My sister bought me the niftiest gadget – an apple peeler – for my birthday this year! With a knife, I can’t peel an apple worth a damn (ironically, my sister also bought me a Wusthof paring knife) – not only was I slow, Mom used to say that an apple would lose half of its mass after I had my turn at it *. But now! (And please ignore the rest of the crap on the table.)

You install an apple into the crank…

…and it peels, core, and slices in one move!

Instead of spending 7-10 minutes peeling and slicing one apple, I can now prepare 4 apples in about 5 or 6 minutes. How cool is that! I usually don’t buy appliances with only one dedicated purpose (i.e., why buy an egg slicer if you own a perfectly good chef’s knife?), but this one has greatly streamlined a single process for me.

With all of those apples, what else could I do but make apple crumb pie?

Mmmm, pie…

I recently discovered Trader Joe’s makes pizza dough (the label on the bag reads, “Trader Giotto’s,” hoo hoo…). It’s incredibly cheap at $0.79/lb and has a few additives in it that make it a little more resilient and easier to spread out even if it’s still cold from the fridge. I may never make my own pizza dough again! I whipped up a few pork and broccoli calzones for dinner the other night. Delicious!

* You may be wondering why I wanted a paring knife if I’m so explicitly bad at peeling apples. I actually wanted it for finer knife work, where a chef’s knife is a little too big to be the right tool for the job. Sometimes, you just want a smaller knife!

I’ve had a lot of people visiting recently. Matt’s parents stayed with us for part of a weekend, and we walked about 2/3 of the famous Freedom Trail. We took a brief detour to pick up cannoli and other baked goods at Mike’s Pastry.

My future family

Most of the people from my old lab also came to Boston for a conference. Some of them came to Harvard for a tour of my building and lab, and I met with the rest of them for dinner in the square. My former advisor is on the left.

Strange news on the job front. Looks like I may not get laid off at the end of July, but I still need to find a fresh laboratory.

I’m spinning up the roving pictured below. Two bobbin’s worth finished so far, I hope to have time to ply it tomorrow. I haven’t worked on my wedding lace in so long. I’ve been so mentally frazzled, it’s difficult to find the peace I need to work on it.

A few years ago, I bought a naturally colored medium grey fleece (with tiny bits of brown), staple length about 4 inches, I think some kind of finewool-longwool cross. Knowing my buying habits, it was probably a Corriedale-Border Leicester. Despite being uncovered, it had almost no vm. I don’t recall for sure where I bought it, but I think it was from Pat Lees. Nice wool, reasonable prices. A couple of months ago, I kettle dyed parts of it in shades of blue and green.

It looked like hell, drying on the kitchen table, and I refrained from taking any pictures at that time. I sent it to Spinderellas for processing into a striped roving. It’s a mix of evergreen, steel blue, and natural grey. This is the first time I have ever sent anything to her, and I have nothing but praise. It took longer to ship it both ways than it did for Lynn to process the wool. The roving has come out really well, easy to spin and thoroughly blended. I will gladly send another fleece to her.

Anyway, here’s the finished roving. I’ve spun a bobbin’s worth so far, I’m making a fairly tight single which will become a two ply worsted weight yarn. It’s a little bit hairy and probably better suited for garments that don’t directly contact the skin. I’ll be willing to part with some of it for $2/oz, if you’re in the mood for something different (email me, joshiro911_at_hotmail.com). Yarn pics will be posted as I spin it.

And thanks for the birthday well-wishes. Thirty doesn’t seem so bad! Emily, totally go for the Wyatt wheel. I really liked their sample Pegasus wheel at MDSW.

I observed a landmark (30th) birthday last week. It rained that day. I took advantage of the weather (rain = low ozone = I can do an experiment using a fluorescent dye that is unfortunately sensitive to ozone) to cram in a series of microarrays. It ended up being a 13 or 14 hour workday, and Matt and I just went out for a late dinner at a local Thai restaurant.

