Germ theory bites!

Work has picked up again, and I've been too busy to blog much.

I've gotten some spinning done lately, but much less than usual. Why? Because I, dear friends, have had the glorious, incomprable experience that is strep throat. When your joints hurt so badly that you start to wonder if your thighs bend, and your tonsils are so swollen that you're concerned that you may accidentally swallow them, anything activity more intense than pouring yourself another shot of NyQuil generally doesn't happen.

I'm feeling better now thanks to antibiotics, but I may never like soup again!

Sheep Christmas in July

I probably should have written about this several days earlier, but I've been having too much fun. Audrey sent me a box of fiber last week as part of our occasional fiber swap. (Someday we may extend this practice to include swapping toddlers, but I doubt they'll be travelling Priority Mail.)

She sent me about three pounds of fiber, and all of it was pretty. I've mislaid the sheet I wrote everything down on, but here's a general idea:

Spice-colored wool roving, with streaks of cinnamon, orange, red, and dark brown. Two batts of Finn/Merino wool in the lightest of grays. Three "Audrey batts" of alpaca/wool that she dyed and blended herself. The infamous "Electric Popsicle" roving. Organic alpaca roving from a small farm in Kansas which has the names of the responsible alpacas on the package! Eight ounces of alpaca locks, some superwash wool, and an absolutely exquisite bump of merino/tencel from Th'Red Head Designs in green and gold! The spinning wheel is calling to me.

Brian says this should keep me in spinning fiber for about a week.

Vacation pictures

For the Fourth of July, we visited Brian's parents and did the traditional barbecue on the beach. For me, it just doesn't seem like Independence Day without lighting marshmallows on fire. (I've never had the patience to toast them "properly" for smores. Light 'em up and blow them out before they completely turn in to charcoal, I say.)

We introduced the Mimi to her first-ever smore. "I'm covered in sugary goo and I want to share!"

She also recently learned how to feed herself semi-liquid foods with a spoon. Oatmeal got everywhere, but she did it all by herself.

I saw this sign at the Black Sheep Gathering last month. It's an important distinction, but there were so many shops selling handmade baskets that I can't help but wonder if it's just a clever bit of PR.

We visited Mom last month. It's hard to tell what the Mimi's expression is when she has her fingers in her mouth, but note the matching maniacal grins. Insanity is hereditary--you get it from your kids!

Due to other pressures this year (like work) I'm not doing the Tour de Fleece. Mostly because I found out about it (although I really shouldn't be surprised that July happens every year) two days ago and don't think I can "compete." As I see it, the whole point of spinning is that it's a relaxing activity that makes yarn. And when you get right down to it, in spite of the joy yarn gives me, it's just string. Unlike nursing, in which you're regularly reminded that if you screw up, you can kill people (and the board of nursing regularly publishes helpful vignettes of people who have done exactly this) yarn doesn't matter.

If I spend weeks and weeks knitting a sweater out of lace weight yarn on size 3 needles only to get to the armpits and find out that my bust is more than 26 inches, I can rip it out. I can turn it back to yarn, I can use it for stuffing in a decorative pillow, I can cut it up and make coasters out of it. Why? Because it's yarn! I've never punished a failed project by setting it on fire, but I've removed the needles from more than one and just thrown it in the Dumpster because I was that disappointed with it. No one died, and I went on to happily complete other projects.

Cat people

I am a "cat person." Brian is not. He describes it best by saying, "if cats can read minds, they look at mine and go 'gonna stay away from him!' When they read yours, they think 'As long as I'm nice to the little pink person that's with her, I'll be rolling in gravy!' "

The Mimi also loves cats. She spends a lot of our Sunday visits with my sister in law chasing her four cats around. Three of them treat her with a good-natured tolerance (and ever-present hope that she'll drop food for them.) But the oldest cat, Shakti, is short-tempered and doubtless the reason that my nephew recites House Rule Number One as "cats are sharp--and fast!"

Our neighbor has been feeding a paranoid gray alley cat for the last couple of years. At this point he's no longer completely feral, but he's understandably still a bit twitchy. As we were out gardening last week, he slinked home after discovering his place in the local feline hierarchy. He moved as though every joint in his body ached and was missing a large section of one ear. Large patches of his fur were newly absent and replaced by healing scabs.

The Mimi looked at him with wide eyes. "Kitty has owie!"

"Yes honey, the kitty has lots of owies."

Comprehension dawned as she put new ideas together. "Shakti!"

But true to Brian's theory, he still let the Mimi pet him!

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!

Irony

My art supplies showed up yesterday, the day after my birthday. Unfortunately, since I've got a scratch on my glasses that cuts directly across my line of vision, anything that requires extensive focussing on small details (like, say, looking at a photograph and trying to paint it) causes severe eyestrain headaches. Back to fiber arts for now!

Adorable Art Supplies

(The Mimi has learned to make faces, and I had to show this off.)

I used to do a lot of painting in high school. And welding. (If my college had had a metal sculpture fine arts program, I probably would have gotten a BA in art rather than a BSN.) For the last several years I've been trying to channel my "creative impulses" into fiber arts as a substitute, but I really miss them.

As I was commuting one morning several months ago, I found myself day-dreaming about how to paint the countryside with watercolor. (Daydreams about welding are pretty normal for me.) I realized I really want to get back into painting. My preferred medium has always been oil, but in my current situation, it has several drawbacks: I have a four room apartment, with no room to dry canvases. (And I'd like to retain my damage deposit when we move next.) Oil paintings generally take (depending on climate) anywhere from several days to several weeks to dry. Add in some toxic paints and turpentine and a small person who has just barely finished the "It's pretty, can I eat it?" stage, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
So I decided watercolor was the safest and least messy way to get back to painting. Finances are still tight for us, but I have a birthday next week. My in laws gave me $20 and an easel, both of which should help quite a lot. I've been checking out the various online art vendors and making a shopping cart of supplies to compare prices, and I found this:

at Cheap Joe's.

I've never heard of the brand before so I don't know what quality of paints these are, but it's so mind-blowingly cute I find it difficult to care!