Welcome to Caltech

So my niece sent us a drawing of herself with the instruction to take her to our places of employment and show her around. My actual job is kind of dull, but the people I work with are all sorts of interesting. So interesting in fact that whenever anyone comes for a visit and we're thinking of things we want them to experience while they are here, a visit to Caltech is in the top three (there is also a turtle / koi pond on the grounds - it's not all microscopes and bacteria around here).


Here's what Danyelle saw when she came to visit.


Behold the impressive Broad center, where science is happening.

Science is fun and interesting, but the first thing you need to do before you enter a lab is learn about lab safety! Always wear proper shoes, clothes, and sometimes even goggles and lab coats. Also, know where the first aid kit is and know how to use the emergency shower station in case you spill something on yourself that you need to wash off in a hurry.

Our biology lab specializes in taking the best pictures in the world of some of the smallest living organisms. Some of our favorite things to take pictures of are Caulobacter crescentus bacteria (a cousin of e. coli), mycoplasma pneumoniae (the bug that causes pneumonia), and the HIV virus.

Before we can take pictures, first we have to grow our bacteria in tubes. You can grow bacteria in just about anything. We use liquid solutions called media. Some of our solutions even have gold added to them! It only takes a few hours for bacteria to grow, so you can start a solution in the morning and take pictures of it after lunch! Once you have a nice group of cells to image, you need to place them on a slide or a grid so they can go into the microscope. Our lab uses both - a wet slide for light microscopy (the kind you're probably used to)

or a copper grid to put into our special, big electron microscope.

Since a drop of media can contain thousands and thousands of bacteria to take pictures of, we only need a tiny bit for each slide or grid. To help us, we use a special tool to pipette small amounts. It works just the same as a straw.

When your grids all have bacteria on them, it's time to take them to the basement where the electron microscope has its own special room to help protect it from movement and sound. Because when you're taking pictures of very small things, it helps to be as still as possible.

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Taking pictures of things with an electron microscope is tricky because when you beam electrons on your bacteria, it makes them fall apart after a short time. And trying to figure out the structure of a bacteria after it falls apart is like trying to figure out how a watch works by looking at one that's been smashed by a hammer! Right, not very helpful. Scientists try to get around this issue by mixing their samples with special chemicals, embedding them in plastic, or freezing them.

Our lab uses a method called plunge freezing to create our samples. We use a machine called a Vitrobot to freeze our bacteria. Freezing protects the bacteria from the electrons and keeps them looking almost exactly the same as when they were swimming around in the media, but you have to freeze your samples very, very quickly in order to create clear, see-through ice. Freezing things too slowly will create crystals, and crystals will make for bad images just like having static on your television set will disrupt the picture. We drop our bacteria grids in a mixture of liquid nitrogen and ethane so they freeze instantly.

After they are frozen, the grids have to stay frozen solid. If they warm up even a little bit, the ice can make crystals. So we put the frozen grids in a cryo-holder (it's like a thermos filled with liquid nitrogen) until they are ready to put in the microscope.

The next step is to put the grid into the vacuum of the microscope and take your images. Our microscope is hooked to a series of computers that save the pictures you take. We also do a special technique called a tilt-series where you take a whole bunch of pictures of one bacterium at different angles.

After you take all the pictures you want to, the last step is to analyze your data - or look closely at the pictures you took. For a tilt-series, this last step is called reconstruction. It's where you take all the pictures and stack them on top of each other to create what we call a tomogram. Remember that gold we put into the solution? Under the microscope, that gold shows up as large black beads that we can use as markers when we are stacking images. This gives us a complete 3-dimensional image of our bacterium - a real break-through for seeing new things and figuring out how things work!

Here's an example of how a tomogram is put together to form a 3D picture and how it helps us learn about bacteria cells.

http://lab.jensengroup.org/movies/JMB2010HnSmall.mp4

Thanks for taking a trip to our microscopy lab at Caltech today. I hope you learned a lot!

Happy Anniversary - 100 Random Facts about my Husband

Today is our ninth anniversary, and in honor of that, I'm posting 100 Facts About my daring and darling husband, Richard. He's a cutie and I love him completely.