As a gift to myself (and boy oh, aren’t those the best kind), I bought this:

Sony Clie TH55*, baby!

I added a 256 MB memory stick, and I ordered a sassy red Covertec leather case to keep it safe.

*And yes, it is now password protected.

Matt and I used to go to a small Chinese restaurant in NJ that had a great noodle dish that they referred to only as “Singapore Noodle.” I thought I’d try to replicate it. I used this recipe as a base.

Eat while it’s hot!

My interpretation of the recipe follows. I give measurements here, but this is a really rough estimate of the quantities used.

Cut 6 shrimp and 1 chicken breast into small pieces, mix them with 2-3 tablespoons of Japanese sake, 1 teaspoon sugar, and 1 tablespoon of freshly ground ginger. Add a few squeezes of chili sesame oil. Set aside. Cut up 1 small yellow onion, the green parts of a scallion bunch, and grind another tablespoon of fresh ginger. Rinse one large bag of bean sprouts (I think the bag I used holds one pound). Soak 1/3 of a package of rice vermicelli sticks (~5 oz) in hot water until bendy, then drain. Mix together 1 c of water with 1 teaspoon of chicken flavor Better than Bouillon.

Separate chicken from shrimp, cook chicken first. When no pink remains, add the shrimp and cook until both are done. Set aside. Heat a little bit of oil and add curry powder. The recipe called for 1 1/2 tablespoons, which I used, but I also think it could have been a lot less. Maybe next time, I’ll just use 1 tablespoon. Fry the powder for just a brief bit (I think I cooked mine too long, I detected a faint bitterness afterwards). Add onions and scallions, cook until softened. I added a little water, as it seemed that the pan was too hot. Add bean sprouts, cook until softened, add vermicelli, add chicken-water. When noodles are soft (this took more time and water than I originally imagined), add back chicken and shrimp. Stir until everything is well coated in curry powder. Add salt to taste.

About five years ago, I developed a pattern for a knitted DNA helix. It was web-published and got bandied around online groups for a while. Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from knitters who are related to or are themselves scientists and physicians, with funny stories and photos of DNA-embellished scarves, sweaters, socks, and the like. Its popularity exploded after the design was picked up by one of the world’s highest-impact genetics journals, who ran it as their cover image for four months in 2002.

The DNA seaman’s scarf pattern, along with a brief interview (part of an article on “Geek Chic”), was published in the Fall 2003 issue of Interweave Knits. In the article, author Brenda Dayne mentions that I had met a woman via email who was knitting the scarf for her boyfriend’s father – none other than the Nobel laureate James Watson himself, one of the two men credited for identifying the structure of DNA. (Yes, I know this is old news, but I’m still tickled as all heck about it. James Watson, wearing my scarf!)

There’s a new twist to this old story. I met a new postdoc, Eli, at work today, she is a knitter and machine quilter. Her boss introduced her to me because she knows about the knitting lunch group that meets at work on Tuesdays. At lunch, Eli showed us some quliting samples (one of a five DNA strand motif for an eventual wall hanging) and a winter hat with my helix pattern circling the brim. I couldn’t help but to grin and say, “Hey, I know that pattern!” Her mouth turned into a perfect “O” when she realized who I was, and she blurted out my last name. (We had been introduced with only our first names.) A knitting biologist has heard of me! I’m famous! Heh.

Now it turns out that Eli got her degree from the Cold Spring Harbor graduate program – Cold Spring Harbor being, of course, the research institute where James Watson is president. Eli attended a social event at the Watson home as part of the graduation celebrations this spring (hers is apparently the first crop of Ph.D.s to graduate from CSH). Knowing Eli is a knitter, Watson’s wife Liz pulled out a copy of the Fall 2003 IK that they had laying around the house, showed her the Geek Chic article, and pointed out the part of the article where I talk about how cool it is that James Watson has a DNA scarf. Now how funny is that?

