Subzero Fiber (part II)

Short one, today.

I knit up most of my natural fiber swatches and brought them in for some initial testing. I plunged swatch #1 into liquid nitrogen and... well...

Nothing turned to glass.
Nothing. I sat there with it completely submerged for minutes (ie until the metal tools were getting uncomfortable to hold) and nothing happened.

I haven't tried the synthetic fibers yet, but other than a little issue with absorption, both protein based and cellulose based fibers were unbreakable when I yanked on them with two hemostats like it was going out of style. I think the alpaca might be less fragile at -196 C than at room temperature... I couldn't make a single swatch even rip and all of them were downright flexible.

 I'll work up the synthetic fibers tonight, but they take some finesse and needles not made of bamboo.

The current fiber list is:
98% cotton, 2% elastic
70% superwash, 30% nylon
100% alpaca
100% tencel
100% sugarcane
55% wool, 45% silk
25% buffalo, 75% tencel (purchased after round 1, given the observations made about cellulose and natural fiber)
50% milk protein 50% soy protein
100% acrylic
100% silicon (Rescue tape modified into yarn using the plarn process. This is a nightmare.)
100% PTFE (teflon tape spun into a strand)

I need to modify my thermocouple procedure a touch to make sure the yarn is in contact with the junction (the part that actually reads the temperature), but other than that today was remarkably enlightening.

Subzero Fiber (Part 1)

My biology masters program has turned into explorations of applications of the fiber arts in cryobiology. I've sewn more in this quarter than in the previous decade. Every time we have an idea for a new technology, I end up sewing something for it. Now it's time to bust out the other fiber arts knowledge, though.

We need to connect teflon to teflon. The internet tells me that this is, in fact, impossible without a drill and a bolt. That would be all fine and dandy if 1) I weren't trying to fill the container with liquid nitrogen and 2) metal wasn't such a good conductor of heat into my intentionally cold system. Now the plan is to lash the two teflon containers together.

While the final tech needs to be on the hush-hush, I did crowd source an idea. What fiber would work best at cold temperatures? What would be least brittle? Would protein, cellulose, or carbon-based polymer be better? Insulating power is one thing, but I need something that can take the stress of constant tension without giving up (or being stupid, conductive metal. grrr.)

So, over the next few weeks (days?) I will be conducting an experiment and posting the methods, results, and discussion in pieces here. I doubt any journal will actually care about this, but if I get nifty results we may even push for publication (with acknowledgements for the Ravelry.com community)

Here's the preliminary plan:
Knit swatches--15 sts x 20 rows, 3 per fiber composition, tight but still appropriate gauge for all yarns using size 0 needles. I'm knitting the swatches rather than crocheting/weaving/knotting because I want to see the real effects of tension in a system that will fall apart when something goes wrong. If you cut a strand in any of the other options, the world doesn't go to Hell in a hand basket. The final project will be knotted.

Fibers--Wool, Alpaca, Superwash/nylon, Merino/Silk, Tencel, Cotton, Sugar Cane, Acrylic, Fishing Line (and whatever else strikes my fancy at the hardware store). I'll stash-dive again tonight and see if I can come up with anything else. I think I have some nylon, I'd like to try more than just Acrylic for polymers. I will keep track of plies.

Cool--Plunge into liquid nitrogen with a weight (yet to be determined) attached mid swatch. Swatches will be chilled for at least 5 minutes or until they break. Time of break will be monitored with a stopwatch. Swatches which do not break will be subjected to increasing weights until I find their stress tolerance.

Measure--At least 1 swatch per group will have a T-type thermocouple welded into the top row of the knitting, taking readings (at least) once per second. This will be analyzed unweighted, several times per fiber type. I will analyze rate of temperature change at the top of the swatch over all fabric types to see if there is a fiber that better insulates itself (the animals fibers have an advantage here, but I'm interested to see the other fibers performance in comparison.)

The best fiber for the job will be the strongest, least conductive fiber.

Wish me luck.

I can't look away...

Today's post is brought to you by driving through your old neighborhood and not being too sorry you left. 

Whenever my husband and I wanted to get on the freeway from our old apartment, we'd invariably have to drive through the seedy part of town. To be fair, most of the town was actually the "seedy" part, but the pre-freeway segment was especially questionable, and right before the freeway entrance was Miss Kitty's XXX store. Without fail, whenever we drove by this store, I would slow down and stare. The building itself is a wholly unremarkable shack about a decade overdue for a repaint, but their sign...

