Yep, she's a sneaky one.... I go put a load of laundry in the washer, and when I come back I see this:



Not sure how much she ate, but I foresee a hyper and/or cranky afternoon.

(The chocolate mix is Shaun's, neither Emma or I use it. Nasty stuff.)

Remember this post from last December? The one when Emma took her new scissors and gave the cat a haircut? Well, the scissors have been in and out of timeout since then, as she alternately uses them responsibly and messes up. There haven't been any major disasters, just things like cutting paper she's not supposed to or snipping stray yarn ends (trimmings I hadn't gotten around to tossing yet) into little pieces. Nothing I was concerned about losing, but I want her to know that she needs to ASK before cutting anything other than her coloring paper. The scissors are currently in timeout. I though we were safe.

However. On Friday she got a hold of some old SEWING SCISSORS!!! This is something that she knows is completely out of bounds. Mommy's sewing (and knitting and crochet and spinning and weaving) things are not for touching. Up until now, this hasn't been a problem at all. I try and keep my stuff confined, and she knows not to play with anything in the loom room or the small bag I keep next to my chair. But she went into my supplies desk, and got the scissors. This is a picture of how she looked on Jan. 23:



Then Friday, when she came to wake me up in the morning, I noticed that she had a shorter piece of hair on one side. I asked her what happened to her hair, and she ran away. I knew something was up, so I went and looked in the bathroom, and found this:



That's just what I rescued off the floor. I wasn't about to fish the rest out of the toilet. She had cut 4" long sections of hair off, all over her head! It was bad enough that I had to do a remedial trim, to try and make her look less ridiculous.



Still a couple really short bits, but not as bad as it was. At least it's only hair- it'll grow.

And her response when I asked why (WHY?!) she did this? "I had stickies and tangles, Mommy." She had evidently gotten up early, and had been eating peanut butter out of the jar. Some got in her hair, so she was unable to hide the fact that she had been eating peanut butter. I guess she figured if she cut out the peanut butter, I'd never know.

I finished the first huck lace stole last night! Using the larger shuttle and memorizing the pattern really sped up the weaving, and I got into a good rhythm. I did 12.5 repeats of the pattern, hemstitched the end, and did all the finishing yesterday, in about 4 hours. Here it is still on the loom- I love the way a piece of weaving looks when the fabric is rolled onto the cloth beam. It looks so.... official and weaverish.



I decided to cut off the first stole before weaving the second and third, because I discovered two sleying errors that I want to correct. They aren't super noticeable, but they bug me enough that I want to correct them.

So I cut off the first stole, trimmed and twisted the fringe,



and wet finished it. I gave it an Orvus bath in the sink, then spun it out and rinsed it in the washing machine. I gave it a bit of gentle agitation during the rinse to make the yarn bloom. It dried overnight, I pressed it this morning, and voila!

Before and after:



The yarn poofed up and the lace areas are more defined. The wet finishing also smoothed out my sometimes uneven beat.



I love it. The fabric is so soft, and I like the huck lace pattern I designed. I'm looking forward to weaving the rest of this warp.



The specs:

6.1 oz (175 g) Jaggerspun Superfine Merino yarn, 18/2, 5040 ypp
set at 19 epi and 19 ppi
22.75" x 80.25" off the loom
20" x 75" after wet finishing
huck lace pattern (my own)


My selvedges still need work, though they improved the more I wove. I'll eventually get an end-feed shuttle, but for now I'll keep practicing. I was a little worried that 18.5 repeats would be too long (wasn't sure what the shrinkage would be after finishing), but I think it came out just right. It's a good length to wear. When I had it on for the pictures, I felt like I should be going to the symphony or something.

I hemstitched the beginning of the huck lace last night, and wove another three repeats of the pattern. I plan for each stole to have 18.5 repeats, so there's still a ways to go.



You can just barely see the beginning edge of the fabric, almost ready to roll onto the cloth beam. I think it should go faster from now on, though, because I switched shuttles. I started out using the 11.25" Leclerc shuttle I bought in 2004 to use with my rigid heddle loom, and it just wasn't working well. Every time I put the shuttle through the shed, it would dive down and catch threads from the bottom. Every single time. In order to get the shuttle through, I had to gently nudge it along from the top, reaching between the upper warp threads. So. Incredibly. Frustrating. I didn't know if it was the way I was throwing the shuttle, or the shuttle shape itself (though I used this same shuttle for lots of other projects with no problems), or the fine yarn, or the threading of the loom, or what. I struggled through two repeats this way, then decided there had to be a better way.