100 Random Facts About My Husband

1. He has two emotions that he recognizes – anger and calm.
2. He has a complete lack of empathy, but he has come a long way and knows when to ask for clues.
3. He has way too many hobbies: shooting, camping, skiing, snowmobiling, horseback riding, wrestling, reading, hiking, gardening, water sports, rock climbing, fishing, on and on.
4. He started working when he was thirteen and hasn’t stopped since.
5. He had a febrile seizure when he was two and was officially dead when he arrived at the hospital. (Obviously, he came back, but wow, good job psyching out your mother.)
6. He is so afraid of spiders that even talking about one will break him out in goose pimples.
7. He hates tomatoes so much that he doesn’t even want ketchup on the table.
8. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City and gets teased for this a lot.
9. He was born in Waycross, Georgia.
10. His best companion for fourteen years was a yellow lab, Husky mix named Cocoa.
11. He is a professional driver and is licensed to drive anything with wheels except an airplane and a passenger bus.
12. His greatest wish is to live off the grid in Alaska or Montana.
13. He used to watch the Man from Snowy River every single day.
14. He loves instrumental music.
15. He cannot spell, but he can write beautifully.
16. He reads quickly and devours thriller books by the dozen.
17. He loves to have his back scratched and isn’t quite satisfied until he is bleeding in more than one place.
18. He does not know his own strength or realize his own worth.
19. He gets loopy on medication. Once, when hospitalized for a kidney stone, while I was buttoning up his pajama top and telling him I was going to go get the car, he informed me that he was not going anywhere with me because his wife was coming to get him. When I left the room and came back, he told me that he knew I was coming and that “someone” wanted him to go somewhere. He claims I should just be grateful he knew he was married.
20. He is protective and loyal.
21. He is slow to make decisions, needing to do extensive research about brands, read reviews, etc. even if he’s just purchasing a toaster.
22. He loves to haggle and make deals.
23. He has a very fine hat collection and loves to dress up in old-fashioned clothes.
24. He is part Cherokee Indian.
25. He has an accent. People often think he is European and ask me where he’s from. I have to explain constantly that he is the result of a Georgia born father and a Montana raised mother.
26. When he talks to, listens to, or watches people with a Southern accent, he will adopt it for hours.
27. He hates people to baby him when he’s sick and would rather be left totally alone.
28. He once killed and ate a robin while he was roughing it in the wilderness. He does not recommend it.
29. He is pragmatic – just like MacGyver.
30. Before we were married, he would disappear into the wilderness quite often for weeks at a time just to be alone.
31. When I met him, he had forty-two girls’ numbers in his cell phone who all wanted to be his girlfriend.
32. He tried to pretend that he didn’t like me, even to himself.
33. He got slightly misty-eyed on our wedding day, but he only sheds tears on the days when I bring one of his children into the world.
34. He never does things in halves.
35. He is charismatic. People do things for him that they wouldn’t do for anyone else.
36. He has a permanent retainer on his front top and bottom teeth.
37. On our first date, he took me to the mall and bought me $120 worth of classy clothes because he liked to see me in them and he had been saving up to do it for months.
38. He is a member of the National Ski Patrol.
39. He once filmed for a movie while skiing backwards down a mountain.
40. The sight of blood does not bother him in the least – or anything else gory for that matter.
41. An aptitude testing center told him that the best job he could have would be a fighter pilot.
42. He can exert 160 pounds of pressure by bringing his non-dominant hand into a fist.
43. He does not hold still while he sleeps.
44. He hates doing dishes, and hates it even more when dishes are left in the sink to soak.
45. His favorite season is winter, but he lives in a state that doesn’t have one.
46. He has perfect pitch. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Perfect Pitch.
47. Richard has been the sound editor for lots of movies, but none of them are ones you would know about.
48. Richard has also been a voice actor for the anime series Ah My Buddha. He voices the principal of the high school along with a few other minor characters. How did he get the job? He was just there at the right minute.
49. He has broken most of his fingers.
50. He’s also broken his foot and has trouble with certain shoes. Probably because he didn’t use the crutches as long as he was supposed to.
51. When riding his horse, she threw him into a tree, and he rode her around for another two hours with cracked ribs.
52. When I met him, the calluses on his hands were so thick that it was hard for him to feel how hot or cold something was.
53. He can grow a pretty awesome beard and mustache.
54. He never misses a shot with his .45 rifle.
55. He would rather be an hour early than a minute late.
56. The first of my birthdays we celebrated as friends, he took me out for a Jamba Juice and then we went back to his place to drywall his basement.
57. He had a “testing routine” for all his would-be girlfriends to see if they would be worth the effort of building a relationship with. I passed.
58. His nickname is Ducky and even his mother calls him that.
59. He tries every summer to consume his own body weight in fried squash.
60. If unsupervised, he will drink a gallon of whole milk every day.
61. He does not play video games or computer games.
62. I had to make a hard argument for him to buy a cell phone.
63. He is left-handed.
64. He tells people that he’s six feet tall, but he’s not. He’s 5 feet 11.5 inches.
65. He’s a tease. An incessant one.
66. He loves to read colonial American writing. The syntax and passion really move him.
67. He loves James Bond movies.
68. He can fix absolutely anything.
69. He likes to vacuum (which is good, because I don’t).
70. He is so secure in his masculinity that he doesn’t have trouble tossing feminine products into his cart while whistling, and he owns a pink phone.
71. That man can rock the color red so hard it’s difficult to take him out without him getting fawned over by every female we see. I’m surprised he hasn’t been kidnapped.
72. People are usually slightly surprised to discover that he married someone like me. What can I say? Opposites attract! It's because he is good at bringing out the best in people and working with their strengths. He's a good leader, but he doesn't like it.
73. He has a faulty sense of relative time, mostly in the realm of goals. At one time in our marriage, he really thought he could put up a fence around our six-acre lot in a weekend.
74. There are a lot of days where he’s working so hard that he forgets to eat. This drives me insane.
75. He can play the harmonica.
76. He was once mistaken in an LA restaurant for Quenton Tarantino.
77. He’s also been mistaken, on more than one occasion, for Johnny Depp.
78. He is a volunteer on the world-famous Sierra Madre Search and Rescue team. He loves it.
79. He takes interest in my interest. I can give him a Knit Picks catalogue and not say a word to him. He can then flip through it, and in ninety seconds, say things like, “You’d love to make that. And that in a different color. You like that but would never knit it. That’s a no. You’d love to have some of that, but you know you have too much already.” And his commentary will be one hundred percent accurate.
80. Every time I say I can’t do something because I don’t know how, he’ll return, “But you can LEARN!”
81. When startled, his response is to attack. I learned this the hard way early on and have never, ever tried to shock him or scare him since. (He went for my windpipe.)
82. Even though he served a mission, he mysteriously does not know how to cook. Though he can grill barbecued chicken legs like nobody’s business.
83. His idea of cooking is to put parsley . . . in everything.
84. Every once in a while, I will come home to a candlelit bath, storm soundtrack, and darkness while he takes the kids away and comes home with dinner. I love these days, and I love that they don’t happen often enough to not be special.
85. He likes to kidnap me for our anniversary. He’s spirited me away to Las Vegas and San Diego. Once we crashed someone’s ballroom dancing group dressed to the nines. The group were so thrilled that they rearranged their whole schedule to cater to us.
86. He’s actually quite good at listening, but he looks like he isn’t paying any attention at all.
87. He looks like he isn’t paying attention because he is one of those rare people who can think three steps ahead and focus on more than one thing at a time.
88. His fast thinking means that when I spell things for him, three letters at a time, in a rhythm, it grates his nerves. He doesn’t want the rhythm. He wants me to just give him the letters. Reversely, when he spells things for me or tells me phone numbers, I have to have him repeat it several times because he goes too fast.
89. He is an amateur ham radio operator (and made me get my license too). He gets a kick out of messing with his radio. His call sign is KK6EJJ.
90. He’s so intelligent that he knows exactly how to be incompetent enough to get me to do things for him.
91. But he will change diapers. I think we’ve changed equal numbers.
92. We are not equal on number of baths we’ve given the children. He almost always gives them their baths.
93. He doesn’t know what to do with newborns, and while he loves our kids very much, he enjoys them more when they can interact with him.
94. He is fearless. He can jump off cliffs, out of helicopters, and even (get this) give speeches in public without getting nervous. He’s not set up the way other people are.
95. He’s not very good at relaxing. He prefers movement and learning and doing something.
96. However, he will watch youtube videos for hours at a time if you get him going on something (i.e. pranking).
97. He is devoted. I have never once worried, ever, that he was bored with me or wanted someone else. And for someone with low self-esteem like me, that’s really saying something about his fidelity.
98. He has a hard time with closed-minded people, false people, or arrogance.
99. If he promises something and shakes your hand, that’s a blood oath, and he will be true to his word, no matter what.
100. He really is my favorite. Always. I love you, darling.