Oh, their sign.

I have this thing about the sexualization of animals for marketing purposes, and by "thing" I mean I DO NOT get it. Not even a little. It just doesn't make any sense on a fundamental, anatomical level. There are levels of totally not getting it--at least if it's a mammal, as with the case of the aforementioned Miss Kitty, then the portrayed female has mammary tissue (generally much more than she's been given credit for and much less... localized...) Sometimes it's ducks (as with the watershed poster on my department's wall. Conservation is sexy. For ducks. Sexy ducks), sometimes it's lizards, and when it is my brain breaks. Those are egg layers. They... They can't have boobs. Why does the lizard have boobs? WHO DREW THE LIZARD WITH BREASTS?

Miss Kitty is one such oversexualized, anthropomorphized mascot. Being a mammal, I normally wouldn't hit full throttle "What abomination is this..?" except for one detail. Here is my quick and dirty sketch of Miss Kitty.

It is worth noting that this quick sketch reflects both the anatomical abnormalities and the overall quality of the Miss Kitty XXX store logo.

 Can you tell what's wrong with this picture? (beyond the feather boa clad cat with eye makeup... I... I just don't get it.)
Can you spot the issue?
I'll give you a hint. Here's an even quicker sketch of a cat skeleton.

And here's a person skeleton (sort of. I got lazy. All the important parts are labeled.)

Have you figured it out?

Miss Kitty's cleavage begins and ends before her clavicle starts, well above her armpit (legpit?)
Breasts don't go there... not even kind of. Try moving down a couple of ribs.

But do you know sort of round, bulbous lump does go there? One which you indeed might try to hide with a feather boa?

A goiter.

Swollen thyroid glands.

The cat has "sexy goiters."

Can I start a foundation for People Against the Oversexualization of Iodine Deficiencies? Because apparently we need one.

Lace is pretty.

As I crawl back out of the nebulous, all consuming black hole that is my graduate education (or really my data crunching software), I am reminded that I have hobbies. I have things I enjoy doing for fun in that magical, mythical space known as "free time." I like to knit. I really do, but lately it just hasn't been happening with the frequency and volume I might prefer (aka, all the time).

That's not to say I'm not knitting, though. No, there are bills to pay, and more specifically accountants, and the accountant gets paid in knit goods. (BEST. ACCOUNTANT. EVER. You get me several hundred dollars back on my tax return, and I get to knit things? Where's the catch? [there isn't one]). Last year I knit her Gingko, and she loved it. I was sort of spinning my wheels for this year's bit of pretty, but then I remembered a shawl that has been lurking in my knitting PDFs for quite some time. Viorica.

I really love this shawl. I think it's probably because the gentle crescent gives the overall shape this subtle, sweet ruffle. I may make a window dressing using this pattern as a guide, because it's just too perfect for that sort of thing.

Anyhow, I think it turned out quite nicely.

 Whenever I block irregular shapes, it always takes a bit of massaging before I finally decide the best fit for the fabric. Large sections of stockinette certainly can be blocked as tightly as the lace portions, but that clashes with my personal aesthetics regarding the nature of knitted fabric. I feel like the V's of the knit stitches are beautiful and I put them there for a reason. Because of this, getting the tips of curves to stretch without wonkifying my stockinette is a little tricky. Pinning something like this usually takes a few hundred T-pins and at least an hour and a half.

It's totally worth it, though. Good blocking makes beautiful lace.
I'm almost finished with my sister's birthday present, which is good, because I'm seeing her in 3 days... I should probably get on that...

 

More Fluff and Stuff

Everyone is having babies lately (everyone but me), and that includes my fellow grad students. One of my buds, bless her heart, will be 9 months pregnant when she defends her prospectus. 9 months. No thank you.
Her baby shower was this week, and it was a rather gender neutral one, as the wee one has refused to uncross its legs for the last 3 ultrasounds.

So I asked her what kind of animal she wanted and she said they were decorating with a sort of "cow theme." Cool. New stuffed animal.

I flipped through the cow patterns on Ravelry and finally settled on Milkshake the cow. It seemed cute enough. The one I really wanted to make was this one, but it's in some book that I cannot access... The udder is freaking hilarious. Oh well. Milkshake was a quick knit--the pieces are made flat and sewn up when it's stuffed. This was the first error free stuffed animal pattern I've encountered in a while, so kudos to the designer.

