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!

Projects that lead to insanity

Every so often, I'm overcome with guilt for not making this blog more about knitting. After all, if it's titled "Naomi Knits," maybe it should have some yarn-related content. Maybe I shouldn't use it as a soapbox for whatever thoughts are bouncing through my head. Perhaps I need to confine my topic to knitting, or even just continue with my usual slavish imitation of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Then again, it's my blog and I'll write about whatever I feel like writing about.

The last several weeks have been very busy for me. There's a new staffing grid at work. The upside of this is that there are more nurses on night shift, and every so often I get to eat lunch during work. (Thank God for Pepsi, or I'd probably collapse from hypoglycemia!) The downside of this is that now the staffing office calls me much more regularly on my nights off to beg me to come in and work extra shifts.

Consequently, I have a backlog of projects that I've photographed over the last few weeks and have yet to show off.

To begin with, I love stuffed animals. When I found an adorable pattern for miniature teddy bears in a knitting book, I was unable to resist the pull of its cuteness. (Yes, that is a US quarter in the picture next to it.) Next, I realized that the bear needed clothes and crocheted it an outfit. Lastly, I shipped it off to my mother-in-law, who has made dollhouse miniatures for years and therefore was truly able to appreciate the insanity that this project represented. (Total time: 20 hours= one half pair of socks.)

When I'm not knitting, I've been working on dyeing. I've been dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid and food coloring for about a year now, but lately I've progressed to dyeing roving. Ever since I blew all my Christmas money at the Wool Peddler on superwash wool roving, I have been experimenting to see precisely what happens when you dye roving with my usual methods.

And here is the single I spun from it:

And here are the socks I am knitting for myself:

I'm not sure how much time I have spent on this particular project, but so far the total is at least 45 hours, and I only have the cuff of the first sock done. I don't suffer from insanity--I enjoy every minute of it.