A few crafty hours

I was able to spend a few much-needed relaxing hours working on my projects today.

I caught up on my sewalong progress for the Crepe dress. The shoulder and side seams are sewn on the bodice and the armhole facings are attached and tacked down. And all the edges are zigzagged to keep them from fraying (since I don't have a serger or pinking shears). If I can stay on track or catch up each weekend, we're supposed to be finished by Valentine's Day.

I'm all caught up on the Pendrell blouse too, which wasn't too hard since I'm making the sleeveless version. The necklines are stay stitched and shoulder seams are sewn and zigzagged. The fabric is so light compared to the cotton/linen blend I'm using for the dress! It is slippery, but I haven't had trouble sewing it yet. Cutting was a bit of a pain, but the sewing seems to be going just fine. I think I'll be making several more versions, and definitely one out of lace since I can't help but want to copy Tasia's great ideas.

Progress continues on the Blackberry cardigan too. I sewed the shoulder seams and eased the sleeves in. It was a bit of a pain to get them lined up properly and looking nice (I had to do it twice). I still need to sew the side seams and the sleeve seams before I start the collar. I'll be glad when this cardigan is finished. It feels like it hasn't been the smoothest project because of the number of times I've had to rip something out and redo it. But it will look beautiful when I finish it, and that's the goal. I wouldn't be happy if I left all the mistakes in because I would see them every time I looked at it.

I have the yarn and pattern already for my next knitting project. It's from Vogue Knitting, Spring/Summer 2009:
The yarn will be trickier to work with, but the knitting should be simple and mindless, a welcome change after having to pay such close attention with the cables and the blackberry stitch. It should go a lot faster too. My yarn is a raspberry/wine color, similar to the picture on the right. I haven't decided if I'm going to embellish the neckline with beads or crystals, or if I'll leave it plain. I might wait until it's finished before I decide. That should be a while from now though, seeing as how I have a cabled cardigan to finish first!

Working, working, working

What have I been doing this week? Working. It's one of those times of the year when it seems that there are not enough hours in the day and that I don't have enough brain cells to deal with everything. And it's going to last for another month or so.

Classes were a mess from the snow/ice days at the beginning of the semester and I think we've just now gotten everyone straightened out. Just in time for their first test on Friday!

I'm a co-investigator on a proposal for a NASA Explorer mission with the submission deadline coming up soon. I've been spending lots and lots of time proofreading the proposal and typing out corrections (mostly grammatical and typographical corrections at this point) to send to the principal investigator. Seems a bit amazing to me that I am one of the science experts on this effort... but I guess that's what I actually am, so I shouldn't be so surprised!

The proposal deadline for the next cycle of Hubble Space Telescope observing time is coming up fast (end of February), so I've also been scrambling trying to get some preliminary results together to show in my proposals so that I can justify asking for more observations. "See what neat results we're getting? Give us more observations so we can have more neat results!"

I'm also trying to get some results together to write a Letter to Nature in rebuttal of a recent Letter to Nature that was titled something like "There is no connection between this thing and that thing". My title will be "There is a connection between this thing and that thing" of course with the proof in the text and figures. And with this project, I feel a huge self-imposed deadline to get it together and get it submitted soon while people are still thinking over the first article that started all of this.

I finally sat down for a few minutes and forced myself to write an abstract and complete my registration for a conference in Milan, Italy in April. The abstract wasn't too hard to write, I just really had to force myself to focus on it for half an hour or so, and it was hard to find the focus with all this other stuff going on and pulling me a million directions. The deadline is Monday, so I made myself finish it Friday afternoon before going home for the weekend.

Where does this leave my crafty projects? Exactly where I left them last weekend. :P I'm forcing myself to take some time away from work stuff this weekend so I don't push myself over the edge and end up getting sick (which always happens when I work too hard and get run down). I have some sewing to do on my Pendrell blouse and Crepe dress, and assembly and a collar to knit on my Blackberry cardigan. If I can get my cardigan assembled and get the shawl collar started this weekend, then the rest of the collar knitting is mindless enough that I could work on it in the evenings next week when I come home exhausted and brain dead.

So, yeah, Milan in April. Just need to hold out a few more months...

