couldn't sleep. we have to be at the hospital at 7:30. i think i woke up around 5:00. so figured i'd do some last-minute blogging and emailing to pass the time.
guess what terry got me for my birthday! a sewing machine! it's so fancy -- i'm in way over my head. i tried reading through the manual and i totally don't understand the most basic aspects of how a sewing machine works. but soon i will!
i'm very excited by the prospect of thusly-expanding my "pioneer wife skills"....
all in all, this did not turn out to be "the worst birthday ever", as i was afraid it might. went into work really early and ran around like crazy all day, including a way-too-long detour to the doctor's office and then the pharmacy and then back to work. i finally wrapped up all my loose project ends (or in some cases gave up on them and passed them off to someone else) around 4:45 and went home and hung out and cleaned the house a little and then spent some time working on the lace scarf (figuring it might be awhile til I can do so again).
then around 8:00 we had about 12 friends over for a BBQ/party. it was a lot of fun and defeinitely took my mind off of today. several folks had never been to our house before, so they had lots of questions about suzie (what's that? how does it work? and my personal favorite -- "where does the sweater come out?") (answer = a jcrew catalog).
so it turned out to be a really fun birthday. today does not promise to be as much fun. keep your fingers crossed for a safe, easy, complication-free experience.
p.s. the doctor says 8 weeks in a sling. ugh. that should make blogging ... and my job ... a little tough.
So last night I decided to try to card some of the wool from one of my fleeces and do a little spinning "in the grease." I definitely don't understand carding. I need to pull out the spinning books and see what this is all supposed to look like.
I did wind up with a few balls of fluff that more ... fluffy ... than the locks on the sheep, so i tried to spin them. at first i thought it was going ok -- although it's super slow going b/c they're all so little (i don't know if these are even technically 'rolags' b/c i don't know exactly what a rolag's supposed to look like).
But after spinning for a little bit, the yarn started breaking. i also noticed that the singles, which i thought were well-spun, would up stretching apart and breaking.
i don't know what the deal is. i guess i'll keep practicing. but i feel like i'm doing something fundamentally wrong. hmmm.....
if you're as fascinated as i am with giant vegetables, take a visit over here.
guess where i went today when i was supposed to be working!
hint: i saw giant vegetables, plus sheep, alpacas and pygmy goats. i bought several knitted alpaca items (a sweater, hat and socks -- all for about 1/2 the cost of the yarn for the alpaca sweater i knit myself).
i also bought a purse that's shaped like a stuffed cat. i named it teunces and i am in love with it.
someday i will have a working computer and can regale you with photos of teunces and me on out various misadventures. as well as photos of me with the enormous vegetables.
if you haven't seen this, you should.
i'm happy to report that i've been spinning up a storm. i love the alpaca. it's impossibly soft. someone on the spindlers listerv was selling alpaca fleeces and i had to resist the urge to add to my absurd fleece collection!
no new fiber purchases for me. but tonight, mr purl,interrupted is out at sea (kayaking somewhere in alaska) so i'm being lazy as can be ... spinning alpaca and lounging around in my flannel jammies.
it feels like fall here.
spinning things i want to do:
- get something to put in with the fleeces to keep moths away. i've heard of using irish spring soap?
- fill up a bobbin with the alpaca
- dye some yarn (again ... maybe the alpaca? i also have some spun merino)
- work on carding one of the skirted fleeces.
knitting things i want to do:
- finish a project! i'm knee deep in half-finished scarves. and indiana's year-old baby blanket! ridiculous! i may have to wait til they have another kid!
- make a diagonal scarf. or maybe one of k's cool multidirectional ones. maybe i'll start with diagonal first.
- make a vest.
- knit more with handspun!
unfortunately, surgery is in 5 days, which means it's questionable whether i'll do much of anything fiber-wise between now and then. it looks like i'll be working all weekend ... trying to tie up lots of loose ends before the big day, since i'll be taking time off and probably coming back part-time at first.
oh hey, have i mentioned what a pain in the ass this whole shoulder cyst disease thing is? as an added bonus, surgery is the day after my birthday. nice. this is shaping up to be even better than last year's "slept through my own suprise party"-birthday.
sorry to complain about it. won't it be great if it works??
cross your fingers that i'll be well enough by next weekend to go to the state fair! i guess i won't be in the spinning demonstration after all. but who could pass up a chance to see the giant vegetables?