Adventures in Sewing

It comes as a big shock to most people. Just like when I have to explain time and again that just because I am an English major, it does not mean that I am a teacher (really, why is that the only thing an English major can do?), I also have to explain that just because I am a knitter, it does not mean that I know how to sew.

It’s remarkable how many people don’t understand the difference between these things. Thinking I can sew just because I knit is rather like thinking I can speak Italian just because I took Spanish in high school. Similar, sure, but just because some of the words are the same in both languages and you might be able to understand a smattering doesn’t mean you can just write a novella in Italian. You know?

In fact, I’m rather against sewing. Maybe because everyone thinks I should be good at it, but I honestly don’t like it. I like knitting – no, I love knitting. I love the simple movements and the endless variety of yarn. I love how portable it is. How I can haul off and quit in the middle of a row if I want to. I don’t need to lug around much equipment. A little skein of sock yarn and a long circular needle, easily tucked into a bag, are all I need for hours and hours of entertainment.

Sewing, on the other hand, isn’t like that. There are too many steps requiring too many pieces. You need pattern pieces, pins, a huge machine, different threads, etc. And probably the biggest obstacle to my wanting to ever do it – you need a workspace. That machine has to go somewhere, be plugged in, and then there is the space you need to lay out fabric so you can cut it. You can’t curl up on the couch with your sewing like you can with your shawl. I can knit a sleeve without even looking at it. You don’t look at your sewing and you’re likely to put the needle through your finger.

So I don’t sew. Why have more than one expensive hobby, right? But no good story ever started "once upon a time there was a knitter who did nothing to further her skills" so we have a different beginning that started a little before Thanksgiving when I took my daughters to an Elves’ Fair at a Waldorf School. It was so charming; we had so much fun, right up until it started pouring in the early afternoon. Lots of people went home, but my girls and I went into the doll room.

I instantly regretted my decision. The room was filled with long tables covered in gauze and silks and miniature benches made from branches and twine. Fortunately, as it was later in the day, most of the dolls were gone, purchased by other fair goers. Yet there were a few remaining. Ezri gravitated immediately to a bunting style doll wearing a purple cotton velour nightgown and cap. He had a dark brown face. She picked him up and carried him around the room even though he weighed more than three pounds (weighted down with lavender-scented millet). She even marched up to one of the workers in the doll room and asked, very politely, “Excuse me, can I have this please?”

I caught the worker’s eye and shook my head, but she knelt down next to my daughter and said, “You should ask your mom.” Thanks!

Ezri trotted back over to me and showed me the doll, again asking if she could have it. Now, when I had seen children wandering the fair grounds with dolls all day, I had a moment where I considered getting her one. I’m all about handmade stuff (see above about the knitting), and her birthday was coming up soon. But then I looked at the price tag on this little bunting and had to change my mind. It was priced just right for a lovely, organic, hand-sewn item, but unfortunately, it was a little too high for my budget. So then I told my sweet girl that this particular doll would have to stay here in the doll room and take a nap, but I thought that we could make another one that would live with her.

She accepted this with an amount of grace that other girls much older than her do not have and put the doll away, kissing him goodnight. Then she went around to all the other bunting dolls (there were three left) and kissed all of them too. And then we went home.

When I told Rich about our adventure to the Elves’ Fair, he asked me how I was going to make a replica doll of the one she had found. I responded that I was hoping to maybe get one second-hand from the Internet. That I had seen other Waldorf dolls on ebay for $12 - $30, much closer to my chosen price range. We started a research session, seeing immediately that a heavy bunting baby like the one Ezri loved wasn’t available on ebay. In fact, I couldn’t even find the same Waldorf bunting doll that she had looked at. It didn’t look good.

