some terrible Irish pub food (that place apparently stays in business by being known as a serious meat market).

Even without the original cast, Spamalot was funny (to me as well as to the large portion of the audience unfamiliar with Monty Python). It's always a bit odd being the only one in a large room laughing, but I now realize that I must subject my immediate family to a Monty Python fest the next time we are all together so that they can understand the "inside" jokes. I was only sad that "Help, I'm being oppressed!" was never shouted during the course of the show. There was a random reference to "suspenders and a bra" so I can't complain too much. Kristen from the Thursday knit group tells me that the Wynn (win?) in Vegas is doing a permanent installation of the show and should have most of the original cast back at the beginning at least. I'm tempted to try for tickets given that it would include Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce and Tim Curry.

Wicked was fantastic despite major changes to the plot (only one completely contradicted the novel where scarecrows are a small race of people and not a spell that only half worked on a single individual as in the musical). The cast has also changed (although Carol Kane is still in it) but I think the new woman in the Glinda role is better than the original if the CD recording is anything to go by. Mom loved the show largely because of Glinda's performance even though she got the tickets as a treat for me and hasn't even read the book.

I'll try and post photos from the trip tomorrow. We tried hard to get good touristy ones from Times Square and Rockefeller Center so they should be cheesy.

I'm off

to see the wizard....

Well, I'm off to D.C. for the weekend. My mother got tickets to Wicked so we're taking the train up to NYC together to see the show and visit my brother's girlfriend. He's also going to be up there for the weekend preparing for job interviews so we'll do some quality family time as well. I'll be at knitting early tonight but then I've got to leave early and run to the airport.

I'll post about the trip when I get back.

What happens when I go out to the field.

So as many of you know, I went out a few weekends ago to do field work (ie. collect data from shrubs people have been watching for nearly 30 years). We have a site that is just north of Lucerne Valley in the Mojave Desert. I went out with my boss and one of his first students, the current provost of UMass. These guys are quickly closing in on 60 (well, one is already there) and apparently suffer from a bit of hearing loss. We come back to our camp at the end of a day and I hear a rattling noise.

Of course, I leap back making funny "I'm scared out of my mind" noises causing the guys laugh at me (rather loudly I must say). Until I point out that the cause of my behavior is a mojave green rattlesnake that has decided that our tanks of nitrogen gas might be interesting prey (they track heat and giant metal tanks get very hot in the desert sun). Even after I pointed the thing out, they still couldn't hear it.

Now, I've worked in places where these snakes are before. I even came with in a few inches of stepping on one once. However, they have all been very relaxed snakes. This one was on caffeine and speed, in full strike position and rattling its butt off.

Snakes in general are not so scary. This one is though. Its venom includes the usual run of the mill stuff that other rattlesnakes have as well as a neurotoxin which apparently can cause you to stop breathing within 15 minutes of being bit (don't quote me here, this is all stuff I've been told by other non-herp scientists).

Given that they've led long lives, the guys offered to deal with it. So using one of my tent poles they began to try and move it.Of course, it immediately went under a bush which made grabbing it that much more exciting.
Eventually though, they managed to get it into a paper bag to carry it away... using the tent pole of course.
Here are my heroes carrying the evil villain snake off into the sunset.
And a last shot of Bruce with the snake safely deposited too far away to crawl back overnight and surprise us when we're working at 2 am.
Bruce's wife insisted that I walk ahead of everyone once she heard the story since I was apparently the only one in the group who could hear the thing! So their chivalry and machismo died a quick death. At least no one was bit and we didn't see it again for the rest of the trip.

Oh and did I mention that it was 113 degrees F in the shade? Every day?

I love being a scientist.

spinning tonight!

Just a quick post for those who go to the Monday spinning group. It's at Mary's (the big farmhouse on Glenn Annie north of Cathedral Oaks). Feel free to email or call for directions if you need them.

I'll be there late because I have my usual Monday night knitting group AND a softball game to play before I can go (not in that order fortunately!).

Oh, yeah, did I mention work? I got a big grant proposal in on Friday so that's calmed down a bit and I will have time for all of my evening activities for once in a long time. I'll post photos and stories of all of the other happenings tomorrow night probably.

