Finished the sweater!

I finished the Sonnet cardigan!

Mass vaccinations are fun for everyone!

The new job is going well. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to do nursing with people who aren't sick! (And the fact that working for the health department means I don't have to lift anyone heavier than a toddler doesn't hurt either.)

Because H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine is still limited in our area, we're trying to make sure all the "first responders" (police, firemen, EMTs, hospital workers, etc.) get vaccinated. So on Thursday, I got to go vaccinate the local fire and police departments at the new Lebanon Justice Center.

The vaccine comes in the same two forms as the usual seasonal flu vaccine--the nasal mist and the shot. Because of the misinformation swirling around the nation about the vaccine, we had a hard time getting people to accept the nasal mist. (The government sent us twice as much nasal vaccine as the injectable form, so we're trying to save the shot for people who can't have the nasal form.)

Therefore, much of the evening went like this:
I'd look over the guy's form (we vaccinated a grand total of three women all evening, and they were all dispatchers) and say "Congratulations, you're a healthy person between ages 2 and 49, you qualify for the nasal mist!"
Vaccinee: "But I want the shot! I've heard bad things about the mist!"
My coworker K usually took over at this point, as she's worked in the community much longer than I have. "What sort of bad things?"
Vaccinee:"You know, bad things.... All my buddies say it's best to get the shot."
K: (looks at guy's form) "It's just like the seasonal nasal flu vaccine. And you're telling me that you're 35 and you're still falling for peer pressure?"
Vaccinee: "Fine, I'll get the mist."

Watching K use the guys' fear of being thought vulnerable to peer pressure (which might be a form of peer pressure) to bully them into getting the nasal vaccine was priceless. I want to be like her when I grow up!

Retail therapy

Shirley caught a cold earlier this week, and she shared it with the rest of the family. I hope I'm over it (or have stopped coughing) before work starts on Wednesday!

While I'm very grateful that starched white dresses are no longer required attire for nurses, I've grown weary of the ubiquitous scrubs. While I appreciate the fact that they come in an amazing array of colors, the fact remains that their stain-resistant fabrics, bright prints featuring a variety of cartoon characters, and smock-inspired styling makes me feel slightly unprofessional. Next to the white-coated MDs, I feel like I might as well be wearing pajamas to work.

So you can imagine how overjoyed I was to learn that business casual attire is required at my new employers. Finally, a good excuse to get out my iron (okay, I'm lying with that one, as I've only recently realized that my ironing board is in the garage, precisely where the movers left it a year ago) and my dress clothes. Then I checked through my closet and discovered that not only did I only own one pair of dress slacks but the majority of my tops are summer clothing.

So today, in spite of my nasty cold, I somehow found the strength to go shopping. (It's amazing stuff, Shopping is. They really ought to market it as a cure for the common cold. "Feel sniffly? Try Shopping! You'll feel better in minutes!") I'm hoping some cute new outfits go a long way towards allaying my nerves about starting a new job.

I have a job!

What does it take to make me finish a sweater? (Don't get Brian started on this topic.) Since I knit mainly for relaxation and have the attention span of a heavily-caffinated rodent, I generally have between five and twenty projects in varying stages of completion.
I've been working on a bulky-weight version of the Sonnet cardigan out of handspun superwash wool since May. I'm midway through the last sleeve, and starting to run low on yarn. I'm down to the last ball, and I have a paranoid fear that I'll be five rows from completion and then completely run out of yarn.
So it has languished in my UFO bin for the last four months. But after finding out that I start a temporary job next Wednesday (and the required attire is business casual) I've been knitting on it like a mad woman.

Ren Fests and good friends

We spent all of Thursday driving to Hermiston, Oregon and back to see Jon and Lindsay. Why did we spend four and a half hours in the car to drive to a strange Wal-Mart, spend an hour with them at WallyWorld and then turn around and drive four and a half more hours home? Partly because we're nutters with an unfortunate amount of free (jobless) time on our hands and a questionable grasp on the concept of "carbon footprint." (If we drive nine hours in a Prius, it doesn't count, right?)

