Catching up

The snow has since melted off the grill, but it was a great layer cake of snow for the longest time:

Snow on the grill

Recent sunrise

Felt skirt and tie-dye experiment on scarf

By the way, we had sun come into the house today! First time I've seen that since November.

New stove

Here's a picture when I still had hair:

Kate and Rob with hair

 We got a new wood stove, big enough to heat the whole house from the downstairs. Monday the chimney sweep came and gave it a clean bill of health - better than the old one upstairs.

Kate and the new wood stove

The scarf look

Smile for the camera

 In the pictures above you can't see the whole scarf, but the colors are better than the image below. I made this scarf in grad school with a friend who wanted to learn batik. We spent many joyful hours with melted wax over a sterno fire. We also learned a lot about color theory, this being yellow and turquoise dye. The designs are from a Chinese paper cut book I just adore.

Whole scarf

 The fan really is turning:

Stove as the star

Update

Well, it's been an interesting month, for sure. What's going on is that three days before I went on that flight over the Chukchi Sea, I went to the doctor with a cough and fatigue. The cough is most likely due to my blood pressure medicine (ace-inhibitor cough), but only crops up when I'm otherwise unwell. I used to get that cough in the spring before I took vitamin D regularly.

Anyway, the fatigue and tachycardia (fast heart) were more alarming to the PA I saw. She had me get an EKG, then a chest x-ray. The x-ray showed a mystery mass in my mediastina (between the lungs, behind the breast bone). The next week I got a CT scan and a biopsy of the thing - lymphoma. It's the most treatable of cancers, but by the time I met the cancer doctor, another lymph gland was acting up, next to my neck. A week later I had the surgery to put in a Power Port for giving me chemo and the first of the chemo treatments.

I'm in for four chemo treatments, spread three weeks apart, then another PET scan in Anchorage to assess what's what, then possibly two more chemo treatments. Yes, that's up to 18 weeks of "chemo brain". I'm on Family Medical Leave, trying to get a little work done from home each day.

It has been suggested that we set up a Caring Bridge site for all of this:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/katehedstrom/

More about the trip

First, a sunrise picture from home:

 Second, someone was asking for more on the science of flying over the Arctic. We flew to Pt Lay, then turned north, dropping radiosondes as we went (turn off your Bluetooth!) The second one got stuck, so someone had to take apart the launch tube.

 Back together! The next six went without a hitch. We flew to 73 N, then turned around. The chief scientist said that if anything, we should have gone farther north. He was looking for how the atmospheric boundary layer changes as the air comes from the south and hits the sea ice. With 50 miles of pancake ice in the marginal ice zone (MIZ), the air was still seeing the water underneath. So we didn't get far enough into the solid ice. They'll get another chance this coming week.

 Once we turned south, that's when we alternately flew above the boundary layer (roughly 5000 ft) and just above the surface (200 ft), with slow transitions between for measuring the turbulence through the boundary layer. Once we got back south of the ice, they let out a few AXBT's for measuring ocean temperature profiles:

The plane has a lot of sensors and each science station has a Linux computer with access to the incoming data. The chief scientist set me up with a display with a few of his favorite inputs, including altitude, wind speed, and a radar sensor which was designed to measure surface wind speeds based on the wave state. The latter turns out to be a good way to see the ice edge even through clouds.

Sea Ice at Last

Over twenty years ago I was sucked into a sea ice modeling project. We didn't do a great job then, but nevertheless we're still in the business. I've thought maybe I should go out and see some sea ice, but it just never happened - until today. Today I got to go on a NOAA P3 flight over the Chukchi Sea, all as a day trip from Eielson Airforce base.

I took a lot of photos, most of them terrible. Here are a few that almost might pass for tolerable:

Over the Brooks Range, running away from the sunrise.

At the northern extent of the flight the ice was thin first-year ice, mostly solid with some openings and thin spots.

Fresh ice.

Flying South into more broken ice.

Farther South the ice is pancake ice with swells from the South.

Winds are strong and it shows over open water.

Swells casting shadows.

Back over land, North of the Brooks range.

Science is done so I got to sit up front for a few minutes.

An interesting river.

View of fog

We got up this morning for our last Adopt-A-Highway pick up of the season. From our house, it was a lovely morning:

Above the fog

As you might guess, by the time we got to town, we were in the thick of it. It even started drizzling by the time we cleaned up our mile.

This afternoon I went by the dye garden to cut off the rest of the tansy. It goes to seed, dies, and becomes stiff stalks cluttering the bed if left alone. So I cut them all down today and left them on the grass for the botanical garden people to deal with.

On the Fiber Factor front, I'm resting this round out, but challenge five will be announced next week. Meanwhile, people have been asking me about notes for the challenge three sweater. I finally got them rounded up (with a few new photos) and you can download them from http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/unexpected-angles.

Dye harvest 2013

This past Saturday we had our dye harvest party. I didn't get pictures or emails of any participants, but we had a good number - not too few, not too many. On the Wednesday before, I dug up some madder and started soaking the roots:

Madder roots

 One thing that's fun to knit is space dyed yarn, made into a giant loop (10 m or more):

Wet Tofutsies tangle

Dry Tofutsies giant loop

Fleece, roving, Kenzie yarn

 The lovely purple stayed in the pot, while the yarn turned dull blue:

Purple basil pot

Dye garden today, flax in foreground

My prize Kenzie yarn with dyed leftover Kenzie

 What prize, you ask? My prize from Skacel for playing along in challenge 3 of the Fiber Factor.

Tofutsies: basil and tamed giant loop