In the U.S.

Yes, I'm back in the U.S., with a work visa good for a year, and a smile on my face. Whew! A pretty surprise welcomed me home:


Isn't she gorgeous? I love her big eyes and skinny legs and arms. She traveled all the way from Málaga only to be stored at the Post Office because they would not let my husband pick her up. After some negotiations they agreed to deliver it and let him receive it if he was home. Thank you, Magdalena, she is a wonderful gift!

Here's a progress picture of my socks. I would like to knit them much longer, but I have  not figured out how to make the increases without disrupting the stitch pattern.

The truth is, it will take me too long to work things out, because even after returning to the U.S. to sort things out with  my new employer, I'm still going home to spend Christmas with my family. And when I get back I will have to catch up with the finals I missed, in addition to getting used to the new job, so it seems to me that knitting and blogging will not happen as often as before.

In Mexico

I was given an appointment this morning at the US Embassy in Mexico City. I hardly had the time to get a ticket and gather my documents, much less to blog about it. My new TN visa was approved, and will be printed on my passport. It will take them another week to send it to me, but everything seems to be going smoothly.  I brought my blue socks with me, and I have worked both heels. I wish I could show a picture but that will have to wait.

Many thanks to those of you who kept sending encouraging words and wishing me luck. This was one big step ahead!

Ode to my Socks

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks

knitted
with her own
shepherd's
hands,

two
socks soft
as
rabbits.
I
slipped
my feet
into them

as if
into
jewel
cases
woven
with
threads
of
dusk
and sheep's
wool.

Audacious
socks,
my feet
became
two
woolen
fish,
two long
sharks

of lapis
blue
shot
with a
golden thread,
two
mammoth blackbirds,
two
cannons,

thus
honored
were
my feet
by
these
celestial
socks.

They
were
so
beautiful that for
the first time
my feet
seemed
unacceptable
to me,

two
tired old
fire
fighters
not
worthy
of the
woven
fire
of those
luminous
socks.

Nonetheless,
I
resisted
the
strong temptation

to save
them
the way

schoolboys
bottle
fireflies,
the way
scholars
hoard

sacred
documents.

I
resisted
the wild
impulse
to place
them
in a cage
of gold
and
daily feed them
birdseed
and rosy
melon flesh.

Like
explorers who in the forest
surrender
a rare
green deer

to the
spit
and eat
it
with
remorse,
I stuck
out my feet
and
pulled on
the
handsome
socks,
and then
my shoes.

So this
is
the
moral of my ode:
twice
beautiful
is
beauty
and what
is good is doubly
good
when it
is a case of two
woolen
socks
in
wintertime.

                      Pablo Neruda

Sock/Visa progress

I got the second version of the petition letter today, and I already submitted it to the embassy. I'm so happy I cannot stop knitting.





Of course, this cheerful colorway helps. I don't usually use variegated yarns much but I'm loving this one. It's called "funny blue". I like the pattern too. It's very easy and in my opinion goes very well with this yarn. I'll be doing the heels soon.

Chocolate Socks

I finished the spouse's socks. I wanted him to model them but the socks are still moist.


Now that I'm done, I feel like starting another pair. Browsing around I came across an Opal sale. I like the look of Opal yarns but I've always been too cheap to try them. This time, at $11.10 per skein, I went ahead and ordered some. Of course, that means that I should at least get started with some of the sock yarn from the stash.  I chose some Regia Schachenmayr in funny blue, and Nancy Bush's Gentleman's Fancy Sock  pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks. I'm knitting backwards, from the toe.



The toe up method with a figure 8 cast on is good for lazy knitters like me: I did not knit a swatch, I just casted on 16 stitches and increased until the toe felt right on my foot. The toe is a little pointy but otherwise OK.

On the visa issue, I've no idea when I will get the second version of the letter. I need to learn to be patient and stop worrying. Marlena suggests finishing the pink thing so I can wear it in Mexico. Mexico City will not be warm enough for me to wear it, but if I have the chance to escape to the coast, then I might!

Back to the Knitting

Yeah, because this is a knitting blog. So. Here are the chocolate socks. I'm making a cuff, even if the original pattern does not call for one.