When that bobbin ran out, I switched to a 15" Leclerc that came with the loom, and WOW! What a difference! I can toss the shuttle, it makes it all the way across the fabric, and doesn't dive at all. I think the difference is that the larger shuttle weighs more and holds the threads down rather than bouncing along them. The larger shuttle also takes 6" bobbins instead of 4", so it holds a lot more yarn (yay!) and I discovered that if I load the bobbin into the shuttle so that the yarn comes off from underneath, it unwinds much more easily than if the yarn comes off over the top.

I have a pair of slippers. I love my slippers. I got them for Christmas 1987, my junior year of high school. My mom originally got me a pair of boot-style fake shearling slippers, but they didn't fit right and had a really uncomfortable hard plastic sole insert, so we took them back to shoe store at the mall to exchange them. When I saw a pair of real leather shearling moccasins, I knew those were the ones I wanted. So soft, so comfy. However, they were quite a bit more money than the fake shearling ones, $25 rather than $10. I could tell that my mom was reluctant, so I said I'd contribute the extra $15 (which seemed like a really big sum to me at the time- an entire evening of babysitting!) to get the ones I wanted.

They went with me to college in Maine, then to grad school in North Carolina, and were very useful when we lived in a drafty converted barn while Shaun was working on his doctorate. They have been on vacation to Ireland, skiing in Vermont, and were on my feet as I waddled around the hospital while in labor. It was a very well-spent $25.



Now, however, after 19 years of faithful service, it may be time to retire my slippers. I have patched them, and patched the patches. There is no longer enough stable leather on the sides to sew a new patch on. The back flaps have blown out again. The wool inside is felted completely flat and partially rubbed away, and no longer gives the slightest bit of cushioning between my foot and the ground. Rest In Peace, slippers.

In the interest of warm feet, I need new slippers. But I'm crafty, I don't need to buy a pair, I can make my own! Da-da-DAAAA! Felted clogs to the rescue! I may have been the only knitter in the blogiverse who had never made a pair of these, but no longer.

These are the Fiber Trends "Felted Clogs" pattern, by Bev Galeskas, and my first time felting something that has to fit. I must say that despite seeing other people's pictures on the web, I was very doubtful about the pre-felting size.



After two trips through the washer (once with jeans, once with a regular dark load), they turned out just right.



These are made from my own handspun, the same green yarn I used for the mittens (which are done, by the way, but I'm not completely happy with them yet). I made the women's size Large, shoe size 10 according to the pattern, because I think this handspun is slightly on the thin side of "worsted weight" and because I wanted very thick slippers. So I made a size larger than I normally would have and fulled them more. It worked beautifully. I could have stopped at once through the washer and been pretty happy with the fabric, but twice through gave a fulled fabric that is a good 1/4" thick (nearly 1/2" on the double layer sole), is very cushy, and should stand up to years of wear. They fit perfectly, and I may still add a suede sole for even more durability.

I'm currently blocking them on my feet (....wet slippers feel.... interesting), but after they dry a bit, I'll take them off to finish drying on the heater vent.

Here's to the next 19 years.

Well, finally! Actual progress on the huck lace stoles, after being stalled with a sleyed reed for far too long. While Shaun watched the football game today, I threaded the loom.....



beamed the 7 1/2 yard warp.....



tied onto the cloth beam and spaced the header....



and wove one repeat of the lace pattern.



Apparently, this took about six hours. I say "apparently" because while I started at 3:30 pm and finished at 9:30 pm, and that is in fact six hours, I have no recollection of that amount of time passing. It felt like two hours, tops. Singleminded? Yes, I am. Luckily, Shaun took care of feeding Emma and himself, and put her to bed. (I wonder if she brushed her teeth?) I emerged from the loom room ravenous, happy, and slightly dazed. That's very fine yarn!

The pattern is another that I "unvented." I was playing around with the huck lace structure on the computer (using WinWeave), learning how all the pieces fit together, and decided to see if I could create a structure that combined two different size huck diamonds on a background of plainweave. It worked! I'm sure this isn't the first time this draft has been woven, but it's so satisfying to understand the structure well enough to be able to create it from scratch. I'm also pleased that my warp calculations were correct, and the design is centered.