Busy weekend

I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit this weekend. We ran a bunch of errands yesterday and then I spent a good 4-5 hours working while James alternated between watching his shows and napping on the couch. I was going to try to get a bit more work done today, but realized I should give it a break when I thought of something I needed to do and then couldn't remember it 15 seconds later. Time to let my brain rest! Well, at least the work part of it anyway.

We had a nice lunch today with a couple we've met and keep running into. When we got home, I tried to catch up on my crafty projects. I cut out the pieces for my Pendrell blouse, something that was a bit difficult due to the slippery nature of my fabric. Then I sewed the darts on my Crepe dress bodice. This involved carefully pinning the darts down the legs, hand basting just inside the dart legs with white thread to keep the fabric from shifting (and to help me follow the line of the dart better on my black fabric), sewing the darts with the machine, and then tacking the ends of the thread into the body of each dart with a hand sewing needle. You might wonder why I added all the extra steps here, but I found that my darts weren't ending up very even on my muslins. I think I'm happy with how they turned out on the bodice this time, but I'll need to attach the pieces of the bodice and try it on to be sure. And finally, I've got my second sleeve for my Blackberry cardigan soaking right now. I'll block it out tonight and leave it to dry for a day or two. I could work on part of the cardigan assembly, but I'm tired and don't really feel like it right now. I kind of just want to sit and read or watch more Project Runway episodes. Besides, tomorrow marks the beginning of yet another busy week!

Big Questions: Science and Religion

Many of the students taking my class are fulfilling a science requirement. That means that it's very likely that my class is the last science class they will ever take in their lives. Their future understanding of science and scientists may be shaped during their 14 weeks with me. Since this is Georgia, it's very likely that the vast majority of my students attend church and will continue to do so throughout their lives.

I make sure that we go over the definition of science and what science can and cannot do. I try to make it clear that science is dynamic, each day brings new questions and new discoveries. I try to point out that I am a scientist, and I am not an old man with crazy hair who spouts incomprehensible equations day and night. I also try to point out instances of historical astronomers who were also religious -- like Georges Lemaitre, the Catholic priest who came up with the idea of the Big Bang (yes, you read that right). As often as religious people and scientists are in conflict with each other, Religion and Science do not conflict because they don't actually overlap. Religion is not testable, and Science can't answer the question "Why?"

I was really happy to see the recent articles on Space.com addressing the issues of Science and Religion: How Astronomy and Religion Intersect Part 1 and Part 2. The Catholic Church has a long and colorful history of scientists within its ranks, as well as other scientists outside its ranks, and it is refreshing to read these two articles that present a balanced view of the history along with documented facts (rather than opinions). Especially as Space.com is dedicated to keeping up with the state-of-the-art in all things space-related.

For those of you who are interested in the Age of the Universe question specifically, I think this brief but very clear Official Statement perfectly sums up my professional opinion on the matter.

Two sleeves!

I finally finished the second sleeve for my Blackberry Cardigan! This feels like a major achievement only because I had to rip it back and knit the same sleeve 3 times. But I finally have two matching sleeves! The first one has already blocked, so I can block the second and start the assembly. Not tonight, maybe tomorrow.

I found all of season 6 of Project Runway on Hulu and was watching that tonight while finishing the sleeve and keeping an eye on my email. The semester has started, and so have the myriad problems and excuses that a group of 100 students always seems to have. However, things should settle down in another week or so and move along smoothly until finals start to approach. And at this point in the semester, most of the students are still happy and blissfully ignorant of the final grades they will end up with. :P

I read several tutorials on fusible interfacing yesterday and got all my interfacing attached for my Crepe dress. So I'm all ready to start sewing when the next sewalong posts come out. And I'm ready to start cutting the fabric for my Pendrell blouse. Progress is fun!

Crafty weekend

My shoes arrived yesterday and, unfortunately, none of them fit quite right. So back they all go. I've already placed another order with a new batch of hopefuls (like the Cole Haan pumps above). I've been on a quest to find the perfect pair of black pumps for the longest time now. I so rarely wear heels that I have no patience for shoes that hurt the minute you put them on or after standing in them for 2 minutes. And I refuse to get granny shoes. I also think that my feet are oddly shaped compared to whatever models the shoe designers of the world are using (and I seem to wear something between a 5.5 and a 6, which doesn't exist), but I remain hopeful that I will eventually find the right pair. Some day when I'm rich and famous, I'll have shoes made from molds of my feet! For now, though, thank goodness for free shipping and free returns with a huge selection of shoes.

