The Hornet Saga

Gather 'round children, and let me tell you a story. This is the story of the hornets that decided to make their home on our balcony, and the leasing office that wanted nothing to do with them.

Our story begins last Wednesday (July 2nd) when I was out on our balcony watering our container garden. I noticed a large swarm of (rather large) insects near the corner of the over-hang, and remarked on it to my mother, who was on the phone with me at the time.
She suggested that I call an exterminator. I shrugged it off. "Meh," I said. "There are some bugs, no big deal."
I changed  my mind fairly quickly when said insects began attacking me. I was hit a few times in the head and shoulders by dive-bombing maniacs, and I fled indoors. I took a look at the corner of the balcony from the vantage point of our window... And saw this:

I called the leasing office as soon as I got off the phone with my mother. I explained that there was an alarmingly large nest on the outside of our balcony. I was told that the exterminators were actually in the complex, and there was a good chance that someone would come out that day to take care of the nest.
I gave the office detailed directions to pass along to the exterminator, explaining clearly that the nest could not be seen from the balcony, and that if the exterminator would look at the roof from the window I indicated, he would be able to see the nest no problem.

My husband and I went out that night, to see a fire-works show, and by the time we came back it was late, and dark, and we were tired. But we saw that a service note had been left for us. The service note had a box checked off on it... The box read "treated". It was dark, and we couldn't see the nest, but we were happy to know that the bug problem was over.

We were not so happy the next morning, when we woke up to see that the nest was still there, and that there were bugs till flying in and out. I called the leasing office again before I had to leave for work. I was told that the exterminator had been there the evening before, and that he sprayed. When I asked why there were still bugs flying around, the lady at the leasing office said:
"I don't know, that's not my profession."
When I asked her if she could find out for me, I was told that it can take 24 to 48 hours for the bugs to all die, and that it was all perfectly normal. I asked if I could call again in a few days if the bugs were still there, and I was answered very dismissively.

That was Thursday (7-3), and we had a very busy weekend. We didn't get home until Saturday night, when we noticed that the nest was still there. Sunday morning there were more bugs swarming around, and by Monday morning (7-7), when I called the leasing office again, the nest looked like this:

Bigger and badder. Yuck. I called the leasing office and was initially given the run-around. Finally, I was told that they would call an exterminator. I was frustrated and expressed this by explaining that we had been dealing with this issue since Wednesday. The lady at the leasing office said:
"Okay, we'll order and exterminator for Wednesday." And then hung up on me.
Great, annoying, but at least we'd be getting this taken care of.

This time, I was home for the exterminator, and it was a lucky thing. I took him over to the window, and showed him exactly where the nest was. What was the first thing he said?
"Good thing you were here, I never would have spotted that."
He confirmed my suspicions that the nest had never been sprayed to begin with, and gave me a name for our intruders.

Bald-Faced Hornets, nasty little things, and nothing to mess around with, according to the exterminator. I asked him why the nest hadn't been sprayed last week, when I first called. He said that the guy probably walked out onto the balcony, didn't see the nest, sprayed a bit and went home. I explained that I left detailed instructions with the leasing office. But apparently, the leasing office didn't pass along any of those instructions.

TL;DR?

• We had a hornet problem.
• I called the leasing office - they promised to take care of it.
• When the hornets persisted in being alive, I called them again
• They continued to be dismissive with me - telling me it wasn't a problem
• When the hornets were still there almost a week later, I called again
• This time, they were rude, but did call an exterminator
• He came and informed me that the nest had never been sprayed
• This time, he sprayed and killed the hornets

How do I know. Because this time, the nest looks like this:

See all those gross yellow things? Those are eggs, ready to hatch into more hornets, like ~50 more of them! I'm so glad that I was able to get this hornet thing taken care of, but super annoyed that it took a week to do it!
I explained to the leasing office how they needed to handle this, and they were rude and dismissive, and as a result, I couldn't enjoy my balcony or take care of my plants the way I wanted to for the past week. I almost wouldn't mind so much, if we weren't paying quite so much for rent...

What's the moral of this story, dear readers? The moral is that this is not how you treat your leasers. The moral is that if you want people to continue renting you need to treat them with more respect, and respond more promptly to service calls. You need to take care of maintenance issues, rather than telling your renters to take care of it themselves.

For now, I'm upset yes, but I'm also relieved that this hornet problem is over and done with, and we'll just have to wait and see what the next issue will be...

Knitting Entrelac

I've had this post sitting in my "drafts" folder for a very long time now, I think maybe 6+ months. So long that I don't remember why I didn't just sit down and write it in the first place. Maybe I wanted to wait until I was finished with my entrelac scarf? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm still not exactly "done" with my scarf... Okay, I'm not even half way, but I want to write about it! I've done enough (about 21") to really feel like I've got the hang of the method, and I don't see what I can't share what I've learned.

