kmkat and her kneedles

Of goats, spiders, and science.

From an e-mail I received today from Mental Floss magazine (I'm on their mailing list) (Y'all may already know all about this; it was news to me):

Scientists in Canada have genetically modified goats with spider genes so that they produce a unique milk that can be turned into the same super-strong silk that spider webs are made of.

Pretty interesting, I thought, so I did a little googling.

BBC News, August, 2000: "Using techniques similar to those used to produce Dolly the sheep, scientists at Nexia Biotechnologies in Quebec have bred goats with spider genes."

Biocritics Magazine, May, 2007: "In 1998, Nexia implanted a single spider gene into the egg of a goat, which led to the birth of a healthy female goat named Willow. After Willow became a mother herself, the milk she began to produce contained a special silk protein which was used to create BioSteel...After the initial tests proved successful, the project moved forward. Today, several of these goats live on a special farm in Plattsburgh, New York." (BioSteel is what Nexia is calling their spider-goat's-milk silk.)

www.allfibrearts.com, July, 2004: " 'Nexia has decided to refocus fibre development towards biopolymer sales and specialized nano-scale fibre applications for spider silk and away from traditional fibres and yarns. This decision was prompted by the emerging interest in nanofibres and by the ongoing technical challenges of producing bulk, cost competitive spider silk fibres with superior mechanical properties, especially strength.' "

Shucky darns. I was looking forward to knitting a goat's-silk garment.

I wonder, if the BioSteel gets wet, does it smell like wet goat or wet spider?

Cat tales.

Okay, just what was going on here while I was gone? Hmmm?

Luckily, we have photos of the crime scene, taken by our on-site CSI personnel.

Film at 11.

* * * * *

Last Thursday night I was catching up on blogs before I went to bed when suddenly a bat! swooped from the hall into and out of my office. I know bats are beneficial animals, I know they eat literally tons of insects like mosquitoes, and I know they do not attempt to nestle in one's hair. Still, it unnerved me a bit. Bats do not belong in the house.  But I persevered at the computer until it swooped through my office a second time. I decided that it was my bedtime -- I closed the door to my bedroom firmly when I retired -- and that I would let the cats deal with Mr. Bat.

He has not been seen since. Yay.

(Note: the bat in the photo is not *my* bat; it is just a photo I found on the web. *My* bat remains unrecorded.)

* * * * *

And then there was the day I was doing paperwork at my desk when I noticed this.

What the heck was s/he doing? And no, s/he was not dancing to the music. S/he had the beat all wrong.

* * * * *

One pleasant evening last week I was knitting on the deck. But although I lacked human companionship, I was definitely not alone.

To my left, Big Ole Bear, aka Princess Brindle Bear of Antler, mostly deaf and never terribly smart ("All heart, no brains") but the sweetest canine you ever want to meet:

To my immediate right, Lucy the Intrepid (smarter than Bear, but not smart enough to stay away from that porcupine a few years back):

To my far right, En Esch the Precious But Stoopid, here performing one of his extremely rare acts of grooming; seriously, if his brother didn't wash him and I didn't comb him, he would be one big mass of mats:

Last but certainly not least, Hannibal the Magnificent:

Take at closer look at that calm and sweet face:

Now tell me true: is that the face of one that could do this?

Hannibal! The watchword(s) here at Chez Kat are *peaceful* and *coexistence*.

That last picture could be read two ways, either "No hunting" or "No chipmunks." Oddly enough, my personal preference is the second; the dang things scold our cats and dogs if the pets wander anywhere near the rock retaining wall behind which there is a veritable underground chipmunk metropolis, and constant angry chirping gets verrrrry annoying after 20 minutes or so. Thus, I tell Hannibal he is a smart, brave hunter-killer and to keep up the good work.

No problem, mon.

It's county fair time again!

I went to the county fair on Sunday. Since I did such an obsessively thorough job of documenting that event last year, I will feature just a few highlights in this year's post.

