More baby things!

This is totally me right now:

I have a conference to go to on Friday, well, technically a meeting, and I'll be giving my very first talk in front of people who actually know what I'm talking about. We're supposed to have a practice talk session with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon, and I've finished... well, maybe the introduction slides. This is because I'm procrastinating. In fact, right now, I'm procrastinating from my procrastinating, since I got distracted from reading blogs on Google Reader to write this blog post. I sure hope my supervisor doesn't read this.

Anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity to show y'all some baby things I made recently which I can now display proudly since the recipients have received them (yesh, I spreak the Engrish). First up, we have baby legwarmers!

I got the inspiration for these from Kelley Petkun's Knit Picks podcast (that lady is full of good ideas). The motivation behind baby legwarmers is that babies often wear these little onesies that are legless and their little legs might get cold. And the best part is that when you're changing the baby, you can leave them on!

I made these from a free ball of Patons Kroy Jacquards (in the colourway Cameo) that I got at the Stitch 'n Pitch, which means they're washable, and also adorable. I used the pattern Baby Leg Warmers by Erin Cowling over others, mostly because of the author's nickname. I made only one major change, which was to add increases for the thigh.

Next up, a baby-sized aviator cap!

I made this using some gifted Knit Picks Andean Silk in the Slate colourway, a highly inappropriate yarn for baby things, but I don't care. The little flower is crocheted out of some left over Noro from that baby surprise jacket I made. I used the Aviatrix baby hat pattern (Ravelry link only) by Justine Turner, which I am definitely going to do again in an adult size for myself (maybe in lime green?).

Finally, the world's saddest elephant:

I made this using some of the left-over Andean Silk, so it's super soft, but it's totally going to be ruined the first time it's washed. I used Cristina Bernardi Shiffman's Oliphaunt pattern, which has rather cryptic sewing up instructions, and thus I attribute my little guy's wonkiness to this fact. Of course, I also did the pattern in stockinette instead of garter stitch, which may have also contributed to the wonkiness. Whatever. He's cute.

And a bonus shot of my cousin's baby (who all the above things were for) wearing her handknit booties!

D'aw! Ok, now back to writing my talk... ahem...

NRDA 2010

One of the joys of being a grad student is that I get paid to travel to conferences! I already talked about my trip to Halifax, but this more recent conference didn't take me quite as far afield. The last week of June, I went to NRDA (Numerical Relativity and Data Analysis) at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, only an hour's drive from Toronto.

This conference is meant to bring together the gravitational wave community, so those people who study the gravitational effects of black holes (and other compact objects) crashing into each other. This includes numerical relativity, gravitational wave detector data analysis, theoretical models of gravitational waves, etc. It was associated with CAPRA, which was more on the theoretical side, and which I skipped most of. It was great going to all these talks in my field and learning about what other people are doing. I found it much more interesting than CASCA where the majority of talks weren't in my field. I also got to meet most of the authors of the various papers I've been reading for my research. It's really cool to put faces to all those names.

I presented a poster with my research so far:



Another couple of people are actually working on the same thing (error estimation for hybrid waveforms), so I've got to get my butt in gear and actually publish. Too bad I have the second part of my qual in less than 2 weeks!

Other highlights included a nearby lake (more like a pond) and petting zoo with baby ducks!



Really fancy lunches



Really fancy desserts at out-of-the-way vegetarian restaurants



Interesting architecture at the Perimeter Institute



And knitting an entire baby sweater in four days (more on this later)



The world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is also visiting the PI right now, and I did in fact get a chance to see him. However, I was way too shy to talk to him or take a picture... oh well.

CASCA 2010 a.k.a. Good times in Halifax!

One of the major reasons I haven't written in so long is that I've been working like a madwoman trying to get my research ready for CASCA, the annual conference of the Canadian Astronomical Society, which took place at Saint Mary's University in Halifax this year. It was mostly an excuse to travel a bit, meet some new people and drink a lot, but I also enjoyed being immersed in Astronomy.

I presented a poster on my current research, and also gave a talk about the monthly Astronomy Public Tours I help organize. The poster was rushed to the very last minute... I only finished it the afternoon before I got on the plane, and thus had to get it printed in Halifax. The print shop had it ready the half hour before they were closing for the day, and so I rushed to pick it up because I underestimated how much time it would take to walk there. Everything worked out in the end, and I was able to get my poster up by the first poster session. Phew! My talk was slightly less stressful, but only because I didn't have to rely as much on my science smarts. I was in communication with the previous graduate students in charge of the public tours, and so had lots of interesting information to present. People seemed impressed with how much the tours had grown over the last couple of years, since our attendance has more or less tripled in that time.