ok, i recognize that blogging about knitting and spinning is far less cool when you don't have pictures. incredibly, however, we STILL have not managed to get my computer system set up since arriving in Anchorage ... 7 weeks ago. grumble grumble.
we need the cable guy to come drill a hole in the wall in the "fiber arts room" so we can set up my computer, the router, the scanner, etc etc. i called them and made an appointment to do this several weeks ago (it takes abt 2 weeks to get an appointment), but we had to cancel the first appointment at the last minute b/c mr purl,interrupted went on an overnight kayaking trip. i was pretty psyched about that.
then we were very close to getting it set up earlier this week, but had a little marital communication breakdown. my sweetie was supposed to wait at home for the cable guy. since we rent, they need a note from our landlords. our landlords, who didn't want to bother with it, told us just to tell the cable folks that we ow the house. mr purl,interrupted, however, has an amazing ability to sit through a conversation and not pay attention. i'm sure he's thinking about deep and important things. and sometimes that's really cute.
tuesday afternoon he calls me at work and says "the cable guy's here and they haven't gotten anything from the landlords."
the only positive thing to come out of this little debacle is that he clearly knew i was super irritated, so when i came home the house was really, really clean.
yet, i still don't have computer access. and now won't have it until well after my surgery.
all of which is to say ... sorry i have no pictures to show you. :-(
speaking of guilds, yesterday i went to my first meeting of the anchorage knitters guild, "knitters of the north." nice folks with a real range of experience levels. they offer classes and workshops throughout the year. in mid-septemeber they have an all-day workshop on sock-making. i don't think i'll be out of the cast/sling by then. plus, i really want to try learning to make socks via the magic loop method (one long circular) -- someone suggested that it might be less painful on the joints -- but the folks teaching the workshop don't know that method and are going to use double points. so maybe i should wait this one out.
they're also putting on a "yarn expo" coming up in october. sort of like "stitches -- north pole." they're bringing up an instructor that weekend to offer a bunch of classes. there's one on entrelac , which (now that i've googled it) i'd like to learn how to do.
also speaking of guilds, i had the wierdest conversation ever yesterday with a friend's girlfriend. she lives around the corner from me and i drove past the two of them yesterday afternoon. i pulled over to say hi and they asked what i'd been up to that day, and i said, "i just got back from the knitting guild meeting." at which point my firned's girlfriend started lauging really hard and said "knitting guild!" "knitting guild!" several times, as if i'd just told a funny, funny joke. (wtf?? they were packing to go camping -- i didn't laugh maniacally while repeating "camping!" over and over again.) i'm still not sure what's funny about knitting guilds. i just think she's a bizarre girl.
my return to spinning has been slow-going. i've been trying to spin with the alpaca i bought on salt spring island. it's been slow. i want to make thicker yarn than what i'm making. i guess i'll have to finally break out my homemade lazy kate and try to ply it. but it's taking forever to just spin it, so it'll be a LONG time before i have two bobbins full!
i'm also trying to teach myself to spin from the roving, instead of over the fold. it's going pretty well, but i usually get confused or mess it up after about a foot of roving. i just don't know if it's actually drafting enough before it gets twisted. i think i need a spinning video. or to spend more time with the weavers and spinners guild.
i got a package yesterday from karrie -- what a bounty!
first of all, the girls of the mel-o-dee were kind enough to save me two of the prizes from sheep to shawl, so I now have more still roving, and a bizarree rug hooking kit involving sheep. it's pretty funny, actually. i wonder if i could do it one-handed....
also in the care package was a pair of gently used hand cards to call my very own! i'm very excited to try them out and see if i can figure out exactly what a rolag is supposed to look like. i played with them for a few minutes and really just made a mess, but i'm going to sit down with them at a calm moment and re-read on of my spinning books.
I can't wait until next Tuesday when the cable modem folks get me back online. I guess I'll have to find my camera and my san disk drive by then, and can regale you with photos of fiber, musk ox, UFOs, etc....
No fiber news today, but, predictably, some shoulder news. I spoke with my doctor in Oakland for a second opinion on my diagnosis and the idea of this new surgery. He didn't seem surprised at all that the condition has progressed so rapidly after the surgery (he was sorry, but not surprised). And he made me feel much better about the procedure -- said that it's pretty new but not nutty and if my doc here has done a lot of them (which apparently he has), it's a better option than some form of shoulder replacement, which is really the only other option left at this point.
