MadScientistK

Baby!!!

Our second daughter, Zoe Samantha. The usual baby info: 8 pounds 7 ounces and 21 inches, born at 12:09 on May 23, 2010, at Willow Creek Women’s Hospital.
Valerie is excited to be a big sister!

Excessive detail after the break:
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It’s a meme, but hey I’m posting!

Oh my have I neglected this blog. There’s just been so much going on! So to get back into it, I’m posting this silly meme even though I’ve sworn off this sort of thing in the past.

1. Do you like bleu cheese? Only if it’s *good* bleu cheese.
2. Have you ever smoked? Not really. I tried a couple of cigarettes, including the clove kind.
3. Do you own a gun? Not actual firearms. My husband has a Nerf arsenal, though.
4. Favorite type of food? Thai is my current fave, but that changes every so often.
5. Favorite type of music? Anything I can dance to.
6. What do you think of hot dogs? Like ‘em.
7. Favorite Christmas movie? Ew. I don’t like Christmas movies.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Dr. Pepper, but right now I’m stuck with tea.
9. Can you do push-ups? Not with this huge baby bump. Usually I can manage one or two.
10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? My wedding ring and whatever I just finished making.
11. Favorite hobby? I can’t pick! The one I do the most right now is read manga, because I still don’t have my studio space set up.
12. Do you have A. D. D.? ADHD, actually.
13. Do you wear glasses/contacts? Yep, but I really want laser surgery.
14. Middle name? Jo, and my maiden name.
15. Name three thoughts at this exact moment: Get off my bladder. What am I going to eat for lunch? Move, cat.
16. Name three drinks you regularly drink: Water, iced tea, and hot tea. I miss my Dr. Pepper!
17. Current worry? Six more weeks until this kid is due to be born.
18. Current hate right now? I really dislike cold, snowy weather. Especially after this past winter!
19. Favorite place to be? Floating in water or snuggling my sweeties.
20. How did you bring in the new year? At a party, texting my husband who was stuck at work.
21. Someplace you’d like to go? Australia.
22. Name three people who will complete this. I dunno.
23. Do you own slippers? Yes.
24. What color shirt are you wearing? Plain white, because it’s one of the few I can still get over the baby bump.
25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? No way, they are too hot.
26. Can you whistle? Yes, two different ways.
27. Where are you now? On the couch in the tv room.
28. Would you be a pirate? I AM a pirate. Yarr.
29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Whatever is stuck in my head.
30. Favorite Girl’s Name? It’s hard to pick, but I like old-fashioned girl’s names.
31. Favorite boy’s name? Samuel.
32. What is in your pocket right now? No pockets.
33. Last thing that made you laugh? XKCD and this Dooce post.
34. What vehicle do you drive? Saturn SL2.
35. Worst injury you’ve ever had? Whiplash.
36. Do you love where you live? Yes!
37. How many TVs do you have in your house? Two. And a portable DVD player.
38. How many computers do you have in your house? Three. More if you count video game consoles.
39. If you changed your job, what would it be? Encyclopedic synthetist.
40. If you were granted three wishes, what would they be? That nothing truly bad would ever happen to anyone I love, that the world would finally see money for the illusion it is, and that human society would grow up.

let’s see if this works

Progress report

I didn’t exactly work out on Tuesday, but I did do quite a bit of wandering spindle spinning which is both walking and an arm workout! It finally dawned on me that spindling is probably what gives me these lovely firm triceps, and maybe some of the other arm muscles too. Just for tracking purposes, my waist measurement is 34.5″, high hip 40″, full hip 43.5″. Sure, the waist-hip ratio is okay, but I still can’t button any of the pants I want to wear. That high hip is just messing it all up. ;p Actually, I didn’t do my workout for the rest of the week. What is it about setting a goal that makes me lose all interest in it? But we did go hiking on a short but hilly trail. Good thing Noodle Girl is a good hiker!

I’ve been grazing pretty lightly. I do feel hungry occasionally but not in an uncomfortable way. Breakfast is never going to be my favorite meal of the day, and I’m having a hard time making myself eat less than two hours before I wake up. I’m still having two caffeinated sodas a day which is probably a bad idea but it has been helping with the sinus headaches and of course my overall energy level. I have eaten probably too much guacamole this past week but it’s sooooooo yummy!

I really need to go to the doctor and adjust my medication. I quit taking the Lexapro because I couldn’t sleep no matter when I took it, and it’s possible that the lower dose of Wellbutrin just isn’t enough on its own or maybe it’s time to change meds again. We still want to have another baby so I’d sort of like to try Zoloft again; we already have one healthy child who was exposed to it in utero and through breast milk, so I’m comfortable using it again in that situation. Either way, I have to do something. It’s getting hard to get out of bed every day and I am angry way too often. And hey! We may have (crappy, inadequate) health insurance again soon so I don’t have to feel guilty about needing a hundred dollars of medication every month!