This weekend I go to D.C. to visit Mom (both of our husbands are out of town (the country) for July so Dad sent me a ticket. We're going to hop on a train up to NYC and have tickets to Wicked!!!! I'll definitely post about that trip when I get back.

Hope to see you tonight!

anacapa island

Two weekends ago we went to Anacapa Island. Since Marius was kind enough to create low res pics of his favorite photos, that is what you'll get to see.

We woke up at an incredibly early hour to pick up Thuy and Jaeson and drive to the ferry on time. They claimed we needed to be there an hour before departure although we sat in line for 15-20 minutes and then waited another 20 minutes or so before we could load our gear onto the boat (grumble, grumble, lucky that we stopped for coffee on the way down, grumble, grumble).














It was a bit foggy but the sun came out in time for a little snorkeling the first afternoon.



















Now, if I had selected the photos you'd be seeing a great shot of Marius and Jaeson in their wet suits (Jaeson's had lovely neon accents reminiscent of the 80's), but alas, Marius picked the photos so you only get one of me coming out of the water but grinning like a maniac.

The water is very clear around the islands and so you can see the kelp forests and fish really well. The only odd thing is that there is something that makes a crackling noise in your ear when your head is under water. Even the park ranger could only guess at what caused it even though everyone hears it. His suggestions were the waves moving sand and rocks against the rocky walls of the harbor in which we were swimming. Apparently shrimp can also make that sound but there aren't any shrimp like that around Anacapa.

Okay, the other odd thing is that we were swimming in May in the Pacific Ocean. Despite the wet suits, it was still cold (and not in the "oh, it's just brisk/refreshing/insert your favorite euphemism here sort of way; it was the "oh my god my head hurts" sort of cold). The only reason I managed to forget was because of the nice view. Next time we visit an island where we can swim, we'll bring the underwater case for our camera to show you.






















However, the really nice thing about visiting the island in May is that the seagulls were all nesting. I don't mean a few nests here and there. Imagine every seagull you've ever seen in Santa Barbara or Goleta all on 3 acres of rock out in the middle of the ocean. That is what we saw (and smelled!). Fortunately seagull chicks are absurdly cute (although you can't see from the photo Marius selected -check Thuy's blog as I'm sure she'll have better shots and if not, I'll dig up a few to add later this week). They're small and fluffy (go figure) like most baby birds but they are brown with black spots all over. It's the sort of sight that makes you go "awwww" to the point where you make your self ill. It's just too much cuteness to handle and most folks are reduced to gibbering nonsense and taking thousands of identical photos of every chick they see.

Okay, maybe it was just me.














The only thing to break up the cuteness are the parents. They first start interacting with you by barking like dogs (small dogs, but dogs just the same). If you don' t leave their vicinity after the barking they might move toward you on the ground. If that doesn't work, they then take to the air and begin to dive bomb you. When we were on the boat on the way over, we were warned to hold up one hand if attacked by a seagull so that they wouldn't go for our heads (aren't you just feeling warm and fuzzy about them now?), but being hit by an angry seagull parent isn't the worst thing that they do to you. When they dive bomb their victims, they are actually trying to figure out the right moment to bombard you. You might ask, what does a seagull have with which to bombard you? Well, they certainly aren't picking up things to drop on you. Use your imagination.

The only thing to be grateful for is that at least they don't regurgitate on you. I think that could potentially be worse... or not.

Dye Day!!!

This past weekend I went down to Hollywood for a dye day put on by the L.A. F.A.G. (stop giggling, it stands for Fiber Arts Guild -do you really think LA has only one gay man?). The location was a beautiful arts and crafts "cottage" (if a REALLY big house can be called a cottage) with a wonderful back yard and patio area (see the photo above of everyone in action). There were probably over 50 people there over the course of the day with great food and several shops taking over various rooms of the house to do a little business (in case you ran out of your own fiber to dye).

It was so much fun! The members of the guild are great (a couple of us even converted a very creative guy to starting his own instructional blog, I can't wait to see it!) and were very welcoming. We spent the entire day talking, trying out different dyes including everything from Cushing's Acid Dyes to natural dyes to my new favorite way, earth hues natural dye extracts (they're as easy, if not easier, than chemical dyes with the results of natural dyes). Below is a hot pour dye (clown pot) that my dye buddy (twisted) Ruth set up. I threw quite a bit of gray wool into this pot and it came out wonderfully. You fill the pot with water and vinegar, slowly pour the dye on top and then very slowly bring the pot up to the temperature needed for the dye to strike (without poking it Ruth! :) ). That allows the dye to move down through all of the fiber in the pot before it strikes.