So I'm trying not to be too bitter/crabby/teary/etc about any of it. We scheduled the surgery for August 31 -- the day after my birthday. I've always said that nothing quite says happy birthday like fascial arthroplasty.
This will probably mean that I'll miss the giant vegetable weighing at the state fair -- dammit -- but I'll go up to the fair the weekend before my birthday and see the sheep, spinners, etc. Photos ... I promise.
i'll try to temper all the gory health news with fiber news where possible. monday night i took ann's and karrie's advice and went to the spinning night. so glad i did. it was nice to get reacquainted with suzie ... and to meet some local folks! there were 3 other women there -- all members of the anchorage weavers and spinners guild.
the woman who was hosting had 3 looms and 2 wheels in her living room -- talk about a woman after my own heart! she was spinning on a lendrum, so i thought of karrie and gen, the el cerrito lendrum fan club.
one woman was spinning on a louet, and the other was hand-spindling on one of those spindles made from a CD. they were really nice folks and much better spinners than me, so i think i'll learn a lot. (there are bi-monthly monday night spinning sessions that rotate around to different people's houses within the guild).
i also learned that there are 2 retailers in AK who sell spinning stuff -- including one here in anchorage. yeehaw!
before i left my house i decided i'd better try a little spinning to make sure i still knew how. i tried spinning from the locks of the lamb i'd washed a few weeks ago, and it went pretty well. i actually had less luck spinning the roving i bought from the sheep farm. i had a hard time getting it to draft evenly; it seemed ... sticky.
next i tried spinning some of the alpaca roving i bought on salt spring island -- wow what a difference! just like when you're knitting with wool and it doesn't feel particularly scratchy but then you switch to alpaca and it's like knitting with velvet. it was SO NICE to spin. not as tricky as i'd thought it might be, either.
however, spinning did really make my arm hurt (um, see today's other post for more info on that than you wanted). i may try to learn to spin with my right hand. (generally everyone uses their left hand as the dominant hand in spinning). fortunately, my majacraft wheel is ambidextrous -- you can actually rotate the whole flyer/whorl mechanism over to the right-hand side. so that may be this weekend's project.
by the way, it's oppressively hot here this week. it's supposed to hit 80 tomorrow. in alaska! unthinkable. say hello to drying fleeces in the yard!
p.s. still no photos, sorry, because my own computer's still not set up. we need to get the cable folks out here to set up a cable jack in the fiber room. then there'll be no stopping me!
what could be better than having shoulder surgery twice in 3 years? how about having shoulder surgery *three times* in three years!
t and i visited the doctor tuesday a.m. -- what i had hoped would be a follow-up, get-reacquainted (this is the dr who did my first surgery when i was living in AK back in '02), get a palatable explanation for why i'm in more pain now than ever, etc etc (somehow i thought this would involve a reformulation of a physical therapy plan?)
what i got instead was a big host of disturbing news: advanced shoulder disease; something about "avascular necrosis," and proteins destroying the bone; something about how he's been seeing this more and more but doesn't know why -- usually with young, female post-surgical patients; not an infection but they don't really know what causes it (having extensively biopsied and aspirated other folks with the same condition)...
and, "how soon do you want to have the surgery? i'll clear my calendar for you."
huh?
the best part ... as if this weren't all so great already ... is that the surgery being proposed is only being done by 2 docs in the country -- my guy and the guy who wrote the textbook on shoulders -- and involves grafting cadaver skin over the top of the joint.
as an added bonus, there's NO literature on this procedure (e.g. no websites to peruse while insomniac at 3:49 a.m.). the literature is all about how the only fix for this kind of joint disease is total joint replacement, or a modified version of that if you're really lucky.
coincidentally, though, tonight's simpson's was the one where homer gets a hair transplant from the executed felon, snake, and his hair turns evil. coincidence? or proof of the supernatural?
Everything's been a frantic blur this week. Our stuff finally got here late Tuesday night so I've been spending any free time trying to get settled into the new place. Wow do we have a lot of stuff. So ... haven't done any knitting or spinning. I even skipped Saturday night at the LYS -- I was just too tired.
However, I'm happy to report that Suzie survived the trip in one piece. When I can dig out of enough of these boxes to have a chair to sit in and some free time, I will try spinning from the locks of one of the new fleeces. There's apparently some kind of informal meeting of Anchorage Spinners Guild folks tomorrow night, but I'm torn about whether I should go since I haven't spun in months and would hate to look like a jackass....