Lumpy is not forever

I keep telling myself that. This weight gain and body shape change was a really rude shock! I weigh almost as much as I did right before Noodle Girl was born! Some of it is probably medication-related, but I’m sure it’s mostly a mid-30s metabolism shift. Gaining weight is still a novelty to me, and if it weren’t creeping up into an unhealthy range it probably wouldn’t bother me. What does bother me are the lumpy blobs o’ fat around my upper hip area and the backfat. I started tracking waist measurement and walking at RealAge and discovered that my waist measurement is still increasing a bit, which horrified me. I can keep up the maintenance walking easily, but it’s not doing a thing for those lumpy blobs.

So I have started an actual workout regime. It includes some of the exercises from the RealAge 20-minute workout, and some from SparkPeople’s core fitness plans, and for cardio I dance like a maniac with Noodle Girl. We have limited floor space, zero equipment, and I have to work around munchkin interference, but I REALLY want to get in better shape and stem the weight gain.

I’m also trying to watch how much I eat. It’s an alien concept to me for the most part. I’ve generally tried to maintain balance in my diet but I’ve never tried to limit the overall amount. Grazing, that’s the ticket! Keeping lots of fruit and veggies in the house helps too.

I hope to keep track of my overall progress here. Today I worked out for 15 minutes and danced for 15 minutes and I’ve pretty much only eaten a nectarine, guacamole and chips, and Dr. Pepper. Hey, I never said I was going to completely change what I eat.

Whee!

A lot can happen in a month. I got a new license plate for my car, started trying to lose weight, failed to get invited to any job interviews, and started playing World of Warcraft. We finally started “spring cleaning” our house and got rid of the fleas. I got a down wool fleece from the local 4-H kids that needed immediate washing, so I washed it and the alpaca fleece I bought last year. I finished spinning up the silk cap I dyed at Easter and the plying is not going they way I expected but it’s still pretty. Ooo! And I finally got around to making a chain with the rubber rings I bought last year, and I love it! Stretchy chain maille is awesome. I’d post pictures but another thing that happened over the last month is that I lost my camera. Thoroughly. I really thought it was in my car or this pile of craft stuff by my end of the couch, but it isn’t. Waaaaaah! I miss it. Cell phones do not take the quality of photo I desire. However…an $80 digital camera these days has better resolution than my camera, even if I can’t adjust the shutter speed or anything. I may buy one of those to tide me over.

Noodle Girl is only going to school one day a week for the summer and has rediscovered swimming with great enthusiasm, even in the lake. She may even learn to go underwater – goggles seem to be really good motivation to put her face in! Pillow and sheet “houses” are her favorite thing to make and play in right now; her flat sheet is tied to her bed posts and her Granny and I are plotting a PVC-pipe framed bed tent. She’s been away for six days, at Papa’s farm with her cousins and then with her JoJo and Big Daddy, which are the Mr.’s parents. I feel a little guilty saying it, but it’s been a relaxing break from parenting. I am starting to miss her, though, and I’ll be glad when she gets back tomorrow.

The most important thing that has happened over the past month? The Mr. got a new job! He starts Monday, and after a couple of weeks training during the day, he’ll be back on third shift (overnight). It’s a shift he likes, and very similar work to his old job at a similar pay scale. The best part, to me, is that he is working four 10-hour days and will have three day weekends! Now if I could just find a job with similar time off. Well, one that didn’t also make me homicidal. That’s the trick, really.

State of the munchkin

Four year olds are interesting. One minute they’re big kids, and the next babies. And they often start speaking clearly and making up their own words. Funny!

Noodle Girl got new shoes, again, already. I guess I should quit worrying about her eating habits; she’s clearly growing. Just not as fast as her cousins! She started drawing faces, recognizing whole words, doing things for herself. The fear of everything is almost gone, and only shows up when she’s really tired or presented with a strange food. She still loves the water and has been asking to go to the lake.

My new favorite web site is Filth Wizardry. I don’t know which makes me more jealous, her total fearlessness towards crafting with children or her having enough space to keep a huge model space shuttle in her house! She has inspired me to let Noodle Girl use Sharpies and other crafts I’ve always thought of as too messy. If I ever find my camera I’ll share the results!

Playing with fluff

It’s an obsession that matches my earlier experiences with beadworking. I have collected all sorts of fibers to play with: cat fur, recycled silk fiber, wools, alpaca, bunny down, dog down, and assorted stray fibers from deconstructing garments and weaving thrums. I made spindles, bought large dog slicker brushes to use as budget hand cards, got Dad to drill holes in scrap 2-by lumber for spindle stands and makeshift lazy kate. When the egg dyes went on clearance, I bought some of those and some fiber reactive dyes, and collected lichens, onion skins, and oak galls. Then came the umbrella swift and ball winder, building a frame loom, making weaving shuttles with Mom and experimenting with heddle options. And I’m still knitting and crocheting, sewing and embroidering, and possibly tatting. Maybe this is worse than the bead thing.

