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!

Naomi wanna potluck?

On St. Patrick's Day, I got bored. While I was bored, I started thinking about patron saints. Specifically, if there were a patron saint of county health departments, who would it be? And I decided it'd most likely be the gentleman who invented the birth control pill. (Or possibly broad-spectrum antibiotics, as we pass out a lot of those as well.) Unfortunately, as I was pondering this I checked my e-mail and started typing before I'd "fully engaged my brain." Before I knew it, I'd invited the entire public health department to a birthday potluck for Dr. Gregory Pincus, the inventor of The Pill. (Margaret Sanger's birthday is in September.)
I thought the plan would be politely laughed off, but it spread. Before I knew it, I was getting e-mails from other departments (everything from WIC to the developmental disabilities department) wanting in on the fun. (Yes, I work in a mostly female environment. However did you guess?) One of the men who works in my office asked if he was invited, and all I could think to say was "if your life has been enriched by birth control, you are certainly welcome."
"Great--it's because of birth control that I don't have to pay any child support!"
On Friday, when I got to work, the secretary had papered my office door (I have an office! It's awesome!!!!) with flyers about the potluck that afternoon and the accomplishments of Dr. Pincus. think they like me here.
The potluck itself was fun. We had lots of food and we shared about labor experiences, theories of childbirth preparedness, recipes, STDs, and discussed menstrual troubles. (As one of my male co-workers said "Thank you for inviting me, but I draw the line at gender reassignment surgery!")
We plan on doing another in September to celebrate Margaret's accomplishments.

Packages and road trips!

(This is probably the third or fourth attempt to write this post. I keep getting distracted by things like work, dishes, and the cold which the Mimi graciously shared with the family. It's hard to write anything sensible when your sinuses feel as though they're about to explode from the pressure.)

Last week, the county's infectious disease department, whom I used to work for, had their required H1N1 debriefing and requisite planning for the next mass vaccination pandemic.

Even though I don't work for their department anymore, they still invited me to come--and then badgered my current bosses into letting me come, and paying me to go! I love public health! So we went to Seaside, where I just had to snap a pic of this famous statue of Lewis and Clark. Don't they look impossibly heroic? It says "End of the Trail" on the plinth, but I can't escape the feeling they're saying "Well, Bill, looks like we're lost again!"


When I got back from the conference, I had a fiber package from Silfert waiting for me. (Every six months or so, we do a fiber swap. It allows both of us to rotate our stashes, and cuts down on the nagging from husbands about "you spent HOW much on fiber?") The Mimi promptly rifled through the box, grabbed the baggies labeled "Shirley's girly goth batt" (pink in the photo) and danced around the house with them.

I also got a stunning superwash wool/tencel blend from a dyer I adored in Kansas, but haven't been able to get her products here, as well as some amazing roving dyed by Silfert herself. The brown bag in the above photo is a wool/tencel blend from the spectacular Traci Bunkers of Bonkers Fibers, who has a wonderful eye for color. It turned out to be too slippery to spin on the wheel, so I've been spinning it on the drop spindle instead. It's great fun to spin, and I think I see a shawl on the horizon.

The Mimi turned two a couple of weeks ago. One of the gals from San Francisco sent her this adorable vest. Pink is always her favorite color!

I may post the rest of the pictures another time, but we went on a mass family excursion to OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center to celebrate, and then to Brian's parents' house for a birthday party. Her favorite toy was these over-sized cat toy balls. At least she's stopped meowing at people!

Jewelery is fun

I'm not really a "girly-girl." I do have two X chromosomes, a nice figure, and enjoy makeup. That's where many of the similarities end. In high school, when all of my friends were busy stalking Justin Timberlake, I had my bedroom wallpapered with the Spokane Chiefs' newspaper clippings. The only adolescent hero-worshiping crush I've ever had was on Barry Marshall, which shows you that I was a massive science geek even then. Now that the Olympics hockey is in full swing, I'm glued to the Internet every evening.

Because Mother Nature has a sick and twisted sense of humor, this does not seem to be the case for the Mimi. The first time we put her into a dress when we were near a full-length mirror, she ran over to the mirror to twirl around and admire herself. Many toddlers disassemble their link-a-dink toys, but she's the only one I know of who wears them as bangle bracelets!

So it's no surprise that her first multi-syllable word is "Jewelery." She likes to climb in my lap, pat my earrings, and say "jewelery, yeah!" with a blissful expression.

As I'm sure many spinners do, I've got a fiber stash of odds and ends that's too small to "do something" with, but I'm reluctant to throw out. You know what I mean: the half ounce of alpaca from my first wash/dye/card experience, 15 grams of recyled silk fibers, half yards of handspun yarn, etc. So I thought I'd card it all together and make some fun batts with them.

Midway through this process, I discovered the hard way that as much as I might like to pretend, large flat hairbrushes are NOT the same thing as proper hand cards. But except for the blisters, I'm pretty pleased with the final results. Carding all the fibers together really evened out a lot of the more vibrant colors, but also brightened up the sedate ones. (After I borrow Pop's hand cards,) I have to try this again!

New job

On Monday, I started my new job. While almost all of my nursing experience has been in the hospital inpatient setting, this job is outpatient, and out in the community. (My philosophy of anatomy and physiology can be summed up with "Air goes in and out and blood goes round and round. Any variation on this is a bad thing." Likewise, I prefer nursing practice settings in which these things happen all by themselves.)

With the job giving flu shots, my schedule was flexible. Some days it was 9-3, some days it was 1-8pm, but generally it was 11-5. This job is 8:30-5, and that's taking a bit of getting used to. (I can't stay up past midnight any more--not if I want to be a nice person in the morning.)

The Mimi has been having some trouble with this. She looks so confused when I leave for work at the new time. I know there's a small voice in her head that says "Mama is wearing her nice clothes and leaving already? I just woke up half a sippy cup ago!"