A year of knits

(Yes, you've seen some of these pictures before. I just wanted to put them all in one place.)

The year began with the Warm Woolies 10 for 10 campaign - 10 items for kids aged 10 or older. It took me till the end of November to finish all ten.







Then there was the 6 for 6 campaign - 6 items for 6 year olds. I think this one was finished sometime in August.


And the FeelGood campaign of the last post - here are the pieces I made.

One more pair of socks for Warm Woolies, just because...


And some non-charity pieces:




The tally: 10 pairs of socks, 7 sweaters, 4 vests, one shrug, one scarf, one pair of booties, and one hat (not pictured).

Not a bad year's work. Especially considering I had never made anything but flat pieces (blankets, scarves, shawls, throws) before January.

Warm Woolies FeelGood Campaign

Back in October I received a package. About 7 pounds of yarn wound into two huge cones, one purple, and one black. This was a donation from one of my favorite classic clothing stores, Lands' End, which had teamed up with Warm Woolies to provide clothing for children on tribal reservations here in the United States. (Lands' End garments made from FeelGood yarn can be purchased here. No, I didn't hand knit any of these :) )

With the help of my good friend Heidi, (almost all) the yarn was knitted up into sweaters, vests and hats.

Here is our handiwork, minus one hat, which was cast on and completed while I proctored final exams just before I packed up the lot and shipped it off. I still feel guilty about the 4 oz or so of yarn I didn't manage to use up (could've made another hat!), but there was just more yarn than time.

Puppy dog eyes

During that long, long, long flight, we were lucky to have personal on-demand screens on the back of each seat. Rebecca watched Bolt about four times in a row.

Yesterday, Rebecca spotted Bolt again. She REALLY wanted us to get it.


That face almost made me give in. And no, we don't have an Xbox 360.

Christmas vacation!

We got on an airplane (or three) and took a long, long trip.

Enjoying Twizzlers for sustenance while waiting to get on the plane in Chicago. Becca was still in a good mood, having no understanding of the concept of 27.5 hours travel time.

We came to Singapore for Christmas. Becca has never been, and Kathryn doesn't remember much of it. We met cousin Khloe for the first time and bonded immediately.


Note how Khloe looks cool while Kathryn and Becca have hair plastered to their faces. Guess you have to get used to the heat. And no, not a dry heat. At all.


To cool off, I introduced the kids to ice kachang - shaved ice covered in syrup over weird stuff like undercooked red beans (the kachang). The ice was a huge hit. The kachang - not so much.

My favorite source for spices

I admit it. I'm a food snob. At the very least, I'm a food snob wanna-be. Sometimes I cook. From scratch, even. I was telling my friend today that I actually went to the trouble of making the bread for the Thanksgiving stuffing. Once. And I made a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin. Once.

But I digress.

I always get my spices at Penzeys. I don't remember how I heard about them, but I've been mail-ordering my spices from them since they were just a mail-order catalog and two stores in Wisconsin. Then they opened a store on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. What a treat it was to go there. I'd open every jar of herb and spice to take a good whiff. And they had hot pepper flakes that were actually HOT. And 3 different types of cinnamon!

Then we moved to a god-forsaken city with no Penzeys, (Los Angeles) and I mourned the loss.

These days we're three hours from at least three Penzeys stores (St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati) and I try to make a point to stop in when we're in the area. I think we went around last March, to the one in Columbus, OH. (Another gymnastics meet. Nothing else in Columbus, you know.) I browsed, John broke a jar of cinnamon (they were really nice about it) and the kids sat in the kids' corner and drew pictures.

Today I got a Penzey's catalog in the mail. Check it out here. Page 13, especially. (Hint: Check out the ART on page 13. Anything look familiar?)

Here we go again...

Look! I have time to knit again!

That can only mean one thing.

Meet season is upon us!

On Saturday we drove four long hours to New Castle, Indiana, home of some high school fieldhouse that's apparently pretty big. It was all set up for a gymnastics meet.


We sat for four more hours on bleachers that weren't that comfortable, trying to keep Becca amused,


and watching Kathryn compete for a total of maybe 5 minutes. More good knitting time (when she wasn't competing, that is).

Good pictures were a little hard to come by - we were more interested in watching the action.

Start of floor routine:


Some move on the beam whose name I don't remember:


Getting ready for the run to the vault (which happens so quickly that we've never managed a picture):

No good pictures on the bars, because the bars are always in the way.

At awards, she won the judge's award (a package of candy!) for "best scale". My (bad gymnastics mom) reaction - "What's a scale?!"

