Awesome quilts! I am dying to learn to sew or knit or something. I'm trying to convince my friend to teach me to knit. Go you! Sewing AND solutions. Impressive!
Those quilts are gorgeous! I am expecially partial to the bugs/hippos/turtles one, for obvious reasons. I just remarked to my sister *yesterday* how I wanted to learn quilting. You are an inspiration, JF. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Sara! I love the bugs. I may even keep it for myself. 
NSLS, I have a great old book with diagrams from all kinds of needlecraft; I'll try to remember to send you the title.
It sounds like you have a lot of great old books!
love the quilts!
and i have the same feelings about the "baking"/being a tough scientist. but then it annoys me, because i LIKE baking (and knitting) and I don't like eating 50 cookies in one day, so why shouldn't I bring some in to share? Even if I am the only girl with 25 male coworkers?
So I do bring them, and wear skirts, and sometimes things with bows, and sometimes things that are pink, a color i never wore as a little kid. I spent many years not doing anything remotely girly-girl and then finally in the last few years said screw it. I will do what I want to do, and be a good scientist at the same time, it is of course a very tough needle to thread but I think one risks to reinforce the sterotypes that girly girls cant be good scientists if everyone who is a good female scientist works to avoid appear at all girly-girl-ish.
I also kick my male coworkers asses in soccer once a week, which is probably the most important thing I do to get their respect anyway, I think they are much more surprised that a woman can play soccer than that a woman can be a scientist.
...anyway, now im rambling...just to say I totally identify with what you are writing.
NSLS, I adore old books; my college bookstore had periodic 25-cent sales, too.
Sara, I do entirely agree with the whole if we don't wear skirts it will never change, but at the same time, when I do wear frilly things, the extra effort to get people to take me seriously (if possible at all!) is just beyond me. I do wear makeup though. My evil plan is to find a position of power, run things from it, and THEN wear pink poodle skirts.
And I've virtually stopped baking, especially because Mr. S doesn't like sweet things, and I don't like my lab enough to feed them. We feed Mr. S's lab sometimes though.
In general I totally agree with you. Women in natural science are somehow expected not to be "real women", because those two are not supposed to match.
There can however be local differences. If you fail to bring cookies to the lab fika (Swedish word - hard to translate) don't bother ever showing up again. In fact, unless you want to hear about it for the rest of you life, you might want to get a new job. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. EVERYBODY is expected to provide cookies (can be replaced with cake) on your appointed week, or if it's your birthday, or if you have travelled somewhere, or basically done anything at all out of the ordinary. It is possible to get away with buying something at the bakery, but it will not improve your popularity at the lab. The cookies are usually good at these occations, because being good at baking and being good at labwork tends to require the same skills.
Those small shelves standing on the lab bench was a really good idea. I have to search the storages when I get back to work.
Love the quilts (especially the bugs one) and all the little sticky notes on your workstation.
women who bake well cannot be good scientists
I know the attitude you mean, but it's entirely daft. The reverse is probably much closer to a useful generalization: any (bench) scientist who *cannot* cook (or bake) is probably no good at experiments either.
Erika, that sounds lovely; I wish someone would feed me cookies every week!
Bill, you would think, wouldn't you? Measure, mix, incubate. I think it's worse for, say, knitting (everyone does have to eat, after all). And yes. Daft.
Love the post-its which are so old the post-it-ness has failed and they require tape! Oh, kindred spirit! But, no DNA or protein ladders taped up for reference?! And you call yourself a scientist? phttbt.
Juliane: The DNA ladder is behind the shelf, and the protein ladder is on the fridge, where you can't see them. So there. And.. yeah, what, you're not supposed to tape them?
Nice quilts! Especially the bugs!
One thing you forgot to mention is that tenure has nothing to do with whether or not you have a kid. It has everything to do with whether or not you have published a billion articles and go to a billion conferences and wrote a billion books - all of which are more difficult if you are the primary care taker of the kid. For the most part, men in all jobs tend to get ahead because they are less likely to be the main care takers and have to go home when school lets out early than their female partners.
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