Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

My dear little brother turned 26 last Tuesday, and even though I got his present ready the Thursday before that, I couldn't write about it here before he had gotten the present. Would have been kinda silly: him knowing beforehand what he would get, just because I wrote about it beforehand! Anyway, I have the hardest time buying presents for my brother. That doesn't mean I don't try - oh boy do I try! But sometimes, finding him a present is like finding ice in Sahara. Just not plausible. So, I try to do what my dear mother once told me about buying Christmas presents: "Try to look for Christmas presents for people during the whole year, not just in December" Sometimes, I actually manage come across things that are *perfect*. I found an alarm clock in a this weird interior decorating store (the clock had skulls on it...), and ever since my brother bought me a matching set of 3 raspberry colored kitchen containers with skulls on them... well, let's just say...

I must say, sometimes being a biochemist can be quirky. It enables you to read things - things not relevant to the work you're currently doing - out of other fields of biological research, and grasp concepts that rely on the understanding of the basic organic chemistry that is life as we know it. Anyway, while reading about transposons, I quickly wanted to confirm something on Wikipedia. Which, naturally, lead to some wiki jumping (I have no idea if that's the correct term;  it just means that you jump from one Wikipedia article to another, sometimes not even finishing the current before skipping on to the next). I jumped from DNA transposons, to DNA, to TNA (threose nucleic acid), to abiogenesis, to the Gaia theory . For those of you yet unfamiliar with the concept, the Gaia theory (originally by James Lovelock in the 1960s) proposes that the Earth is one big organism, where the biosphere and the biota (biomass) as a whole regulates the Earth to sustain life as we know it...

Since I went so long about tea in my previous post, I guess it's okay to post this separately. The knitted circle cape "Karolina", from the book "Sticka i romantisk lantstil", is finally done. It's not that it was hard to make - the opposite in fact! - it was just that I didn't spend all my available "knitting time" on this project. You can read the info about it here . It falls real nicely from your shoulders, and I guess it would have harmed to make it perhaps a tad bit larger. It really depends on how much yarn you have available, and if you want it to cover your back a bit more. I'm using a flower brooch I made myself, to keep the thing together. A brooch/big nice safety pin is a must for this cape.

"Teas, where small talk dies in agonies." Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) "When the end of the world is near, drink tea." Anonymous (and if you want to see more tea-quotes, go to Wikiquote ) I distress, sometimes I'm a mess, but I have to agree with the saying that drinking tea will help you in many situations. Oh, don't get me wrong, I like lots of other beverages, but there is a ... simple joy to be found in the fact that tea actually will make you feel better. (Said the addict to her teapot). My stomach has been a bit upset since yesterday (nothing terrible, but I have no idea why), so I've been drinking tea to calm it down. Tea is great that way: since it's sour (pH between 4-6) , and the milk (if you take it with milk) helps to buffer it (cow milk balances it to the higher pH, close to 6) , your stomach's pH will actually get a bit higher (from it's pH of 1-3) and thus make you feel a bit better. Not so acidic. It's the sa...

E once said, and I quote "Why must grown-ups clothes be so boring? Why don't people use more color?". Well, I'm doing my part to color the world, while at the same trying to come up with something knitted or crocheted that Micke might consider OK to use. This is mainly because I still have a lot of yarn inherited from both my maternal, my paternal grandmother, my mom and one of her sisters. Some of this yarn is white or really light beige, and some of it is in really pale pastel colors. And thus not... terribly exciting to either use or plan to use. Hence the reason behind my interest in learning how to dye yarn, preferably as cheaply as possible. On one of  the blog-sites I subscribe to, Fiber Star , I've read about how to dye with natural things like avocado pits , onion skins and flowers . There's also books about dyeing that I borrowed from the library. But like any good chemists, it really itches in your fingers to try it out yourself. But, I distres...