The yarn is Jaggerspun Superfine Merino (18/2), set at 19 ends per inch and 19 picks per inch (though I need to work on keeping this even!). As I mentioned before, this project will have many "firsts" for me, newbie weaver that I am. First time weaving with fine yarn , first time weaving huck, first time weaving a large piece, first time sleying more than one end per dent in the reed, first time fixing a sleying error (oops), etc. Overall, though, I think I'm doing well. The warp wound on nice and tight (a little scary to pull hard on that fine yarn!), and the tension seems even so far. The part I'm having the hardest time with so far is keeping the beat gentle. It's so fun to give the beater a "thwack" rather than a "push," and all I need is to snuggle the new pick up next to the one before. No beating!

Have you just about given up any hope of fibery work here? I nearly have myself. The reasons for this are several-fold.

Firstly, we had company this weekend. One of Shaun's fellow slug brain researchers (he really does do research on sea slug brains!) was here for four days, so the day before he arrived was taken up with cleaning the house etc. The loom room is also the guest room, so I still haven't threaded the huck lace warp. That's my goal for this week, after I fold the futon and unfold the loom.

The second reason for the lack of fibery work is much more subtle, sneaky, and insidious. Shaun and I got ourselves a wireless router for our DSL for Christmas. Which means I'm no longer tied to the big desktop computer for internet surfing. Which means that I can surf from My Comfy Chair. Which means that knitting/spinning/crochet/hardanger time is compromised. I mean, I say I'm just going to go online for a minute and check my email, then get back to knitting. Then I get online, and I say, "Well, I may as well check Bloglines while I've got the computer on..." then that leads to following links and admiring gorgeous fiber and yarn, and dreaming about wool combs and dye and Cormo fleeces and silk bricks and carders and Merino wool and Ashland Bay roving and.......... Well, at least it's only daydreaming and not actual spending. It's more fun that way, anyway. Though I think that wool combs may have to come to live at my house soon. I'm thinking Indigo Hound 5-pitch fine English combs. Anyone have experience with those? (Or a pair they don't want anymore?!) The reviews I've seen have been good.

The third reason for the lack of fibery posts recently is that I've been charting the green mitten pattern, and have been paralyzed with indecision. See, I got the idea to put some cable-y goodness on the back of the mitten, and have been having a hard time deciding and fitting the cable to the space and generally getting it to match what's in my head. I got a cable charted up last night- I'll test knit it today, and we'll see. I still think it needs tweaking.

I guess that's it for now, though I did want to share my happiness with a purchase I made yesterday.



We have a large Bissell ProHeat upright carpet cleaner that works great (love it), but it's a pain to lug it out just to clean up one little spot. With a three-year-old, an indoor/outdoor dog, and a cat who is prone to hairballs, we frequently have "little spots." I would put off cleaning up until there were several little spots, thus making the task more difficult than it needed to be. I was in Bi-Mart yesterday (aside: Bi-Mart is a 100% employee-owned, membership discount store that is our alternative to the giant Sprawl-Mart down the road. Lifetime membership is $5, and unlike Sprawl-Mart, doesn't make me sick to my stomach when I think about their business practices. Sorry, off my soapbox now.) Anyway, I was in Bi-Mart yesterday, and they had these small carpet cleaners on sale for 50% off. I got the last one off the pallet. It's about the size of a Dustbuster, much more convenient than the upright for little jobs. I was actually excited when the cat threw up last night- the scrubber worked great!

The Buggy Blogger Saga, Part 2

1) OK, so apparently the only email address I can get emailed to me with a comment is my own. Helpful, that. Everyone else still shows as "noreply_comment@blogger.com," even though PJ and I commented back and forth to see if it would work. It didn't, though we both have our emails set to public. I guess Blogger still has that little bug.

2) The blog backup via Scrapbook worked great. I saved my archives for each year separately, rather than all in one big lump as Russell described (though I tried his method as well, and it also worked), because that way I can update throughout the coming year without re-saving every post every time. I'll do each month of 2007 separately during the year, and consolidate 2007 at the end of December.

