Erica's microscope image of sperm fertilizing an egg.
The first chromosome division is shown in the upper portion of the egg (DNA is stained blue).
Erica posing with our
kickball championship trophy.
We are ballers!
This is the second hat in my thesis-themed hat series. I made it for my good friend Erica who is an amazing scientist. She defended her thesis today and I am so proud of her! I am going to miss her so much when she moves to her post-doctoral position in San Diego.
For her thesis project, Erica studied diabetes and how it affects fertility. Specifically, she studied how diabetes affects sperm development and function using mouse models of diabetes. She investigated the role of insulin in sperm and how other hormones were altered in diabetes. Her work is extremely cool, novel and very fun.
Here are some pictures of me modeling Erica's hat. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of her in the hat, but I hope to change that soon. I topped off the hat with a sperm pom pom. I am working on typing up the pattern and will post it online if you are dying to make this hat for your sperm loving friends.
My friends Erica (left), Beth (right), and myself (middle)
posing at a friend's wedding
Here is the most recent science-themed hat that I knit for my friend Greg Sibbel. Greg is a fellow PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis and he studies the cellular origins of gastric cancer using mice as a model organism. Greg studies how the loss of a transcription factor (a protein that regulates the expression levels of several other genes in the cell) and autophagy (a fancy word for the cell degrading its membrane and components through a specific cellular compartment called a lysosome). Greg was recently diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma and has bravely faced his treatments and kept plugging with his thesis research. You can follow his story and learn more about the treatments from his first-hand account on his blog here.
Even though it is summer and starting to get hot in Saint Louis, I offered my skills to knit Greg a science-themed hat. Hopefully it will help keep his head warm in the air conditioned lab and in the upcoming winters. He requested a mouse hat since he works with lab mice. You can see what I came up with in the pictures below.
The pattern to this hat can be found here and information for this pattern here. When doing the colorwork for this hat be sure to wrap the non-worked color around the worked color behind the hat every 2-3 stitches to maintain the stretchiness as demonstrated in the Football Patterned Hat post.
Update on 12/3/13: Sadly, Greg lost his battle to cancer today after a long and courageous fight. My thoughts go out to his family and his girlfriend Anna. In his honor, I will donate all proceeds from sales of this hat pattern to CJ's journey, a charity that helped Greg in his battle. Hopefully these gifts will help others battling childhood cancer. Click here to learn more about CJ's journey and here to donate in Greg's honor.
Click here to buy the hat pattern on Craftsy and here to buy it on Ravelry.
A special thanks goes out to Matt Menietti for taking the pictures of me in the hat.
The recycling dumpsters that appeared alleys across St Louis. Source.
I love to recycle. I even implemented a recycling program in my sorority house in college (you would not believe the amount of paper/plastics/tin cans a houseful of women can create!). When I moved to a new apartment in St. Louis, I was happy to have a recycling bin provided so that I could single-stream my recyclables and take them to the curb every week - at my first apartment I had to separate my recyclables and carry them down the block. About 6 months after I moved into my new apartment, our neighborhood awoke one morning to recycling dumpsters next to the regular dumpsters in the alley. I was SO excited about this, as it was even more convenient, as now, for the average resident, recycling is almost as easy as throwing away trash and more people might begin this good habit! Plus, I could take out my recycling at my leisure and did not have to remember to take it out to the curb every week. If you live in St. Louis and want to learn more about recycling, click here.
However, this left me with a dilemma about what to do with my recycling bin. I used it for a while to collect my recyclables and take them out to the trash, but these recycling bin lids are heavy, and it is impossible for me to lift the lid high enough to dump the contents of my bin into the recycling dumpster. Plus, the bin was rather large, and I preferred to use a smaller trash receptacle to collect my recyclables in.
Then, after I bought tomatoes and peppers, I needed pots to plant them in. The previous year, I used pots that were way too small, and the plants did all right, but could have done much better. I went to Target to buy some pots, but since I am very thrifty (read cheap) and the cheapest options in the store still seemed rather expensive, I only bought one and then had the brilliant idea to convert my recycling bin into a planter for the tomatoes and peppers.
Instructions:
Wash the inside of the recycling bin.
Set the recycling bin upside down on the ground
Puncture the bottom of the bin several times (I made ~8-10 large knife cuts around the edges of the bottom of the bin) with a large knife, a screwdriver, a hammer and nails, or anything else that will make holes. This is important to allow efficient drainage of excess water.
Turn the bin right side up, fill with soil, and plant your plants.
The tomatoes and peppers in this bin did extremely well last year! The cherry tomatoes made it up to the second story landing on the deck steps. Hopefully they will do as well this year. I noticed when I was planting this year's crop that there were several earth worms living in the pot. I don't know much about gardening but I will take that as a good sign. :)
Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and grandmothers and everything you do for your children!
To honor my Mother, today's post is about a painting I made for my mother for Christmas. My parents repainted their living room a bright happy orange and I made curtains out of a brown fabric with colored polka-dots. I bought similar colors of paints and a square canvas (I think it was 18" by 18").
To paint this, I sketched the circles using a bowl and plate as guides. Then, my art teacher brother stepped in and helped freehand the smaller circles. I began painting by painting the background within about half an inch of the circles. I then painted the inside of the circles the different colors and let them dry. I touched up the edges circles with the brown (or other colors as needed).
This was a difficult project for a perfectionist like me to put down; as you can see in the large picture above, the circles are not perfect. However, once I took a step back it looked nice and I was happy with it. I think my mother was too!
The "original" expolding Tardis painting that I tried to replicate above.
I didn't quite get it, but close enough :).
Continue below to see how I made this painting. However, if you would prefer to buy a finished product directly from me rather than painting your own, click here for more Exploding Tardis paintings in my Etsy store! Use the code BLOGREFERRAL20 at checkout to get 20% off!
This is the second item in my "Doctor Who" themed crafts. The first item was my Amy Pond Police Costume and there are a couple more Tardis items in the works. Stay tuned for those!
I think I took my nerdiness to a new level here. My inspiration was the Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor" where Doctor Who and Amy go back to the time of Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent then paints his vision of the Tardis exploding. I wanted to try my hand at replicating this painting.
Supplies needed are a canvas, blue, yellow, gold, black, and silver acrylic paints (Vincent actually would have used oils, but I have never learned how to use oil, so I went with acrylic), and paint brushes.
Step 1: Begin by painting the yellow swirls and the yellow part of the explosion in the center of the canvas.
Step 2: Paint in dark blue around the yellow swirls on the edges of the canvas.
Step 3: Paint the white part of the explosion.
Step 4: Paint the outline of the Tardis pieces around the center of the explosion.
Step 5: Paint in the white parts of the tardis (windows, sign, light). Also, paint the top of the tardis with yellow and gold accents. Enhance the explosion where needed. Once dry, add the blue lines between the window panes.
Step 6: Add the black accents and outlines to the tardis. Paint the dark blue/black area above the top of the tardis. Enhance the explosion as needed, I tried to keep it powerful, but struggled to get the same effect as the original.
Step 7: Fill in the blue areas around the tardis. Mix blue and black to add dimension to the blue areas. Add some blue streaks to the yellow swirls.
Step 8: Add yellow/gold accents to the blue swirls. Add the "words" to the white panel on the tardis in black. Fix the yellow swirls as needed with yellow and gold. Touch up any areas on the Tardis and explosion as needed.
For her thesis project, Erica studied diabetes and how it affects fertility. Specifically, she studied how diabetes affects sperm development and function using mouse models of diabetes. She investigated the role of insulin in sperm and how other hormones were altered in diabetes. Her work is extremely cool, novel and very fun. 