Now, I'm going to be very honest, I am not a knitter. I like to pretend I am, but I really only know a few basic stitches. For those of you who've been following me for a bit, you may remember my cable scarf, which I scraped (or "frogged") numerous times before finally getting the hang of the repeat... That was probably my greatest knitting accomplishment to date, and I still haven't finished it. It's just about as long as it was back in 2012...

So, being just a beginner knitter, when I saw this gorgeous Entrelac Scarf (by Allison LoCicero), I didn't think that I would be able to do it at all. But I got out my needles and some yarn, and I tried it anyway. I first saw the pattern on YouTube, on the channel VeryPink Knits. The video was called (of course) Learn to Knit an Entrelac Scarf.
The video was endlessly helpful in my endeavors to knit this scarf. Being sort of a beginner knitter, I was nervous, but it really isn't nearly as hard as it looks (though feel free to tell you friends how complicated it was when they compliment you on it).

Wanna get started?

Here's What You'll Need to Know:

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You should come into this project with a basic knowledge of how to knit and purl (the 2 most basic stitches in knitting). There are a few other techniques that will need to be mastered (or at least learned) in order to make this scarf, but they're not hard, and if you can knit & purl, you can learn them.
They are:

sl (slip one) - to slip a stitch, you put your needle in the stitch purl-wise, then simply move it from the left needle to the right without having worked it. 

kfb (knit-front-back) - you put your needle into the stitch and knit it normally, but before taking the stitch off of the left needle move your right needle into the back loop of the stitch (as if you were going to knit it again), and then wrap and pull them both off. You've turned one knit stitch into two! 

m (make) - to make a stitch, you use your needle to pick up the "bar" between stitches and put it on your right needle. You've just made a stitch out of nothing! 

ssk (slip-slip-knit) - in this scarf, to slip-slip-knit you will slip two stitches (as if to purl) from your left side needle onto your right needle, then knit them together.

psso (pass slipped stitch over) - This isn't as weird as it sounds. Basically, what you're doing is passing a slipped stitch over the next one on the needle, just as you would when you bind-off your work.


You will also (at various times) have to knit or purl two stitches together, but this is very simple to do. Instead of picking up one stitch to work, you just pick up two. Easy as pie.

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My recommendations? Read through the pattern, more than once if you need to. Watch the video continuously (I've watched it about 6 times all the way though, and I keep jumping back and forth between sections as I need). And don't be afraid to make mistakes. There are some tricky stitches in this pattern. Just take it slow and don't worry, you can do it!

Before you know it you'll have a beautiful chunk of fabric like this:

So grab your needles and get started! Don't worry if you don't have a long-dyed variegated yarn, use what you've got, it'll be beautiful regardless!

I'd love to see what you guys come up with! You can find me on ravelry.com (feel free to "friend" me!), or as always, you can leave a comment here on the blog. I can't wait to see your projects, and Happy Stitching!

P.S.: Don't worry if your scarf often looks like this:

It's normal, trust me.

Librarian's Corner: Homecoming

Homecoming

by: Cynthia Voigt

When I was in middle school, my best friend and I were very avid readers, but we had very different tastes. She liked the Baby Sitter's Club books while I was starting to get into Stephen King. As a result, our book choices didn't tend to over-lap much (with the notable exceptions of the first few Harry Potter books and Ender's Game).

One of her all time favorite books was Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt, she must have read it at least a dozen times by the time we were 13. Obviously, she tried to get me to read it, but I wasn't really all that interested. I knew that it had something to do with kids our age, and family issues, and they were looking for their mother... but it sounded boring and really touchy-feely, and not for me.

Fast-forward about 13 years. My husband and I were in New York for our niece's wedding, and over the weekend, I was looking for something to read. I noticed a copy of Homecoming sitting around, and remembering that it was my best friend's favorite book when we were kids (and that it's one of my mother-in-law's favorite books), I thought I'd pick it up and give it a try. I'm very glad I did. I loved the book, and only wish that I had actually given it a chance when I was still in middle school.

The book centers around the Tillerman children, who have been abandoned by their mother while on their way to stay with a relative in Bridgeport, CT. Dicey, the oldest, has been put in charge of her three younger siblings: James, Maybeth and Sammy; and is responsible for getting the four of them to Bridgeport safely. While there are many times in the book where the plight of these young children is heartbreaking, it is more of a 'girl's adventure' book than anything else. Dicey is cunning and resourceful, and more than willing to do whatever it takes to keep her family together. 

The children spend their days walking to Connecticut, and spend their evenings fishing cooking and camping out. The spirit of the adventure takes them all the way to Connecticut, where they find themselves in an unexpected situation. I don't want to give anything away (no spoiler alerts needed here), but let's just say that this is yet another situation that Dicey will have to cope with as she tries to keep her small family together.