As we were clicking around in despair, I finally managed to find an image just like the doll we had snuggled earlier. I showed Rich what we had been looking at, and then we noticed that this doll was available in a kit from Dream Pixie. We really could make our own and at a price that I could get away with. I asked Rich if his mother would be willing to help me as she is a fabulous seamstress and I am. .in case you missed it before. . . a KNITTER. We chatted about it, and in the end I purchased two doll kits – one purple like the one Ezri had and the other a raspberry.

The kits showed up at my house looking beautiful. The fabric was folded neatly and resting on a cloud of carded sheep’s wool. When I had been researching these dolls, I wasn’t exactly put-off by all the talk of natural materials, but it wasn’t a big selling point either. I mean, I’ve made hundreds of toys and stuffed them with the widely available, cheap polyester fiberfill. I never thought twice about it. But just LOOK at the Difference!



See? See how pretty the wool is? And it smells divine and even had little tiny pieces of plants still stuck in it. Being the lover of sheep and wool that I am, how could I not be charmed by that? I let Ezri see the kits and asked her which color she liked best. As predicted, she picked the purple. We both cuddled the bags, basking in their perfect potential, and then I tucked them into a closet to wait for my mother-in-law to come at Christmas to help me with them.

Except I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I looked up tutorials on the Internet and read the instructions about twenty times in the next few days. It didn’t look that hard. The directions were straightforward; there was nothing extraordinarily tricky about what they were asking me to do to get a sweet dolly. I’d made so many dolls before, painstakingly knitting each wee stitch and embroidering so many faces. This, amazingly, seemed easier.

Before I knew it, I was spreading out the big pieces of paper with the pattern printed on them. Another minute and I had a pair of scissors in my hand. I paused then, not really wanting to start. If I started then there was the very real potential that I was going to ruin the kit. It was so perfect in its bag – that neatly folded fabric, that beautiful cloud of carded wool, that lovely cardboard wrapped with floss, button thread, ribbon, and elastic. One wrong move with my inexperienced hand could wreck the whole thing. I should put the scissors away – what was I thinking! I don’t sew.

I was going to put them away, really, but then I picked them up and, without any warning, I was carefully, oh my goodness so carefully, cutting the pattern pieces out. After all, this wasn’t sewing. This was cutting, and last time I checked, I’ve been pretty good at cutting since, um, kindergarten. Besides, it would save some time when my MIL came to help me. I wasn’t going to waste her valuable time having her hold my hand while Cutting Paper. Ridiculous.

When I had all the pattern pieces, I put them neatly into the bag again and put it away, satisfied. Well, not really. It took another two days of constant thinking and flip-flopping before I found myself again with the bag and a shivery feeling.

What harm could I do just tracing the patterns on to the fabric? No, really, it’s a water-soluble marker. If I mess up, I can just wash it right out. No permanent damage here. So I took my marker and with the concentration and precision of a surgeon, I traced along my pieces. Whew. Nothing exploded either. I wandered around the house on a creative high, and when I woke up I was standing next to the fabric with pins and scissors in my hand again.

First up, I wondered where the pins had come from. Knitters don’t really need pins, especially knitters like me who are so against sewing that they choose patterns specifically that don’t have seams of any kind. Socks are great for this – no sewing at ALL, just one big, complicated knot from start to finish. Shawls are also awesome for only requiring a needle to weave in the starting and stopping points, and even then it’s a big needle, blunt and easily threaded by the blind.

And yet, I had pins and apparently I even knew where they were so I could put my hands on them at a moment’s notice. How’s that for being a good Girl Scout? I put them in my fabric around the lines I’d just traced and, after only a moment’s hesitation, I Took the Scissors and Cut the Fabric!

The only reason I didn’t hyperventilate was because, honestly, that would have probably resulted in a disaster that I couldn’t really afford to fix. These pieces, now that I’d started, must come out well. In knitting, there is a technique called the steek. It’s when you knit a beautiful sweater (or vest) usually in a colorwork pattern in a tube and then CUT the armholes, cardigan line, and sometimes the neck after you’ve finished. I’ve heard the sound that scissors make when you cut things like this and it makes me sort of woozy. For some reason, I believe that things just fall apart when you cut them, and not just in to the two expected pieces either. And yet, here I was snipping up the velour almost as if I didn’t even care what happened to it. In no time at all, even though during some of the individual moments when I was doing the oval shaped bunting time did seem to stop, I had all the pieces I needed.

I took another break. After all, I had definitely reached the end of what prep work I could do without help. I cut out the pattern and the pieces. The only thing left to do was actually start sewing them, and, well, that would just be too hard.

But then my darling husband took Ezri away with him on a day trip, leaving the new baby and me to myself for a whole morning. I hurried through some necessary chores that are easier to do without three-year-old assistance and gleefully took up the little baby sweater I’ve been trying to make for a friend ever since I found out she was pregnant (she’s due in February).

Merry slept beside me, and the sunlight was perfect and bright in our living room. Everything was so quiet and beautiful, and yet, I was discontent. This sweater, why was I so excited about it? I mean, I love the girl I’m knitting it for, but I’ve done this pattern three times now and I’m at that dull bit where I just have to knit in a circle for row after tedious row. Why on earth would I waste the beautiful daylight I have right now, this quiet alone time in the sun, with a project that I can do in complete darkness?

That’s what I thought! That’s not very effective time management now is it? No, definitely not. Then it came to me. The head! The doll’s head doesn’t require any sewing! But it does need some toddler-free time investment. I got my well-worn bag out of the closet again with the instructions and proceeded to see if I could make a doll head.

All my doll heads up to this point have been pretty basic and repetitive. You make a circular formed piece of whatever and stuff it. That’s it. A Waldorf head is different; it’s what makes them special and easily recognized. It’s a shaped head. I eagerly turned to the directions and got out my big puffy block of wool.

