Yuletide 2011 fic recs part 11: V, W, X, Y, Z

V is for Vorkosigan!

Burn the Topless Towers, about Aral's first wife, and Ges.

Money often costs too much, third parties consider the problem of Miles.

A Fine and Public Place, Ivan and By.

Domestic Affairs, Ekaterin and Miles.

Keeping the Peace, an interesting AU (Shards of Honor era).

So, you might be asking, do I want to read either of the long Vorkosigan stories, the 18K word fandom AU or the 47K word Ivan/By novel? I prefer to stick to positive recs - I've read plenty of Yuletide stories and found them disappointing and I usually just wouldn't mention it - but I think it's actually possible that someone could be reading this who reads in the Vorkosiverse but hasn't automatically read every word of Yuletide Vorkosific yet and thus might actually be interested in my opinion. Which is that I read both and am not recommending either.

As far as Y being for Young Wizards - I sometimes forget that I am not actually into this fandom. I mean, I love the first three books and they're important to me, and I love fanfiction about them, but what I really care about is Nita, and secondarily Kit, and Nita & Kit, and Nita/Kit, and really not so much their sisters and their friends and their sisters' friends and the whole secondary cast that becomes important in the later books. (I guess Dairine stars in High Wizardry but I mostly read it for the Nita parts.) Of course I like Tom and Carl - who wouldn't like a gay couple smuggled into a kids' book in 1982 - but, enh, anyways, no recs this year.

I in fact only have one final rec for this year, which is Astolat's story, which I never would have read based on the fandom, but is of course excellent: Force Majeure. Washington and Hamilton + AU with magic.

Best-of list coming soon!

science for tinies: chromatography part II

Project: Can We Unmix Colors Better?
Materials: paper towels, food dye, binder clips, skewers, drinking glasses, water
Explanatory details: A second try at the chromatography experiment, spotting the dyes onto paper towel strips suspended in drinking glasses via binder clips hanging from skewers.
How did it go: We did see action more quickly than with the construction paper, but the actual separation wasn't nearly as good. Lots of sideways bleeding, and a weird effect from the binder clip where the sides of the blot were moving faster than the part directly underneath the clip. This could *maybe* work with a *really small spot* - I'd been dropping the dye directly onto the paper towel, but putting a drop onto some other surface and then dipping something in it to transfer a much smaller amount could work (ah, for a micropipette).
Things we talked about: We did talk this time about the idea that the water is carrying the colors and as it moves up the paper, some of the colors can go faster than others.
What Junie got out of it: She was intrigued by the skewers and really enjoyed helping to set up the clip/skewer/glass assemblages. She squinted with interest at the water as it started to move up the paper towels and encountered the dye and happily came back with me several times to check on how they were doing. So, not bad, but I'll probably set this one aside for awhile and work on other experiments with more action for her.