Saturday, October 11, 2008

Yesterday in photos.

But first. HELP PLEASE! It's fairly quick, painless, and free. -- Anyone remember the tetrachromacy discussion around here? Mutation? Extra cones in the retina? Super color vision? (If not, it can be found here.) Well, if anyone out there in blogland is willing to help me out, go take this test and drop me a comment with your score. (Lower the score, better your color vision is.) For refrence, my score was, uh. Three. (The husbeast leaned over my shoulder during the test and said something profane I'm not repeating, but I think the operative word was 'freak'.) Everyone else I've asked is scoring from twenties to forties, except one female friend who ALSO says nothing ever matches. She scored a six.

Anyway. Yesterday I dug into my super-high-tech dye studio (I am praying to any god listening that when we move, we will have a basement with a laundry sink in it - anyone know any dye gods?) and started figuring out how to dye with 'real' dyes. Namely the Procion MX dyes developed for cellulose fibers, instead of my fooling-around food coloring deal. Here's the studio:


A milk crate full of stuff in my office, and a five gallon bucket in the bathtub. Yeah, baby. It's all about the tech around here. (I figure our ancestors did amazing work with a couple clay pots and some smashed shellfish, I can do this.) I'm dyeing in the bathroom in an attempt to keep the chemicals totally separated from food, and even I do not prepare food in the bathroom. Seemed the sensible way to go. So far I have not turned the tub or sink any odd colors.

I had gotten a pack of a dozen 'blank' bandanas for experimentation purposes, and laid down some primary colors (primary in terms of ink and light mixing - cyan, magenta, and yellow).

Today, tie-dye, batiking, and secondary colors. I've already got the bees' wax ready to go in my fondue pot. (It's got a temp control. And come one, bees' wax won't kill anyone without allergies, I can clean it out and use it to melt chocolate again.)

First color for the day, green. Learning all this color theory stuff is becoming downright handy. Who'd have thought? (Just the other day the husbeast said in all seriousness he did not know what colors mixed to make purple and I stared at him like he'd just landed from Mars.)

Otherwise I got in some knitting while timing dye soaks. As stated, The Octagonal Thing looks just like it did twelve, fourteen rows ago.

And I've been dyeing roving. For hopeful sale. I'm not thrilled with the maroon, but I'm hoping someone else will be.



I'm feeling better. Sort of like if I'd upped my thyroid meds without permission. But I'd never do such a thing. Nooooo. Not me. I've got so much respect for doctors because they're always right. (Wow, do I feel better. They're going to have to do some fast talking to get me down to my lower dose again. Like threats of heart disease and/or dropping dead.)

66 comments:

Saren Johnson said...

I scored a 10. Which is way better then I expected.

kate said...

(first comment ever - love the blog btw)

I scored 15.

Unknown said...

Wow, I just scored a 3, and I knew there was something wrong with that block but couldn't be arsed to fix it.

Rachel said...

I got a 37. ...whee.

Sarah O G said...

I'm even freakyier than you, I got a perfect 0. wow.

Amy Lane said...

I scored a 36. Because I'm apparently BLIND!!!!

Anonymous said...

I got an eleven

Amy Lane said...

And wonderful projects, Julie--I'm not a big Maroon fan (I like burgundy better!) but it looks REALLY cool:-)

Anonymous said...

I got a 28. Probably should have fussed with it more.

The problem with upping your dose of thyroid without permission is that eventually you run out and they notice. I've done the wait a week before you can have any more thing and it's not worth it. If you can get around that, go for it.

Sarah said...

I came by for your rare moment of philiosphy from Bells, great words.

Had to check out that test and really surprised myself with a 4 - I participated a bit in Project Spectrum this year and thought a lot about how we perceive colours differently - colour is such a seemingly simple thing and such a fascinating subject

Anonymous said...

i did this a while ago and i think i scored 5 or 6

Anonymous said...

I got a 4, colors never look right, but I'm too lazy to care when I get dressed.

April said...

I scored 8. I blame my monitor.

Really.

Unknown said...

I got a 31.

Louiz said...

Crap. I got 42.

Anonymous said...