3) I figured out how to fix my inability to post pictures using Firefox. I cleared my cookies and cache. D'oh. That's right up there with making sure that the cord is plugged into the outlet.

4) Though I didn't mention it in the last post, I've also had the problem that I couldn't change the post date (either into the future or in the past) without it automatically changing to the current date and time. This came up because I went back into an old post to correct something, and wanted to preserve the original post date, not the date when I did the correction. Very frustrating. Then, two days ago, I accidentally discovered that if I entered the date with slashes, not dashes, it worked fine. As in: 12/20/06 was an acceptable format, but 12-20-06 would get reset to the current date/time. Of course, the default format for Blogger uses slashes, but my usual default is dashes, so that's what I was using when I manually entered a date. Haven't had any problems since I realized that, and maybe it'll help someone else.

Well! I think Blogger might have actually fixed something! You may remember that I have had problems replying to comments because the return address on the email Blogger sends me is "noreply-comments@blogger.com". Well, I posted a test comment to myself again today, and found that I actually got my own return address!

I discovered, through several test comments, that if you have the "Share your email" box in your Profile (accessible through the Blogger Dashboard) checked, your actual email will show up in the comment that's mailed to me. It does not show up as part of the comment on the blogpage, only in the email. It is also NOT necessary to have your Profile set to public, so if you don't want random people to be able to get your address, they can't.

Of course, I can't make you do this, but would you? It would make replying to comments much easier! (Of course, this solution doesn't help much for readers who don't use Blogger, but I don't know how Typepad and all those other services work...)

And while we're on the topic of the vagaries of Blogger, I discovered that while I haven't been able to publish photos using Firefox for the past month, I can publish them using Explorer. (This is using the Blogger photo button, not a third-party service like Flickr.) So if you're having photo trouble, try using a different browser.

One last thing- have you ever wanted to back up a copy of your blog, in case of catastrophic failure of the Blogger servers? (sarcasm: Not that anything would ever go wrong with Blogger, right?) Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't have way to export the Archives, apparently. Well, I found this site that gives a workaround. It requires Firefox and the Scrapbook extension, but both are free, and really, why wouldn't you want Firefox, a better browser?

Oooo! I'm famous! I submitted a picture of Emma's gansey to the Yarn Museum, in the "Yarn FOrward" gallery. Lots of pretty yarns at that site, lots of good links to other people's fibery doings.

I finished spinning the last of the purple merino/silk "top" last night. This fiber was definitely not top-like. Very hard to draft in spots. The silk was tangled in spots and clumpy, like it didn't get completely processed, and the merino and silk weren't very well blended. Where it was good, it was very very good, but where it was bad.....

Anyway, here's the finished bobbin.

I discovered that 100 g of fiber fills a Schacht bobbin nicely. Love the way the uneven dye job made swirly multi-tone singles. I'm going to wait until after I spin up the Sapphire roving to decide whether I want to ply them together, as I originally planned, or do each separately.

I don't have much of anything fibery to post about this time. The green mitten still doesn't have a mate ( I had an idea which will involve time with graph paper as well as frogging about half of the first mitten, and I haven't gotten around to actually doing it yet), the purple merino/silk bobbin still isn't full (though I'm about 2/3 of the way through the pile-o'-roving), and the huck lace stoles are still stalled (need to take a couple hours to thread the heddles and beam the warp). Lazy, lazy me. I spun for an hour last night, and that's it.

So, as a filler and because I thought of a whole bunch of better weird things after I did this meme the first time, here are Six (More) Weird Things About Me:

1) I have blueish hazel eyes, except for a large brown spot on the iris of my right eye. I've always felt that this is kind of cool.

(Both Emma and I now have pictures of our eyes posted here. Perhaps I should post Shaun's eye too, so the whole family is represented.)

2) I have to have the covers tucked completely around my shoulders when I sleep, right up to my chin.

3) When I eat a sandwich, the fillings must be in a specific order. Meat on the bottom, then cheese, then lettuce/other veggies. If the meat is not on the bottom, I will take the sandwich apart and rearrange it. If it's a PBJ, the peanut butter goes on the bottom. Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, however, are reversed and the cheese must be on the bottom. Also, Miracle Whip not mayo, and never, ever mustard.

4) I have never had a beer or other alcoholic drink (only about a dozen or so sips in my life, enough to know that I don't like them), a cup of coffee, a cigarette, or illegal drugs. The smells of coffee and beer make me nauseated.