I wish that I had picked this book up when I was Dicey's age, I know that I would have loved it. I was all into 'girl's adventure' and strong female leading characters when I was a kid, and if I had only listened to my friend, I would have had another wonderful book to love. Although actually, it isn't just one book. Homecoming is the first book in the 'Tillerman' series, followed by Dicey's Song (which I currently have checked out from the library, and plan to read soon). There are a total of seven books in the series, and I hope to read them all eventually, as I'm quite hooked.

So that's it for today. I hope you liked the first entry in a new monthly feature that I'm planning to run! The next Librarian's Corner will be posted on July 21st! Until then, keep checking back for more posts about things I'm doing! And I'd love to hear what you guys are reading! Let me know in the comments!

Happy Reading!

Crocheting a Uterus

So uh, I crocheted a uterus. Why? Why the hell not? It's cool as all get out and it didn't seem to hard. So I made one.

I'm not going to get into all of the deatils about the pattern, because its not my pattern. And besides, you can check it out here. You might have to sign up for a ravelry.com account, but don't worry, we don't bite... much.

Anyway, onto the uterus! (I bet you don't hear that phrase very often, do you?).

I had never made anything stuffed before, and I wasn't sure that I would be able to crochet a 3d shape, but it was actually pretty easy.

I started out with the body of the uterus, just crocheting in the round, following the pattern and watching as it started to take shape. The only sort-of tricky part here is that you have to pull the tube at the bottom up into the body of the uterus to make the cervix, but it's actually pretty easy, just follow the pattern carefully and you'll do fine.

Next up were the fallopian tubes, and these were much trickier than the body, if only because they are a lot more narrow, and since I was working with a 5.00 hook, I sometimes had trouble getting my hook in there and stabbing through the right stitches. My advice? Just be patient, count your stitches and use stitch markers, I cannot stress that last part enough.

My un-assembled uterus

The little loopy bits on the end may look tricky, but they're not too bad. I had to google how to do it though, because it's not clear in the pattern. Here's the link I used. Again, it just takes some patients and practice, you'll get it, I promise.

When you're done making all of the bits and parts (and it shouldn't take too long, there's only 3 of them after all), it's time to grab your pipe-cleaners and put the whole thing together! That's right, I said pipe-cleaners.

You stick them through the fallopian tubes, so that there's about 2" sticking out. This will help you attach it to the body of the uterus, and it will also provide some stability for the tubes, otherwise they get all floppy like.

So go ahead and place your tubes fairly high-up on the body of the organ. The pattern calls for a specific placement, and I recommend it. And then just attach them. And guess what? You're all done! You have yourself a crocheted uterus! How cool is that?

very cool indeed

Bonus points if you have a carved skull and a framed picture of the Mütter Museum to put your uterus next to!




So that's it! Go forth and crochet your own uteruses. Uteri? Either way. And I'd love to see what you come up with! Send me some pictures at CarynSKA@gmail.com, or friend me on ravlery.com (you know you want to); CarynSKA. Oooor... Just leave a comment with a link! I'm dying to see what you guys come up with!

Libraries without Books and Books without Libraries

When I was a kid my favorite place to be was the library, and my favorite thing to do there was to simply walk up and down the aisles and aisles of books and stare. Sometimes I would pull out an interesting book, sit down in the middle of the row and read it. This is still one of my favorite things to do in a library, and since I work in one, I often get the chance to wander among the stacks. Having said that, you will probably think that I am irreparably biased toward onsite collections, and honestly, I am. There is something magical and wonderful about being surrounded by endless rows of books, and there always will be, but that doesn’t mean that offsite collections don’t have their merits as well.

            In January of this year my husband and I took a trip to DC, and of course, since I’m a bit of a geek one of our stops had to be to the Library of Congress (where I got a library card, of course). The building was beautiful, and the main reading room was one of the coolest places I’ve ever seen, but one thing that was rather conspicuously absent were the rows and rows of books that I have come to associate with libraries. Now, that’s not to say that the LoC doesn’t have an onsite collection, of course they do. Rather, their onsite collection is carefully preserved, archived and catalogued, most of it away from the public eye. The LoC’s main job is the 9^th step in the ‘Life Cycle of Information’, that is, preservation. Yes, they do strive to make important pieces of their collection (like their Gutenberg Bible) available for the public to see, but most of their job entails preserving documents and artifacts from our country’s past.

Another library with a rather large onsite collection is the main branch of the New York Public library. There are 8 floors of stacks below 42^nd street containing who knows how many books (there are 53 million items stored over its many braches), though these stacks are again, not available to be browsed by the public. The NYPL is a research library, and these items are available to the public (you don’t even have to be a resident of the City of New York), but they are not there to be browsed. You submit an item request, and if you have the proper credentials, a librarian will fetch your book for you.