And, here's the pink thing. The back is now as long as the front. Too bad the weather does not call for sleeveless cotton tanks anymore.



As you might have guessed, classes have kept me busy. Jobwise, there's great news: They want me for the lab position! Now it all becomes a different bureaucratic matter: The petition letter they write needs to please the US embassy so I can get a new visa. The first one was returned requesting revisions. These are going to be interesting times: The semester ends in less than a month, and during that time I need to travel to Mexico and change my visa. I have no idea when, so I cannot discuss the dates my professors in advance. They know about the job situation and they have been very supportive, so I am hoping they don't mind me being away during finals or handing in final projects early... or late.

Menstrual Stem Cells

Yes, I'm going way off-topic. Also, this poor blog has had no attention for a long time. Instead of showing you pictures of my sad wips, I bring you this link for a press release.

It's cool, isn't it? Finally something good's coming from your monthly mess. If you were too lazy to click on that link, I'll summarize it for you: Your menstrual blood contains stem cells that may one day save your life or that of a close relative. And, how convenient, there is a company willing to store yor menstrual blood for a fee.

And yet, the press release contains this little statement: "The use of these unique menstrual stem cells in pre-clinical studies
for human cardiovascular, diabetes and neurodegenerative regenerative
therapies is under evaluation."

Pre-clinical? This means they have not done anything beyod the petri dish, maybe a  mouse or two. In other words, no human being has been treated with menstrual stem cells. I wish the company's website were a little more clear on that.

I'd give you that website, but you will easily find it with a google search. And I suspect it will soon pop up in many internet ads, too.

Moving on...

Yikes, I haven't posted in a long time. This semester's classes are, by far, the hardest, and I have had no time to post. Also, I've been knitting very little. The spouse is on a trip and he didn't even take the time to try his socks on, so I've no idea where to start the cuff of his socks, so all I am doing is knitting one or two rows of the pink thing every once in a while. By the way, the spouse took the camera with him, so I cannot show any progress pictures.

As for the job issue, I hesitate to blog about it. If I ever get hired, it would be inappropriate to talk about work here. Of course, I might not get hired at all, which means I can complain as much as I want on my blog. If I end up being hired, I might come back and erase this.

I got a call from HR. Since opening the permanent position is taking such a long time, they are hiring someone temporarily, and they suggested I applied for that. Well, I happen to know the person who already took the temporary position. She is one of my classmates and we actually work as a team in one of my classes, performing the experiments together. The HR person denied that anyone had been hired already. I told her that in any case I wanted to apply to the permanent position, not the temporary one. She said then that whoever got the temporary position would probably get the permanent one. So I sent in an application for the temporary position, even though I knew that my classmate was already working anyway.

Well, this HR person told the head of the department (who had already told me that I was getting the permanent job) that I wasn't really interested. One of my former professors corrected that notion, but I am still very annoyed at HR.

I hate it when people are lazy or just don't want to bother with anything they haven't done before. Like I said, changing my visa is not hard. They don't need to do anything except write a stupid letter, and then I would have travel back home and tramit my new visa, not them. But it seems to me that HR is trying very hard not to hire me.

I am now competing with my classmate for the permanent position. She is good, but I have more experience and there are certain tasks I am better at than she is. Of course, if she works as a temp long enough, she'll be much better than me in certain things: instruments and machines may operate all on the same principles, but each model has its own quirks, and she'll be more acquainted with the equimpent they have here than I am. Also, because she is now an internal candidate, she'll be able to apply for this position before I do, and she will get preference over me.

Life is unfair.

A family anecdote

Many years ago, my father worked for a British transnational company. He was based in Mexico City, but he got an extremely good offer to relocate to an African country. He accepted it, and patiently explained to us that we were moving to a far away land where lions and elephants came from. And yet, after gathering more information, he ended up declining the offer for a number of reasons, among them his fears on how we would fare in a ratially segregated society. Of course, by then I had already informed all my friends that I was going to live among lions and elephants. In addition to being very disappointed, I felt like a big liar.

Well, I feel a little bit like that once more. I told everyone I had gotten the position, but it turns out that they have to open it again to ensure fair competition.

Here we go again...