5) I never wear any makeup, and haven't since high school (How can it be 18 years since high school? Gah.) I don't consider chapstick (or, as we call it, Lip Goop) to be makeup. I have the bad habit of picking at chapped lips, and Lip Goop is a necessity.

6) I like going to movies by myself. (Not that there has been much movie-going in recent years.) It's not so much that I specifically mind seeing a movie with other people, but if it's something I really want to see, I'd rather go alone. That way, nobody talks to me, I don't talk to anyone, and I can just enjoy the movie. And have the popcorn all to myself.

Emma likes Noggin, a kid's channel on TV. I like it as well, because it shows programs that are non-violent, imaginative, usually cute, somewhat educational, and there are no commercials. In between programs they show little short cartoons, problem-solving skits (counting, patterning, shapes, etc) by the Noggin hosts (a moose and a blue bird), simple cooking recipes that kids can do mostly by themselves, and music videos. One of the regulars for the music videos is Laurie Berkner, and there's one of her songs that I particularly like:

----------
I'm Not Perfect
by Laurie Berkner

I’m not perfect, no I’m not.
I’m not perfect, but I’ve got what I’ve got-
I do my very best, I do my very best,
I do my very best each day,
But I’m not perfect
And I hope you like me that way.

We’re not perfect, no we’re not.
We’re not perfect, but we’ve got what we’ve got-
We do our very best, we do our very best,
We do our very best each day,
But we’re not perfect
And I hope you like us that way.

You’re not perfect, no you’re not.
You’re not perfect, but you’ve got what you’ve got-
You do your very best, you do your very best,
You do your very best each day,
But you’re not perfect-

And you know I love you that way.

------------------

I think this is a wonderful message for kids (and adults) to hear. As often as possible, sincerely and honestly.

It seems appropriate that on St. Distaff's Day I have spinning to show, for the first time since before Christmas. I predrafted all the purple merino/silk yesterday, and spun up a partial bobbin today.



This is about a third of the roving, spun semi-worsted short draw to a thickish laceweight- I haven't measured the wraps per inch yet, but it's not froghair.

This was some fiber I got off Ebay several years ago, and while it is nice, it's not super-splendiferous. It was advertised as "assorted mill ends" of Jaggerspun Zephyr roving, and that seems to be the case. Definitely 50:50 merino/silk, but it came to me somewhat tangled, not a smooth rope of combed top. I don't think I made it any worse during the dyeing, but the pre-existing fiber disarrangement (as well as the extremely variable length of the silk fibers, anywhere from an inch or so to almost a foot) makes it a bit difficult to draft into a very thin and smooth single. It can be spun laceweight, just a bit thicker. Predrafting before spinning helps a lot, as it realigns the fibers somewhat.

In a previous post, Christina asked why I started the green mitten with a provisional cast on. I did this because I initially planned to pick up those stitches and knit an attached liner mitten to make these super warm and more windproof. I'm now debating whether to do this, because the mitten seems pretty warm as is. I may just do a knitted bind off.



You can't really see it in this picture, but three of the cables from the cuff extend up and around the hand. Two of them go around the thumb and merge into one, and the third goes up from the opposite side and meets the merged cable at the top. Spiffy.

OK, so dyeing is WAY. TOO. FUN. I had the remains of a bag of 50:50 merino/silk roving in my fiber closet, and the dye that I got for the Urchin Shawl, and no particular spinning project going at the moment, and well, colorful roving is more fun to spin, right? (Not that natural colored roving isn't lovely as well....)

I did take the time to mix up all the powdered dye into stock solutions this time though. I just measured out the powder when I dyed the shawl, but using stock solutions is much easier and less dangerous. You don't want to inhale dye powder.

I had a total of 200 g of the roving left, so I split it and did half in Purple:



and half in Sapphire:

The merino took up the dye much more than the silk did (I soaked the roving for half an hour before it went into the dye, but that probably wasn't enough to thoroughly wet the silk) so the finished dye job is streaky and variegated. However, when the roving is predrafted a bit to loosen it up and attenuate it, the silk and merino blend together, and the result is beautiful.

This is a 3% depth of shade, using each of the colors pure. The darker merino and lighter silk give the roving interest, and the finished yarns should have great depth.