In other news ---

Progress on the Crepe Dress: None. I was waiting for the next steps in the sewalong, but they seem to be coming very slowly, so I'm thinking I might just run ahead on my own. I found a tutorial on threadsmagazine.com about facings and interfacings, and with the muslins I've gone through, I have already practiced the rest of the bodice twice now. I think I'll wait for the posts when it comes to dealing with the skirt, however.

Progress on the Pendrell Blouse: I ran a zigzag stitch along the cut edges of my fabric and ran it through the washer, so my fabric is all prepped. I didn't want to cut into the original pattern, so I taped the pieces to our sliding glass door and traced them onto freezer paper (it's cheap and comes in a big roll). My bust and waist measurements match the size 6, but my hips are 4" smaller since the pattern is meant for pear shapes, which I am not. So I reduced each of the seams by 1/3" (8.5mm). The pattern is also quite long, but I don't like to tuck my blouses in (they never look quite right on me), so I shortened the pieces by 4 1/4" for a final blouse length of 22". My pattern pieces are now cut out and ready for the next step of the sewalong.

Progress on the Blackberry Cardigan: The first sleeve is blocking and I'm working on sleeve 2 while watching the Seahawks vs. Bears. The game is rather painful to watch right now as a Seahawks fan, so I'm glad to have something else to concentrate on.

First day of school

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of students that made it to class today. Of course, now that we've actually met once, we have a three day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr day! The university has decided not to extend the semester, so we all have to squish our classes into a shorter semester now.

I've been shopping on fabric.com this evening looking for a cute (and inexpensive) cotton print to make a maxi dress for summer with Simplicity 2638. Unfortunately I'm not sure what I want, which really makes it hard. :P I was looking for a larger scale print since it's a lot of fabric, and I finally settled on this:

Just for good measure, I also threw this in my basket for Simplicity 2588:
I want to make the view with the full skirt and no sleeves (similar to the white with black polka dot line drawing). Not sure where I will wear this, but I'm sure I can come up with some place once the weather gets hot here again. And if those purple shoes that I ordered work out, I'll have a whole new cute purple outfit. Now that I have all these sewing plans I need to spend some time this weekend working on my sewing skills!

I made some progress on sleeve two of my purple cardigan (apparently I'm going through a purple phase right now) the other day but I still have some work to do. I had to rip back about 6" when I found a mistake. My knitting is slower than it should be because I can't let a mistake go, I always have to correct it.

I started reading a new book on the train on the way to work. It's a biography of Grace Kelly (who I know very little about) and is actually quite good so far. Makes me want to track down some of her movies at the library. If anyone has any good biographies (another phase I'm going through), feel free to suggest them. Or any other good books you can think of, I sometimes run out of ideas for books to read.

Back to Work

We're still thawing out here, but the University re-opened today. Classes won't start until tomorrow, but faculty and staff were asked to report in at 11am this morning. I was in my office until about 5pm tonight, and the sidewalks downtown are just awful. A lot of the side streets all over town are still a mess too. I'm not expecting a huge turn-out tomorrow for our first day of class. And then Monday is a holiday for MLK Jr. Day!

Not much else to report right now. I'm looking forward to a warm, cozy evening at home tonight, but not looking forward to getting out of bed early tomorrow morning. I've gotten spoiled by being able to sleep until I wake up and just keeping the alarm off. :P

More Free Time

The roads are still dangerous around town, so this is my third day at home. Apparently the city of Atlanta only owns 8 snowplows to serve its population of 5 million people. Watching the news has been entertaining, to say the least (especially since I grew up in the Pacific Northwest). Clips that have been shown that I found especially entertaining: a guy in a BMW spinning his wheels trying to gain traction, overheating his engine, and eventually catching his car on fire; a man easily ice skating with real skates down the middle of Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta; a DOT truck coming to rescue several jack-knifed semis on the freeway and crashing into a guard rail itself. Each day on the nightly news they mention the overnight freezing temperatures and say something like "All that slush and melted ice will re-freeze over night, making tomorrow's commute the worst yet!" To which I reply, "Well, duh!" Needless to say, we haven't left the house since Sunday evening.

So what have I been doing with my time?