Here are some samples drying on the fence of what everyone did and some of the dye pots we had going. You'll notice there was a lot of blue. We had an instant indigo pot going all day and several acid dyes in various blues going but the colors were more diverse than what's drying here.















Speaking of which, below is more gray wool I dust dyed. This is where you mix acid dyes with corn starch and sprinkle it on fiber that is packed in a tray filled with water and acid. You then heat it until the dye exhausts. I'm not a huge fan of pink but we were worried that the gray would hide more subtle colors. Apparently it wasn't an issue!

Granite Mountains

I have a bit of catching up to do so I'll start with last weekend (ie. not the past couple of days but a week ago). I went with the Plant Physiological Ecology class on their field trip to the UC reserve in the Granite Mountains. My boss teaches the class and so I got to tag along to "help" the students (oh yeah, six students, their professor, a TA and me; they really needed my "help"). Below are photos of the group and a shot of Bruce (my boss) hidden by one of our favorite shrubs, Larrea tridentata (creosote bush). It's one of our favorite because we both spend quality time with it in our research. It produces toxins that may help it to establish a territory belowground that is relatively free of neighbors' roots.





































The property is on a 100 year lease originally obtained by a geologist and his brother (both faculty at UofC schools) and it turns out that the geologist's wife is a long time member of one of my spinning groups. If you think your world is small, wait until you move to Santa Barbara -it shrinks even more. It's located in the Mojave Desert about two hours past Barstow depending on traffic.

I had a great time although we experienced a cold snap of the likes that I've never experienced in a desert (and I know my deserts -or at least know when to expect them to be cold and that wouldn't include the month of May, regardless of hemisphere!). The students were completely unprepared as some didn't even realize how cold it can be at night when the weather is seasonal and I found myself trying to decide if the one guy (who looks like he played defense in high school football) could fit into my baggy but not huge windbreaker.

Some fauna and flora of the area: a fringe toed lizard (endangered), and coyote melon.

Fortunately, as I wasn't really responsible for anything or anyone on the trip, I got to run away and have fun hiking while students collected data. Both hikes I did were wonderful. I walked up to the top of the mountains located next to the field station for a wonderful view and walked around the mountain and up the neighboring canyon. Of course my camera batteries were dead by the time I went out so the photos are all from the first day and a half. The hikes did result in one of those events that does seem to happen to me whenever I leave home (have I mentioned I got stuck in an elevator by myself in London this spring?).


another shot of the beloved larrea













So my boss tells me that I would really enjoy the next canyon over and shows me the route on a map. I tell him I'm leaving to go on the hike and that I'll be back in a couple of hours. The students were supposed to give presentations on data they had collected in 2-3 hours (which normally mean that they'll start in 4 if we're lucky) and I had to be back in time for those. The hike was fantastic. I took the exact route my boss pointed out (I don't like hiking alone unless people know where to look for me when I don't come back), and started back a little late so that I was approaching the field station a little over three hours later. I look across the desert and see the university van (used to drag the students out to the site) driving slowly along another road in the distance and figure they're off doing something fun. Then the van stops and someone gets out so I figure that I'll walk over and see what they're up to before I go back to the house. As I get closer, I hear someone calling.

It turns out to be the TA for the course. Folks got a little concerned when I wasn't back in two hours (not that you could make it to the end of the neighboring canyon and back in two hours but you never know...) and so this guy kindly offers to go find me. Of course, no one bothered to tell him the route I was taking and so he's off down a road with very deep and loose sand.

I mention this because once I found him and he explained everything, he then explained that he had gotten the van stuck in the sand.

We spent the next hour trying to get it out but failing spectacularly. So we decide to go get the rest of the group to help (and to let them know that I was not lost in the desert with a rattlesnake firmly attached to an extremity). It took the entire group another 30 minutes or so to get the van out. Don't you just love science?

The last shot is of a cholla in bloom. I'll post more soon including shots from this past weekend (a big dye day down in Hollywood and hiking with two of my favorite people).