an Oscar bonanza

First of all, see if you can guess the song Oscar's singing in this video.

Oscar had a great birthday. He got lots of toys and good books and new outfits - all the important things. We sang the birthday song and he looked a candle in the eye and threw up after eating cake - all the other important things. So here he is in all his glory, enjoying all his presents.

Sweepea

a few more items

All the animals relaxed together for once. Pocky and Garage even looked at the camera.

I made delicious onion rolls. The pink part on top is onion. It is unclear why it turned pink but it was definitely not poison. The internet thought maybe the onion was on its way to caramelizing but when we tried broiling the rolls to encourage it to finish caramelizing, all that happened was it turned black.

We just turned our heat on Nov. 1, and here is the bold daylily that decided to bloom the very next day! 

Oscar enjoyed some blanket forts this weekend. He really likes when I take pictures of him and then show them to him. He knows that it's Oscar in the picture!

He was very helpful when Eric changed out the screen door for the glass door. I really like how the glare totally obliterates Eric's head.

That is all!

weaving project

Here are some pictures of a little project I've been working on for Johnnie and Rachel.

Warping

Blue warp + orange cat = trouble

Dying the weft. All safety precautions were observed!

Weft dyed and dried.

Eric was very excited to see how the skeins looked wound into balls, so I made him help me do it.

Weaving has begun and it looks pretty awesome - but you'll have to wait until it's done to see!

beautiful poplar pictures

First are some stained poplar sections - these are free-hand sections I made with a double-edged razor blade under a dissecting microscope, then stained with very dilute Toluidine Blue. Then I imaged them with a fancy light microscope, 50x magnification. The colors and the symmetry are very pleasing!

Then are the prints that I made using these sections. Before I put the sections in stain, I blotted them onto special paper (nitrocellulose) that binds proteins extremely well. Then I probed the paper with antibodies to my proteins (extensins), and anywhere that shows up black is an area in the poplar stem that is producing those proteins. (I scanned the paper with an amazing scanner at the max resolution - something like 12,000 dpi.) The prints can be compared to the stained sections to make sure exactly where in the stem the protein is showing up. I'm so pleased it worked the first time, and I never have to do this again! (I could if I wanted to, it was pretty fun, but at least I don't have to do it.)