Good news... I think

I got the position! Yay! Wait a minute, I only have a verbal offer. That, and a few hours spent trying to learn as much as I could from the person who's leaving. I cannot work yet, I must change my visa first, and for that I need something in writing. Nothing fancy. A simple letter saying something like "We are offering Pioggia such and such position with this salary".There are a few technicalities that must be added, but overall, it doesn't seem that difficult, especially since I have given them a sample from a friend of mine and tons of information. And yet, even though the decision was made on Monday (and they already knew by then that all I needed was that letter), I have nothing to go by.

Meanwhile, my life seems to be on standby. The semester started three weeks ago and I keep going on without knowing whether or not I will miss a few classes, or maybe even drop altogether. Emotionally, I feel like on a roller coaster. On one hand, it feels great that they want to hire me. On the other, I fear that as long as I don't have anything in writing they could still get someone else. I've been moody and I cannot even knit much. I've worked a few rows on the back of the pink thing and a few more rows of the chocolate socks.

           
You'd think I should be trying to relax and knit, but it's not working. I hope I'll make some progress over the weekend.

Feeling Better

It turns out that I *might* still get the position. Nobody seems to know and I was unwilling to blog about this until I knew for sure what the outcome was going to be, but I'm tired of waiting. Also, other things have been going on. For example, my pooch was bitten by a spider, got an infection and was wearing that stupid Elizabethan collar once more.

I also finished spinning the purple yarn I intended to use for socks. The results are not very satisfactory. First of all, I have a few slubs.



Slubs aren't that bad. They are soft and if they end up on the sole of the sock you can still step on them if they're not too thick. The problem is what I call "snarls" (they might have a better name). They are the result of overtwisting the singles a bit too much and not having enough tension when plying. I have a few of those and they stiffen the yarn. I wouldn't want to step on those.



The rest of the yarn is not that bad and I might still use it for socks, cutting the bad parts out and then weaving in the ends, but I'm not sure I want to do that. I did keep practicing and made another skein, this time with much better results.



Sadly, that's not enough for a pair of socks, and I don't have any rovings left from that dye lot. Oh well.

The pink thing has grown a bit in the back, though the front is in standby. The chocolate socks have also grown past the heel turn, no holes this time. I had to do wraps while knitting the heel flap and chomping up the gusset stitches. I like the results a lot.

Discouraged

I spent all Summer waiting to apply for a position that was going to be opened "anytime soon..." Specifically, the person filling that position announced since May that she'd be leaving in September, and I was recommended for the job. But the position had to be submitted for approval, approved, filed, opened to internal candidates, waited on, internal selection made, no internal candidate found, approved for opening to external candidates, filed again and so on.

For those of you lucky to start working whenever you please, the fact that there is an emergency hire and they want someone to start ASAP wouldn't bother you.

Me, I cannot start working without changing my visa first. It's not hard, really, I make an appointment with a US embassy back home,  and a week later I present all my certifications and letters of recommendation along with a letter of employment. I get my new visa another week later and I can come back to the US and start working.

Not hard, but it does require a wait of about two weeks.

Well, this is yet another job opportunity I have to let go because they're not willing to wait two weeks.

So now you know why I'm discouraged.

Curly Singles

My singles were overtwisted on purpose, because I don't want any slubs showing once I'm plying. Want to see how overtwisted they were?



Just in case, I decided to also set the twist before plying.  A little warm water and overnight stretching has straightened those singles into submission.



Back to a cardboard tube, from which it will be plied once I'm done with the second batch of singles.



I don't see many slubs, so I hope I can really make socks from this yarn once it's been plied.

The chocolate socks for the spouse have grown a few rows, but I didn't feel like taking a new picture. I should be starting the heel now, but I want him to try them on briefly before that.

Weekend dye job

Last year made a pair of fingerless mitts with my handspun yarns and I liked them a lot, but I kept thinking I should have made them longer. So I'm using up the rest of my handspun yarns in a second pair of fingerless mitts.  That also gives me an excuse to spin the rest of the colored rovings.


