17 November 11
Shearing Day Coming Up
I’ll be helping out on Saturday at Meridian Jacobs for Shearing Day, which is an intense but lovely transformation of shaggy, probably soggy-tipped (it’s going to rain tomorrow) gray animals into piebald fairy creatures. Apart from a couple of them which are a prized lilac color; a lilac fleece may well come home with me.
Just learned about In Sheep’s Clothing, a short silent film from 1932 about gathering in Shetland sheep, rooing their fleeces (primitive breeds like Shetlands shed their fleeces and can be plucked, or rooed), spinning and knitting fair isle sweaters. It was a sunny day — wonder how long they waited for that — and despite the well-combed hair and smiling faces the crofter’s life was obviously VERY hard. (Still photos from the Shetland Museum archives can be found here.)
This all goes well with my nightly sheep study (I got a copy of Carol Ekarius and Deb Robson’s Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, which has me counting sheep at night.)
13 November 11
A Dab of Tolstoy
I just finished reading War and Peace for the first time. It’s a delicious book — not a slog at all, though I started it well over six weeks ago. There’s something very evenhanded about Tolstoy’s writing, how he’s able to move seamlessly from historical narrative to the lives of his characters. The historical narrative is what got me inspired to read the novel: I had just finished reading David Chandler’s definitive one-volume history The Campaigns of Napoleon and thought that War and Peace, the quintessential novel about the Napoleonic era, was the perfect follow-on. That the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was on our bookshelves helped matters. As for why I read the Chandler, this was a result of our calligraphy workshop this summer. Our teacher Sheila Waters designed and calligraphed the maps for the Chandler book back in 1965, and I was able to see many of the mylar originals!
The next work of fiction I’m going to read shouldn’t take me as long: Terry Pratchett’s new book Snuff.
31 October 11
Batty
I’ve been using my new drum carder. A LOT.
27 October 11
Cat On The Windowsill
I’m taking a silkscreening class right now at the campus craft center and find myself needing a bit of black-and-white artwork from which to make a screen. I haven’t done much black-on-white art so I sketched Charlie sitting on the windowsill with ink and a Chinese brush.
18 October 11
Stolen Children
The scandal that’s been brewing in Spain for some time — that over the course of 50 years the Catholic Church stole babies and sold them to couples wanting to adopt — has moved outside the country. The BBC is going to air a documentary on the subject. There’s a crazy figure of up to 300,000 stolen children being thrown around.
I suppose nothing should surprise me any more about the abuses carried out in the name of fear (that the children would grow up in subversive households) or greed (on couple paid 200,000 pesetas for a baby, which at the time was a fortune, it would have bought an apartment).
This one’s close to home, though. I know at least two people who might have been adopted under these circumstances. Tim, if you’re reading this, you’re not one of them, but you might have inspired Mari and Tito to adopt.
These photos are making me very, very quiet…
27 September 11
Point Reyes in Fall
Sunday was the fall Yolo Audubon Society trip to Point Reyes. The birding was pretty slow, with nothing more exciting than several palm warblers, and I spent a good bit of time sketching. At left is a little watercolor of the view of the Point Reyes North Beach from the Point Reyes Lighthouse. 
Next at right is a bright yellow-and-black caterpillar we saw chowing down on a willow leaf by Drake’s Beach. Looking it up I think it’s from a Spotted Tussock Moth (Lophocampa maculata). Finally, at bottom is a sketch for the antenna book. It is part of the HF antenna farm at the old RCA communications site. In times gone by this was an important location for radio communications with merchant ships in the Pacific. 
17 September 11
Problem
Numenius just got back from a conference last night, an open source GIS extravaganza in Denver where he also managed to take in a Giants game against the Rockies, where Pablo Sandoval hit for the cycle. (Non-baseball fans, that means he hit a single, a double, a triple and a home run all in the same game. It’s difficult. It’s unusual. It’s only the 25th time a Giant — in San Francisco or New York — has done it, ever, in over 100 years of Giants baseball.)
I took the opportunity of his absence to face the music. With a couple of supportive friends sitting on the floor with me, I got out my yarn stash. All of it. From under the bed and in the closet and in the bins under the computer table.
