5 days of a Science Journo

I was chosen as a 2011 British Science Association Media Fellow, and was placed at the Irish times.
Work began on Monday and it has been a crazy week in Dublin.
I have published 4 articles in the paper, one online:

Warning for obese Irish dads

Area not key to cancer survival
Bored people more hostile to outsiders
Scientific approach gets Emer 600 points
Extracting the secrets of seaweed
with two more pieces to come in tomorrow's news!

Exciting and totally different. Best of all I am no longer afraid of the phone, which is an achievement!
Follow the media fellows on Twitter @MediaFellows

Video Killed the....

Yesterday morning nerves hit me like a slow motion brick. Why? Because at 10:30am I was booked in to do a live radio interview for BBC Radio Oxford.

I had been given a weeks notice so I had had time to plan, but instead spent most of the week pretending it wasn't going to happen, and worrying. So I only got down to actually thinking about it on Sunday evening, when I sat down with Andrew and worked out the best way to explain a fairly complex process.

Cloning.

I had to talk for 10 minutes about cloning, inspired by it being the 14th anniversary of the world finding out about Dolly the sheep.

The interview was with Malcolm Boyden, the morning presenter on Radio Oxford, whose face looms off the TV set during BBC breakfast in an advert for the morning radio show.

I arrived to the studio 5 minutes early, and was told I would be on air at 10:30. At 10:29 I was taken to the studio, and sat down opposite Malcolm while he faded out the song and introduced me.

I wasn't even sure at what point we were live on air, but luckily kept my mouth shut and didn't ditzily ask "are we on air now?", as I was tempted to!!

Anyway the interview passed relatively smoothly I think. I haven't actually had the courage to listen to it yet, and don't really remember what I said, so I will let you judge for yourselves:

f-fwd to 30 minutes in for my section: radio interview

I would definitely do it again, in fact I think I would enjoy more practice now I know what to expect, so watch this space...!

Firsts

This has been a week of firsts in my world. I have bought my first spinning wheel; a Kromski Sonata, and so far have spun my first skein on it, 100g of Shetland Moorit spun 2 ply (to be precise!). This resulted in me designing my first pattern: a super quick and very easy slouchy hat, which you can find here:  Handspun slouch hat

Here I am modeling the result with a bit of help from Pearl.

First time I have uploaded a pattern to Ravelry too.

Ok so it couldn't get more simple than this hat, but it was still quite a process making the pdf, uploading etc.






On the wheel at the moment is some dark brown Corriedale. I'm working on consistency and trying to be patient.

It's easy to forget that you can stop the wheel to rectify a lumpy bit before it gets sucked on to the bobbin. I have to keep reminding my feet to pause.

Handspun Slouch Hat