It occurred to me that I am finally spinning singles that are thin enough to make socks from them. Of course, I could be wrong and slubs may show up while plying, in which case I would use the yarn for mittens. In any case, I'd need more purple singles, and that's why I dyed another batch of purple roving. I don't expect a match, but at least I'd be plying with a similar shade of purple.

          

I used solar energy, which I hadn't tried before. After a whole day on my balcony, this is the result.



As usual, I used regular food coloring and vinegar. I wish I had a white enamel pot so I could have seen clearly when all of the dye was taken up by the yarn. Also, if I ever move to more toxic stuff, I might not want to use the same pot where I cook my frijoles.

The spouse's socks are growing. I chose the undulating rib sock pattern, also from the Favorite Socks book. The pattern is very easy to memorize so it won't bother me that I'll have to return the book to the library before I'm done.

Done!

Stubborn as I am, I kept on knitting according to the pattern even if I knew the cuff was not tight. I did try the socks on before going on and they seemed to stay in place. I did a very loose bindoff the way Vaxgirl taught me and wore them right away, no washing or blocking. But wool socks in August are not a terribly good idea, unless you're wearing sandals. I believe wearing socks with sandals is in good taste if the socks are handmade. The spouse agrees with me.


The socks are very comfortable and I hope they remain so after washing them. My feet were happy and I guess I'm lucky, because that means I can choose either a gussetted heel or a short row heel when making socks for myself.

I picked up the pink lacy thing and guess what? I still hate it. But I did get to the armholes before starting something else.



Those are socks for the spouse. He will have his own gusseted socks and provide further input. I did not use a figure eight toe, but a Turkish toe instead. I think I like it even better.

Cuffing

My philosophy with these socks has been to keep knitting and, unless it's horrible or unwearable, don't rip. This applies to the cuff, which is sort of inelastic. Even the model has problems keeping her cuffs up:



Or maybe she's doing it on purpose because it looks cute. Still, should I be reasonable and rip in order to make a better cuff? Or just keep going according to the pattern? This is my cuff so far:



You can tell that the cuff is not pulling the stitches together and tightening the fabric like a cuff is supposed to do.

Both Andrea and Jennifer  pointed out that the short row heel is not as comfortable as the gusseted heel. So now I understand why so many people prefer the gussets. I will wear my gusseted socks and decide for myself whether or not I like them better than the short rows. If I do, I'll give gussets a second chance. Andrea also pointed out a tutorial by Grumperina to avoid holes when picking up stitches along the heel flap. Very helpful for cuff-down socks, but I need a better solution for toe-ups.

Ivy asked me about the yarn I'm using. It's Mama E's sock yarn, in Glampyre colors. I got the yarn as a prize from the Glampyre herself. I have checked Mama E's website but I don't see that colorway available. Maybe she just made this one batch for the Glampyre, who knows?

The pooch is doing well and his wound is healing wonderfully, but his behavior is less than wonderful. He obviously hates the collar, and he lets us know by reverting to his early childhood behavior, when he was a very naughty puppy indeed. I just hope he goes back to his old self when we remove the collar.

Sock Talk

You mean those potatoes were still edible? I doubt it, they were soft and squishy. I keep most of my fruit and vegetables in the fridge. Even when I buy stuff in small quantities, it lasts very long because I'm basically cooking just for myself: The spouse gets fed at work and he likes eating out on weekends (which is really nice).

The socks are progressing beautifully. I decided to challenge myself into knitting a gusseted heel to make them more interesting. I got the idea from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, by Cat Bordhi, which was my inspiration for these socks. There is a beautiful toe-up pattern called "Leaf and Tendril" that I would have chosen if I were using a solid color instead of a variegated yarn. The instructions are very clear and the only confusion arose from my knitting style, which orients the stitches on the needles in a different way than most Anglo-Saxon knitters do.

Why is it that almost everybody uses the gusseted heel? It messes up banding patterns. Also, it is not particularly pretty, and knitting it is too complicated. The toe-up method saves you from picking up stitches, but I still believe the short row heel is easier and looks better. I had holes along the heel flap:



At first I thought It was my twisted stitches, but then I took a close look at another gusseted sock knitted from the top down:



That picture comes from the book No Sheep for You, by Amy Singer. I can definitely see holes where the stitches were picked up. So it is not me, it is not my twisted stitches and it is not the toe-up direction of the pattern. Bordhi's book does include recommendations to avoid holes by twisting the stitches when you pick them up, but I doubt I'll ever do a gusseted heel again. Still, I'm glad I gave it a try.

