the evolution of slimon, the slime mold

This semester, I'm taking a class called Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds, taught by Professor George Hudler. This class is something of a beginner's foray into mycology. We had a demo session in place of class one day last week, and one of the activities at this demo session included "making" your own pet slime mold. At this DIY slime mold station, I used a scalpel to cut off a nail-sized piece of slime mold-covered agar and placed it in my petri dish, along with 10-20 oat flakes. I sealed my petri dish with parafilm (it looks like tape, but it's stretchier and more epic) and that slime mold has been growing ever since I brought it home on Thursday.

Above: Slime mold as of Thursday evening, around 6pm. I named him Slimon. He's yellow. He's the little triangular bit you see just left of center. It's not easy taking pictures of a pet slime mold in a petri dish filled with condensation.

Below: Two photos of Slimon on Friday morning, 11am. Not much has changed overnight, but he's started to produce spores, creeping out toward some of the oats nearby.

 

Below: Two photos from Friday afternoon, 4pm. Slimon's really starting to take off. You can see all the little networks that are forming outward in a circular pattern. Fungi tend to grow this way so as to disperse their spores most efficiently. (Interesting fact: slime molds are not really fungi - they are actually protists - but mycologists like to include them in the fungi kingdom anyway.)

What causes a slime mold to produce spores, you might ask? There are a number of factors, really, but changes in moisture and food availability are the two main factors at play here.

 

Below: Slimon on Saturday, 12pm. He's grown quite an amazing amount in just 16 hours. Just look at all those networks and protoplasmic strands!

Below: Slimon on Saturday, 2:30pm.

I know a lot of you might find this kind of stuff to be a bit squicky, but I think slime molds and fungi in general are really amazing and beautiful organisms on another level. They operate in mysterious ways, and there are always new species and things to discover. They've done a lot in human history (e.g., "nature's ultimate recyclers," the Irish potato famine, penicillin, the deliciousness that is the enoki mushroom...), and you have to totally respect that.

Above: Slimon, late Saturday night, around 11pm.

Below: Slimon, 12 hours later on Sunday morning, 11am.

I'll leave you with some links to more slime mold-related reading, because I find these articles to be really interesting:

• Can Answers to Evolution Be Found in Slime?, New York Times, October 2011
• Railways and slime moulds: A life of slime, The Economist, January 2010
• Hunting Slime Molds, Smithsonian Magazine, March 2001

dobbs ferry cowl

Back in October, I discovered this local yarn store down in the Commons, where I picked up a lovely Rowan wool yarn. You can't tell very well from the photos, but it's a very pretty deep evergreen color with blue-gray flecks embedded. I decided to use this yarn for the Dobbs Ferry Cowl from Lion Brand Yarn (if you have a Ravelry account, you can check out my project here), which I gave to my sister for Christmas.

The pattern is originally from Lion Brand Yarn but has also been made available on Martha Stewart's website.

My mom likes being mentioned on my blog, so this is a shout out to her for modeling for my pictures:

diy gift wrap

Just one final exam stands between me and the last month long Christmas holiday I'll ever have. Naturally, I've been procraftinating and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and drinking coffee to avoid studying.

It's working pretty well.

On Tuesday, I made wrapping paper and gift tags with some of the fly femmes at the Cornell Women's Resource Center. I'm convinced that this is the best DIY project I would never have done on my own.

With just a handful of supplies, such as...

• a big roll of butcher paper (okay, granted, I have no idea where one purchases butcher paper unless you're a teacher but I suppose you could always improvise with brown grocery bags),
• stamps (or make your own with potatoes and vegetables - the possibilities are endless),
• ink pads (I'm really in love with the metallic gold ink I used... it didn't go on very smooth but you know, as Jamie Oliver always says, I like it a bit more rustic anyway),
• glitter glue, stickers, maybe even some scrapbooking paper if you're feeling fancy

...you too can say goodbye to commercial gift wrap! Perfect for the wrapping paper savers in your life.

 

madam rosmerta's butterbeer

Weekend project with some friends. Back in October we made butterbeer using a recipe adapted from the one on the Huffington Post. Homemade butterscotch (butter + brown sugar), seltzer water, and butterscotch whipped cream on top. Seriously perfect for a Harry Potter party.

halloween pumpkin-carving

I've been involved in pumpkin-carving activities exactly three times in my life. The first time was in pre-school, and my job was to take out the pumpkin guts with my bare hands (it was cold and gooey and seriously traumatizing). The second was over a decade later, during my freshman year at Cornell, when GCF held a pumpkin-carving contest. I don't remember it clearly - I know there was a lot of pumpkin-hacking going on. Mostly I watched the action from a safe distance.

This year I participated in APO's Halloween pumpkin-carving event. Pumpkins upon pumpkins upon pumpkins were provided, along with some really legitimate pumpkin-carving tools. I worked with three other girls and this is what happened (ghosties and Harry Potter pumpkin! - we were so proud):

 
 

how to: ombré hair

Last spring I bleached (and then dyed and then bleached again) my hair. I wanted it to have that ombré look (like these people here), and in an ideal world my hair would be fading to lavender right now. Unfortunately Mystic Violet did not turn out so well for me (hence Bleach-a-thon Part II). The good news is that Bleach-a-thon Part II did indeed work out, so now my hair looks like this (the third photo being most current):

   

Bleach + creme developer. Mix.
The first thing I did (besides look up a thousand variations of the same tutorial online) was buy a box of powder bleach (usually contains a couple packets of powder and a set of plastic gloves) and creme developer/creme peroxide (30 vol is ideal, wouldn't go higher than 40) from Boots and Superdrug. Follow the instructions according to your box of bleach and mix the bleach and developer together really well using a wooden popsicle stick or something similar. I lacked any sort of mixing utensils, so I just put on my gloves and used my fingers. Can't give you my full recommendation on that one.

Run bleach mixture through hair.
I separated all of my hair into two roughly equal sections, scooped up a small fistful of my bleach + creme developer mixture, and ran the bleach through maybe 6-7 inches of the first section of my hair. I did the same to the second section. Then I let it sit for about 20-30 minutes and freaked out in amazement as my hair started fading from black.

Repeat but focus on the ends of your hair.
After the first round of bleach, I repeated the process but finger-combed the bleach through the bottom 4-5 inches of my hair only. Veddy important! This is what gives your hair the ombré look. More bleach = lighter hair color, so you want to make sure the ends of your hair have more bleach than the sections higher up. Let the bleach sit for another 15-20 minutes, and then rinse everything out. Be sure to treat your hair with conditioner afterward (no shampoo!). And tah-dah! Ombré hair.

   

Mostly I ended up winging the whole process, which is not ideal when you are messing around with your hair color for the first time. But I did look at this video tutorial first and found it to be really helpful, so here it is for your reference:

If you want to color your hair, depending on your natural hair color, you may have to tone your hair after you bleach it, and then dye your hair the color you want after you tone it. Make sure to do some research on that because different toners are used with different hair colors. Best of luck!

grrrl patches

I made these 2x4 inch patches a few weeks ago. The design on the left was inspired by oldmotherfox's Hairy Pits Club patch, available on Etsy (in other words, I shamelessly stole and altered it. Sorry girl). To make these, I used handmade stencils, scrap fabric and white acrylic paint, though the stencils were not all that effective. My lines were all really messy, so I had to touch them up with black paint obviously.

I have some more fabric and some more paint sitting next to me, and two guys I know have asked me to make patches that represent various physical accomplishments (e.g., completing the saltine cracker challenge), so I suppose that will be my next project. After that, I want to buy studs and go to town on my denim vest.