But mostly because Jon and Lindsay (and their little dog, too) have been our friends for the last eight years. Brian and Jon survived NNU's religion department together, while Lindsay and I were in the same dorm. Then Lindsay and Jon were our next door neighbors when we lived in Nampa. When we moved to Nome for the summer with our four suitcases, not only did they drive all our stuff (and our truck!) to Kansas City, but they also let us live with them for a couple of weeks before we found an apartment.

J&L are moving. Unfortunately for us, they're moving to Alaska. Hermiston was literally the closest they would be to us in all of their 3700 mile road trip. One of the last times we saw them when we all went to the KC Renaissance Festival in 2007. I sadly neglected to bring the camera that time, but we had a blast.

Shirley was much easier to transport at that festival, as I was five months pregnant with her. On Saturday, we went to Shrewsbury. The ground was too uneven for her stroller, so she had to walk a lot more than she was used to. Here she is giving us the patented "I can't believe you took me to this strange place and are expecting me to use my legs!" baby glare.


We saw a lot of strange costumes at the Faire. I didn't take pictures of the worst one I saw, as I firmly believe that some things are so awful they should not be preserved for posterity. (Suffice it to say that if I were an excessively hairy obese middle-aged man, I would choose to wear something more than just a baldrick and a kilt made of skunk skins.)

The runner up, however, would have to be the dragon-girl in the photo below. She wore a parochial-school outfit (think Britney Spears circa 1997) with a felt dragon hood extending down her back. She and her boyfriend were so inseparable during the joust that Brian and I briefly wondered what their inevitable offspring would look like, then shuddered at the mental pictures created.

I was unable to get a picture of the two gentlemen dressed as King Arthur and his squire from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (complete with coconuts!) but they were a far second from the best costumes I saw on Saturday. This group of cranky Celts with their trophy took the cake!

Spinning update

Ever since I got my wheel, I've been trying to figure out how to make the yarn I want, instead of the yarn it wants to make.

I had some odd bits of superwash left over from making crazy batts. Not enough individually to do anything with, but collectively I had about four ounces. So I divided each color into three equal piles and put each pile into a sandwich baggie.

Pulling random colors of roving from the bag, I spun each bag onto a bobbin,

and then plied them all together as a 3-ply sock yarn. Unfortunately, plying with the wheel doesn't allow me to put as much twist into it as I do with a spindle, so the final yarn may not be suitable for socks.
I'm not sure what my total yardage was because it wouldn't all fit on my niddy-noddy. (Arguably a very good problem to have!)

I also had a bump of roving I hand-dyed either in San Francisco or shortly after we moved from there. (It's been a bit since I went on an all-out dyeing binge!)

Wanting to make mostly-identical socks, I split the roving lenghtwise, spun half on a drop spindle, and Navajo-plied the yarn to keep the color sequences intact. I've still got the other half to spin up, but I hope the yardage will equal the previous skein.

Baby's first blade

I grew up on public assistance, and when I became an adult I swore up and down I'd never be dependent on the government again. But I'll do a lot of crazy things to make my baby's life better.

The most recent of those crazy things was standing in line for three hours yesterday at the Department of Health and Human Services to sign the Mimi up for the state-run health insurance program for children. (Because at least one member of our family should be able to get medical care without having to invoke EMTALA.)

Like an idiot, I had brought Shirley along with me in her stroller (and forgot to stuff knitting in my purse!) She fussed a bit, but otherwise was a trooper throughout the ordeal. So I told her that since she'd been a good girl, we' d go to the dollar store and she could pick out a new toy.



And she picked a 15" plastic Halloween cleaver! Not only does it probably glow in the dark and have a skull-shaped hilt, but it also is filled with fake blood that splashes around inside the blade. I tried repeatedly to turn Shirley's attention to other toys, but she would have none of it. I thought for a brief moment that I'd reached success with the pink furry cowboy hat that was just her size, but when I told her she could have it OR the knife, she tossed the hat on the floor and clutched the knife closer.

Next time, I think I'm going to be a lot more specific about what kind of toy she can have.