1. Sleeping (since I can).

2. Reading. I think I read the entire book How Starbucks Saved My Life in 1.5 days or so. My thoughts -- decent book, a bit jumpy, seems too polished for real life (maybe the guy has a very vivid imagination, or a publisher who likes to "spice things up"). There were too many flashbacks that went on for much too long. I get that the author was trying to tell us about his early life in the midst of his new life, but I found it distracting. Some of the flashbacks went on for so many pages I forgot what was going on in the "present". But it's a quick and simple read. I didn't really like where it ended. I would have liked for the author to tell a bit about the events that were just about to happen when the book ended.

3. Sewing (well, mostly sewing preparation, anyway). I finished re-drafting the facings for my Crepe dress with Gertie's sewalong and cut out all my pattern pieces. I made lots of strips of cotton organdy and stabilized the neckline on the front and back pieces. I might read a few tutorials this afternoon and just jump ahead to attaching the fusible interfacing to the facing pieces since I have the time and I'm likely to fall behind on the sewalong in the next few weeks.

4. Shopping online. I ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos.com since they offer free shipping and free returns. I can try them all on and send them back if I don't like them. After all, spring is on its way and I have all these cute dress and skirt patterns to sew! Here's what I ordered (although, not necessarily what I will keep since I'm so picky!):

Kensie Girl Lisa	Kensie Girl Chandra2
Sofft Ramona II	Softspots Neima

I've also decided to get two new knitting books. I'll pick up New England Knits at Borders when the weather clears since I have a $20 gift certificate (thanks, Brandy!). The other, Vintage Modern Knits, is due out in February, so I'll pre-order it on Amazon.



5. Checking this blog obsessively for comments. :P Thanks Tasia for being my first official blog commenter!

I'm not actually sure what else I've been doing. Maybe that's the best part, I don't really feel like I have to do anything at all! Something that's been really rare for me, and probably something I really needed.

Snow Day in Atlanta

I've been thinking I should have a blog so at least my family can follow along with what I'm up to. So, since we have a snow day today, this seems like the perfect day to get a blog started!

I bought a sewing machine just before Thanksgiving and I've been teaching myself how to sew. I figured the best way to do that would be to jump right into a sew-along or two. I spent a few weeks trying to perfect the fit on my muslin for the Crepe Dress with Gertie's sew-along, and finally convinced myself I was happy with it yesterday (modifications made: side seams taken in, small bust adjustment, shoulders modified, back waist darts lengthened). Here's Cal helping me lay out my fabric and pattern to start the cutting process last night:


Thanks Cal! So very helpful! The fabric is a linen/cotton blend from fabric.com. It's black with red and white pinstripes and a bit heavier than the really light cottons most people are using for the sew-along, but I wanted something that wouldn't be sheer so I wouldn't have to fuss with a lining.

I'll be starting the Pendrell Blouse sew-along with Tasia this week also. I have my fabric and pattern, but that's all the progress I've made.

I'll be making View C (the sleeveless blouse) with a navy blue and white polka dot polyester charmeuse from JoAnn Fabrics. At this point, I'm keeping my fabric choices on the easy care and inexpensive side. When I'm a bit more confident in my sewing skills, I'll start to branch out to some nicer fabrics.

I've also been oh-so-slowly knitting a cabled cardigan since some time in October. I'm working on the second sleeve, and as soon as I finish that I'll be able to assemble the body pieces and then knit the shawl collar. Here is the back and the two front pieces blocking on a towel on our futon:



The yarn is a bit darker than it looks in the pictures and is Cascade 220 wool. I wasn't sure how I would feel about pure wool, but as soon as it arrived in the mail I was happy with its squishiness and how soft it felt already. Since it's a cardigan, I'm not planning to wear this without a shirt underneath, so I'm hoping my skin will be happy with it.

Other than that, I have spent most of my energy getting over a cold and catching up on things at work last week (annual report, quarterly report, student recommendation letter, internal grant application, running calculations for a collaborator, checking files for a collaborator, reading a paper draft for a collaborator, working on my own research, getting a syllabus and class webpage and first few lectures ready for the new semester, etc, etc). So I feel entirely justified in taking this extra day for myself.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the background picture for my blog was taken at dawn one morning at Lick Observatory when the marine layer had rolled in over San Jose.