Here's the scale.


My back hurts just looking at it.

She also got a few other awards. I think she did pretty well.




The team did great too - note all the little girls with the same leotard also receiving awards. The team took 3rd place overall, but we couldn't get a picture of 7 screaming, excited little girls.

Here's the haul.

Becca needed to get in the picture too.


Full results:
Level 5, 9 and under age group:

• Vault: 9.100, 2nd place
• Bar: 8.000, 12th place
• Beam: 8.550, 5th place
• Floor: 8.900, 2nd place
• All-around: 34.550, 3rd place.

One down, a bunch more to go! There'll be a lot of car-riding, bleacher-warming and knitting in the next few months!

(P.S. I don't know why some of the pictures are off-center. It's the upload, not the photographer.)

Quotes from the four-year old

Yesterday was picture day at preschool.

"The picture-takener was SO funny. We all laughed and laughed. My GOD she was funny. She was 100 pounds of funny."
_________________________

I had gotten a notice about a field trip they were going to take, to watch Rainbow Fish. I think it's a play. Not sure. Anyway, at pickup on Monday:

"We saw a movie today. Rainbow fish."

I was suspicious. I hadn't gotten any reminders about the trip. And I didn't think it was a movie.

"What's the movie about?"

"There's a shark, and a rainbow fish.
And the rainbow fish is in his house, and the shark says, "little fish, little fish, let me in."
And the fish says "Not by the hair of my finny fin fin!"

( I checked. No field trip, but they did read the book. And no, that's not the plot either.)

World Communion Sunday

Today was World Communion Sunday. Frankly, I don't know how many churches celebrate it, or what denominations. I had never heard about it before I moved to Indiana. I might not have been paying attention.

In Southwestern Indiana I'm a bit of an anomaly. I stand out. People remember me wherever I go, which is terribly embarrassing when someone says hi to me at a store and wants to make conversation and I have no idea who they are.

I have only been attending my church for a few months. People know (of) me though, because I stand out. I got an email earlier this week asking me to read a few verses of a Psalm in 'my language' for today's World Communion Sunday service. I assumed she didn't mean that I should read in English, although I really can't read much of anything in any other language.

Thanks to Google I manged to find a Chinese translation of the Psalm in which I could recognize more than half the characters. I found a nifty Chinese to Pinyin translator so I could actually pronounce the characters, even if I didn't know what they meant. And then I found a Chinese to English dictionary so I could actually figure out what I was saying.

Then I read the passage this morning, butchering it, leaving out words because I was nervous and because my tongue just isn't accustomed to making those sounds. I consoled myself that nobody knew what I was saying anyway.

World Communion Sunday. A day to celebrate our oneness in Christ and to remember the world that the Prince of Peace called us to serve. I loved that we ended with an old hymn from my childhood (with lyrics changed to be more inclusive):

Let there be peace on earth
and let it begin with me
Let there be peace on earth
the peace that was meant to be
With God our creator
children all are we
Let us walk with each other
In perfect harmony
Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live each moment
in peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
and let it begin with me

Yes, indeed. Let peace begin with me.

...and in a non-sequitur but not really, I love what Michael Moore had to say about capitalism today. Read it. It's a good one.

Faith and science

I don't think there's a person that reads this blog (that is, if there are indeed people reading this blog) regularly that doesn't know that I'm a scientist. That part of me is pretty darn public, since I happen to be a biology professor.

Maybe it's slightly less well-known that I also happen to be a Christian.

I was watching Kathryn at the end of gymnastics practice tonight when this conversation started around me:

"Yes, my daughter is enjoying middle school too. Love her homeroom teacher Ms. A. She's great."

"Oh, Ms. A is my daughter's science teacher. She's wonderful. I was worried because my daughter was at the Christian school, and they didn't teach creation there..."

(here my ears perked up. A Christian school in these parts not teaching creation?!)

"Well my family believes in creation."

"I mean, the Christian school didn't teach evolution..."

(oh boy. the E word.)

"...and I asked the teacher if this would be a problem that we believed in creation and she assured us there would be no conflict..."

"... I just tell my girls that they need to learn the answers that they're taught in school, and then we just laugh about it at home..."

"...her teacher said that the earth is millions of years old, but if you look at the timeline in the NIV bible, it's clear that it's only about 7 to 10 thousand years old..."

"...they were taught that thing about wooly mammoths in 2nd or 3rd grade, and we just laughed about it at home..."