Now, having said all of that, you’re probably wondering what exactly my point is. My point (and I do have one) is that onsite and offsite can have much broader meanings than simply having a book inside the physical walls of the library. Working in a browsing library, and having pretty much grown up in one, I tend to think of an onsite collection as books that are available for me to browse through, look at, touch and even smell. I love being surrounded by books, but as you can see from the examples of two very well-known reference libraries, sometimes an offsite collection can be much more beneficial to the public.

Both of the libraries that I mentioned have extensive digital collections, and I’m not just talking about eBooks. They have both taken the time to digitize large portions of their collections, and especially items that are very old, very rare and very valuable. These are pieces of history that the public has every right to have access to; but many of the items are much too fragile even to be displayed, let alone interacted with. The only way that these items can be made available to the public is by putting them online, an offsite collection that can be accessed anywhere in the world. One such object is the $5 Confederate bill that was in Lincoln’s pocket the night he was assassinated (if you’re interested, click here to check it out).

As you can see, onsite collections can be extensive, but unavailable. While offsite collections can sometimes be accessed anywhere around the world. There are merits to both sides, and neither option is perfect for every occasion, or every collection. Any library that wants to really make a name for itself (and the Library of Congress has certainly done that) needs to employee both on and offsite collections. Even our small little local library has stacks that can be browsed, as well as eBooks that can be checked-out and read anywhere.

Access is Not Enough - Closing the Digital Divide

If you can't tell, I'm double-dipping here. I've been writing papers and responses for my grad school classes, and I'm just not having enough time to work on the blog as well. So I thought ya'll might like to take a peak at what I've been working on for school...

Current research states that if you want to be able to speak a second langue fluently you need to be exposed to it as a child. We often talk about basic computer skills as a language, describing ourselves as computer literate or illiterate. This suggests that in order to be fluent in the language of computers, we need to be exposed to be exposed to them as children. But now that most school-aged children are being exposed to computers, why aren’t we all equally successful? 

Because the Digital Divide is no longer about the ‘haves’ vs. the ‘have-nots’. Most children have access to a computer at school, but there is a world of difference between a school that can give each of its students a personal laptop and a school that has a lab with maybe 10 old desktops for a student body of 500+. This new Divide runs on socioeconomic lines. 

“Socioeconomic status for many individuals ultimately determines what type of technology (if any) they will have access to and, just as importantly, how often they get to use it” (Morrone, Witt 2013). Being in a classroom with a computer is no longer enough to make our students competitive. They need to not only have the computer, but to know how to use it, and how to use it well. Libraries can make a difference here, but I believe that the real solution to this gap will have to be provided by the schools. 

Speaking from my own experience, I believe that I greatly benefited from having access (both at school and at home) to a personal laptop. The high school that I attended was one of the first in the area to provide its students with access to laptops, able to be checked-out and used for both academic and personal pursuits. These laptops helped me to be more inter-active with my studies, and built the foundations of research skills that served me well in college. I went to a private school, and I know that the public schools in the area (though very good) did not have this program. 

Libraries can do and have done a lot to decrease the gap between the old ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, but often lack the resources to do more than simply provide access to the internet. In his article in the Public Library Quarterly, Bo Kinney tells us that “…provision of Internet access alone is only one part of bridging the divide, which is a function of broader social and technological inequities” (Kinney, 2010). The Divide, like so many in others in our country, can only be closed by education. 

This education has to come from schools, and at an early age. In their research into the Ohio school system, Lawrence Wood and Aimee Howley discovered that students attending schools in poor urban or rural areas had much less access to computers than students from wealthier school districts. Moreover, they also had older software and slower Internet speeds (Wood, Howley 2012). This needs to change. 

We can tell ourselves that we’re doing everything we can for our children, trying to give them a leg-up by providing them with access to a computer. But access alone is no longer enough. Just because you put a set of encyclopedias in your child’s bedroom doesn’t mean that they are able to access the information contained in them. Our children need to be taught how to use the latest technologies to further their educations and succeed in life. 

All students deserve this chance, and the only way to make that happen is to ensure that children from all socioeconomic have access to the same current technology, and are taught the same important skills. We’re working on one of those, let’s work on the other.

 

 

Kinney, B. The Internet, Public Libraries, and the Digital Divide. Public Library Quarterly, 29, 104-161. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01616841003779718

Morrone, M., & Witt, S. Digital Inclusion, Learning, and Access at the Public Library. Urban Library Journal, 19. Retrieved 5-17-14, from http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/urbanlibrary/article/view/1399/pdf_9

Wood, L., & Howley, A. Dividing at an early age: the hidden digital divide in Ohio elementary schools.    Learning, Media and Technology, 37, 37-41. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17439884.2011.567991