My golden fleece

I'm ever so slowly working my way through the alpaca fleece that I was given best part of a year ago now.  It's such a beautiful joy working with something so "raw" and close to nature.  I get so used to spinning with mill prepared fibre, usually already dyed and ready for me just to take those final two steps of spinning and knitting, that it's humbling and awe inspiring to take the process back even further.  There's the crazy washing that turns tan/brown to white:

And then there's the deciding what to do with it.  I've spindle spun some undyed before I got the wheel.

But since I've had the wheel, I've done another one of my epic dying sessions with Sarah, and I used the alpaca, as it's beautiful creamy whiteness screams out to be dyed, to use up left over dye baths and exhausts.  I did this by shoving handfuls of the dried washed fibre into a plastic bag and then pouring the dye in.  This worked ok, but there was poor penetration to the centre of the handfuls, leaving undyed spots.  With this, I arranged it into a rainbow, carded and spun to quite a chunky n-ply.  I used this to start a small colourful blanket, based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi Shawl, but run out before I got it to a decent size.

And so the blanket went on hold, but I did get round to a special little alpaca project, by carding some undyed alpaca with some undyed silk, in a roughly 80/20 blend and spun it on a spindle that I had been given, courtesy of Karen at Wildcraft.  She had been experimenting with polymer clay whorls, and I had absolutely fallen in love with one of her prototypes, and she very kindly snuck it in with a fibre club installment.  The alpaca/silk seemed like the perfect way of christening this very special and much loved little spindle.  I love how soft and shiney this yarn is.  There's not a lot of it, about 115m of thick laceweight, so I have no idea what I'll do with it.  But I'm sure I'll have fun deciding!

(Clearly my handcarding still not as smooth as it could be, but it's improving!)

So I've just dyed up some more, using dye baths on the stove and larger handfuls.  My rainbow progression will be spoilt, but it'll still be wonderfully colourful. I wanted to do a goldeny colour, which always amazes me that I have to add plum to yellow to get, but it works out so well.  It's finally more or less dry, so I spent tonight picking it, ready to be carded, when I get round to it, likely to be at the weekend.

 My golden fleece

 The short second cuts that make for really bumpy spinning and some veg matter still coming out.

 Lovely little golden lock, pre-picking

A golden cloud of alpaca fluff

This single alpaca fleece has given me seemingly endless hours of crafting, and has helped me produce so many different projects.  Most of all it's been a fantastic learning tool - and I still have quite a bit of it left over!  Yippee!

Produce of the wheel - part 1 (of many!!)

So yesterday was all about getting the wheel, now for some of shots of what it's enabled me to do.  The first thing I spun was this - approx 200g of black Welsh Mountain tops.  It was one of the lucky dip fibres that came with my wheel, and was a lovely fibre to work with and perfect to learn with.  Spun as a simple two ply, which worked out as a soft, bouncy chunky-ish yarn.

 The first bobbin on the go

And the finished yarn.  Still debating what to do with it.  It's not next to skin soft, but it's a lovely yarn all the same.  I liked it so much that I've since brought and spun more, trying to get it as similar as possible in terms of thickness (and failing!).

From then I moved on to some dyed fibres - first off a 3 ply of EWB, then a 2-ply SW cheviot.

The red stuff was really lovely, such a pretty colourway but I don't think my rookie spinning and plying did it the justice it deserved.

And finally for today, a lovely, slightly unusual fibre - Devon longwool.  I brought a braid of this and then got one a short while later as part of a fibre club in a similar colourway, they screamed out to be plied together and looked stunning when completed.  Again, not to sure what to do with this.

Ever since I've had my wheel, it's been a lovely adventure of learning, leaving my flat cluttered with spinning paraphenalia, or if I'm being tidy, a neat little corner a little like this:

(Jacob top on the bobbins, and yes, I ended up getting more, because a spinner really can't have enough bobbins!)

The Wheel

My crazy fibre crafting really took on a mind of it's own, when earlier this year, I splashed out on a shiney new spinning wheel.  This is an idea I've had for a while, probably since about this time last year, but I always thought it would be an expensive waste, as I didn't have access to lessons.  So, I successfully managed to put it to the back of my wish list, thinking they were too expensive to fool around with.  Over on Ravelry, I'm a member of the Wildcraft group.  I get my spindles from there and a lot of my spinning fibre, and it was always making me a little envious seeing all these wheels and the things people did with them.  During one of these moments, I posted a comment about my wheel envy, and I got a lot of good natured replies, which set me off on a slippery slope.  I realised two things, one - there are wheels out there that aren't as expensive (even new) as I thought and two - perhaps I didn't need access to lessons.  I discussed these on the forum, and got a lot of encouragement, and dare I say, enablement.  It was pointed out the me that I had taken to spindle spinning really well, and it had given me a good grasp of the fundamentals of spinning.  And youtube was there for the rest.  And then in January, I came into a little extra money when I assisted one of the surgeons at work on a couple of cases, giving me nearly half the money that I'd need for the wheel I had set my heart on... and the rest, as they say, is history. (And I can't believe it's taken me up to now to blog about it!  Mainly because between it and my knitting, soon all my spare time was absorbed!!)