I did like the stitch pattern, and I hope it really makes the heels last longer. I believe this can be applied to short row heels and I might try that later on.

I should add that I didn't buy either of those books, nor the book I took the "Go with the Flow" pattern from: they are all library books. I do buy knitting books if after checking them out of the library I feel the need to possess them, but I am too frugal to let that happen very often.

Some bad news this week: The pooch turned fifteen and I wanted to take him for a day trip as a present, but the car door got in the way. So he instead got an emergency visit to the vet, four stitches and an Elizabethan collar.



I doubt he liked his presents.

Stuff in my fridge

I thought I had a reasonably clean fridge. I really don't clean it that often, but it doesn't get dirty, and I'm prettty good at not allowing food to spoil in my fridge. That's why I don't understand how this happened:



Does that count as spoiling? After all, those sprouts are thriving. And yet, I'm certainly not eating those potatoes.

In other news, I've been working on my new sock project. I chose the "go with the flow" pattern by Evelyn A. Clark, published in Favorite Socks by Interweave. It's not a toe-up pattern but it makes no difference. Or does it? I don't know if I'm supposed to read the charts from the top down since this is, after all, a cuff-down pattern. The fact that the instep section has the first two purls outside the repeat section makes me think these charts were made to be read from the top.


Just in case, after two inches of pattern I inverted the ssk and the k2tog. I'm not going to rip all the way down to implement this change, because really, those two inches are going to be inside the shoe and besides, the difference is very subtle. Also, I learned early on that if you take the socks off the needles, it is very hard to get them back on in the right order. Other than that, this idea of knitting two socks on two circular needles is great.

The figure eight toe was also a success. I learned how to make symmetrical increases to avoid twisting. I also like how the colors are banding diagonally. The purple and orange are alternating within one single band, like striping within a stripe.

Two-ply vs. three-ply

The doggy rug, which hasn't been touched for a long time, was originally a "learn to spin" project. So I tried different things with my spindles and spinning wheel and incorporated them into the rug. One thing that surprised me was that a three-ply yarn knitted to apparently the same gauge as a two-ply yarn. But my yarn was slubby, lumpy and uneven, and I tried different stitches too, so there is some uncertainty there. I'm testing that hypothesis now by spinning two-ply and three-ply yarns, and when I get to that rug again I'll use the same stitch so I can really tell what's going on. So here they are, two-ply and three-ply. There is no obvious difference.

       

And yet, my spinning wheel does not like three ply yarns. I have to stop often and wind the yarn myself, because the yarn gets stuck in the flyer and is not properly wound. Also, Navajo plying is pretty rough on the hands.

Buuuuut... a long time ago I came across a humongous crochet hook that came with many knitting supplies I got in an estate sale. I didn't know what to do with it, and for a while I put a cd "whorl" on it and used it as a splindle, but now I found a new use for it: Assisted Navajo plying. Nice!



And since the yarn winder was out, I took the opportunity to wind my Glampyre yarn into a center pull ball:

       

That's 100g of Mama-E's sock yarn, 100% merino. It makes a huge center pull ball that looks quite unstable, like it's about to fall apart into a messy tangle. That means I need to knit it right away don't you agree? Plus, I finally need to come to terms with the fact that I don't like pink. I've been in denial, trying to finish a couple of pink things for months and I hadn't realized it yet. I still mean to finish the pink Kiri and the pink Lacy Tee, because I do look good in pink, but I definitely need some green and purple in front of my eyes right now. I don't know about the orange. It does pull together the green and the purple, and I'm curious to see how it knits up.

Here's a short preview of what I'll do with that center-pull ball




Yeah, socks on two circs. Two socks at a time. With a figure eight toe (which I had attempted before without success). If I were smarter I would not try three new things at once, but I'm not smart, I'm adventurous.

I worked a litte more on the Lacy Tee in spite of its pink-ness, but there's only six rows between the last picture and its current state. I'll post another picture once I reach the armholes.