I scored 11, which I gather from your post is pretty good (although probably not in the "freak" category ;o)

I was surprised, because I don't think of myself as being that "good" at color, but maybe that is why! I certainly do find myself having arguments with people about whether something is pink or purple, blue or green, orange or yellow, etc. Now I know that I'm right!

amy said...

19, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it. I'm actually pretty confident in my color discrimination, for the most part, when I take proper time with it. I can recall spending quite a lot of time in design class mixing gouache to get just the right gradations of color.

What fun, fun projects you are working on!

Terby said...

16. Good, but not freakish.

Unknown said...

Scored a 5.

Anonymous said...

Someone linked me to this test a while ago, but I didn't have time to take it right then. I'm glad I waited until you brought it up now, or I'd have thought it was broken.

I scored 0. "You have perfect color vision!", it tells me.

I've suspected I was a tetrachromat since I first heard of it.

roxie said...

I got a 24. And I thought I was pretty hot snot till I read the other scores.

Ann said...

Woohoo, I got a 4! I'm amazed.

Anonymous said...

15 here. Better than I expected, really. A few of those I knew were wrong, but w/ the lines, the whole thing started to look wavy and I figured I'd just go with that.

Michelle

Alwen said...

Another 3 here.

Which is comforting, given that two of my three brothers are colorblind, and I often pick what other people feel are strange color combinations.

I guess that must be my brain, rather than my color vision.

NeedleTart said...

Wow! I got the high score! 47! Go me! Funny thing, I thought my color vision was pretty good because I can usually remember the color I need to match at the thread store. Huh.

Anonymous said...

I scored a 4-even with a 9 year old moniter!

Anonymous said...

I scored 19. Better than I expected considering I was talking on the phone and not totally concentrating

Lethe said...

I got a 0 ! "Perfect Color Vision" they said. For my age range (the 50s), the range they reported was 0 to 1409.

But after I started the test, I thought my screen was too dull, so I did turn up the brightness as high as it would go (lcd screen on MacBook Pro), I think that helped. There could be some monitors out there that cannot display the full range of hues. It would be interesting to try the same test on other monitors.

Going to turn the brightness back down now to save battery life.......

janet said...

I scored a 12, after lots of blinking and squinting.

Bunny Queen said...

Well, I got a 35, but I'm going to go back and take the test later when I have been awake for more than 15 minutes. :)

Mary Lynn said...

I got a 16, which is good. This interesting thing is my husband (who is not noticeably colorblind) got a 87.

That's why I can see some thing that no one else seems to see!
(Like the fact that my white refrigerator and white freezer are not the same color. Everyone else thinks I"m crazy.)

Leonie said...

I got an 8. Now my being finicky about getting the same dye lot/batch of wool makes perfect sense...I can see the difference!!!! I only had one area that was out of order and it was the blue-green section, these are my favourite colours I wonder if there is a connection?

April said...

I got an 8. My husband (who is colorblind) is taking the test right now. Should be interesting.

April said...

The colorblind husband got a 85. Kind of funny since the non-colorblind husband previously mentioned in the comments got an 87.

Anonymous said...

I got a 0 - but I see I'm not the only total freak out there, so that's okay.

Leonie said...

So after being so interested in the result for myself I persuaded the reluctant husband to do the test himself.....a O, perfect colour perception for him. This really sucks I can so see him pulling that one out on me on a regular basis.

Anonymous said...

Just made my husband take it - he got a 7. I'm not actually surprised, since he used to be a lighting designer for a dinner theatre. So, even though his dad was red/green color blind, his color vision is pretty good. (I don't, unfortunately, know enough about genetics to know if there should be any correlation. I could look it up, I suppose.)

Anonymous said...

Your score: 99
Gender: Female
Age range: 40-49
Best score for your gender and age range: 0
Highest score for your gender and age range: 1421

What does it mean?

Pam

Anonymous said...

That was hard, but cool. I got an 11. Several times I knew a block was wrong, but all my moving it around didn't make it any better. Like one block was just "off" a bit. I wonder if individual computers screens can have any effect, like they don't show a particular part of the spectrum well? because all of my problems seemed to be clumped in one area, according the to scoring.

Anonymous said...

I scored a 10.=) Good enough for me. Also, wouldn't your color picking super powers just translate to superb dying and color matching abilities? =)

Regenia said...