 The box has arrived!

 First tantalising glances - including some lucky dip fibre - I got a £15 fibre voucher with my purchase and asked them to pick a variety of good newbie fibres.

 The Wheel with it lovely turned spokes

 All the pieces laid out ready to be waxed

 Unable to resist that first treadle, even though the wheel wasn't ready yet.

And the finished article with my first attempts at spinning.

I tried to give her a name, but it never really stuck, she's just "The Wheel".

And I really haven't looked back since.  I've spun literally kilometers of finished yarns on it, and have never once regretted my decision.  I have read a couple of books, discussed it with the various forums and watched lots of youtube.  I really haven't needed lessons after all!

Positive affirmations and all that

Today was wonderfully positive - my supervisor at work randomly told me that he had been getting lots of positive feedback from the patients and the other partners in the practice about me.  Yay!  It's so lovely to get some feedback and to feel a little better about how I've been getting on, especially after yesterday's post of mixed emotions.

I have also stretched my legs, metaphorically and literally and did a home visit today.  It's an utterly fascinating and stripped back way of doing medicine, and an interesting challenge.  I thought going from the hospital to the GP was a change in gear from having everything so easy available and at my finger tips.  But it's not a patch on going into someone's home, who almost by definition is worse off than the patient who can get to the surgery, with just a bag of "essentials".  I feel very protected and safe, as my visits are very carefully prescreeened by my supervisor, but it still presents a whole set of challenges.  And that was part of my feedback today, he said he wouldn't have sent me out if he didn't have confidence in my abilities.  What a lovely compliment.

As you may have guessed, I'm at a little of a loose end tonight, sitting typing a blog entry on a Friday night.  But it just seems like there was nothing better to do.  I had a chaotic full house last weekend, and the contrast to this is startling.  And I've finished my latest projects and trying to decide what to do next.  And it's only 10pm, and there's still a whole weekend ahead of me.  I so have to think of things to do tomorrow.

GP land

In the last few weeks since I've posted (yeah, yeah, I know!) life has been a chaotic upchurn of things.  I've moved both my home and my job, said goodbye to so much old, and hello to all this new stuff.  It's scary to think just how fast the last year has gone by and just how far I've come.  I feel, in many ways, like a completely new person.  I've changed in many ways.  They say that Med School really doesn't make a doctor, it just gets you on the path.  And it's so true.  I'm now what would have been up to a few years ago, an SHO (senior house officer), which sounds so much more advanced than F2 (what the position is now called) and I have to pinch myself to believe that I'm an SHO!

I feel so much more experienced, yet at times, I feel somewhat overwhelmed by the mountian sized amount of things that I just don't know.  And no where is that more apparent than working as a GP.  There are the simple things like chest infections, that I've seen so many times before and I feel so comfortable with, even the nastier, hairier versions of.  And then there are the things that I've just never seen before, and perhaps have a dusty memory somewhere of, like all the rashes that I get presented with!  I really know so little about dermatology, and chances are, I never will have to.  But it's so frustrating to go from something where I feel so comfortable to something where I have to ask my supervisor about.  The variety of general practise is wonderful, and a challenge that I really thrive on, but some days my confidence really takes a knock!  It's nice to have that safety net of someone to fall back on, but I really do feel lost by it all at times.

My new home is well and truely a home now, with my bags and boxes unpacked, and my junk scattered about.  I love this little space.  It's by far the most grown up place I've ever lived, with it's slick kitchen and nice bathroom.  I feel amazed by the twists and turns of life that have lead me to this place.  I still can't quite believe it at times.  I can't wait to do so much in this space, even though I'm only going to be here for a year.  Just silly little things, like buy extravegant new sheets, with rediculously unnecessarily high thread counts, and getting a new dinner service so that I can retire my well loved and worn set that I've had for about 7 years.  And this time, there'll be no cheap as I can find student budget plates.  I want to really look round and enjoy picking out the right ones.  Silly and dreadfully materialistic, I know, but it's these simple things that bring pleasure to my life - to be able to afford these luxuaries after all those years as a broke student!  And I can't wait to entertain and have people round in this precious little space I call home.

Catching up! Part 1 - work

Well, since it looks like I'm not going to be sleeping for a while...I'll try do some catching up.

It's been since December, and that's really hard to believe.  I had just started my surgical rotation.  So let me think... things that have happened since then.

I loved my surgical rotation, with a passion!  It was a very different pace of life and structured very differently in terms of day to day responsiblities and duties.  Two things really made this placement for me, first, the wonderful people I was working with.  All the surgical teams were fantastically welcoming, friendly and supportive.  I found it interesting and it made me really want to get stuck in, learn more and get the hands on experience, something which I felt they recognised and appreciated.  My registrar, in particuar was fantastic and really encouraged me and helped me regain my confidence.  He was very generous with his positive feedback, and at giving me support with things I felt shakey about.  The strained working relationship I had had with my SHO on my previous job had really shattered my confidence and my self-esteem.  But that definitely changed with surgery. 

