Unfinished Business: Early Winter Q & A, 2020

"Late Afternoon, Early Winter" by J.J.
Hi, Annake. We are high school students who want to ask some questions about some of your recent posts. Please don't show our names or school because your articles are not on our reading list, but our lame on-line classes are pretty much just reading the textbooks and doing the tests that come with them. We had a teacher last spring who suggested we ought to read your Earth Day blog post and gave us the link. She also wanted us to read the one for Arbor Day. Then we looked at the 'All About Color' ones and liked those too. They are all different, but the last one was the best one yet, and we wanted to know more about it. And we want to know if you are going to do another Time Travel one? Or what is next for the Color ones?

Okay, then: Welcome, Mystery Guests! We are indeed planning more posts in the 'All About Color' series, and I have a few things to say about them today. But first of all I want to shout out congratulations to Ishana Kumar. She won a top science prize for her project on the perception of imaginary colors. She is a 12-year-old 7th grade student who had to work within the restrictions of the corona virus guidelines. Her project may lead to a better understanding of some eye diseases, as well as of cognitive processing. You Go, Girl!

We have two new 'All About Color' features in the works, one for late Winter and one for Spring. I'm not sure yet which one will go up first, but the topics are: "The Psychology of Color" and "The Physiology of Color". The first one will deal with subjects like imaginary colors, camouflage, how color is used to sell things, how colors affect our moods, etc.

The second will discuss not only how human eyes work and the problems that may afflict human vision, but will also deal with some of the remarkable ways animals see things that humans cannot.

Now, as to the Time Travel article, it was designed to get you interested in what was going on at a pivotal time in Earth's history. I have never been convinced that all of the many species that appeared during the so-called Cambrian 'Explosion' just appeared out of thin air with no links to a developmental past. Remember the sediments collected from the lowest part of our hypothetical dive? When we examined those in our respective labs back in our own time, what do you think we would have found? Remember that they were sheltered by the sediments from the increasing supply of oxygen on the surface. Many such organisms are alive and thriving in oxygen-free or oxygen-poor environments such as deep sea deposits, caves, and deep mines today.

Black Smoker in Atlantic

Now I am going to give you a "magic word": EDIACARAN. And here is a link to follow (These Bizarre Ancient Species Are Rewriting Animal Evolution) into a field that is growing rapidly with findings from many parts of the globe. Read the side entries. Learn as much as you can and make your own decisions about the 'Explosion'. Keep track of the dates given and I think you will see why I set the time for our 'expedition' when I did. Have fun. Look hard at everything. Scientists were once "stumped" by the strange appearance of one of the Ediacaran specimens until someone else walked into the room and pointed out that they were looking at it upside-down. (Look up Hallucigenia: the "Which end is up?" controversy has been solved by new, better fossils and the electron microscope.)

Ask questions. Never stop asking questions. Probably the most important word in any language is "Why?" As any harried parent will tell you, it is usually the first question children ask, and they employ it ruthlessly. The second most important question is probably "How?". But very high on my personal list of important questions is the one that begins,"But what if...". That one will take you places!

As for whether there will be another tine travel adventure, J.D. and I will think about it. Personally, I would like to look at the relative speed at which birds and mammals repopulated the planet after the disappearance of the dinosaurs. In the meantime, stay safe and well — and do your homework!

You have shown several new border patterns lately as outlines or graphs. I work better if I can see things done in finished needlepoint. Is it possible to show some of the patterns done that way?

Of course it is. I will have to look at some back issues. so it may be a while before I get caught up, but I will put several on this post. Some of the ones from "Something Fishy" were not meant for needlepoint or cross-stitch, but rather for outline stitching or crewel. But I do samples of new counted cross-stitch, tent stitch, or solid upright Gobelin stitch before I file them, so those should be fairly close to the surface. Choose your own color schemes. You may want to do figures like flowers, hearts, and strawberries in natural or conventional colors, or you may want to experiment. If you are following a geometric design, then the light and dark values should stay as close to the original design as possible, regardless of the color scheme. Happy stitching!

We had a lot of fun with the Thanksgiving games. Thanks for those. How did you think of them? Are you going to do more of them in future blogs?

You are very welcome. I'm so glad you liked them. I always used games in all my years of teaching, so I'm accustomed to making them. They are more fun than tests (and can tell a teacher just as much about the progress of the class). We played a lot of forms of Jeopardy, too. Look for New Year's games on December 26th, for sure, and there may be something for Valentine's Day, but that hasn't been decided yet. I'm thinking about something for Easter, too, especially if travel and gathering restrictions haven't been lifted by then.

I loved the mask! Did you make it? Have you made any others?

I did not make it. It was made for me as a gift and meant to be worn on my chest as a neckerchief, but it was easy for me to adapt it into a mask. I am working on a couple of designs of my own. I had a whole box of broken necklaces, "orphan" earrings, beads and other items that could easily adorn a bandanna. Unlike the original design, which I hope to wear as a neckerchief again someday, the new masks will have decorations that can easily be removed so that the mask can be laundered. Look for pictures sometime in mid-January.

Hey, I liked the fish stories. Got another one?

We were fishing one of the many mesa lakes early one summer morning. I like peace, quiet, and space when I fish. All three were somewhat lacking where we were and I was about to suggest we move. Some guy with an over-sized, loud, power boat was zooming in and out between boats bragging about his boat and his catch, although he only showed a medium-sized rainbow trout. He swung around ahead of us and my line went slack. I was pretty sure he had cut it, which did not endear him to me.

I was reeling in my line. When it broke the surface, I saw I had a passenger — a crayfish nearly a foot long. Just then Mr. Obnoxious pulled up alongside, too close for comfort.

"What are you fishing for, Honey?", he yelled at me.

"Oh, no," I called back in my sweetest voice. "I'm not fishing. I'm teaching this crawdad to water-ski!" I held up the crustacean in question.

With a facial expression somewhere between affront and alarm, Mr. O. gunned his motor and roared away to annoy people in another part of the lake. Once he stopped laughing, my husband started the trolling motor and moved off in the opposite direction to find a more peaceful spot. Then I gently released the crayfish, thanked it, and dropped it back into the lake.

I wish you fair weather and good fishing.