I was originally going to spin a single of each color and ply them together, but now I'm thinking that I'll do each separately. The colors are so clear and bright, and if I spin a fine yarn, each batch will be enough for a shawl or stole.

Fiber work has been sporadic the past week or so. After I finished the Urchin Shawl I needed a little break, and just sort of drifted around.

I finally finished sleying the reed for the huck lace stoles yesterday. I started this before we went to Friday Harbor before Christmas, then it just sat there with a partially sleyed reed. Every time I walked past the loom room for the past week the loom yelled at me, so I finally got back to it.



It was actually a really fun way to spend an hour, because Emma sat on the futon in the room and told me stories the whole time. She told me Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, Dr. Seuss' Gertrude McFuzz, and Blueberries for Sal before branching out into her own original stories. These included assorted Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go adventures, how Santa delivers presents, what her first day of kindergarten will be like, and other stories that came out of her own imagination. Several of these involved Cinderella marrying Emma's stuffed animals or our cat, after rescuing baby animals in trouble. I wish I had recorded this hour, because it was hilarious. I was really impressed with her memory. Gertrude McFuzz, in particular, was nearly word for word.

I have also started a pair of mittens for myself, out of the green yarn I spun in November 2005.



I really like this yarn. It's three-ply, soft and bouncy, and is remarkably similar to Brown Sheep Naturespun worsted.



It's also fairly consistent, and knits up to a nice dense fabric with US 3 needles. If I were making a sweater (oh how I wish could, with gorgeous cabling, but I only have a pound of yarn) I would use slightly larger needles, but the 3s are good for mittens.

I also did some more dyeing a couple days ago, but it's not dry yet, so I'll post that tomorrow.

I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for all the times when I was growing up that I responded to my mom's requests that I clean my room with "I did clean my room," or "My room is fine, leave me alone," or "Fine!" (with the patented eye-roll and sigh).



Emma's room has been gradually becoming a disaster area over the past three days. Things came to a head today, when I could no longer get from the door to her bed without stepping on something. Now I realize that she's only three years old and the main responsibility for cleaning her room still falls on me. I do think, however, that age three is plenty old enough to help pick up toys, put clothes in the laundry basket, etc. She has, in fact, been doing this since she was old enough to follow directions.



For three days, I have repeatedly asked her to put her toys away and put her dirty clothes in the basket, not on the floor. This morning, I told her that her room needed to be picked up by bedtime tonight, or there would be consequences. I would be happy to help her do it, she just needed to let me know when she was ready to start.



By jammie-time tonight, she still had not made any move, so I asked her if she was ready to pick up yet. Her answer? "Mommy, it's OK! It's not so bad." I told her again that it was time to pick up so we would be able to get to her bed without squishing her toys, and her solution was to shove everything to one side, thus creating a path and removing the problem, right? Wrong, said I. "It's time to pick up, or there will be consequences." So she replied, "OK, you can do it and I'll get my jammies on. We'll cooperate!" (OK, that was a little funny.)

I just said "That's not the way it works, sweetie," and started picking up. She was quite pleased with her solution, got her jammies on, and climbed up on her bed and started looking at a book. I put all the clothes away (dresser or laundry, as appropriate), and started on the toys. She just kept watching. When I started carrying things out of the room, however, she got a little worried. She wanted to know where I was taking them.

You see, if I have to pick up the toys, they go away for a while. This is a policy that's been in place for a couple weeks now, in an attempt to reduce the daily mess. This is not something that I just sprung on her tonight. She lost a whole bunch of favorite books, several stuffed animals, a favorite blanket, assorted random toys, and her beloved Leappad that she just got for Christmas, along with all the Leappad books.

I think tonight she may finally be starting to get it. But man, do I feel like the Grinch.

I've seen this little diversion a couple places around the blogiverse, and had to click for myself. I was amused when this came up on my first try:

My Fortune Cookie told me: One thousand shoals of fish offer you no room for sheep.

Get a cookie from Miss Fortune

No room for sheep? No room for sheep??!!! But surely, this ecologist thinks, there's room for both sheep and fish.....

(I do remember, however, that when I was working on my Master's degree I had drastically less time for fibery pursuits. Granted, my thesis dealt with snails and mussels and not fish, but the point is well taken. Balance in all things.)