I squeezed it and shaped it and rolled it and followed the directions to the letter. I made a big mess:



But in the end I got something that looked like it might be right:



Just to be sure, I doubled checked using a real-life adorable model:



Yep! You can barely tell the two apart. Then I broke a few craft threads and made another big mess, but by the time my husband and older daughter were due to come home, I had finished the head.



Then I quit. Really. No, I put everything away and left it alone.

Or at least, I wanted to.

Before long, I had reasoned with myself that so far this project had been a total success. Also, why did I need a sewing machine? Did I think that the Waldorf people who started creating these dolls in Europe back in the dark ages had sewing machines? Not likely! And yet they made lots of beautiful things with only their two hands and a tiny needle. I had a tiny needle! I took out my hand pieces and my thread and lovingly started the first seam, thinking peaceful thoughts about creating and doing it the same way as it had been done for hundreds of years. Me and my sewing. Together. Making something beautiful.

Ha!

The hands are made with four layers of cotton held together. My needle, poor thing, wouldn’t go through all the layers.

(poor bent needle)

I had to stop what with my needle being turned into a fishhook, but I did so reluctantly. I wanted to sew this together. I wanted to see the finished piece. I wanted to bask in my accomplishment, of doing something that I had no experience in doing and no idea how to start, and actually making it work.

I’m going to write a novella in Italian!!

That weekend, Rich took Ezri with him on a scouting campout. I was giddy with anticipation. They would be gone all night and all the next day. I kissed them good-bye and spent the afternoon cleaning. (Yeah, bet you didn’t see that coming.) I was cleaning because I was making a space perfect for, you guessed it, a sewing machine! I cleaned some other stuff too because nothing really takes the buzz out of crafting like having Other Things You Should Be Doing With Your Time looming over your head. I wasn’t about to let guilt ruin my experience.

One of my coworkers said that she had a machine that she wasn’t using at the moment when I told her that I was getting obsessed about this project and probably wouldn’t be able to have a conversation not involving cotton velour and back stitching and too thick fabric again until I had resolved my issues, conquered the task, and finished it. She’s a good friend (and I’m sure she likes to talk about other stuff), so she said I could come pick it up that Friday night.

So even though I had no idea how to work it, and she didn’t really know how either, I took the machine with me bursting at the seams with confidence that somehow I could figure it out. I have a degree, right? It’s just a machine, right?

I brought everything home, put the darling baby to bed, and then set the beast up on my kitchen table.



Once upon a time when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I took a required home economics class. They taught me how to iron, how to make an omelet, and the poor woman in charge tried to teach me how to sew. I remember picking a horrible pink fabric and cutting two pieces out of it that sort of resembled a teddy bear. I also remember sewing without thread on a piece of paper, taking care to make sure that the needle punctured only on the lines that were drawn on it. That was a crooked little teddy bear, and I don’t even think I own it anymore (I think I threw it out in embarrassment). But the point is that I did have, at one time, some sort of knowledge that allowed me to thread a machine. And I knew that just threading it at the top wasn’t enough. That sewing machines, genius little contraptions, work great because they have thread coming from the top and bottom. They have



Complicated, intimidating monstrosities that are inappropriately (because it is such a sweet, cute word) named bobbins. Oooh, look at the wee bobbin! It exists to vex me! Look at it sticking its tongue out at me.

However, even though I have only the most basic knowledge of how a sewing machine works, I am pretty good at finding things on the Internet. Within a few minutes, I had found the Operator’s Manual of my borrowed machine and was reading away on how to get the beast to bend to my will and sew me a seam.

I took a long time threading the bobbin and the upper needle. Then I spent some more time figuring out why it wasn’t working, and more time wondering if I should just quit before I did something stupid like breaking the machine or hurting my fabric. At long last, everything seemed to be in order to function without spontaneously combusting. I positioned my fabric carefully under the foot. I remembered that it was a good idea to sew a little, then sew backwards to make a sort of knot that wouldn’t come out. I made sure my light was good, double checked the whole thing again, took a deep breath, and ever so gently put pressure on the foot pedal.

OH MY STARS!

The noise that came out of that machine knocked me backward. I ripped my foot off the pedal, leaped from my chair, and had to take a little walk around the kitchen, staring at the sewing machine to make sure it wasn’t going to suddenly sprout fangs.

Knitting is almost silent. You can knit right next to a sleeping baby’s head and she will not be disturbed in the least. There is a gentle clicking of needles as they come together to form a stitch. There is a light sweep of yarn across the surface. There is the occasional moment where you are so at peace with this meditation that you start humming softly just from the joy, but that’s it. Practically inaudible.

Once my heart rate had returned to normal and the machine had not yet made its move to bite me, I sat back down and thought about trying again. Of course it’s going to make noise. Things are moving. It’s using power. It’s not out to get me. I positioned everything once more and tried again.

After some more furious starts and stops, I made my way (sloooooowly) around the outside of the doll’s hand. Did you know that a needle has to be moving at a certain velocity before it can puncture through whatever you are sewing? Did you know that this speed is faster than my comfort cruising pace? There were so many times that I was so intent on where my fabric was and where that needle was going and, hey watch out that you don’t break your needle on a pin, that I narrowly missed putting my own finger through it. Luckily, I did not injure myself. When I was done, I pulled the hand out from under the needle. I held it up to the light and smiled the smile of a conquistador. I had sewed a (crooked, wonky) seam and lo, it was good.



(sorry the picture is blurry. It was late and I might have been a little excited. Why? Because that there, my friends, is a SEAM that I made a machine sew for me. The adrenaline was making me shaky.)

I did the other hand. It seemed to be done in an instant. I sewed the seams for the doll’s bunting body. I sewed the head. Look how quickly that machine can sew things! This would have taken me hours and hours. I was intoxicated with the power.