First, the parking lot attendant:

Oh, sure, there are always one or two others on foot directing traffic, but the real authorities in the parking area are the ones on horseback. How do you disobey someone who is 50 feet tall and reminds you of every TV lawman you saw whilst growing up?

It seemed that my attendance coincided with local, homegrown music of different kinds:

The tall, shiny-headed gentleman in the back row just left of center is on the county board and the finance committee with me. I sorta kinda knew he was in the Indianhead Men's Chorus, but I didn't know exactly what that was. Now I do. That bunch of men was so full of energy they practically vibrated. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but I think every one of them was poised on the balls of his feet, ready to leap from the risers if needed. Clearly, they were having a lot of fun.

This is a community band of some sort; I didn't see an identifying sign. The clarinet player visible just to the left of the director is a friend who was in one of my book groups until it fell apart. I didn't know she played in a band. (Note to self: I need to get out more.) Her husband is an undercover cop whose cover was blown when his photo appeared in Rolling Stone. Yeah, I hang out with celebrities. BranJolina and the kids are coming for drinks tomorrow.

The flowers outside the building where I worked were eye-catching.

Let's take a closer look at those delphiniums, shall we?

Truly blue flowers -- not lavender, not pinkish-mauve, but really, really blue -- are rare. The only ones I know of that grow in the Midwest are delphinium (short-lived perennials), bachelor buttons (annuals), and Siberian squill (spring bulbs). There are probably others in warmer parts of the world, but they are there and I am here. Fun facts to know and tell: the reason blue flowers are so rare is that that was the most recent flower color to evolve. In other words, hang around a few more hundred thousand years and there will be blue flowers all over the place. The very first blooms were green; over the millenia, flowers evolved to become showier and more colorful -- yellow, white, orange, red, pink, purple, and, eventually, blue -- to better attract pollinators. These certainly attracted me.

Random Saturday.

En Esch is in training to for his next career: a guardian lion. Photo at left courtesy of Chris at Stumbling Over Chaos. See her photo in its leonine entirety here. Thanks, Chris!

* * * * *

While we are on the subject of Chris and her neighborhood walk photos, here is something related: fu dogs/lions (I think; these are certainly more fanciful than the ones she saw).

These, however, are not carved of stone nor guarding a mansion on Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. These are topiary somewhere in Beijing, created for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

* * * * *

See this?

This is my marriage license. We had to dig it out, along with my birth certificate, in order to get one of Smokey's retirement plans to start paying him now that he is 60. (They needed my documents because we chose the payout option where I will continue to receive the benefits if he should die.)

Can you tell what is missing from that document?

Don't feel bad if you cannot. What is missing is the official seal, the thing that is stamped/punched into the paper. The retirement authorities asked for certified copies of my birth certificate and our marriage license; my b.c. has the seal but this doesn't. The first thing we wondered was, Just exactly how married are we? Neither Minnesota nor Wisconsin has common law marriage, so the fact that we have lived as husband and wife for nearly 34 years (yikes!) does not necessarily cut the mustard, so to speak.

Won't #1 and #2 sons be surprised to learn they may be, um, er, illegitimate?

* * * * *

Your Power Level is: 77%

You're a very powerful person, and you know that all of your power comes from within. Keep on doing what you're doing, and you'll reach your goals.

How Powerful Are You?

I am The Kat; hear me roar!

* * * * *

The knitting continues on my Summer Chevron. I'm thinking it is a good thing I bought that dress form -- no way I could have fitted this sucker without it. While I was waiting for the form to arrive I made four bibs for a friend who is due in August.

When in doubt, knit a bib. That's my new motto.

Eye candy Friday.

Remember the washed-out photo of the monarda last Friday? This one is more accurate.

Friendship lasts a lifetime.

I tear up every time I watch this. I'm just a sucker for big friendly furry things...

