This past weekend, your friendly Desultory Knitter went to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, so I thought I would give you all a rundown. It's been a little while since I've posted, but my research project for work has kept me quite busy of late and after work there has been much to do that isn't knitting. Sheep and Wool, however, was awesome, and has restored my will to make beautiful items!
Upon arriving at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds early Saturday morning, I could tell I was in for some good ol' Wisconsin rural fun. We were greeted at the entrance by a tractor pulling a little trolley, a shuttle carrying visitors around the fairgrounds, giving a delightful hayride ambience. Since we arrived so early, the major activity taking place at the time was the sheepdog trials. This was fascinating, as my husband and I had never seen anything like it. The dogs are treated like elite athletes, and many are involved in multiple national competitions per year. There are few dogs in the competition who are not purebred Border collies, though the amount of running they do makes them almost as lean as a greyhound. Not like my pampered little spaniel! The dog trainers/handlers stand at a fixed point in the field and whistle, yell, and stomp out commands as the dog runs about after the sheep. The dogs who were not actively competing at the moment sat on the sidelines and a few perked up their ears and pulled on their leashes at the commands, wishing they were out there with the sheep. The portion of the competition we saw was mostly "nursery" dogs, pups who were still being trained, though several showed immense promise according to knowledgeable spectators I spoke with.
After watching the competition for some time, we explored the rest of the fairgrounds. There was a building with fleece auction, a quilt show and "Make It with Wool" competition, a silent auction of roving and handspun yarn. A separate building held the "Meet the Breeds" hall, full of examples of various sheep breeds, as well as the Blue Faced Leicester show. I've heard of dog shows and cat shows, but a sheep show? Ridiculously awesome. There was a lambing pen in which several newborn lambs lived with their mamas, and a few pregnant ewes lived alongside them. Two adorable Wisconsin farm kids in classic overalls offered to "catch" a lamb for us to pet, eagerly introduced us to the lambs and explained which one was the oldest in the pen. They adored farm life and were obviously enamored of the sheep on their family farms.
The two "Country Store" barns were jam-packed with knitterly goodness, so I had to go through them very very carefully. In my haul, I have two skeins of beautiful handspun Romney, some lovely roving for spinning practice, some luxurious cash-merino sock yarn (yes, I splurged a bit, but it was within my budget for the event!) and a copy of Folk Socks and Respect the Spindle, two classic, classic tomes. There were spinning wheels, tons of handspun, roving, fleeces, and spindles from family farms and more commercial spinneries. A few booths even sold sheep related farming implements and sheepdog toys/leashes. The crowd was full of friendly knitters and spinners.
What did I miss out on? The classes. Next year, I'd love to take a class, possibly even an introductory wheel-spinning class, but I just couldn't this year. It is too bad, because they had a few truly world-class teachers there this year, but oh well. All this fun was mine to be had for a five dollar admission fee. Craziness, craziness I say. Who's with me next year?
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Ask the Knitting Gamer Doctor 1: How to Knit Body Parts
In an effort to further explore the nearly-unique awesomeness that is me, I thought I would introduce yet another Q&A segment. I say "nearly unique", because as my friend over at The Crafty Doctor (thecraftydoctor.blogspot.com) could attest, I have a "twin from another mother." We both fall in the overlapping part of the Venn diagram of doctor, knitter, singer, gamer, geek, and now blogger apparently. We used to share the category of "future pediatrician" but we all know just how well that went. Read her blog for another perspective on this, but for the moment, here's mine. Once again, step with me onto my talk show stage...
Hello again, and welcome to Ask the Knitter Gamer Doctor, a show where we ask pointless questions to try to figure out how it is possible to function as all of those things at once!
Hi. Do we have to do this again?
Yes we do!
Fine
So, tell me...what's it like to be a knitter doctor? What could it possibly do for you?
It takes a lot of doing. Most of us went to medical school, frankly, because we actually want to learn things. Not a day went by in my resident career, or in my life since, that I didn't learn something, and that's how I like it. Knitting and medicine both offer so much to learn and so many niches for specialized expertise. The problem with being both, of course, is that learning requires time, the most precious commodity to us, and in training that learning time must be spent on medicine. My friend talks about wanting to use her on call time for knitting, which is pretty much exactly how I felt all the time, but neither of us is able to totally justify it.
Medical school, particularly the pre-clinical years, is different. While I hadn't yet become the crazy, obsessive knitter I am today, there were a few girls in our class known for sitting in lecture with knitting in progress. My inadvertent choice to nap during lectures seems a lot less productive, and now that I knit a lot more, I'm aware of just how much it can help focus and improve learning in lectures. This is one of those many situations in which I would love to call for a do-over.
The great goddess Knitting bestows lots of gifts on us, most of which would have saved my ass if I had developed them before medical school and residency. Focused attention, a sense of minor accomplishments adding up into a big one, patience, hope, planning and foresight all come from knitting, and it has helped me mature in a lot of ways. Residency, ironically, requires more of these and bestows more cash for raw materials, but sweeps away the time to knit.
