Constellation Embroidery. Very cool. SCIENCE!

I don’t really knit socks but I want to buy this sock yarn! It’s called Zauberball. As a German speaker who grew up in Canada, I find this hilarious, because it translates to Magic Balls. Because I am 12.

I’ve sort of disappeared lately, and I apologize! I think this is the longest time I’ve gone without blogging, and I should at least have warned you guys in case some of you folks suspected I was dead. Well, I’m not dead! Only my social life is.

The past four days were, I think, the most stressful of my entire life. I had about 3 days to design a neuroimaging experiment, pilot it with 4 participants so I would know which set-up and stimuli would be most effective, recruit participants and make sure everything was tested so nothing would go horribly wrong. My first participant in the machine came in yesterday, and when that person was finished, I’d gone for four days on 13 hours of sleep. Oh yeah, and in that same time I also had to rewrite a 15-page paper twice. Twice!

But now it’s over and I told everyone that I don’t care what my other responsibilities are, I am taking a whole day where I don’t have to do anything. Here is what I have done today: sleep until 5pm, watch Reno 911, and pet my cat. Now I am going to finish the ribbing on my Bubble sweater, and all will be right with the world.

This shirt is effin’ wicked.

I also completely adore this one! Cute + Cookies + Science!

Read the rest »

I was at the Science Centre today! I kinneared you guys a picture of an Ogee arch, which looks quite like the top of Ogee lace. Hence the name, I assume. I say “kinneared,” but really I just held up my camera phone and talked loudly about how I was checking the time. “I wonder what time it is.”

“I am continuing to look at the time on my cellular phone.”

“Ah. That is the time on my cellular phone. I will put it away now, until I feel the need to check it again near that model ship.”

Read the rest »

My study has been over for a little while now, so I can announce the winners of the four $25 gift certificates. And the winners are…

Jen, Nicole, and TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE ANONYMOUS!

Yeah, this is as exciting as a psych study will ever get.

And the winner of my second study?

ANOTHER ANONYMOUS PERSON!

Thanks to everyone for their help! I’ll be running another contest within the next little bit. I’ll also be announcing a huge project, about a year long, that will involve a monthly contest winner. Keep your Internet peeled for more deets.

Register Here!

How would you use a $25 Amazon gift certificate? Any way you want! And you’ll have the chance to win one simply by filling out a quick questionnaire in under 5 or 6 minutes.

I’m looking for people (hopefully you) to answer some questions about household objects. There are 40 objects and it should take you only a few seconds for each one. If you can spare a few minutes to help me out, you’ll be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate. I’m capping this contest to 20 people, so you’ll have a 1 in 20 chance of winning 25 bucks.

Quick note: If you participated in my previous Uses of Objects study, you can sign up on the site to be included in the contest, but please don’t respond to the questions because I can’t use your data. Thanks!

REGISTER HERE!

This Knitted Brain is brilliant. Nicely done. Via Bits and Bobbins.

Thanks to a little bit of random number generation and a big list of contestants, I have the winner of my comic strip reading contest. Thanks so much to the folks who participated! And the winner is…

Laura! from A Frayed Knot. She has requested a skein of Cider Moon Glacier in Sweet Potato Pie, and she will receive it soon. I’m totally in love with this colourway, too! Ooh, I want it…

It’s my birthday today! And I’ll be in the lab from 1pm to 6pm running more folks through the eye-tracker. Then I’m going to go home and have a romantic night reading papers and writing essays. Yesterday I watched The DaVinci Code (which was lame) and made my data analysis program (which was awesomely fun). It looks totally amazing! I obviously can’t show you results because some people haven’t finished looking at all the comics yet, so I’ll take a different comic and make some fake data:

It’s still a work in progress, but that’s not bad for a few hours! If someone had told me last year that I’d soon be drawing pictures with the interweb and programming my own ANOVA “software” (and ENJOYING it), I would have scissor-kicked them in their lady-and-or-gentlemanly parts.

Guys, there is an emergency. The Beau has decided that, since he filled out my questionnaire and read my comics, he is going to be a contestant to win yarn*. He also said that if he did win it, he would not give it to me The beau is a mean boyfriend.

There has been a lot of knitting at Chez Needle Exchange, and a lot of working. I wasted a lot of time yesterday looking at recipes for things made of chocolate, but I made up for it by knitting about a foot of my scarf while watching The Lost Tomb of Jesus. It was a pretty good documentary, if any of you folks are interested in archaeology (or even if you’re not). I’m not, and I thought it was fascinating. I saw something else by Simcha Jacobovici in which he was searching for Mount Sinai (it’s right here in Toronto, mystery solved), and I wasn’t too convinced of his scientific prowess (his use of geometry and step functions made me yell at the television). But this one does put out a pretty good case for a set of ossuaries containing the bones of Jesus. I’m not an archaeologist so I have to watch this from a laywoman’s point of view, but I do have a grasp of the scientific method and it’s an acceptable argument. There are A LOT of ifs and A LOT of maybes, and they manipulate statistics in a way that rubs me the wrong way. Nothing convincing at the moment, but at least it’s out there. Having grown up in a very religious household that also highly valued scientific discourse (Genesis was a metaphor for the Big Bang and evolution), I’m fairly sure this will be a dinner table conversation the next time I’m back with the folks.

Anyhoo, back to the knitting. The Backyard Leaves scarf is reaaaaally close to being done. I cast off the second half and then forgot to post the pictures that I took, so they will be up shortly, as well as a description of certain dumb things that I did afterwards as well as a full on Annie Modesitt worship party. Check back soon.

* Don’t worry, he is ineligible.