Wow, I didn’t realize it’d been so long since I last posted! I’ve been super busy at work, organizing and attending a field trip from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, Alaska, for the Ninth International Conference on Permafrost. I went on a dry run with the field trip leaders during the second week in June, and then on the field trip during the last week of June. Beforehand, and in between the two trips, I helped put together the guidebook for the trip, gather up coolers, whistles, books, spotting scopes and binoculars, soil probes, sleeping bags for 30 people, pack bags with brochures and tee shirts, and a myriad of other duties as necessary. The trip went off almost without a hitch, and everyone had a great time.

About 45 permafrost scientists assembled on Monday, June 23, for the trip north, and we loaded onto a very comfortable Holland America bus for the trip north. We stopped along the way to look at the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the boreal forest, various experimental sites; we looked at soil cores from, and soil pits dug into, the permafrost and marveled at the ice-rich soil that emerged. I have a new collection of plant photos for my own use (and maybe my work website too). We learned about aufeis and frost boils and pingos and other permafrost features; the geologic history of the north slope; plant communities and how they indicate what kind of soil and history lie beneath them. The last day of the field trip was spent in the Prudhoe Bay oil field, where we got to see how research is conducted in the oil field, as well as how oil spills and abandoned pads are rehabilitated. I think the highlight of the oil field tour was the view of Prudhoe Bay, with it’s coating of receding ice.

In spite of all the work getting ready for the field trip, and finishing up loose ends afterwards, I had a fantastic time on this trip. There were scientists from all over the world - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, China, Japan, Italy, Great Britain, and even New Zealand. We got to hike through and explore some of the most beautiful parts of Alaska’s interior and north slope. I rarely get up there, so I was thrilled to get to spend two weeks up north. This is the perfect time of year too; everything was blooming and green.

It’s hard to decide what was the best part of the trip; the aufeis field at Galbraith Lake was certainly one, but the rainstorm at Imnavait Creek was pretty awesome, and the pingo we explored on the Chandalar Shelf was home to a beautiful collection of wildflowers. The low rolling hills we saw as we drove towards Deadhorse reminded me of summers in Colorado; I kept expecting to see combines and trucks full of wheat! Getting off the bus and exploring the vegetation and soils of those hills put those memories back where they belonged. Seeing my first wild musk oxen (and being embarrassed later at the way I screamed when I saw them!), as well as a lynx, a wolf, and an arctic fox with a goose egg in his mouth; how can you not be thrilled?

Now that I’m back home, the excitement has pretty much worn off, I’m almost finished returning borrowed items, disbursing cash for trip expenses, and tidying up the lab. I need to organize the 900 and some (!) photos that I took on the trip, make PDFs of the handouts and add them to the website. And I’ve started yet another blog, so we can share memories and photographs, and stay in touch with the friends we’ve all made. I think the best thing that I’ll take away from this trip (besides the caribou antler I was gifted with), is a reminder of how much I love science. Collecting information and learning, and then sharing what I’ve learned. I came away with a renewed and deeper appreciation of the fanastic place that I live in, a renewed energy for my job, and a host of memories to remind me that scientists are pretty darned interesting people to hang out with.

It’s been awhile since I’ve shown off what I’m working on; I like doing this because it helps me keep on track. I’ll come back to this post and document when I finish something, so it’s a nice record of things accomplished. So, on to the show!

The wedding present:

I started this photo frame quite awhile ago; it’s definitely a *WISP! I’d like to exhibit it at a show in July, so I am trying to work on it more diligently. The blank square in the center will eventually contain a photograph. I’m going to try to finish this off so it’s easy to change the photograph.

Irish baseball cap:

I pieced this hat just before going to Ireland; the finished sections still need beads. It’s certainly brightly colored-I won’t get lost in the crowd when I’m wearing this hat! Most of the thread and all of the buttons and other embellishments were purchased in Ireland. There is one more section-I didn’t include it in the photo because I haven’t done any embroidery on it yet.

Baby’s onesies:

This is the third set! The first two were for girls, this set is for a boy. I did almost all the embroidery without any stabilizer or hoop. I used water soluble stabilizer on one to try it out, and decided it was too hard to sew through, and it was too time consuming to fit the stabilizer to such a small item. I think for an adult size tee, I would probably use the stabilizer though; getting your thread tension just right is a little fussy.

Eyeglass case:

I am working on some ideas for small, simple, relatively speedy projects for crazy quilting classes. This is the first small project. If you select the image and enlarge it, you can just see the basting stitches around the edge.