That makes sense for your career path before, but what about your new one?
Pathology has the added benefit for the knitter of requiring color sense. I was drawn to cross stitch much earlier in my life because I adored the color, and then found out how much a part of knitting it is when I made the switch. Pathologists and histotechnologists work with color every day, and the similarities between staining a slide and dying a batch of yarn are vast. Pathology also requires attention to detail and the ability to see "the forest and the trees" at the same time, both of which are key to proper garment manufacture. Gross examination and sectioning a specimen require almost the same amount of hand control as the surgical procedure that removed it.
Have you knit any projects for work use or for your coworkers? What should I knit for the doctor in my life?
Stethoscope cozies. No question. After being introduced to them by a knitter friend, I learned to use DPN's in order to make one for myself. There has been little stopping since. Almost everyone who sees it asks about it, and it's a really simple knit. Next year, I may begin work on a microscope cozy. I think that might qualify me for admission by my psychiatry resident buddy, with a diagnosis of Obsessive-Delusional Knitter syndrome. Seriously, look for ODKS in the DSM-V whenever it finally appears, and you'll find my case history in some psychiatry journal.
My friend who introduced me to stethoscope cozies also introduced me to the knitting of stuffed body parts. Despite not actually being a doctor, she became fascinated with the idea of knitting body parts for people who don't have them. She knitted a pancreas for herself, since she has Type I diabetes, a gall bladder for a person who had recently undergone removal, and ovaries for me (long story). The best one, however, was for my friend James. She knitted him a heart. He's not a heart transplant patient or anything like that, but merely a cynical, sarcastic, heartless bastard in the best possible sense. Perhaps someday I will knit stuffed amigurumi microbes to rival those commercially made plushie ones.
Hello again, and welcome to Ask the Knitter Gamer Doctor, a show where we ask pointless questions to try to figure out how it is possible to function as all of those things at once!
Hi. Do we have to do this again?
Yes we do!
Fine
So, tell me...what's it like to be a knitter doctor? What could it possibly do for you?
It takes a lot of doing. Most of us went to medical school, frankly, because we actually want to learn things. Not a day went by in my resident career, or in my life since, that I didn't learn something, and that's how I like it. Knitting and medicine both offer so much to learn and so many niches for specialized expertise. The problem with being both, of course, is that learning requires time, the most precious commodity to us, and in training that learning time must be spent on medicine. My friend talks about wanting to use her on call time for knitting, which is pretty much exactly how I felt all the time, but neither of us is able to totally justify it.
Medical school, particularly the pre-clinical years, is different. While I hadn't yet become the crazy, obsessive knitter I am today, there were a few girls in our class known for sitting in lecture with knitting in progress. My inadvertent choice to nap during lectures seems a lot less productive, and now that I knit a lot more, I'm aware of just how much it can help focus and improve learning in lectures. This is one of those many situations in which I would love to call for a do-over.
The great goddess Knitting bestows lots of gifts on us, most of which would have saved my ass if I had developed them before medical school and residency. Focused attention, a sense of minor accomplishments adding up into a big one, patience, hope, planning and foresight all come from knitting, and it has helped me mature in a lot of ways. Residency, ironically, requires more of these and bestows more cash for raw materials, but sweeps away the time to knit.
That makes sense for your career path before, but what about your new one?
Pathology has the added benefit for the knitter of requiring color sense. I was drawn to cross stitch much earlier in my life because I adored the color, and then found out how much a part of knitting it is when I made the switch. Pathologists and histotechnologists work with color every day, and the similarities between staining a slide and dying a batch of yarn are vast. Pathology also requires attention to detail and the ability to see "the forest and the trees" at the same time, both of which are key to proper garment manufacture. Gross examination and sectioning a specimen require almost the same amount of hand control as the surgical procedure that removed it.
Have you knit any projects for work use or for your coworkers? What should I knit for the doctor in my life?
Stethoscope cozies. No question. After being introduced to them by a knitter friend, I learned to use DPN's in order to make one for myself. There has been little stopping since. Almost everyone who sees it asks about it, and it's a really simple knit. Next year, I may begin work on a microscope cozy. I think that might qualify me for admission by my psychiatry resident buddy, with a diagnosis of Obsessive-Delusional Knitter syndrome. Seriously, look for ODKS in the DSM-V whenever it finally appears, and you'll find my case history in some psychiatry journal.
My friend who introduced me to stethoscope cozies also introduced me to the knitting of stuffed body parts. Despite not actually being a doctor, she became fascinated with the idea of knitting body parts for people who don't have them. She knitted a pancreas for herself, since she has Type I diabetes, a gall bladder for a person who had recently undergone removal, and ovaries for me (long story). The best one, however, was for my friend James. She knitted him a heart. He's not a heart transplant patient or anything like that, but merely a cynical, sarcastic, heartless bastard in the best possible sense. Perhaps someday I will knit stuffed amigurumi microbes to rival those commercially made plushie ones.
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