And I probably would have kept going if it hadn’t been midnight and my darling baby didn’t want a snack. Nursing an infant is a great sleep aid. It’s almost impossible to hold a warm, cuddly, sleeping baby without wanting to nod off, even if you’re hopped up on sewing machine fumes and caffeine. When it came time to put the baby back to bed, I went right along with her. Triumphant.

The best part was that the next morning I had all to myself. I got all my stuff from the night before and relocated to the couch to finish the doll body. Of course, I made sure that I had correct supervision:



The body of this doll is supposed to be filled with lavender-scented millet. Millet, for those who don’t know, is a grain. It makes the doll all-natural and good smelling. A lot of people really like the idea of dolls like this. I can get behind that. A doll made from all the best that the earth has to offer. . . stuffed with sheep’s wool, assembled from organic cotton and muslin, then filled with calming essential oil soaked grain. It’s a great idea, romantic and pleasant.

Until you start thinking about what a body stuffed with grain really entails. What if it gets wet and sprouts? Hmm? What if your beautiful doll, as sometimes happens with beautiful things, is a magnet for disaster? You know what I’m talking about, dear mothers. It’s when you make a blessing dress for your daughter and do everything you can to make sure that it’s clean for pictures. You feed her early and burp her every ten minutes until picture time. You do not put the dress on her until thirty seconds before it actually needs to be on her person. And even though she has not spit up for ninety minutes and hasn’t eaten for longer than that, she inexplicably spits up her entire day’s consumption all over the dress the moment you pull it over her head.

You know, hypothetically speaking.

And worse! You know what else loves millet besides nature-loving, organically minded creative pattern-making Waldorf moms? MICE! MOTHS! Yuck! What if your daughter doesn’t actually keep the doll with her every single second of every single day until she gets married, even though you have it planned that way in your imagination? What if she puts it on a shelf or in a closet, thinking perhaps to “keep it nice” and by the very act of preservation leaves it prone in the darkness for vermin to find and destroy?

Basically, I didn’t want to stuff my heirloom doll body with rat food. Even though you do bake the millet first to discourage that kind of behavior – there was a warning on the pattern that put me off. I want my doll to endure. And if I’m going to sew something, it being the Process that it is, I want it to last FOREVER. I do not want to have to keep replacing millet or fixing holes. No. I do it once and then never again.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to weight a doll besides grain. There are polyester beads. Ugh. I just typed that and now all of a sudden I feel like a betrayal to the whole Waldorf principle of giving your children natural toys to play with. Let’s just skip ahead before I go buy 25 pounds of millet.

I spent the morning sewing hands into wrist openings, turning down the edges of the body and hand sewing raglan lines. For the record? I do not know how people hand sew at this point. That needle is small and very difficult to get through the fabric. If I hadn’t had this little guy



to give me some friction, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. That, my dears, is a little piece of something that quilters use to pull their needles. I got it, oh you’re going to love this, from a Young Women’s activity when we made two tied quilts for Project Linus. I volunteered to do the finishing when we couldn’t get them done on the actual night and I got to keep that little circle. I don’t know what it’s made of, but I think I should get some points for keeping it and knowing where to find it when I realized that, wow, after all these years it really IS going to come in handy for something. (Hoarders unite!)

I had to use a funnel and a measuring cup to get the right amount of poly beads into the arms and body. Which means that I’ve used more than a dozen items that I’ve never used while crafting before and yet still had easily accessible in my house. I want to think that means that I am just prepared and not that I have too much stuff.



In the end, I managed it. A full recognizable doll.



She weighed in around three pounds at sixteen inches high. I put her next to Merry for inspection. I carried her around the living room, noticing that the dear souls who make these dolls for therapy are one hundred percent correct – you really can’t help but pull this doll in close. This isn’t a dolly you dangle by one wrist like a Raggedy Ann (not that those aren’t charming too). This is a newborn snuggler. The weight and size trigger some instinct to cuddle it close on your shoulder and pat it on the back. The wool inside its chest makes it huggable. The longer you hold it, the warmer it gets.



I had one more major sewing expedition with the machine where I sewed the cotton velour into the bunting nightgown (it happened so fast I didn’t even get pictures. Sewing is weird like that. It’s like a roller coaster. You take a deep breath, climb in, hang on with white knuckles all the while it’s happening, then wish you had a photo of the experience after it’s all over and you’re standing with rapidly beating heart in the next line). I embroidered the face with the help of a seven-inch long needle. I tied a ribbon around the hat. I put elastic in the sleeves and neck. And the last thing I did to the doll before I kissed her complete was rouge her cheeks with a beeswax crayon. The night I finished her, which was a few days before my daughter’s birthday (how cool is that?) I stayed up way too late just admiring my work.

I couldn’t really believe that it had happened. I took that kit bag and used everything in it and got something that looked right. I read directions and interpreted them correctly enough that I had something tangible and recognizable. This was a thousand times better than my home ec teddy bear. I was so pleased with how things had worked out. It was so weird.

Weird? Yes. Because I make things all the time. Since high school I have had a constant project going that ended up in a moment like this. I’ve made afghans, bags, mittens, sweaters, toys, scarves, socks, vests, hats . . . and even that one time that I was paid to knit costumes for a movie. So many finished things. And yeah, I get little buzzes after finishing those things too, but for some reason this was different. This one was even more special. Probably because it was the first time I’d ever sewed something that I liked. Maybe because I did it without help. I’m not for sure, but I do know that even though I have knit Ezri little toys before, and even though I once took a half mile of silk so fine it resembled dental floss and made a complicated knot that someone bought for enough money I could have purchased all three of the organic, already completed dolls at the fair:



this was a Big Deal. My daughter saw something she wanted and I was able to make it for her even though I didn’t know how and I managed to get it done with minimal time investment. That shawl up there? Yeah, that took a whole month of constant work. This doll? Off and on commitment for a week or so. And bonus. It was So Much Fun!