Highlights of the trip included eating lobster by the sea (I named her Eunice):



Drinking fancy alcoholic beverages:



Beautiful views:



And sitting next to the landing gear on the aeroplane (yay Porter!):

CASCA and other astro-nerdy stuff

Last week was CASCA, which stands for the "Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society" (I know... astronomers aren't very good with acronyms, though it actually makes sense in French, being "Congrès Annuel de la Société Canadienne d'Astronomie", so that's probably where it comes from, plus, AGMCAS sounds stupid). This year it was held at UofT. It was really interesting, with lots of great talks, lots of free food, and some great socializing.

Some of the highlights (for a full schedule, see here), for me at least, were the session on public outreach (very important, it seems), the Town Hall lunch meeting, the screening of "Hawaiian Starlight", the public lecture by Lawrence Krauss (it was his birthday, and so the entire audience sang for him), the banquet and bar-hopping afterwards, and the cosmology sessions. I also got to see my old professor from BU, Lorne Nelson. Overall, it was a great experience. It felt really good to be among a few hundred of my fellow astronomers.

In other news, another UofT Astronomy Public Tour is taking place on Thursday at 9:10 pm, though I won't be there because I'm taking a little trip down to Montreal, and then to the Townships. If you're in Toronto, you should check it out.

In other other news, I have a second paper on the arXiv! I'm third author, but considering it was work done in my undergrad, I'm not complaining.

Apology

Forgive me internet, for I have neglected my blog. I haven't written in a good two weeks with no real excuse. Sure I've been busy finishing up my first-year project, the culmination of about 6 months of (more or less) intense research, and I've was busy organizing the astronomy department's part of Science Rendezvous, but that's no excuse for the die-hard crafter! By the way, I totally spazzed out and forgot to take pictures at Science Rendezvous. It's probably for the best though... we had some crazy-ass weather, and the day was mostly miserable with poor attendance.

So, to make up for it, I have a whole camera full of pictures to post over the next couple of days. To keep you busy for the moment, here's a sketch of the professor in charge of my first-year project...



Edit (June 3, 2009): I've since been told that about 10,000 people showed up for Science Rendezvous. I guess it wasn't so poorly attended after all!

Life as a grad student

Being an astronomy grad student is pretty awesome. I get my own office, make my own hours, and study things I'm interested in. Here are a few of the perks of my life right now.

Every now and then we get to go out onto the balcony on the 15th floor



where we get this fantastic view of Toronto:



I have tiny fruit:



And Ganesh to destroy my obstacles:



And when our code is compiling, Greg and I have sword fights:



Though it's not always fun and games. Sometimes we actually do work! Here's Greg marking essays. He's really really enjoying himself:



And finally, here's something pretty to remind me (and anyone else living in Toronto) that spring is actually on its way. Even if it's been snowing for the past couple of days. These are some of the first flowers of spring in a garden near campus.

Sock ramblings

I think I desperately want to be a sock knitter, but something about it terrifies me. Maybe it's the things that people have said about turning a heel being a right of passage, or maybe it's just that it requires working with teeny tiny double pointed needles and super thin thread. So for my first sock, I'm going to try the Monkey Socks by the queen of awesome socks, Cookie A., which might sound overambitious, but I don't think there are any new stitch techniques to learn and the lace pattern doesn't look any more complicated than stuff I've done before.

My other problem revolves around maybe not having enough yarn. I found some really nice powder blue Patons Kroy 3 Ply (no link because Google seems to think that the Patons site has malware) in my grandmother's stash. There's one skein of 262 yards per 50g, but the Monkey pattern requires 360 yards.



I have three choices. The first is just to make those socks a little shorter, and possibly being able to finish them with the one skein. This would be ok, except I'm terrible with figuring out how much yarn it takes to make something, so I wouldn't know how much to shorten them by. The second option is to use this other unlabeled yarn of a similar colour and weight when I run out of the 3 ply stuff. Unfortunately, this other yarn is 4 ply instead of 3 ply, so a little heavier, and it's also an ever-so-slightly darker colour. I suppose I'll just have to swatch to see how different they really are, or I could remove one of the plies from the heavier yarn, but that would be a pain in the butt. The third option is just to buy some new sock yarn. Seems silly when I have a whole skein of that stuff already... but I'm going to my local yarn store today (Romni Wools, nom nom nom!), so I guess I'll check it out. I need to pick up some Cascade Fixation anyway...

It seems silly for me to start something new when I have three projects in the works right now, but I just have so much inspiration! (Cue corny romantic music.) I'm currently working on a baby blanket (using up that fuzzy green yarn, yay!) for my colleague whose fiance is having a baby, the stupid frickin' candy apple shrug (should I just rip it out at this point?), and the circles rug from the Crochet Me book. I should probably slow down and get some real work done... Oh, speaking of which, I just made a breakthrough in my research which will save me days of work, so I'm in pretty high spirits. I wish I'd figured it out weeks ago, but, alas, such is the nature of research.