The Green Mountain DNA conference went very well.  The speakers were all quite interesting, which isn't always garenteed since some scientists just aren't good speakers no matter how interesting the subject matter.  The two that stick out most in my head (while not totally applicable to what I do) were:

The talk given by the woolly mammoth guy - he leads one of the groups mapping the woolly mamoth genome.  He had facinating stories about digging mammoths out of the permafrost as well as having a really interesting insight into DNA preservation, extraction, etc...  It was also interesting to hear his questions to several of the other speakers as he knows all about DNA extraction, amplificaiton but little about the specifics of applying it all to forensics.  The factoid that seemed really interesting to me is that in working with coprolites he's isolated DNA from woolly rhinos in alaska more then a few times - the catch - archeologists have never found wooly rhino fossils in north america and thought that it was an asia-only species.  It's a really strong reminder of how little information is actually in the fossil record - a lot happened that was never fossilized!

I was facinated by the talk on Optical Tweezers (dude!  tractor beams on a cellular level!  crazy...)  Basically, they focus a laser down to a narrow point and use the physical properties of light to trap things at that point and move them around.  Yes - they're moving stuff around using a light beam.  It's pretty non-distructive and they've seen yeast budding while trapped and the sperm they trap and move around can swim away afterwards.  If you have time watch the videos at the bottom of the wiki.  It's really cool!

Along with taking real notes I broke down and took notes on silly references made by the speakers
1 spinal tap "this one goes to 11" reference (just one, but it happens at EVERY dna conference)
1 monty python reference
2 shakespeare references
5 (yes FIVE) star trek references (and 1 star wars refernece)

Meanwhile back at the farm:
"green" beans are starting to produce. 

I'll probably freeze the first few batches, and make some pickled green beans when I really start gettting buried.

I racked the tart cherry/apple wine into a secondary container and set up another:

Cranberry/apple/mystery berry (red, from the CSA last year, currant shaped, but way to sweet to be currants)  This is the "cleaning out the back of the freezer" wine.  There's a lot of berries in there still, I might do another...

I got a call from Neil on tuesday during lunch about how he'd looked outside to see something chasing reggie (Reggie's the dominant yard animal, things don't chase him)  Then it broke off and chased Jake, then Peanut.  Then Neil noticed Moxy cowering in the tall grasses.

The missing chicken is missing no more!  She only hatched 2 babies, which is a perfectly respectable number for a first time mama chicken.  And besides, I already don't know what I'm going to do with all the roosters from the first batch...  She's a bit feistier then our first mama hen.  Also, Neil's already spotted one of the babies riding on mama's back, so I'll go back to stalking chickens with a camera in hopes of catching one in the act!

The yarn for my deadline project has finally arrived! Hooray! Now I'm going to have a little knitting race with myself.

Sorry, I can't give you a better picture. But isn't my new project bag nice?

And we still have no news on potential new baby chickens. Since I don't remember exactly which day she started nesting I'm not too worried. And since the first mama hen was on the nest for about 48 hours after the first baby hatched I just have to accept that if she's still out there she'll come home when she's ready.

My plans for this weekend involve a LOT of knitting. Maybe some canoeing (Neil can do the paddling) and definitely a trip to the yarn store (because I don't own all the needles in the world yet) Oh, and I need to re-rack my apple/tart cherry wine so the big glass jug will be available for something new! Wine making doesn't take much active time, just lots of patience.

Next week I have a DNA conference in Burlington for three days. It's always fun to hear the latest new techniques, and this conference tends to have a lot more discussion rather then just the speaker speaking, which adds to the interest. Three days of conference knitting should be good for my project too.

In an effort not to be bored I was crazily productive over the weekend. I made some feta (needs to age for 2 weeks), baked some bread (note to self, flour is important for gluten), started a new batch of wine (apple/tart cherry) I finally have all the perennials IN the ground and not just sitting on top of it. I put stakes in for my tomatoes and sugar snap peas (I used some of the millions of shoots the hardwood stumps are sending out, thanks for the idea Mom!) I took all the animals to the vets. I was very productive!