I wrapped the doll and gave it to Ezri for her third birthday (funny enough, I also received a handmade doll for my third birthday, made for me by my older sister. I still have her, in pristine condition). Ezri opened the box and recognized the doll immediately. She turned to me and smiled, “You bought this at the Elves’ Fair!”

And I was pretty thrilled. I was so happy about it that I starting thinking that I wanted to do it again.

Oh wait. I have two daughters. I bought two kits. Where are my scissors?

Who's There? A BJD Photostory

So . . . it’s really hard to take decent pictures in the winter when the sun goes down before I even get home from work. I’m using that as my excuse as to why 1) the pictures look the way they do and 2) why you haven’t heard from me in a while. I have a lot of stories to tell, so it’s been frustrating not to have the time or means to make them. This one should have been done months ago, when I actually received the box in question, but, as always, time just continues to move without me. However, since these stories are works of fiction, we can just pretend, right?
Also, I can’t decide on Kotori’s hair. I really love Gryffin’s old wig on her, but then I made the one she’s wearing in this story and think it makes her look so tomboyish and sweet, yet it’s too slippery to wear every day. I just don’t know. If anybody has a favorite Kotori hairpiece, let me know, eh?
But we’re not actually talking much about Kotori or Gryffin today. Oh no! Today should be a special day because I got a delivery confirmation notice in my email late this afternoon, and I’ve been all excited to get home and finally open a box that I’ve been waiting on for several weeks. It should be in my mailbox outside right now –



Me: “Oh, hi Gryffin. What are you doing?” And what’s with the fierce expression?



Gryffin: “Playing cards, what does it look like?”
Me: “I thought you were helping Kotori with her homework project.”



Gryffin: “Yeah, turns out she didn’t need me after all. One of her friends came, and they went to the library or whatever.”
Me: “You sound a little upset about it.” Which means I will have to put off the mail in the name of being a Good Parent.



Gryffin: “I don’t care! It’s not like she needs my permission. She can do what she wants.” (messing up his card game)
Me: (wondering if I should get involved) “I’m sorry Kotori feels the need to soak up as much American culture as she can every second of every day.”



Gryffin: “Doesn’t she though? I wonder when it’s going to kick in that she’s going to be living here permanently. She can take years for all this stuff; she doesn't have to volunteer for everything that comes along.”
Me: “Maybe you should tell her?”
Gryffin: “Yeah, sure, that’s going to work. Hey, Kotori, could you maybe change your entire personality and Stop Being So Helpful? I’d rather you just stay home every night and be bored and friendless.”
Me: “Or you could do things with her? Maybe volunteer to do the same stuff she’s doing so you wouldn’t feel so left out?”
Gryffin: “What do you think I was trying to do with this stupid homework thing? You think I wanted to devote my evening to filming a scene from MacBeth for her AP English deal?”
Me: “Well, actually, that does sound like fun –“
Gryffin: “Fine! It’s fun! I’m sure she’s having a blast, but she didn’t want me there. When I asked if she wanted my help, she got all red in the face and stammery and said she didn’t think I’d be interested so she’d made a group and they were all set, but thank you anyway.”



Me: “I’m sorry, buddy. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Gryffin: “No, I’m all ranted out.”
Me: “Ok then, I’m just going to go and pick up the mail, but we can talk more if you want.”
Gryffin: “It’s ok, and I already got it when I walked Kotori out to her friend’s car.”
Me: “Oh, you did? And?”



Gryffin: “And the package you’ve been talking about for days is right there.”
Me: Struggling with conflicting emotions. I don’t want to make Gryffin think I don’t care about his emotional teenage turmoil (caused by his own inability to recognize his feelings), but I’m still excited about my box. . . .
Gryffin: (Bless him!) “What’s in it anyway? Why does it have holes in it and fragile stickers . . oh, and especially the part where it says, Live Animal / Open Immediately? What’s that all about?”



Me: “Isn’t it sweet? I adopted a Fairy. See? Here’s her picture.”
Gryffin: “What does that mean? Adopted?”
Me: “It was the most adorable thing, ever. The website I found sells these Fairies, from Fairyland, and instead of saying that each one is hand-sculpted and unique, they say that they ‘breed’ fairies as good-luck charms for houses and offer them out for adoption. She’s supposed to bring good fortune if she ‘lives’ with us.”
Gryffin: (not impressed) “You’ve been waiting for weeks for a good-luck doll?”
Me: “I think I’m going to open her somewhere else so your bad mood won’t tarnish the experience.”



Gryffin (following me): “Sorry, Mom. I’ll quit raining on your parade. Let me see your fairy.”
Me: “Thanks, honey. Here, I want to get a picture, so why don’t you open the box for me? I can’t wait to finally see her! I think I’ll put her in the family room -”



Gryffin: “Ok, here we go.” Pause.
Me: “Gryffin, I can’t see. Open the box all the way.”
Gryffin: “You’re not going to like it.”
Me: “Of course I will! Just open it.”



Gryffin: “But there’s nothing here.”
Me: “What? No. There’s a note – what’s the note say?”



Gryffin: (reading): “’Caution – contains live animal.’ Oh, please.”
Me: “And?”
Gryffin (sighs): “’Dear New Fairy Owner, if you are right now looking at an empty box, congratulations! If your fairy is missing, it means she already feels quite at ease in her new home and is currently exploring her surroundings.’ Yeah, right.”
Me: “Shh, keep reading.”
Gryffin: “I don’t think so. It’s too stupid.”