I went over the wedding invitation list, adding on the names and addresses provided by Matt’s parents. Whoa! Our wedding has suddenly almost doubled in size.

We’re ordering the papers from Renaissance Writings and printing them on our home laser jet (HP 2200d).

The invitations will look something like this:

Bougainvillea petals and leaves in handmade paper

Wedding cake topper pieces have been ordered. They’re adorable – will post pics after they arrive. Now I have to find someone for dress alterations!

I went a little crazy on ebay recently and bought about two pounds of CVM carded into batts. One is a very dark brown (has some vm, hmm), the other is a medium grey. I put a spinning bobbin in the photo for scale. It’s hard to appreciate how much wool is laying there!

The white batt on top is home-carded. It’s about 40 g of superfine white merino and “royal” cashmere (50/50). I’ll be spinning it up for the next portion of the wedding lace.

This week, I spun up one of the batts I purchased at the Gore Sheep Day in April. Without really sampling much, I decided to make it a 2-ply laceweight. In retrospect, that was not a very smart idea. Home-carded fibers (even if you have a top of the line machine) will always have some level of neps. Neps must be tediously picked out if your singles are really thin. It makes the spinning significantly less fun if you have to pull out 3-4 neps every yard. If I had decided on a thicker single, a lot of the smaller blebs could probably have been incorporated into the yarn without so much as a blink. Furthermore, I think a good lace yarn will probably be best made with combed fiber and worsted spinning. Well, next time!

When spun, the fiber looks predominately electric blue. I am looking forward to seeing what it will be like when plied.

The bridesmaids have decided what they will wear to the wedding! Hooray! (We’ll have three bridesmaids – my sister Amy, Matt’s sisters Leslie and Marcia.) I’ve always maintained that adult women should not wear identical dresses, but they all agreed on the style and seem happy with the outcome. They selected a satin dress by Jim Hjelm Occasions.

Just imagine the dress in scarlet

I don’t remember showing a picture of the dress that I bought last February. It’s a pure silk dress (slightly off white but matches the lace color incredibly well) by Wearkstatt in NYC. It’s very similar to the picture below, but it has a slightly different fold over region (no asymmetric band).

Under the dress, I’ll be wearing bright red, low heel sandals (and bright red toenail polish). I’m borrowing Mom’s vintage diamond drop earrings, the same ones she wore at her wedding in 1971.

The wedding lace is zipping along. Now that there are a mere four months left before the big day, I’ve decided to focus a little more. Ha ha ha… I’ve been trying to do 4 rows a night during the week (up to 12 rows a day on weekends). It’s getting a bit longer, but it’s still not even 50% finished. Knitting for deadlines, argh…!

17 down, 26 border teeth to go

This showed up in my inbox today (identifying details blocked to protect the innocent):

“Dear June,

“We have now completed interviewing for the position of assistant editor at _____. I am writing to inform you that we have decided to select another candidate for the position. As you will appreciate, competition for the position was fierce and you were among a shortlist of several excellent candidates selected for interview.

“I would like to bring to your attention that there is currently another assistant editor position open within _____, at the forthcoming journal _____. Should you be interested in that position, you should contact their editor, _____, who will be happy to discuss this possibility with you.”

Now this email is altogether odd because a) I was never offered an interview for the first position I applied for, and b) the qualifications for this other job are completely at odds with my strengths. What do I know about analytical chemistry and its interface with biology? Zip. Nada. Nothing. I wonder if they meant to send this email to someone else and accidentally zapped it to me. Dammit, I hope I was an excellent candidate. I hope that they’ll remember me if/when I apply to join their group again in a few years.

A researcher at the Harvard Medical School has shown a slight interest in my joining his lab. He’s asked for references, anyway. I told my parents a little bit about his work and included a link to his web page. Part of my mother’s reply:

“Wow, he is more than good enough for you.”

I think that sentence perfectly sums up my childhood.

Hum…

I have eight weeks to find a new job.