I finished the other two skirts. These are the three skirts that I picked up fabric for at the quilting store last week. The major lesson with these skirts is: If I don't know exactly what I'm doing I should pick up 3/4 to 1 yard of fabric, not 1/2 to 3/4 yards.
The brown gradient on in the center would've fit perfectly if the waistband was 1-2 inches wide instead of 2-3 since I only had 3/4 of a yard. But I'm still really proud of it. I like how the waistband fades from lightest in the front to darkest in the back. And I like my solution for not having the seams stand out in a bad way.
The blue one with the lace is a 12 gore skirt (meaning it's made of 12 wedges that are narrow at the waist and get wider) gored skirts can flair out a lot, but I kept this one more tame as it's meant to be an office skirt. The lace at the bottom and the white ribbon that I turned into a waistband are from my stash (why yes, I have a sewing stash as well as a knitting stash. Is there a problem with that?) I ended up picking up an extra 1/4 of a yard to make this fit nicely (so 3/4 of a yard total). Luckily no one had decided to use all the bolt of fabric for the backing of a quilt or anything.
The last one makes me feel like I'm wearing a chocolate layer cake - in a good way. I knew I wanted it tiered with elastic at the top. But I didn't want to buy yet more fabric and I only had a 1/2 yard of this brown. And then I realized I had some perfect light pink floaty fabric in my stash that matched the tiny pink dots in the pattern of the brown fabric. One of the trickiest things for me (in sewing) is having randomly, but evenly bunched fabric. I'm much better and even, spaced, pleats. I think I did pretty well on these layers and I LOVE this skirt (it may be my favorite).


All in all three really pretty skirts that are exactly what I wanted. And I spent $17.98 total, for three skirts - I win! If I'd had to buy zippers and elastic and lace trim it would have been more, but probably not more then $25 total. Now I just need it to be warm enough to wear my cute skirts and not my nice clean sweaters.

Oh yes, I also did some mending and washing of the woolens. You can probably imagine this is no small task in my house. Usually mending and washing happens when I put them away for the summer, but this year I did the mending and washing and I'm still wearing them, but it was time.

It's like a where's waldo in my living room. But I'm not sure if you're looking for all the woolens or looking for the living room beneath them... I washed 5 sweaters, 4 hats, 3 vests, 3 scarves, 2 mittens, and 1 jacket (not hand knit, but still 100% wool) Not pictured is Neil's india sweater which needed major reconstructive surgery on the cuffs.

I had a reason behind doing this all at once. My awesome front loading washing machine has a spin-only option. So after hand washing all these things I can just put them in the machine and it wrings 90% of the water out. WONDERFUL. But the machine is smart and carefully balances the load by tumbling it a bit first, so it doesn't walk away (or break) during the high spin speeds. We've tried putting just 1 thing in the machine once. It spend 30 minutes before it (somehow, I don't know how) got the item balanced against the door so it was mostly centered with itself for the spin. The machine may be smarter then me. Now I make sure it has enough in it to balance easily before spinning the water out.

I kept quite busy over the weekend although nothing was hugely exciting.
 

• Bottled wine, flavors: orange carrot and black currant.

The black currant was sweeter then I expected it to be.  Not dessert wine sweet but very nice.  Good thing too since I have a flat of frozen black currants we picked last year at the Farm Between waiting to be turned into a 5 gallon batch of this wine.  Orange carrot was drier then I expected (but still not a dry wine), nice, light, a bit tangy (that must be the orange) and I think it'll make a great summer wine.
 

• Dealt with egg eater

During late winter one chicken started eating eggs.  This is bad (clearly) and not something anyone has figured out how to fix easily.  Just as I was preparing myself the snow melted and the egg eating stopped.  Since boredom is frequently a cause of things like egg eating and cannibalism in chickens I hoped that now that the ground was bare the hen had better things to do with her time.  But after 2 or 3 weeks we started finding broken remains of eggs in the coop, and when we caught the same hen red handed (or yellow beaked as the case may be) I knew what needed to be done.  Not all parts of farming are cute baby animals and eating delicious food.

• Made cheese

This time I tried a "chevre" style cheese, but with cow milk.  The result is quite tasty, although it tastes nothing like chevre.  I'm a little suspicious that while 10 year old rennet (enzyme) seems to be fine 10 year old cultures (bacteria) are less active.  It's hard to say for certain though, since part of the chevre flavor is (of course) from the goat milk.

I'm also two half-sleeves and some finishing away from finished with a nice, bright, spring, alpaca sweater.  I'm hoping to be done with it by the 25th!

I had a great time last weekend, and I made a point to myself of wanting to share it - but somehow it's thursday and I'm just now getting around to it.  It's been a busy week at work, I'm sure that's part of it.

I can't even remember what I did on which day - but it was a weekend of late summer preserving and kitchen stuff:

( There was wine-making. )

( There was preserving )

( There was knitting. )

Neil and I also: went canoeing, spent an evening with friends, went to a bonfire, played frisbee golf and generally just hung out.  It was a good weekend.

Bernie Sanders and Peter Welsh have already been declared winners: as of about 7:20, or about 20 minutes after polls close - can you say exit polling?

The "indicator towns" are showing Douglas and Dubie ahead.

EDIT: Around 8:30 Tarrant conceeded the race to Bernie (about 15% of the actual votes had been tallied) - YAY Bernie!  Also, the reporter used the word "quixotic" to describe some of Bernie's early races in the state.

While listening to the reports come through I made two loaves of banana bread, started a batch of elderberry wine, and knit the thumb and pinky finger for a pair of knucks.  Productiveness!