Britt's Blog

The smell of wet sheep… about a hundred rust-free T pins… It can only mean one thing: a blocking is afoot.

Or under foot, as the case may be.

Yes, it’s that magical moment when the ruffly, lumpy, entirely dubious-looking object becomes flat, and smooth, and geometrical.

Of course, Susan was on hand to help with the unpinning.

The basic pattern is the famous Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl from Knitting Workshop. I pretty much winged the eyelet patterns as I went along, and the edging is the “Openwork Edging” from the inimitable Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

The light pink wool is hand-painted 100% merino. (The saleswoman at Unique Yarns said brightly “We usually use it for socks!” but who makes socks they have to hand wash???) I ran out of the pink, and since I had bought every single skein that Unique Yarns had, and since we were headed for Janesville anyway, I dragged J into Dragonfly Yarn to procure the dark pink angora and the cream Cascade Heritage (which as a 75/25 superwash merino/nylon would make a perfectly sensible sock). Jason as always gets props for his eagle-eye for perfect color combos.

Tomorrow the shawl becomes a Christmas present for my grandma.

Personal Best – Have a Cold? There’s No Reason to Skip a Workout, Studies Show – NYTimes.com.

Exercise does not prolong a cold, nor does it help you get over a cold more quickly, but it can make you feel better.

So, no more babying a cold by skipping or dialing down your workout!

• Watching Star Trek: TOS: I believe the young persons would call this “kicking it old school.” Surprisingly good stuff, interspersed with nigh-unbearable cheesiness. I gotta say though, young William Shatner? Yeah, I’d hit that. Although I don’t think I’m soft-focus-y enough for him.
• Peer reviewing a paper and revising a paper for publication: not especially diverting, but, *sigh*, it makes the Science go.
• Watching Witchblade: Absolutely an overlooked gem of the edgy-comic-to-TV-series genre. None of the characters are cut and dried. Kenneth Irons is a billionaire mastermind is locked in an ambivalent dance with the Witchblade’s bearer, Sara Pezzini—will he steal the Witchblade from her, or nurture her and her connection with the Witchblade, or is he just biding time until she continues her bloodline, hoping that the next generation will be more pliable? His über-creeptastic henchman, Ian Nottingham, is torn between his fanatical loyalty to Irons and his puppy-dog special-forces stalker crush on Sara. Some of the camera work and FX are a bit corny, but the story somehow bears up under that. I was even willing to ride out the whole thoroughly embarrassing interlude wherein Sara falls in love with an Irish bard/rockstar named Conchobar. Yes, it’s just as lame as it sounds. Yet it barely dilutes the concentrated awesome that is the First Season. (The second season? We will not speak of this. *Jedi handwave* There is no second season.)
• Shoveling the driveway: The joys of home ownership.
• Playing Agricola: The tagline, The 17^th Century: Not an easy time for farming. is not promising. Neither are the intimidating number of cards, animeeples, veggiemeeples, assorted-colored discs, and other fiddly bits. However, the game is clearly not #1 on Board Game Geek for nothing. J and I are still somewhat at the “thrashing around randomly” stage of strategic development, and we have no clear idea why we or lose, but we hope someday to get a clue.
• Earning my Junior Weathercaster’s Badge: Yeah, didn’t make it to La Crosse for Christmas Eve. :( We’re hoping to be able to make it to family celebrations later this week. Did you know that the Wisconsin DOT has a nifty map of road conditions for interstates? ‘Cause they do.
• Making Christmas cookies: I’m currently chillin’ dough for Chocolate Crinkle Cookies and Ginger Poppy Seed Cookies, and I’ve made a large number of Chocolate Gingerbread Bars, which are awesome. Nothing like harnessing one’s neglected inner homemaker to decompress after the semester.
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I kinda like running in crazy cold weather.

For one thing, you don’t sweat hardly at all.

For another, it doesn’t matter how slow you’re going, or how short a distance you manage, you look like a Total. Badass.

This morning, I wasn’t quite sure how cold it was outside, because they don’t do weather reports on the NPR stations in the morning on weekends. Because, duh, who could possibly want to know what the weather is going to be like on a Saturday? But I remembered that the forecast was for pretty cold temperatures, and it looked pretty cold out, so I dressed in my warmest gear: Underarmor winter tights pulled up to my ribs with windbreaker training pants over them, two long-sleeved sweat-wicking shirts tucked into the tights, a fleece vest, a windbreaker, big orange fleece mittens, a balaclava, and a wool cap.

I went out and did my run. It was pretty cold, before I got warmed up. My toes hurt a lot at first. Eventually they quit hurting, and I worried that they’d just frozen stiff, but I could still feel them when I wiggled them around, so I guess they just warmed up.

Breath is the enemy, or rather the humidity of my breath. Moisture from my breath frosts my glasses, which I ended up taking off. It soaks the balaclava and freezes up the outer surface, making it harder to breathe through the fabric.

I was stymied along my normal routes by uncleared sidewalks, so I did a somewhat abbreviated run—probably a good idea, as I was tuckered out by vaulting over the big piles of snow left at each curb by the plows. But really aside from the cold toes at the start, and the difficulties of breathing through a sodden balaclava, it’s really not too bad.

I’d rather run in the cold than in the heat, because you can cope with the cold by dressing properly; the heat you can’t escape from.

And, as previously mentioned, when you’re out running when most other people avoid going out at all, even in a car, you look like a total badass.

When I got back, with big chunks of frozen tears stuck in my eyelashes (think about that for a second) Jason told me that it was -5° out. It’s just as well I didn’t know that before I left.

Jason was driving, and we were stopped at a traffic light waiting to turn left.

We were talking about our nephew Benjiman’s taste in comic book characters. I was complaining that it runs mostly to Marvel characters. “You know, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Iceman, Firestar…”

The light changed, but Jason didn’t start moving, so I told him, “Green arrow.”

He’s just looking at me funny.

“Green arrow!” I said. “Green arrow! Green arrow!”

His foot still firmly on the brake, Jason said to me, as though I was the crazy person, “What are you talking about? Green Arrow is from the DC Universe“

I heart Ockham’s Razor: both the principle, and the Australian Broadcasting Company radio show, which I listen to by podcast.

This morning, I listened to a great episode about hormones, and I learned a ton about the history of our understanding of the brain and nervous system.

I really don’t know about biology. I mean, I took high school bio, and I like reading science magazines and the web and stuff, but, jeepers, I really don’t know much biology. This was also brought to my attention when, earlier this semester, I needed to give a lecture about isotopic fractionation in C4 plants, and I discovered that photosynthesis is hard. Previously I thought I had a pretty reasonable grasp of photosynthesis. H₂O, CO₂ and sunshine go in, O₂ comes out. Simple, eh? Turns out this is all a planetary astronomer needs to know about photosynthesis, but the actual, like, process that happens inside the cell? Extremely complicated. Yes.

Like, more complicated than the Standard Model of particle physics. Like, more complicated than magnetohydrodynamics.

Or maybe the real problem is that I don’t know any chemistry. ;)

But anyway, check out Ockham’s Razor if you want a weekly 15-minute injection of More Smartness into your life.