Crazyness in Mackeyland

It's been a while since I posted last. I'd claim it's because I've been busy, but there's always the chance that I'm just too distracted to type.

This month, the only other nurse at my work quit abruptly, leaving me to cover three clinics. They got a temporary nurse to help out for two days a week; as she's the woman who held this position before me, I'm confident that she's really good at the job. The bosses say that they're trying to fill the empty position as soon as possible, but given the reality of government budget cycles, it will probably be at least three or four months before they hire someone.

And then just as all the turnover and schedule changes were happening at work last week, our family got food poisoning. If you want to lose a couple of pant sizes, there's nothing like some spectacular gastrointestinal distress and no solid food for 60 or so hours to make it happen!

In the midst of all this chaos, however, I have found time for yarn. I may be spinning it instead of knitting with it, but yarn is yarn, right? The first few pictures are of my most recent dyeing escapade. I originally tried to dye the wool less saturated shades of pink, blue and grass green, but the dye struck much faster than I'd anticipated. I sorted the wool by color and intensity and then handcarded it. Then I laid out all the batts in order of color progression.

I'm about two thirds of the way through spinning it up, and I really like the way the color slowly transitions from green to brown to burgundy.

I also bought wool from a local vendor, Hungry Hill Farm, and intentionally tried to spin a big fluffy single on the wheel with a Z-twist.

I used my left hand as my dominant hand, as well as the modified short draw I always use. (My wheel has only one ratio, so that limits what I can do with it.) Making up skeins was more difficult than usual. As the niddy-noddy has broken, I used the baby gate instead.

I didn't quite acheive the lofty bulky-weight single I was hoping for, but it made a nice bulky 2-ply!