Me: “Give it here, then. ‘If you look quick behind your shoulder, you may catch a glimpse of her. But don’t worry, once she’s quite settled, perhaps in your teapot, she will come forward and make herself known to you. This introduction process generally takes six to eight weeks.’ Oh, how cute.”
Gryffin: “Unbelievable!”
Me: “That there’s a fairy somewhere in the house?”
Gryffin: “Nooooo! Mom, you got conned. You paid for an empty box! This is horrible.”



Me: “What are you talking about? This is great! It’s just what their company advertised – a genuine domesticated fairy. Come to think of it, there was nothing on the site that said it was a figurine, I just assumed that. Awww, I wonder where she is.”
Gryffin: “I’m not hearing this.”



Me: “What?”
Gryffin: “Mom, come on. It’s so obvious!”
Kotori: “Hey, everyone, I’m home. What’s going on? What’s with the box?”



Gryffin: “Kotori! Great, you’re home. Now you can help me explain to Mom that she’s just become the victim of a scam.”



Kotori: “What is he talking about, Mrs. Kingsley?”
Me: “Oh, Gryffin is just upset because I bought a domesticated fairy and she’s somewhere exploring the house.”



Kotori: “You mean Gwendolyn?! She finally got here? Awww, I can’t wait to see her!”



Gryffin: “Kotori, seriously, not you too. Look at the box! They sent her an empty box!”



Kotori: “It’s not completely empty. See? Her wardrobe is still here. Oh, look how tiny she is! I never thought they’d send you a real fairy.”



Gryffin: “They didn’t send her anything!”
Kotori: (reading) “’Your fairy is very young and shy, but she’s quite used to humans, dogs, cats, and other pets. Give her some time to warm up to you, and she will be an invaluable addition to your household. Our company has devoted itself to bringing this sweet and helpful species back from near extinction, and we are the only one of our kind in the world. We have nearly three dozen fairy clans, and our adolescent fairies are excited to become a part of other families. Our mission is to close the gap between humans and fae and create new, safer, habitats for these once completely wild creatures in homes around the globe. We know that your home is ideal just because you’ve chosen to open it to Gwendolyn.’ Wow, that’s amazing, it’s personalized and everything.”



Gryffin: “Why am I the only one seeing what’s going on here? Come on, guys, wake up! This kind of stuff happens all the time. These Fairyland people created a site, got a bunch of suckers to send them money, then they sent out empty packages saying that we can wait weeks before we see something that isn’t really there in the first place and by that time, the site will be down, the phone number will be disconnected, and they will be long gone with most of my college tuition savings and no way to get it back. Mom! I can’t believe you got tricked like this!”
Me: “No, it’s all very legitimate. They have owner reviews and testimonials and everything.”



Gryffin: “From who? PETA? I give up. I’m going to go warn the Better Business Bureau about this.”



Kotori: “It’s a really fun idea, Mrs. Kingsley, but I’m wondering if Gryffin might be right? It does seem a little odd for people to be selling real fairies through the mail and expecting people to be content when they open an empty box.”
Me: “I know, but it would be nice if it were true. I guess I’ll give them a call in the morning and see about a refund.”



Kotori: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kingsley. I know how excited you were about this.”



Kotori: Too bad about all the commotion tonight. So much disappointment in such a small time-frame can’t be good for anyone.



Kotori (throwing Gryffin’s hat on the bed): But it is kind of fun to watch Gryffin get all worked up like that. I bet Mrs. Kingsley was pretending to believe in the fairy just so she could laugh inside about how hysterical he gets.



Kotori: I wish I’d let him come help film our scene, but I’d be too embarrassed to be Lady MacBeth if he were there watching me!



Kotori: pulling back the covers and Noticing Something Not Normal






Kotori: (throwing the covers back on) “EEEP!!!”



Kotori: (running out of the room) “Gryffin!!”



Gryffin: “You say you saw what in your bed, now?”
Kotori: “I don’t know – I just glimpsed it. I was too scared to get a good look. I just threw the covers over it and ran to get you.”



Gryffin: (flopping on the bed) “Mom got you all weirded out by the fairy thing, huh?”



Gryffin: “But if we pull the blanket back, I’m sure that we’ll find that it was all in your imagination.”
Kotori: “Be careful.”



Gryffin: “Uh huh. See? Nothing there.”



Gryffin: “And nothing to be freaked out about.”



Kotori: “Now I'm worried. What if I DID find your mom’s fairy in my bed, but now I’ve scared her off for good? What if she runs out and never comes back. What if she goes outside and something hurts her!”



Gryffin: “Kotori, seriously, don’t worry so much. I’m sure the Fairyland people explained that popping up in people’s beds without warning might cause an unexpected reaction like yours. Or, as is more probable, you were just tired and thought you saw something that wasn’t actually there, which still means that everything is fine and, once again, you don’t have to worry.”



Kotori: “Still, I’d better go tell your mom about it.”



Gryffin: “Thanks for saving me from my overactive imagination, Gryffin. You’re my hero. I’m sure you’re right – it’s just because I’ve been overworking myself lately. No wonder I’m seeing things. Maybe I shouldn’t try to do so much. Oh, you’re welcome, Kotori. Maybe we could do something relaxing together tomorrow so I can keep you safe from imaginary fairies.”



Gryffin: “Man, why can’t I ever say the right thing? I’m so stupid!”

Muffled laughter coming from Somewhere.



Gryffin: “Who’s there?”



Obviously, this is To Be Continued, and I feel bad that I can’t make any promises about when. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed it. Happy Holidays!