Busy busy busy

I had a grant proposal due last week, which of course meant that I was doing nothing but staring at my computer screen all day only to scrap 30% of the week's labor in the last 10 hours prior to the deadline. It also meant that the only thing I wanted to be doing was not writing grant proposals.

So basically, anything else.

But I was a good girl.  I wrote my grant. I didn't knit. I didn't watch random things I found on the internet in spells of desperation. I worked hard and well. It is worth noting that when you go into developmental biology, no amount of Google safe search will save you from the results you get when looking for the average volume and density of a Zebrafish ejaculant (0.8 µL and 9.96 x 10⁷ sperm/ µL, if you care, which you don't). It is a source of great irony that, for all the money libraries pour into research databases, Google's still your best bet for finding what you are looking for, scholarly or otherwise. For free.

So when the grant was turned in at 2 PM on Friday, the weekend was officially underway, and I went home and vegetated for the better part of several days, only taking breaks to do things like feed my husband and make sure we had clean clothing. Turns out those fall under the category of "not writing grant proposals."  I also pulled the Hoarfrost Moebius out of my drawer for the first time in a couple months.

I have to convince myself to work on this project whenever I look at it. I started out of curiosity months and months ago. I purchased steel wool yarn with my Christmas money because I had wanted to try it. I didn't even think I would like it. I just... wanted to.. Is that weird? Probably. Well, turns out that I don't really like it, but I don't really hate it either. It just feels so pointless. I'm sure someone, somewhere can do amazing stuff with this yarn (Amanda. I'm looking right at you. Right now.), but for me, it's just blah.

I did some quick calculations, and I think I need to get 26" of the 33" total length out of the first cone if I want to have enough yarn to finish (Fun fact, If you've knit half the rows on a triangle shawl, you're only 1/4 done in terms of stitches. Let that sink in). This is another reason I've let it languish in the drawer. I didn't think I had purchased enough yarn. Turns out this thing is really hard to eyeball, though, because son of a gun, somewhere along the line I knit 24" and I still have yarn on the cone.

Cool.
I think I'll finish it this time around. There's no reason not to do so... other than crippling boredom and the siren song of my yarn drawers... But hey, if I can be a good girl and write a grant, I can be a good girl and finish my moebius.