life long learning

I took my chemistry-with-hard-sums exam last week.  Now I have no studying for a couple of months, until my next course starts in February (although I may do a little light reading in preparation for it).   Even though my chemistry studies are over for this year, I still have plenty of new things to learn.  I’ve cast on for my bountiful bohus cardigan.  This features a couple of techniques I’ve not done before – short row shaping and steeks.

I have done short rows before, but not for shaping a garment.  The pattern does give some shapings but I’m going to recalculate my own, as well as tweaking other parts of the shaping, using my hard-won mad algebra skillz. If  I can apply the steady state approximation and understand the Langmuir adsorption isotherm then I can damn well work out where to put a couple of bust darts.

Steeks, though! Steeks are a different story.  You want me to cut my knitting?  I think I’d rather derive some more kinetic equations, thanks.  Cut. My.  Knitting! ?  This is terrifying.  But I know lots of knitters who have done it and survived, and they assure me it’s not that difficult but even so, I’m scared.  But ’tis a long way off yet.  I have started with the sleeves, by way of checking my tension calculations (my yarn is knitting up looser than the pattern so I am following the instructions for a smaller size).   I’ve made the sleeves narrower than the pattern has them – I already have one cardigan with big sleeves, don’t really need another.

I did finally finish my summer school shawl, and wore it during my exam – it gets quite cool in the exam hall after 2 or 3 hours sitting still.

pattern: Litla Dimun by Cheryl Oberle (from ‘Folk Shawls‘)
yarn: Jamieson & Smith 2 Ply Jumper Yarn, shade 1403 (the red is slightly deeper/darker than it shows in these photos)
needles: 4 mm

I love the finished shawl, the Faroese shape really does stay on well. And I love the yarn, in all its crispness and slight roughness. This feels like the kind of shawl my great grandmothers would have worn. Airy lace and softy delicate yarns are good for dressing up, but this is an honest, everyday working shawl.  Although I wear it for working in  the library, rather than the fields or mills.  Ah, which reminds me …

I kniktted this ‘U’ for the Poetry Society’s Knitted Poem.  They asked you to tell them your favourite poem.  One of mine is Digging by Seamus Heaney

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Teaser Tuesday

Still doing very little non-study related reading, so here comes another chemistry teaser …

Ozone (O3) occurs throughout the atmosphere, but only ever in trace amounts.  Indeed, if all the ozone contained in the first 60 km or so of the atmosphere could be brought down and assembled at the Earth’s surface, it would form a layer only some 3 mm thick.

p. 9, The Threat to Stratospheric Ozone, K Warr (ed), The Open University, 1996

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

bang for your buck

I can’t in all conscience claim that knitting your own things saves money.  Even with the cheapest nastiest baby-melt you’d be struggling to make a jumper for less than you’d pay for a new one in Primark.   And let’s not dwell on the economics of sock yarns.  But when it comes to gift-giving, knitting makes your money go further with the addition of your time and skill and lurv *.   Some things I have given to people recently ….

Owlie Owlings

pattern: Owlings by Kerrie James
yarn: Green Eyed Monsters GEM Squirrel in owlie-brown
needles: 3.25 mm bamboo dpns

Made for my sister, with some very gorgeous squishy yarn that lovely Kate dyed to the perfect greyey-brown for me.

Green Fluorescent Jellyfish

pattern: Juvenile Sea Nettle by Hansi Singh
yarn: Rowan Pure Wook DK in Cloud and Cedar; Bernat Glow-in-the-Dark Green Glow

Made for my dear friend and unofficial chemistry tutor, because last year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded for work on green fluorescent protein, originally extracted from jellyfish (and yes, someone has made green fluorescent sheep so all-natural glow-in-the-dark yarn should be on the market soon).

Tasteful House-Warming Gift

pattern: Toilet Paper Roll and Kitschy Doily by Denise Plourde

*At least I fondly imagine this is so (and ignore any nagging thoughts in those wee small hours that my nearest and dearest dread unwrapping the next ’soft’ present I give them).

Teaser Tuesdays

I’m spending a lot of time with my text books at the moment, so I haven’t got on to a new reading book and am still reading Guns, Germs & Steel. So this teaser is from my text book.

This folding pattern is known as higher-order structure, and it means that every single molecule of the enzyme will have precisely the same convoluted three-dimensional structure.  The enzyme is held in this shape by hydrogen-bonding, and a number of other intramolecular interactions.

page 37, Physical Chemistry: Principles of Chemical Change: Reaction Mechanisms; Homogeneous Catalysis (Course S342), Open University, 1996
Hope that doesn’t contain too much enzyme-catalysis-related spoiler info for you

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

my comeuppance

I am paying the price for all those socks.  And hats and gloves and shawls. Or rather, the price for ignoring those occasional aches and pains and twinges in my arms and wrists, for now they are much more than occasional.  I am resigned to a regimen of ice, ibuprofen and no knitting (or crocheting) for a week.

Being a crazy mixed up kid I knit right handed despite being left handed and it’s only my right wrist I’m having problems with, so I can still write with no problems.  Less knitting and more chemistry studies is probably A Good Thing with exam looming.  If I say that often enough I might even start to believe it.

It’s my family I feel sorry for ….

this week I’ve been mostly making …

… queen bee pheromone.

And what with all day in the lab doing multi-step natural product synthesisth, followed by tutorials in the evenings and trying to find time to puzzle over results, summer school doesn’t leave much time for knitting.  Including travelling time, I made just over half a monkey.

and this weekend I have to study all about catalysis but right now I am shattered and going to spend the morning reading the Gruaniad’s rebel knitting supplement, feat. Mazz!

heterocyclic hat pattern

A beanie-style hat for organic chemists everywhere.

Knit in the round, using dk/sport weight yarn on 3.75 mm needles, incorporating 4 important molecules. If you aren’t familiar with stranded colour work, read Theresa Vinson Stenersen’s tutorial on knitty.com.

click here for pattern pdf

licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE

Corrections 18 March ‘08 – I have uploaded a revised chart which now shows the correct hexagonal benzene rings for serotonin and pencillin; thanks to ‘As you lean’ for pointing out the errors in the original

Heterocyclic molecules have atoms other than carbon (hetero-) in a carbon ring structure (-cyclic). The molecules on this hat are …

theobromine

penicillin

caffeine

serotonin

I’m new to pattern writing and chart design so please let me know if you come across any mistakes.

photo posed by models – not a genuine organic chemist

knitting penicillin

A test piece for my ‘heterocyclic hat’ project. This is the first time I’ve tried making my own colour chart so I’m quite pleased with the way it has come out. There are a couple of mistakes in the benzene ring bonds (my error in the knitting up not the charting) and I will use a brighter green for the methyl groups. The complete hat will incorporate 4 heterocyclic molecules (penicillin, caffeine, serotonin, theobromine) and if it all works out I’ll share the pattern for everyone who’s ever wanted to knit chemicals (and who hasn’t?).

Further work on this will have to be on hold for a couple of weeks tho while I do some birthday knitting – I really want to press on with the hat but I need to make socks for someone whose birthday is before the hat-recipient’s birthday.