8. And sadly, I tell myself that when something doesn't match, most people don't know. Now I have evidence.

Anonymous said...

i'm 64 and female, and scored an 83. since i breeze right through all the color tests at the eye doc's, i'm going to blame my daughter's cheap monitor. (grin)

btw, highest score for my age/gender cohort was 1,4something.

ellen in indy

Ashley said...

Wow. I got an 8.

I feel all impressed with myself now.

Kitsune said...

I got 8, I'm female and 32.

Leanne said...

I scored 24. I've always thought of myself as having a poor colour sense (when I've thought of it at all!)

Donna Lee said...

I scored a 0. Perfect. Surprised the hell out of me.

Anonymous said...

I have a feeling the reason husbands getting high scores is because they can't be bothered to be futz around it too long. I am not even going to ask the hubby to take it.
I got an 8. I had to look up the definition of "hue" before I started.

The Vermilion Sparrow said...

I scored 0. ZERO.

No wonder I hate clothes shopping.

Bubblesknits said...

* Your score: 0
* Gender: Female
* Age range: 20-29
* Best score for your gender and age range: 0
* Highest score for your gender and age range: 1415


Maybe that's why I see the dirt that no one else sees in the house. lol

historicstitcher said...

* Your score: 24
* Gender: Female
* Age range: 30-39
* Best score for your gender and age range: 0
* Highest score for your gender and age range: 1476

I didn't spend much time on it, and it looked almost checkerboard-y when I hit "score". I'll try again when I'm not sleep-deprived and hurting all over! My brain doesn't care that much right now.

Laural said...

I got a 4. My weak spot seems to be in the blue area.

historicstitcher said...

I'm tired, but not distracted, so I did it again:

Your score: 8

I think you're right about having a biased study group here!

RobynR said...

I'm late to the commenting but I got two scores: 60 on my cruddy laptop. I knew the squares weren't right but darned if I could figure out where they ought to have been placed.
However, I scored 4 on the brand new lcd monitor.

Mathboy scored 12 (on his laptop). :)

Anonymous said...

59. I must be getting old.

Malin said...

I scored 4. So that's good? Hmm, I think I need to force DH to take the test. We never agree on what colour things are...

Anonymous said...

wow. my friend and i have constant arguments about colors, but i scored an 4. i better make her take this test so we can once and for all establish who was right about that "turquoise" cardigan :)

Arianne said...

My husband and I argue about colour all the time. I see things he doesn't see. (Like he thinks that all shades of khaki are brown even when they're clearly more olive green than brown!)

I got the following:

"Based on your information, below is how your score compares to those of others with similar demographic information.
Your score: 3
Gender: Female
Age range: 20-29
Best score for your gender and age range: 0
Highest score for your gender and age range: 1470"

I've got eyestrain at the moment...I wonder how I'd do without the impediment? There were some blocks that I could tell were slightly wrong but I couldn't tell how to fix them. If I didn't have a cold, eyestrain, and a headache...I would hope I would do better. But a 3 is DAMN good. And I'm in good company. ;)

(This must be why I get so arsey with the design people here at work when they don't match the graphics and the fonts perfectly...they insist they're the same but if you go and check the actual code for the colours they're using they're not the same...)

Cara said...

I know I'm late to the game, but 11.

Silver Phoenix said...

13--my lucky number.

Anonymous said...

I got a 17 and the bf got a 12. Which only goes to prove that he isn't paying attention a lot of the time. ;)

HeidiMonkey said...

I scored a 4, and nothing EVER matches to me either. It's interesting to be reminded of the fact that colors look different to different people, and not different at all to others.

Sarah O G said...

Hubby got a 7, age 30-39, scores 0-1468. And he had a great point, how is this scored, how are the points figured out?

Anonymous said...

rather belated, but I got 8. And I'm another person who has all the DMC embroidery threads but can never find the right shade - now I konw why!

ragamuffin child said...

I scored an 11, but I want to do it at home where my monitor is better.

Anonymous said...

Hrmm. Got linked to your blog via Ravelry... I just got a 4. No wonder I have issues with colours matching!

Catie said...

I scored an 11 on a laptop monitor with yicky overhead lighting. I might try it again tomorrow at home on a better monitor - if I remember.