I have less of it now, including things I bought with no clear project in mind. Given that my goal is eventually to spin all the yarn I knit, now seems like a good time to stop buying yarn, wouldn’t you say? I hereby commit to buying no more yarn until at least the spring equinox. There. It’s not like I’ll run out by then…
2 September 11
Catching A Supernova
I saw the second supernova in my life last night. This would be SN 2011fe, which was discovered on August 24 by an automated sky survey at the Palomar Observatory. It is in the galaxy M101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy), which about 21 million light years distant, Two things are unusual about it. First, I believe it is the nearest supernova to occur since SN 1987A (a mere 168,000 light years away, back in 1987). Second, thanks to the automated observing network, it is the youngest type IA supernova ever observed, caught within 12 hours of the explosion. The supernova is destined to be one of the most studied such events for this generation of astronomers
I first heard about the supernova last Friday or Saturday, planned to look for it on Saturday, but was foiled by the presence of haze and smoke from a brush fire 20 miles distant. I have only seen one supernova in a telescope before, back in 1998 — I think was SN 1998bu in the galaxy M96, which got to about magnitude 11.8 in brightness. We were living halfway up the mountain behind Santa Barbara, a place with much darker skies than where we are now — I have great trouble seeing 12th magnitude stars in my 7” telescope here. So I looked on Sunday, and had no luck, cursing the bright skies here.
So I looked again last night, it being important to look before the moon gets too bright in the evening sky in the next several days. First looking through the eyepiece I thought it would go well. It did. When I had hopped to the correct star field there was a suspicious object. Was it the supernova? Or perhaps it was the 11.7 magnitude comparison star on my star chart? Comparing the geometry of the stars with those on the star chart it looked more like the former, but it wasn’t until I found a pair of stars at the upper part of the field pointing at the supernova on the chart did I confirm it. The supernova was now not at all difficult to see with direct, rather than averted, vision. A look at this light curve shows what has happened: between Sunday and Thursday the supernova brightened from about magnitude 12 to around magnitude 10.7. Wow. No wonder it was now pretty easy to see. I’ll be following it over the next several weeks, though the moon will make this difficult for a couple weeks
And now to look for a comet! I just heard about Comet Garradd today: it sounds like it is pretty easy to find.
31 August 11
White Waterfalls
Driving back from the Sierra on Monday — into the sunset, as we had driven into the sunrise; at least our reward was the green flash — we passed a Bridal Veil Falls. There must be hundreds of waterfalls so named throughout North America.
We had walked in 3+ miles only to find out we had way overshot our trailhead, and had to double back. We found our party — a group trapping an alpine relative of rabbits named a pika — and proceeded to follow them around glacial boulder-falls trying to photograph them. Two colleagues, two students: this was the perfect setting for photos that were to illustrate “training,” something I’m called upon to do a lot in my work. (Good thing, because they didn’t catch any pika, though we did see one and heard several.)
At some point during the day, though, it hit me. In earlier centuries, I’d be “going blind.” I used to have better than 20/20 vision, could identify a hawk at enormous distances, read roadsigns that would leave fellow travelers incredulous. Now the white waterfall descends on my right eye and will follow on my left.
I don’t mind, much. Not as much as I thought I would. For one thing it’s an easy outpatient surgery these days, but this is part of what it is, growing older. I shouldn’t expect to have the eyes of a 16-year-old, where something I spotted could cause Francisca to exclaim “Hay la vista que tienes, Dios te la bendiga.” No: whatever surgery they perform will never return me to those times. At this point, according to my opthalmologist brother-in-law, it’s all about minimizing decline. Gone, gone, gone beyond: gone beyond beyond.
Waterfalls. I have a new appreciation.
27 August 11
Co-op Sketchcrawl
Thanks to the organization of Pete Scully, we’re back to doing monthly sketchcrawls in Davis. Today we sketched around and about the Davis Food Co-op, a good location, with plenty of shade and outdoor tables. On weekends the co-op sets up an outdoor grill for chicken and sausages on the spot; the first sketch at left shows the grillmaster (the red blob at upper left is the co-op’s iconic tomato sculpture).
Turning around the other way from my seat on the co-op patio, I painted the watermelons for sale (sketch at right). 
At the back of the co-op is a railroad line with a couple of sidetracks. On one of these sidetracks is a set of a couple dozen train wheels and axles. I don’t know why these are stored here, but they are sketched below. 