* * * * *

Earlier this week I sat in on a committee meeting where the person in charge of all the county buildings and property was presenting her 2009 budget to her governing committee. When discussing her fuel budget she mentioned that she had wanted to buy a couple sheep to graze on the lawns of the county campus so the grass wouldn't have to be mowed (yay! sheep!), but the county finance director had talked her out of it, saying that sheep were not a good investment for the county (boo, hiss!).

Wasn't that sheep thing a good example of thinking outside the box? Wouldn't it be cool if any random county supervisors who knit could get fleece from the county? Not that I am thinking of myself, you understand; this is all completely hypothetical. In fact, it would probably be unethical for me to obtain it. They should sell it to county residents who would spin it ,and I would buy the yarn from them. Yeah, that's the ticket.

ETA: I chatted with the buildings supervisor later and found out that the sheep idea was kind of a joke. Maybe so, but I like it!

Family photo fun.

Thanks to Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting for the link.

A public service announcement.

Ruth, above right, of 5elementknitr is doing a huge destash, above left. Go check out her Flickr page and buy some yarn. Instructions on how to buy are on the Flickr page.

Go! Buy! Help Ruth clear out old stash! (Maybe to make room for new stash? who knows?)

Saturday: frolicking and fitting, tra la.

ETA: There is a non-workplace-suitable photo at the end of this post. Be warned!

One of my duties as a county supervisor is to be the county representative on the two lake associations located in my district. One is my own lake association. Today was the annual meeting and picnic of the other, above. This lake is quite a bit larger than ours, and the crowd visibly wealthier. That woman in the center front in the denim cutoffs and dark gray shirt is a former Twin City anchorwoman who went on to CNN. Elsewhere in the crowd is a well-known Twin City radio announcer, now retired, who was one-half of a popular morning drive-time show for many years. There were well-to-do businessmen and attorneys, trophy wives and doctors (probably; I did not meet any personally). All nice enough people, but definitely a different crowd than that on my own little lake.

Speaking of my lake, let me show you our Fourth of July boat parade. It is a casual affair.

There were a couple other pontoons, but it is always a small parade. Small lake, small parade.

The last photo made me chuckle in a wicked manner. The guy in the canoe is a freshman at Purdue; the pontoon belongs to his lake-dwelling grandparents and is full of his friends. Unfortunately for them, the DNR had a warden on our little lake that day and every one of those kids got a $200 ticket for not having a flotation device. Oops.

* * * * *

One the knitting front, I bought myself a new toy: an adjustable dress form. I have wanted one for a number of years, and the sweater I am making was the trigger that sent me to eBay last week to buy one.

Here it is, hard at work modeling the Summer Raglan (notice how cleverly I matched the stitch markers to the yarn):

You might wonder why it is wearing a bra. Good question; let me explain the ways of adjustable dress forms.

An adjustable dress form is adjustable in length and girth, but only in an overall way. My own particular body bits are distributed rather differently than is represented by the dummy. (No remarks, please.) For example, when I expanded the bust line to be the same circumference as mine, it was obvious that, um, er, something wasn't right. The majority of my bust line girth is in front, not distributed as evenly around my body as it is on the form. This necessitated some improvisation on my part to make the dummy resemble me more closely. Once again, no remarks, please.

Thus, the bra and its *amplifications*:

Yup. Stuffed with plastic bags. I first thought of using a couple breast prostheses, but a quick check on eBay revealed they cost more than I wanted to pay, like, $50. Not worth it, no matter how realistic they are. Hence, the plastic bag boobs. Yay, me!

* * * * *

As Chris suggested I applied my google fu to yesterday's snapping turtle question and discovered that they mate from April to November and lay eggs from May to October. Those periods of mating and egg-laying are shorter here in the Great Frozen North, but I guess my question is answered. They mate whenever the the spirit moves them and the temperature is warmer than, say, 50 degrees, and then they lay their eggs. There. Now we know.

Turtle love, v. 2008: at it again.

Remember last year? They are doin' it again.

As you can see, our dock and boat still languish on the shore, so this year's turtle pørn photos were taken from the porch. Not as good.