The second thing that I really got out of this placement was it cemented in my head what I want to do when I grow up.  As a medical student, I always thought I didn't want to be a surgeon, and was really unsure about the idea of literally cutting people up!  Which really conflicted with the fact that the area I found most interesting was obstetrics and gynaecology.  And then I did my first placement, and I really enjoyed medicine and working, and found the variety quite interesting.  I enjoyed doing the odd procedure.  And I really started to think that acute medicine was perhaps the thing for me.  And then I started surgery...

I found myself drawn more and more to those operating theatres.  I would feel motivated to be super organised about my main duties, so I could rush to spend as much time as possible in theatres.  At first, it was mainly observing, but man... is that draw is powerful.  The overwhelming urge to experience it, hands on, even if just to hold retractors or hold the laprascopic camera.  I would use every opportunity to scrub in and assist, frequently staying late to get the chance to go to theatres.  And the more I did that, the more familiar the theatre staff and the surgeons became with me, and my reward was great!  I was allowed (under very close supervision and guidance) to do small things, including making a couple of incisions (scary because after it's all done, the scar from that incision, is the one thing that stays with the patient as an external reminder) and closing the incisions, and various things like that.  I found it all so very rewarding, and who'd have thought, I actually do have an inner surgeon, and in all honesty, it didn't take very much to wake it!

So I have decided, for definite, that I want to go into Obstetrics and Gynaecology.  It interests me, there's a fair amount of variety and lots of opportunity for hands on practical procedures that I crave.

And that was surgery for me.  If at the start of the year, you'd have asked me to predict which of my three jobs I would enjoy the most, I really wouldn't have picked surgery!  And yet, by far it was.  It may not have given me some of the challenges that that first job did, and I may not have learnt as much, but I will always view it as my most useful one, as it was the one that gave me my confidence back, I got so much pure enjoyment out of and helped me decide what I want to do with my life.

I'm now on my last job of the year, which is another medical job, and as someone pointed out to me, my last  ever medical job!  Which is very scary, and slightly sad thought.  I do enjoy parts of medicine and wish that I could experience it more as I'm sure there's lots more I can gain from it.  But unfortunately, the way that doctor's careers are structed these days, there's no scope for that, unless I decide to delay applying to O&G training posts and do non-training jobs.

I'm now on the cardiology ward, which in Yeovil has a particular flavour to it.  We don't have the facilities for interventional cardiology, so we don't deal with some of the more traditional cardiology things.  So there's some general medicine thrown in for good measure.  It's probably the calmest medical ward in the hospital, which is a very big change from that first job, on the most notoriously busy and hectic ward in the hospital.  And also, I've been working for nearly a year, so I am now more confident and experienced, and I think that also contributes to a much less stressful job.  I enjoy it, but I think I'm not getting as much out of it as my two earlier jobs.  But that's fine, I have a much nicer lifestyle now, and I'm very happy to settle for that!

Late night musings

What a way to come back to this blog after months, but I really need an outlet.  My flatmates are driving me mad.   I know it's a Friday night and all, and they have a right to a social life, but do they have to be so !*$£"@! inconsiderate.  They arrived back about 2.30am, with a bunch of other people, I'm guessing (from the voices) at least 3 or 4 of them.  And now it's 3:40, they're playing music, chattering away loudly enough to ensure I have no hope of sleep, cooking (which is making me feel hungry!) and sitting in the lounge.  Where I left not one, but two on the go knitting projects, including one I've been working on for months and that the stitches slide easily from the needles.  I am now very paranoid that when I get a chance to see it, half the stitches will have pulled out and unravelled, it'll be scrunched or dumped uncaringly by the drunkards in a corner and it'll have greasy crap spilt over it (my delicate cream coloured laceweight silk/mohair).  If I had known they'd be entertaining all night long, I would have packed away the knitting safely.  And my wheel's there with a gently attached piece of half spun batt, and a predrafted, lightly balled batt next to it.  I wonder what state that's going to be in.

Can you tell that I'm pissed off and frustrated.  And I'm so tired.  Physically tired from a busy week - slept for 2 hours this evening, which I never normally can do.  And tired of my flatmates and their sucky attitude towards me, for example, shutting the kitchen door when I get home and walk past on the way to my room.  And their general lack of respect for my things.  But on the positive side, it's only about 5 weeks before we move out and go our own ways.  Roll on that day!

And yes, I realise that I'm being a little immature and paranoid here and part of that's because it's nearly 4 in the morning, and I'm awake against my will.  But I still want to scream... oh yeah, and now I need to go to the toilet and it's far to awkward to leave my room... let's hope they get tired soon.