It's Over

I mean the microscopy class, not this blog. Though given the poor attention it has received lately it wouldn't be surprising. But here I am, still knitting, though at a very slow rate, and blogging about it at an even slower rate:


I know, were it not for the funny colors, it wouldn't look much different from the last picture. It is a lousy picture and I thought about making one in natural light, but this way you get to see that it is indeed a different picture from the last one I posted.

And here's another thing I've been working at:



Those are Shetland singles. After looking at them under the microscope, I want to use them up as soon as possible. The doggie rug lies abandoned but hopefully all these singles, once plied, will be enough to finish it.

Many thanks for the positive comments about my electron microscopy project. I had lots of fun working on it.

Really cool pictures

OK, there was no knitting and no blogging, but I was certainly having fun. I got to use the scanning electron microscope on my fiber samples and take lots of pictures. I know it's not the same as knitting, but they're fiber, OK? Bear with me.

This is my absolute favorite, it's angora bunny:



Not only do these fibers have a symmetric and even scaling pattern, they are also thinner than silk. Just so you can compare, here's two other fiber samples:

              

One of them is wool, the other one is dog, can you tell them apart?

I put these and other pictures along with a lot of information in a wiki. Go take a peek if you have time and tell me what you think: http://textilefibers.pbwiki.com/

Meanwhile, I promise to work some more on the pink thing.

Chugging along

It bugs me that I came close to finishing this project and now I'm back to almost the beginning:



I need to keep working on it before I get tired (once more) of all that pink.

I've also been working with my fiber samples and hopefully this weekend I'll get some Microscopy pictures. Here's a cool picture of the plasma sputtering process:


That purple cloud is a bunch of ions coming up from the bottom mixed up with the metal atoms being "sputtered" from the top under vacuum.

More Samples

Thanks to Custom Handweavers, I now have more samples for the electron microscope: Llama, alpaca, mohair, angora and cotton. The big white vial in the middle contains soy silk, which I may or may not use.

I have already mounted last weeks samples on carbon film:


And I will now proceed to sputter-coat them with a gold/palladium alloy. They will look more or less like this:



That's my own hair and some insect eggs. You need to coat the samples to make them conductive, otherwise you cannot see them in the electron microscope.

I have, of course, ripped the front of the lace tee and I am now in the process of knitting it again. What a pain! Eventually I'll get to ripping the back too.

Samples

From left to right: shetland wool, merino, doggy hair, silk. I will start fixing them tomorrow so I can take a peek at them under the electronic microscope. I'm not sure about using soysilk or not. After all, it is an artificial fiber, even if it's made from a sustainable source. I'm more curious about angora or alpaca. Do you think the shop would be willing to let me take samples this small without buying anything from them?

Of course, I have also collected other materials so I can learn different techniques with different types of tissues, but I don't feel like showing any bug corpses here.

Thanks for all the get well wishes about my mother. She's really on her way to recovery. Knitwise, I fixed the length of the lacy tee so the waist shaping fit my waist. Well, it turns out that the lace band at the bottom gathers in the middle anyway. This pattern is designed so that the waist is exactly at that height. My meddling with the pattern makes the band crinkle at my hips in an ugly way. No wonder I'm no designer. Guess what I have to do now.

As promised...

Here's the picture of the swap socks before I sent them in:


Liggy says they fit, I'm glad she liked them. Of course, I also got something in this swap, from Steloide:

    

The pattern is Thirassia, by Mae. They fit great, and the little case will be very useful for crochet hooks and dpns. Those soft candies reminded my husband of "sugus", a type of candy he must have loved as a kid because they are disappearing fast!

My return to California was perfect. My mother is very stable and recovering little by litte. She's no longer connected to an IV line and the new oral antibiotics seem to go well with her.

This Summer I will learning how to operate a Scanning Electron Microscope. I'm already collecting bugs and spiders, but I also plan on taking a peek at some wool, silk and doggy hair. I wish I had some alpaca or mohair, or any other interesting fiber, but I don't, and my finances don't allow for any new purchases. But if there's a fiber addict out there with a few unspun strands to spare let me know. I promise to post any pictures I get.