Poppy quilt:

Another *WISP; this one was started three or four years ago, for the first Georgeson Botanical Garden quilt show. I wrapped the quilt top and some batting around a board, pinned the crap out of it, tacked a backing on, and entered it; I think it got third place. I want to put it in another show this summer, and the makeshift back isn’t gonna work this time! This is a closeup view; not the whole quilt.

There are more pictures on Flickr of each of these projects.

*WISP = Work in slow progress

If you visit my blog, you’ll notice a new page, Surfin’ the Web (if you view this blog via a reader, well, come visit!). I’m trying out a new way to keep track of my bookmarks. I’m sure you’ve heard of Del.ici.ous, the social bookmarking site. It’s a really cool way to access your bookmarks from any computer that’s connected to the internet. I’m sharing my links with you, and so are other people. Anyone who uses the tag “crazyquilts” is included in the feed on my Netvibes public page, in the upper right hand corner of the page.

If you’d like to join in, and add sites too, sign up for a Del.ici.ous account, and start adding links. You can put a bookmarklet button on your browser, making it super easy to add links. If you network with me, you can see all my bookmarks-even more sharing! But… If you’re a little unsure of using Del.ici.ous, you can always leave me a comment on this page, and ask me to add your link. And please, if you have a cool blog or website, tell me about it so I can add it!

The list below contains links to my Netvibes tabs; I think the names are self explanatory. Each Netvibe tab also has a list of my Del.ici.ous tags. You can select a tag, and go to my Del.ici.ous links associated with that tag. If you click on a link in one of the feeds, a new page for that link will open.

Crazy quilting

Ireland

Computer (not there yet, but eventually…)

Let me know what you think of this. It’s an experiment at this point, and I might go back to having links on the blog (yes, they’re all still there as of now! but that’ll be changing soon… verrrry sooonnn…). It’s just that I’ve found it so easy to use Del.ici.ous; no more copy/paste stuff, my link list on Netvibes is updated without any effort at all, and I can see tons more links as well. What’s not to like??

I stumbled onto this post (from True Stitches, via Red Thread Studio) regarding making honest comments about a knitted item. I was intrigued by this statement “Apparently someone left a comment about the socks Stephanie was knitting, calling them “fugly”. Stephanie was slightly miffed, pointing out that her blog was like her living room, and it would be rude for a guest in her home to say “Gee, that’s an ugly couch”, so why do visitors to her blog feel they can say whatever they like?” In the next couple of paragraphs, True Stitches makes the point that only making positive comments is boring. Too true! Though we all like to hear good stuff, it ought to be okay to disagree and say you don’t like something (personally, I’d appreciate hearing why you don’t like it too!).

There’s two parts to this:

1. the “fugly” comment - criticism is good, bland, non-specific (rude) comments are not good, but they’re a fact of life, so deal with it
2. “like her living room” - um, no, the ‘net isn’t my living room; it’s an alcohol-free zone that is public

Okay, no. 2 first: The Internet is public. Whatever you put out there, people can see and react to. Sometimes they won’t be nice about what you put out there. And it hurts. So toughen up, dry your tears, and get over it. Delete the danged comment! Sometimes easier said than done.

But no. 1 is much more… important to me, I guess. Personally, I would love to get constructive criticism. I get a considerable number of visitors to my blog on a daily basis, but rarely get comments. Of course I love getting positive feedback! But I’d like to hear from visitors who think my hats (or whatever) are, well, ugly! “Constructive” being the operative word here. In a way, I don’t blame Stephanie for being offended by the “fugly” comment. She would have been better served if the criticism had been more specific: I don’t like the design, I don’t like the colors, the object is poorly constructed, the sock will only fit a midget with three toes, etc.

How do I judge things? Mostly by whether it appeals to me; I think that’s how most people decide that something is “good” or “ugly”. By the color, the shape, the texture, and how they all fit together. When I’m looking at a piece of artwork (or machinery, for that matter), I also want to look at how the piece was constructed; the workmanship. I try to look beyond the aquamarine blue that I remember (and detest) from Phoenix, and look critically at the oil painting of the river, and see that the artist didn’t quite capture the color of the river, but the trees and the motion of the water and the sky are proportional to each other, they look realistic, and my eye is drawn to the subject by the placement of the elements in the painting. I think about what I would do differently if I were the artist. Why do I like this piece, or not? What attracted/repelled me? What keeps me looking at it?