"...my daughter was asked to draw her beliefs about where people came from in science, and she thought she'd get in trouble for drawing the Creation story... I told her her beliefs couldn't be wrong..."

(why are teachers asking about beliefs in a science class?)

"...there's nothing to lose with believing in the Bible..."

"...I think that if I didn't believe in God and Jesus I'd just be going around committing crimes and being immoral and stuff like that..."

Thankfully, practice ended at this point. I might have bled to death from my tongue otherwise.

I could write about how Christians aren't the only ones with claims to morality, but I think that one is (hopefully) obvious. The question of faith and science, however, is perhaps more troublesome.

As a (good) scientist and a (faithful, or at least trying to be faithful) Christian, I am deeply troubled by the often pervasive notion that faith and science are incompatible. And I get it from both sides. (Many) Fellow scientists imply that I'm a superstitious fool. (Many) Christians look at me as a heathen bound for eternal damnation.

This semester I have at least two students who have been quite vocal about their belief in a literal Creation story. They have offered their opinion (in writing, so far) already, 1.5 weeks into the semester. One even offered that, like the gymnastics mom I encountered tonight, she would 'give (me) the answers desired', while presumably going home to laugh at my folly. What inspired this? I'm not completely sure; I haven't covered much material beyond the components of a cell and how cells divide. (I don't imagine that she expected I was going to describe mitosis in terms of 'God causes each chromosome to move to its correct location'.) I'd be surprised if there weren't more students who shared their beliefs; I'm sure I just haven't identified them yet.

I happily reconcile both my science and my faith. I teach about molecular evolution (mutations accumulate in DNA sequence over time, and are more commonly seen in sequences not used to code for protein) and then go home and say a blessing before dinner. My research on fruit flies is based on evolution (as in, the research is applicable to humans because you're really not that different from fruit flies) and I will sing in a church choir (after a 20 year hiatus!) starting this Sunday.

Why can't I accept (not 'believe' - science is about observation, not belief) the geological evidence that the earth is millions of years old, or the biological evidence for descent with modification (a.k.a. the E word) and still believe that it was all set in motion by an all-loving God?

I can, and I do.

Maybe it's time to rename the blog

to 'Joyce has nothing to say'. Except I do, but haven't gotten around to it.

Stuff that has happened in the past few weeks which I haven't gotten around to blogging about:

1. I have a 9 year old! When did that happen?!
2. I survived said 9 year old's birthday party. A slumber party. 10 girls, including mine. Miraculously, all made it out alive.
3. I am teaching again. It's like a marathon, and I didn't train anywhere close to enough.
4. I am singing again. It's good.
5. I have about 6 pounds of yarn donated from Lands' End to knit into warm clothing in the next 3 months. 6 pounds is a LOT of yarn.

Mom's done with her meetings!

So we went to the Magic House. It's ostensibly a children's museum, but I think the adults have at least as much fun, which is why John was under strict orders not to take the kids there by himself.

The kids went downstairs via beanstalk, (John and I took the stairs. We're boring.)



where they found the nation's capital.

They raised the flag,



then Rebecca took some phone calls at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.



while Kathryn held a press conference.



Next, the court, Judge Becca presiding.



Being a judge is hard. So they switched to construction.





If only she'd do this at home.



On to more literary pursuits.

Rebecca played the 'harpsichord' a la Beauty, of Beauty and the Beast fame. She actually looked at the color-coded notes on the music, matched them to the colored keys, and played them in the right order, without being told what to do (not that she'd have listened if she were told). My budding musician!



They also got to play dress-up.

Cinderellas:



Characters from Lan Po Po, a Chinese folk tale:



Sacageweas?



All that, and just in the first two hours! (Then the blogger got tired of uploading photos...)

We played at the Magic House for over six hours, and had an awesome time. It's not that easy to thoroughly engage both the 4 year old and the 9 year old, and this place did it impressively. If you're in St. Louis with kids, you MUST take a trip here.

We loved it so much it made our hair stand on end.

Building an arch

I would have liked a better title for this one, with technical sounding physics/engineering terms, but I didn't actually see the exhibits. Had to work. Poor me.

John built an arch at the St. Louis Science Center. It was so well built that the kids could actually stand under it.



Then they learned about optics.



And they did some brain teaser called the tower of Hanoi.



The teamwork exhibited in this picture is amazing. And rare.



Success!



Then they balanced 12 nails on one.






I am a little perturbed that they apparently learned a lot more physics/math on this trip than biology. Guess that's what happens when I'm not around to make sure they get a well-rounded education.