Sunday, August 09, 2009

The Miracle of Modern Medicine or...

did I beam onto the USS Enterprise in Star Trek? Last night I had emergency surgery for appendicitis. Less than 24 hours later I am home. It was diagnosed early enough (did I say my husband is a physician?) and so it was relatively quick and uncomplicated. I have three holes and a sore belly, but I can move around and eat fairly normally. No driving for a bit, which puts a crimp in my life right now. And I won't be able to use my boogie board when we go to the ocean next week.

Sorry, no pictures....

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday. She is 97 years old. I hope that I inherited those longevity genes. I know I inherited a lot of other things from her, for which I am very happy.



She lives in Chicago, a long way from me but we have webcams and can talk to each other with pictures and it's great. I wish I could be there today to celebrate. I used this picture to make a screen and printed us out onto fabric. She lives in a one room apartment in assisted living, so she doesn't have lots of room for more stuff, so I made this into a pillow. She can move it around and it won't take up much room, but every time she looks at it, she will think of me. How great is that?



So, Happy Birthday, Mom, and may you have many more!
Love,
Cathy

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Chemistry Exercise Part 2

As promised, the second part of the dyeing exercise, using what Elin Noble calls "Jewel Tones". I used Fuchsia, Turquoise, and Sun Yellow (ProChem 108). The greens, oranges, and purples produced were clear and bright. These used only 2 dyes in combination. When using all three dyes, the results were less bright and moved into browns, some nice and some less so.



As I examined the results of the combinations of all three colors, I wondered how Elin came up the proportions of yellow, blue, and red that she chose. It certainly wasn't an arithmetic progress, like 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. And it didn't seem to be geometric, like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. I'm certain that it has much to do with the relative strengths of the dyes and that the numbers she came up reflect that. I'm just curious.

Part 3 of the exercise combines the earth tones and the jewel tones to see how they differ from the straight combinations done so far. I could really get carried away here but I'm going to just be content with what I have. And maybe someday I will take Carol Soderland's class.