Looking at an object critically helps me refine my own artwork. I try to step back and see the piece as though it were new; it helps if I put it away for a few weeks and then look at it. Sometimes I’ve put a lot of time and energy into a project, and I can’t distinguish between that and whatever else I might like/dislike about the work. But if I can step back, and be critical, I learn what not to do, and what works. My next piece will be better. Other people will see things that I don’t; they also don’t have any investment in the work, so they might be more honest than I can be. That’s why I’d like comments from you.

What would you prefer… Would you leave a comment on the blog? or would it be easier for you to leave a comment on Flickr? What about setting up a blog just for critiques? Would you be willing to contribute (items to be critiqued and comments)?

Curiously waiting…

Another perspective on criticism from Judy Dunn, of Artrepeneur. She makes some good points on not listening to criticism. Her conclusion says it all:

“The bottom line….The process of creating is precious. Protect it from the critics. The product is just product. It is not precious. It is not us. Let the critics come out and have their say when you are ready to pause. Listen. Notice. See it as a way to learn and grow. And then thank your critics for their input, and tell them to go back in their closet.“

Be sure to read her post on after the show as well; it contains good info on evaluating a marketing experience, but I think you could use a similar process to evaluate why you didn’t win the gold (with some revisions to the questions you ask yourself).

An amazing video:
I sincerely hope that this is an awesome Photoshop/Flash project. Definitely something to aspire to, no matter how it was done! “‘Like It or Not’ was painstakingly stitched by The crew at Mathematics (who made the AIH clip for ‘Debbie’), directed by Josh Logue and interpreted from a coconut concerned psychedelic love fantasy emanating from the stream of consciousness of Cameron Bird.“

Architecture in Helsinki - Like It Or Not from helsinkids on Vimeo.

Found via Embroidered Prayers of Peeling a Pomegranate

Soft circuit embroidery:
I want to try this - “…introductory tutorial for working with conductive thread to make a circuit on fabric. Using traditional embroidery techniques with modern electronic components, she will demo the creation of a simple soft switch circuit that will light up a sewn LED…”

LilyPad arduino:
Whatever arduinos are, you can sew them onto fabric and do electronic thingies with them. Lea Buechly works at in the Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado Boulder and “…explores the intersection of computational and physical media, focusing on computational textiles or electronic textiles (e-textiles) - soft, flexible, fabric-based computers.”

And I’m back home in Alaska! A bit of a change from Ireland… Fairbanks can’t decide if it’s still winter, or it’s springtime. 70-ish degrees the day I got home and the next day too, and snow and down-to-zero temperatures at night since. Jeez, I’m glad to be back <lol>!

I had a wonderful trip! Can’t wait to go back, which is a real possibility, as I made new friends and am assured of a couple of guest rooms should I return. And I will. I didn’t get to see near as much as I’d planned (I got lost too many times!), and I didn’t hike as much as I wanted. There’s thousands of wildflowers I didn’t see, and people I didn’t meet. So yup, I’ve gotta go back!

I brought several projects to work on, and got a couple of them finished. I don’t have a photo of the baby onesies I embroidered; this was the second set. Apparently there is a population explosion going on in Fairbanks! I have one more set to do (and no one else better get pregnant!), and I have plenty of time to finish them before Baby arrives, so I’ll get a photo of this set.

This project started out as a photo holder, but when I was packing for Ireland, I thought it might make a nice needle and scissors case for my trip. I found the thick yellow felt at A Weaver’s Yarn in town, and the yellow silk is a remnant from Britex in San Francisco. I finished it on the plane on the way over, but I am not thrilled with my new needlecase and didn’t use it. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it now. It just didn’t fold up the way I wanted it to. Oh well, I’ll figure out something!

On Saturday morning, literally hours before I left for Ireland, I decided that I needed a new passport bag. So I assembled one out of the same fabrics that I’d pieced a hat from. The basic bag was finished before I got on the plane, but it still needed a strap, a button closure, and binding before it was really useful. Thank goodness for long plane rides! It was functional by the time I got to Ireland, but the first sleepless night I had, I redid the binding to close up the bag more. I was afraid my precious credit cards were going to fall out, and oh my, I would be a skinny little thing by the time I got home, without those bits of plastic! Not to mention that there wouldn’t be any embroidery thread or buttons or who knows what for my crazy quilt stash!

I also brought a hat along, and that worked out as planned. I purchased threads and all kinds of fun stuff to finish off this hat while I was in Ireland. It’s very, very bright! And don’t be thinking that the threads and findings will tone it down! No siree bob, those threads are almost as bright as the fabric. I finished the bill of the cap, and one of the sections before I came home, and am well on my way to finishing section number two.