It's not without quirks though :)

 For starters, in the original pattern, the head is attached to the body using the base of the nose... I... I can't do that... I just can't. Heads connect to bodies with necks... noses, well, they're independent of the head-neck system. You can't just go around connect noses to torsos like it happens every day (yes, yes I know it's a stuffed animal and you totally can. By you I meant me.)

 Thing #2 is that body--those are stripes. Cows have spots. It totally works out okay in the end but when I first held the head an body together, all I could think was "Oh no... It's a Zebra."

 On the plus side, I now have a pattern for a zebra. (Ear up higher, no horns, nostrils a bit lower. All very small changes, really).

Overall, I recommend this guy pretty highly. It's a cute little pattern.

We celebrated my belated birthday this weekend with my folks. Everyone had requests for knitted goods, and I got enough yarn for a sweater for the husband (win), so I'll be cranking out gifts here for the next couple of weeks if I'm being efficient. I've got requests for a teal Les Miserables for my mother, I cranked out a hat for my little brother (no pictures, unfortunately--it only took a few hours, so he left with while it was still drying.), and a Caroline for my seester. I also am pining away for a kit that knitpicks has had for a while, but I think I've got enough knitting on my plate to last me for the next couple of eons, so I'll hold off on that for a while. Knitting for others is more fun anyhow. I don't have to figure out how to store finished objects.

Christmas, or things I now have pictures for

For Christmas this past year, I knit my sister the Scallop by the Sea pouch, a pattern that she had tagged me in on Pintrest. I like it when people tell me exactly what they want, and then act surprised when they get it. It makes me smile. The pattern is essentially a pillowcase. You sew up the bottom, make a lining, get some stiff(ish) interfacing, and stick a zipper on the thing.

And by you, I mean my mother, because I sew like an idiot. My mother, on the other hand, has divinely inspired sewing machine capabilities, so when it came time to decide how to put the thing together I called her. She did it begrudgingly (thank you), and the end product is much nicer for it.

Photo credits go to my sister, the recipient, who takes lovely pictures of landscapes and knitted goods which make it into her hands before I have a chance to photograph them.

Aren't those lovely? (The answer is yes. Yes, they are very lovely.)

The interfacing I used was, perhaps, a touch to stiff, and the pocket was a royal pain in the rear end to install, but on the whole I am pleased with the finished product. It was fun to knit, too (Bonus!). More things ought to be lined in pussy willow fabrics. I'm not sure how I'm going to make that happen, but it needs to.

Back again for more

Somewhere between my junior year in my undergrad and actually graduating from college, I tried to make a hat. It was a cute hat, to be sure. The basic form was a cloche, but it had this charming little ruffle on one side and a carefully sewn ribbon. It was one of those "love at first sight" patterns. I even had the yarn it called for sitting in my stash, left over from a sweater that exaggerated its yarn requirements by a full skein and a half (the designer must have meant to include this cloche pattern along with the sweater; that's really the only acceptable explanation for overestimating by that much). It was certainly meant to be. The pattern was Caroline, which has since been purged from the active internet. Fortunately, the Way Back Machine can get me most anything from the internet archives.

I made most of the hat on an airplane related adventure, and as a result I had not carefully read through others notes on construction, size, and, well, general issues.

When the entire internet agrees that the big hat is "way too big," no amount of claiming you have a large skull will help you (which I do, but it didn't help). The large size was gigantic. It fell down over my eyes, didn't hug my skull, and was pretty much the saddest excuse for a charming hat with a dainty ruffle you've ever seen in your life. This hat needed structure, and structure it did not have. I loved it though, and it took me a few months to get up the gumption to rip it out.

That turned out to be a complete and utter disaster. Somehow something had gone all wonky when I picked up the turned hem, and I had an odd moebius of yarn without an actual moebius strip of knitting. Suffice to say it was weird and knots were involved. The yarn was eventually salvaged, but 2 bad experiences was enough to make me shelve the idea. Still, I never used the yarn for another project. It sat in the front of my yarn drawer, but I couldn't bear to use it, after all, it already had a telos of sorts.

Well, about two weeks ago, I sat down and made the small version of the hat. I went out and purchased ribbon. I sewed my pretty little bow together and slowly and carefully tacked it to the hat.

I really couldn't be more pleased.
Can I say that?
I love this hat.
Too bad winter is over...