Fall in Minnesota

I've been super busy the last week two weeks, but I finally get a chance to relax now! Here are some highlights of the last two weeks. As you can see-- not all bad.
The first pictures are from a field trip for Structural Geology class to Baraboo, Wisconsin to see some Baraboo Quartzite and a giant fold. The first one is Devils Lake.
This is the vertical bedding that shows you're on the inverted limb of the fold. The quartzite is on the right and on the left is a shale. There was also a sign that said that this rock is a "geologic mecca." Take that as you will.






The third picture is from another field trip, this time to Northeastern Minnesota for my Glacial Geology Class. This is Jay Cooke State Park (have you been there?) It is absolutely gorgeous, even though the weather was in the 40-50's and wet. Those rocks are greywacke, a sandstone that has been metamorphosed.




We also walked on a peat bog and saw some mudcrack formation in action. And we went to Lake Superior and did some Agate-searching. These are really unique rocks that form from water filling gas vesicles in cooling magma. There are a lot of them along Lake Superior and glaciers carried them all around Northeast Minnesota. I think I'm going to try and make some jewelery with them or something....
















And then this weekend was the Zombie Pub Crawl... My friends Dave & Chris went all out (Roman Zombies) and my friends Nick and Joelle and I were just pretty bloody. But a great time was had by all the undead. ..









And, back to knitting! I am working on a sweater! Wow, this is hard. I got this gorgeous green yarn and I have a pattern that is supposed to have cables down the front but I am not including those so it's just going to be plain. you knit it top down in the round, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

So..... I'm a busy girl. Plus, I still need to finish that entrelac bag.... I think it'll be cute but I'll probably give it to someone for Christmas I think. I have so many little hand bags like that.
Hope all is well with you two!

summer in the city

So I know this is sort of cheating since Jill made them not me, but look at my new socks!! A little cozy for this heat we've been having but I really love them and Jill sure does know my colors...
I have been super busy with making up classes and working and my summer class and everything, but I just took my last final and all I have to do is hand in a final cpy of a paper and I'll be home free!

I have been working in the experimental petrology lab more and more and I got my own project to work on this summer which is super exciting. It's a little complicated but I'll give you the run-down: I am going to be using this technique (called MISE or modified iterative sandwich experiment) to try and determine the compositions of equilibrium melts at 3 gigapascals. Basically, I take some crushed up synthetic mantle minerals (peridotite) and I take some powder who's composition I guess ("meat" of the sandwich, if you will), and put them in an itty-bitty capsule, put them in layers of graphite, magnesium oxide, barium carbonate, and lots of steel, and crush them with a piston cylinder to 3 GPa and 1449 degrees celcius and see what happens. I see what the composition of the resulting melt is, and do another run with that composition as the meat. And again and again until I get the same melt every time, at which point I've determined the equilibrium melt for that peridotite at 3 Gpa and 1449 Celcius. Pretty cool huh?


Other than that, I've been seeing this guuuuuuuy, Brian. We're actually going to Chicago this weekend for Father's Day because that is where he is from. Then next weekend we're going to Two Rivers. Crazy. The weather has been gorgeous so I've been doing tons of biking and galavanting around the city and it's marvelous. So, now that I won't be so busy expect many many more knitting updates from me.

Some summertime photos: Brian & I hiking, the Superior hiking trail, views of Minneapolis...