A seemingly odd thing just occurred to me. Three or four weeks ago a female snapper laid her eggs at the head of our driveway. The eggs did not survive more than a day or two before some predator (raccoon? skunk? badger?) dug them up and feasted upon them. So, my  question is, do turtles mate in late June/early July and wait a year to lay their eggs? Or is this mating the second try? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Eye candy Friday: Wisconsin roadsides.

Something I have loved for many years is about Wisconsin, and particularly about northern Wisconsin, that they (whoever they are) do not feel compelled to mow the roadsides. This is in direct contrast to their counterparts in Minnesota, who seem offended by unshorn rights-of-way. Consequently, many of Wisconsin's roadsides and ditches grow a diversity of plant life -- wildflowers, grasses, small shrubs -- which in turn foster a variety of insect and bird life. I took all these photos along the 2-mile stretch of paved township road that leads from the gravel road around our lake to the state highway.

Let's start with some of the more common wildflowers. Actually, all of these are common. Some are just more common than others.

Clockwise from upper left: common yarrow (white) with some kind of black-eyed Susan/sunflower behind it, mullein (yellow) with ox-eye daisies behind it; and a bunch of ox-eye daisies with a happy fritillary butterfly in the middle.

Other common roadside wildflowers:

Clockwise, again: daylilies; creeping bellflower; Canada thistle; yarrow and red clover.

With the exception of the yellow daisy-like flower in the first photo, all of those flowers are exotics, either introduced or escaped from gardens. The ones that follow are natives.

Woodland sunflower, looking rather bedraggled because we had had a tumultuous thunderstorm with 60 mph straight-line winds the night before.

Summersweet, of the spirea family. The flowers are the conical spires near the bottom of the photo; the skinny spikes are some kind of grass seed heads:

Wild bergamot (Monarda fisulosa), first cousin to the bee balm in your garden. The flowers are normally bright lavender, but these were pale and washed out for some reason. The Indians used to make tea from the leaves. I tried it one year but was not impressed:

Tick trefoil, so called because the foliage is three-leaved and the crescent-shaped seeds are covered with minute velcro-like hooks that enable them to cling to pant legs and animal fur:

Spreading dogbane (I have no idea how it spreads nor why it is bane to dogs):

The first few years we were here I was disappointed that there were no wild roses in the roadsides. Then one year I spotted a clump a few miles north. In the last couple years they have started to appear along our road:

Fireweed, so called because it is often one of the first plants to reseed and bloom after a fire:

Milkweeds -- common, beloved of the Monarch butterfly larva; marsh; and butterfly weed:

I take credit for this butterfly weed growing wild at the end of our gravel road. I had planted some several years ago in a xeriscapic garden in our front yard, but that garden is now largely under the new deck. Since this is the only butterfly weed I have seen anywhere in Polk County and it is growing a half mile from where I used to have it, it seems a safe guess that it grew from a seed that originated in my garden. Yay, me.

I used to have marsh milkweed growing in another flower garden in a spot where rain water from the roof tended to accumulate. It attracted dozens of little black butterflies every year. But it grows wild in lots of damp areas, so I cannot take credit for it.

As lovely as wildflowers are, the grasses that grow in the roadsides have their own kind of subtle beauty. I have discovered that adding a few stems of grasses with seedheads makes a flower arrangement look better, more sophisticated.

 

There used to be a few patches of both little and big bluestem grasses along the road, but I haven't seen them this year. One of the things about wild plants is that any given year will be different than the year before and the next year will be different again.

This next thing is kinda scary. I took this photo over a week ago, so it was early July. Very early July.

That is goldenrod, people. Goldenrod is an end-of-summer, early fall flower. Why is it blooming in early July? Did our late spring freak it out so much it decided to go directly to autumn, do not pass go, do not collect $200? Weird. But like I said, nature is not necessarily consistent year to year.

Finally, here is a blue flag growing by our dock. I planted this one myself, but they are native to the area.