I started spinning by rolling cat fur down my thigh, the most primitive form of making yarn. Then I learned spindle spinning by parking and drafting for what felt like forever, but it didn’t take too long to learn to draft and spin. Keeping tension on the singles while plying is kinda hard, especially when plying directly from one spindle to the other. At least, I’ve had trouble; the single has drifted apart a few times while I plied the sock yarn. It’s easier to use my spindle stands to provide tension while plying, but plying spindle to spindle is really portable. Better yet is ply-on-the-fly, where the single is spun and immediately chain plied. I think that’s my favorite spinning technique!

My second favorite technique is actually making rolags, which is a type of fiber preparation for spinning. I card out the fiber and roll it up off the hand cards, making nice fluffy tubes that are really easy to draft. They make for a lofty yarn, too. And I can card in whatever grabs my fancy, like alpaca with bunny fur or wool with recycled silk. Really, I can see where making my own blends could get out of hand.

My least favorite fiber task so far is washing and picking fleece. Alpaca fleece is considered to be easier than sheep fleece to process but if this is easy, I don’t want to try hard. A fleece is heavy and dirty and sort of matted together. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a good place to wash it, even though an alpaca fleece doesn’t have to be washed the way a sheep fleece would to be clean.

To dye for

Quite a while back, I dyed my NZ wool roving using Easter egg dye and microwave steaming to set it. I have to admit I had some doubts, but it works really well!
I did two batches, a little more than half the ‘bump’ dyed (8 oz.?) and half of that spindle spun one weekend. Bump is one of those technical terms that crop up in the jargon of any field, and seems to mean a quantity of processed fiber rather than locks or raw wool. This bump took up a gallon zip-top bag. I’ve managed a fairly fine single, thanks to all the practice on the cat fur and the felting fiber. Then I chain plied it into about 92 yards of DK to worsted weight yarn.
At some point I’ll decide what to do with it!

This year I dyed more fiber with egg dyes, this time a pound of Romney wool and about an ounce of silk cap.
Pretty, don’t you think? I decided to do color families on the wool instead of the rainbow effect I did last year.
I used red, blue, and lime green on the silk and you can see that brilliant in the cap does not necessarily mean bright colors after drafting for spinning!

I also tried using the egg dyes on the cotton roving, with baking soda to make the mix more alkaline.
It is very pale, but pretty. I may try using wash soda to premordant the cotton as recommended, then use straight food coloring and see if that gives stronger colors. I also intend to try fiber-reactive dyes and some natural dyes on the cotton.

One kind of dyeing I really want to try: lichen dyeing. I think a good chunk of the lichens I collected from downed limbs after the ice storm can be fermented to produce a nice purplish color. The rest should produce some nice grays and browns. It’s really fun to experiment!

Spinning in (and out of) the wind

A few years ago, I was bitten by the spinning bug. Not the bicycle exercise kind, the making yarn kind. It’s surprisingly portable, easy, and addictive. I’ve spun in all sorts of crazy places, including while walking to class, and almost nobody has so much as given me a second look! It’s amazing how much yarn I can make on a spindle. Not that I don’t covet a spinning wheel all the same. I even have some mad scientist plans to make a wheel, but they will get their own post.

I made a couple of spindles with wooden toy wheels and dowel rods, light ones that I’ve been using to make really thin singles and heavy ones with a hook that I’ve been using for plying and ply-on-the-fly. All supplies for them except the sandpaper from Hobby Lobby, since I worked there and all. I plan to make a few more; old cds, decorative wooden motifs, big glass beads, and stone donuts all beckon to be stuck on a dowel as whorls.

Actually, the first non-cat-hair fiber I spun was wool sold for felting from Hobby Lobby, from which I have knitted some pretty sweet socks. Easy access makes a difference, sometimes, and the local yarn shops are just starting to have spinning fibers and equipment. Oooo, and now the farmer’s market in Fayettville has a fiber and yarn seller!

When I decided to take spinning more seriously, I bought a pound of natural cream-colored New Zealand wool roving from Au Gres Sheep Factory at the big War Eagle craft fair.
Being the pack rat I am, there were soon more fiber acqusitions: dyed and natural Romney roving from fleecemakers on Etsy, 8 oz. of Paradise Fibers’ Potluck domestic wool roving in multi-colored naturals, a silk cap from a local shop called KnitWicks, 4 oz. of gorgeous purple-pink batts from the farmer’s market, and about a pound of cotton roving from the thrift store for $2!

And…I found bags of alpaca fleece on Craigslist. I only bought one bag, and it weighed 5 pounds! Beautiful, rich reddish brown locks and fluff, although it’s really dusty. I’d still like to get some bamboo, and try some different wools and exotics, but these fibers will keep me busy for a while!

I’ve been trying out ‘ply-on-the-fly’ with the pretty dyed Romney on a bigger plying spindle with the hook. It’s a fabulous technique, but it’s much harder to make light weight yarn with the bigger spindle and the results so far are roughly worsted weight. Not that I mind; the Romney is really fluffy and will make a great hat and mittens or something similarly warm and cozy. I’m using a smaller spindle as a supported spindle to make cotton thread. I think it will ply up into something like size 5 pearl cotton, which I’ll dye and crochet or tat into lace.