I Like #99

Welcome to another week of I likes!

There were several good things this week to celebrate.

1.  Getting to spend a good amount of time quilting!!  This was really exciting for me.  I spent all of December knitting and then the holidays traveling, so it was wonderful to get back in my studio and quilt.  Of course it was for a January 31st deadline, and of course both my main sewing machines broke, but I borrowed two sewing machines from a friend (thanks Melody!) that were also Janome's so I was able to quilt and use my same feet and bobbins and everything.  Here's a sneak peak of what I've been working on.  It's a quilt about invasive species and their dastardly effects on our native habitats.  More on it to come!

2. Getting a bit caught up on blogging!  I got to blog about two projects I finished late last year, one was a mini-quilt that was a gift for a cousin and one was the knitted shawl I made for Becky for Christmas.  I think they both turned out nice, so check out those posts!

3.  Working with Blue!  We had our first dog training lesson and it went great.  Unfortunately for us, the instructor had a baby earlier this week so we won't have any more lessons for a little while, but we've been practicing.  It's been fun working with him, especially now that we sometimes have a little light in the morning.

4. I don't usually talk about things from work here, but we had a really cool thing this week.  We've been working for over a year to get some modifications done to our microscope to enable us to image the blood vessels inside the living mouse brain and we finally got it done this week.  One of the things my lab studies is how changes in blood vessels contribute to cognitive decline and mobility defects in the elderly, and it's been really important to get this technology in place so we can study how the vessels are changing in real-time.  This picture shows blood vessels in the brain of one of our anesthetized study animals.  This one was a control, but now we can start studying the mice that model human aging.  I'm super excited.

5.  Reusing things I already had!  I didn't used to sit in this part of the living room (it was where Mike usually sat), but over the fall, I sat there quite a bit to knit.  Unfortunately it was really really dark and I kept thinking I needed to buy a floor lamp since there's no room for an end table.  But the area is really congested already and I hated to buy something new, so my sister just suggested I reorganize and put a regular lamp there instead in the built-in.  I did that right after the break (just took out a shelf and moved it to the other bookcase) and it's so much better!  I can't believe it took this many years to think to do that!  I'm not much of a house re-organizer, so this felt like a big yet stupidly simple change.

In the first pic you can kind of get an idea of how it used to be and the second one is the new illuminated version!  Still not super bright, but enough light over the chair to knit!

Hope you're all having a great week!  Click on over to LeeAnna's to see more things to like!