UPDATE:The new image inserter thingie isn’t working… But, I just learned that you can insert images manually (hm, so why is a blog better than a webpage, if I have to write HTML??). NOW you can see what I’m talking about! And I have two more sections of the hat done-more on that later!

I’m there! I’m in Ireland! I’ll post here occasionally during the trip, but the bulk of my posts will be at http://irishtraveler.wordpress.com. Feel free to leave a comment over there!

I signed up for Wardrobe Refashion again. So here’s my pledge:

I, Edie, pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of “new” manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 6 months. I pledge that I shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovated, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftiness brings!
Signed___EMB_______________.

I find abstaining from buying new clothes wonderfully easy, unlike some of the fashionistas out there, because I hate clothing stores (borrring!!). Shopping for thrift store finds is more fun than buying new, but I find that I do most of my shopping at the transfer station. That’s getting harder and harder to do, as more people discover the treasure trove, and I have less time to check out the recycle area. But, lucky me, over the last year or so I’ve collected plenty of pre-loved items. And yes, I’ll be hitting some thrift stores in Ireland, and will be coming home with a (hopefully) small selection of awesome Irishness!

See my previous projects.

And some inspiration: Unique clothes and retail store ideas.

The original idea behind my flat angels was to send them around the world and see where they traveled - similar to the Flat Stanley project that many elementary schools use to study geography. Well, no one ever wanted to send them on! So now I send them to friends as good luck angels. This one is going to Colorado, and hopefully she will bring Barbara back to her house in Haystack.

This angel went to Amarillo, TX, to my sister. She’s going to help my sister get through chemo, since I can’t be there to drive her around, yell at her when I think she’s doing the wrong thing (so I’m sure she’s grateful to have the angel instead!), and cry with her. Her hair is on the fragile side (as is my sister’s; she’s already losing hers) as I felted it onto her head. I probably just didn’t work on it long enough… but from now on, I think I’ll stick to sewing yarn hair onto the angels.

This is certainly not what I want to do with this angel. How can my baby sister get so sick? Without any visible signs? Thank the Goddess that she gets regular checkups, and that most of this will be covered by her health insurance. And thank the Goddess also, that she is being so positive about this experience, and is confident that she will beat those recalcitrant cells in her body into submission.

In January, she was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer, the most common stage of disease identified at the time of diagnosis. Her doctor says she has a good chance of recovery (75-90% chance of five year survival), and her overall health is excellent, which improves her odds. It still seems unreal to me; I want to be positive and upbeat, but then I turn to tears as I think about what she means to me, what she’s going through, and how losing her would affect me. I can’t imagine growing old without her.

Last week in class, we had a discussion about citizen journalists, during which one of the topics that came up, is “how much do you reveal about yourself”. This is one of those times, when I struggled with how much to reveal about my sister’s illness and how it’s affecting me. I haven’t said much to people at home about this, because it’s so surreal, and so many people are affected by similar scenarios, that the reaction I get when I do say something, is a distancing “don’t tell me” body language. So if I haven’t said much in my real life, why should I mention this in my online life? Because women (and the men that love them) need to know about Ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer sneaks up and gets you when you’re not looking. The symptoms are not very specific, and there’s no reliable screening test yet. It is most often diagnosed in women over 50, but younger women can be diagnosed with it too. There’s no known cause, and it’s difficult to detect and diagnose until late in the illness. The biggest risk factor seems to be a history of cancer, either an earlier bout with cancer or your mother, daughter, or sister has/had ovarian cancer. My mother had ovarian cancer, but I didn’t realize the risk involved for me or my sister; in fact, until this happened, I’d forgotten all about my mom’s bout with it.

The links below have considerable information about ovarian cancer. You need to figure out your risk factor, and act accordingly. Me, I’m making a doctor’s appointment, and I’ll see the doc when I get home from Ireland. I have a low risk factor because (TMI* time!) I’ve had a tubal ligation, but the symptoms are so non-specific that I need to set my mind at rest. I don’t want to be making any Get Well Flat Angel for myself!

MedlinePlus

National Cancer Institute

Mayo Clinic

*acronyms bite sometimes! TMI=too much information

This started out as a quilt for my sister, but when my mother asked for something to cover the air conditioning unit during the winter, I backed it with Ultrex (normally used for the outer layer of jackets) and made a case for elastic with the lavender bias tape. Ultrex is kind of a wierd fabric to use for a quilt, but I figured it would be a better barrier to keep the cold air out. The hexagon edges are covered in lace, sewn down by machine and applied to a blue cotton fabric. The hexagons are from a precut kit that I got somewhere; from some craft store I think, way back when. Made in 2002.