Delicate woolen organs.

Sent to me by #2 son. I trained him right.

Monday morning stumbling.

Stumbling Upon, that is. StumbleUpon is my new favorite time-waster. I limit myself to stumbling onto only a few websites per day, lest I waste more time than usual too much time.

Here is today's best find: Oooms.

Need a flash drive?

Before you rush over there to buy one, be warned that a 512MB one costs €70. Even if the dollar weren't in the toilet that would be a lot of money for a flash drive.

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Fans of Office Space might find this one amusing:

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These are just weird.

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Looking for a present for that aggravating relative or coworker? Look no further...

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Thus endeth our shopping session for today. Go forth and consume stumble!

Express yourself.

This is more fun than I have had in at least twenty minutes. Go, try it. I'll wait.

See? Wasn't that fun? Here is what I made yesterday.



If that isn't obvious enough for you, how about this? Talk about beating the subject to death...

Meanwhile, back at the knitting.

Time for a distinctly sub-par photograph of the WIP.

I took this in my vintage 1970s harvest gold bathroom with inadequate light at 11 pm last night and without flash; thus, the delightful greenish cast to my skin. The color of the knitting is fairly accurate, however, and that's what we care about, right? Right.

I am at the underarm, where the pattern has the knitter put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, cast on an inch or two of additional stitches where the sleeve stitches used to be, stop knitting in the round, and commence knitting back and forth on one side, double decreasing up the side "seam" and wrap-and-turning at the end of each row so the knitting will gradually fill in the roughly triangular open area at each side. So far, it seems to fit, more or less. The real test will come in another 6" or so, when it will have encompassed the boobage. Mine is rather ample, but I am vertically challenged in the shoulder to waist area, so proper fit is often elusive.

In spite of my short-waistedness, I think I want this to be longer than the pattern would have me make it. If it reaches only to my waist, there is a strong possibility that the proportions would be... so wrong as to frighten small children and dogs ugly as sin unattractive unflattering.

Note: yes, that is a small sliver of bra peeking out at the lower left of the photo. Maybe this will make my blog less elementary school.

"I'm voting Republican."

Not.

Thanks to soxanne, on whose blog I saw this.

Ankles and Angie.

Although I am about as far from a fashionista as it is possible for a human to be -- I mean, I buy most of my clothes at Wal-Mart and Fleet Farm, with an occasional foray to Tarzhay -- I have The Sartorialist in my Bloglines because I like to know what I am missing. And occasionally when I gaze at the Beautiful[ly Dressed] People he photographs I find myself saying, Huh?

Like these two, featured on different days, the first in Milan, the second in Paris. What exactly is going on with their ankles?

Clearly, this is a fashion trend that has not yet made its appearance in rural Wisconsin.

* * * * *

One of the unexpected joys of blogging is meeting other bloggers. (Yeah, there are actual real people behind those blogs you read.) Today I met up with Angie of Purling Oaks, who was in my corner of Wisconsin on business.

The little town of Cumberland is a very pretty 30 - 40 minute drive from my house. We tried to meet here:

but they had the bad manners to close at 5, which was when we planned to meet. Instead we found a sports bar with a sort-of lake view, ordered beers, and pulled out our knitting. That's what Wisconsinites do -- order a beer and [fill in the blank].

Our waitress obliged us by snapping a photo. Angie is the pretty blonde; I am the gray-haired laugher.

In case you were wondering, Angie is a delightful person and I immediately felt like I had known her for years. We talked knitting and blogs and bloggers and jobs  and remodeling and cats and plurking* and college. Turns out we both started our college careers in the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota, she in industrial engineering and me in math. No wonder we are both knitters ;-)

* Angie's cell phone had Internet access so she showed me how it works, and now I am plurking myself. Just what we all need -- another time sink...

Duh.

 

And I thought I was so smart.

Sam Sparro on Sunday.

Eye candy Friday: summertime.

...and the livin' is easy. Have a great Fourth!