My new spindling book

DSCF2059-A-book-spindle-11-17-2007
Originally uploaded by MysticSpiral

Ok, maybe that's deceptive. It's not like I've written a book on spindle spinning. Instead, I've turned a small, otherwise useless book into a drop spindle. I found the book at the annual Planned Parenthood book sale held at our local fairgrounds. I had fun making it and am thinking about doing a tutorial, if there's any interest.

I've been doing a lot of spinning recently. Between that and the sweaters that I've unraveled, my yarn stash is getting out of control. It doesn't help that I haven't been doing any knitting or anything with the yarn. I'm currently taking my first uneasy steps toward using some of the incoming yarn.

A series of sock tutorials is being posted on Lime & Violet's Daily Chum. I'm working through the first tutorial using yarn reclaimed from a Gap sweater in a truly unfortunate color. There are 4 skeins total and I'll probably overdye the other 3 but I was so anxious to get started knitting my first pair of socks that I decided to jump right in with the eye-poking really should glow-in-the-dark yellowish greenish yarn exactly as it came off the hanger after washing and blocking.

The only down side to spending time over at the Daily Chum is that if I hadn't stopped by I would have been blissfully unaware of this.

Fold, spindle, mutilate

I've been dragging my feet on this post for a while. To be honest, I don't like the uncertainty of all of this and it's taking so long to figure it all out that I'm feeling very adrift.

The status of things so far... I've had 3 physical/occupational therapy appointments. She gave me 6 pages of exercises intended to help with carpal tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel syndrome, de Quervain's tenosynovitis, and trigger finger. In subsequent visits, we've discussed modifications and variations of the exercises to relieve some of the discomfort and other problems that I've experienced doing the exercises as illustrated.

Last week, I met the orthopedic surgeon to whom I've been referred. Since appointments almost never start when scheduled, I brought my drop spindle to the appointment with me so that I could spin while I waited. I managed to spin for about 45 minutes in the waiting room before being escorted back to an exam room where I spun for another 20 minutes while I answered questions for the patient history and then waited for the doctor. (Met an interesting woman in her late 60s who told me with tear-filled eyes that she hadn't seen anyone spinning since visiting her grandmother as a child.)

When the doctor looked at my hands, I had the weirdest impression that he was disappointed. He reminded me so much of a young boy who opens the door to go outside after the first snow of the year only to find it disturbed by someone else's footprints. He performed a quick physical exam, gave me some instructions while he tapped on my wrists and elbows and then ordered a nerve conduction study and EMG.

The test is scheduled for next week and sounds like a laugh riot. I can't imagine why people aren't lined up around the block to have teflon coated wires poked into their muscle tissue so that electrical current can be zapped directly into the muscle to simulate nerve commands.

Between doctor's waiting rooms and my weekly depression support group, I'm getting quite a bit of spinning in. Enough that I felt justified in purchasing a "real" spindle instead of the CD drop spindles I'd mostly made do with until now. (I have a spindle that I made using a toy wheel and a dowel. It works quite nicely, but still feels somehow illegitimate.)

My new baby is an Ashford Turkish Spindle. What I love about this, and the reason that I just ***HAD*** to have it and managed to justify the purchase to myself and anyone else who would listen, is that Turkish spindles break apart leaving the spinner with a center pull ball from which to ply or knit. After spending more hours than I care to think about hand-winding 300 and some odd yards of handspun singles into a center pull ball using a make-shift nostepinde fashioned from disposable chopsticks from Sprout's favorite Chinese buffet, I realized that my hands/wrists are not equal to the task of regularly winding singles for plying. I know that I could just use my ball winder, but I have found that I lack the patience to wait that long to move forward with the next step of my spinning.

The next addition to my spinning arsenal... A Golding Aromatherapy Spindle... I've heard nothing but good things about Golding spindles from other spindlers and I can tell myself that this one has therapeutic benefits on top of the meditative benefits of the spinning itself.

On a completely unrelated note... to balance my whining about medical stuff... here are the results of an online quiz that I stumbled across thanks to Ravelry.

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Apprentice. You've got the basics down pat and you might just be falling in love with this hobby. Big needles, funky yarns and simple shapes are the name of the game shudder, but it doesn't mean you don't experiment a bit, here and there. As an apprentice, you probably fall back on other people to get you through those rough spots, and if you don't know anyone who knits, you probably have a few books or online sources to tap.
http://marniemaclean.com
Take this quiz!

Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Galvani%27s_legs.gif

My head is spinning

RavSpinOctChallenge
Originally uploaded by MysticSpiral

I'm currently working on spinning up about an ounce and a half of black superwash merino which I've blended (in the loosest sense of the word) with glow-in-the-dark spiderweb from one of the 1,000,000 Halloween stores that has suddenly opened in the greater Dayton area. I've visited more of these stores than is my usual custom (I generally try to avoid them) because I specifically wanted phosphorescent spiderweb rather than black light spiderweb. On some level, it disturbs me that these shops spring up to sell fetish costumes to 7-year-old girls and then they pack up and disappear for another year on Nov. 1st. I actually tried to find what I needed at one of the Foy's stores in historic downtown Fairborn, Ohio. I always kinda liked Foy's and I like that they are a small, locally owned company with strong ties to the community in which they're based and that they operate their stores/businesses year round instead of only seasonally.

I've learned that glow-in-the-dark spiderweb doesn't draft well at all. Spinning with this stuff is a little like wrestling with a toddler while you attempt to brush rubber cement out of her hair. (or at least that's what I'm guessing, so far Sprout has stayed away from the rubber cement...) I don't think that I've ever spun anything this inconsistent. Heather may joke that i'm some kind of spinning prodigy but I'm tempted to post pictures of this stuff, once I finish it and get it posted for the spindling challenge, to the beginning spinners forums as an example of the kind of drafting challenges that will be overcome with practice and well prepared fiber.

Don't get me wrong... Part of me looks at the masses of this stuff that I'm going to have left over (I bought two bags of the stuff when I finally found it at the 5th Halloween store that I went to) and thinks, "Surely this would work better if I had access to a drum carder and could incorporate it into a nice fluffy batt."

I should write something about the results of my hand adventures but since I'm still processing and I won't actually meet the specialist until Wednesday, I don't really feel like I have much to report.

Likewise, my adventures in random psychopharm roulette have yeilded a combination/doseage about which I feel mildly optimistic but I don't want to say too much too soon. I've been attending meetings of a support group for people dealing with depression (including family, friends, care givers, etc although none of those have shown up yet...), but don't really feel like I can blog about that except to say that if I get nothing more out of these meetings than an uninterrupted hour to spin each week it will be better for my mental health than almost anything that I have yet tried.

Handle With Care

I made an appointment for Monday with a hand therapist at a local sports medicine clinic. I had delayed for two weeks since my doctor referred me with excuses about not being able to find childcare. It turns out, the clinic is attached to one of our local YMCAs. (Not the one where Sprout has her swim lessons and soccer and where I take bellydance classes... this one is actually closer to home.) One of the advantages to this is that I can put Sprout in the nursery at the Y during my meeting. I'm not sure if it will be free (I'm a member and they do offer members free childcare for 2 hours a day while they're at the Y...) or if I'll have to pay (a dollar an hour, it's not going to break the bank) since I won't actually be using the Y itself...

What I realized, after I'd hung up, was that I knew a week ago that if I couldn't find any other way, the clinic is open early enough that I could schedule the appointments in such a way that I could leave Sprout with her daddy while I went to my hand therapy. With that acknowledgment fresh in my mind, I had to admit that I didn't make the appointment because I'm a little afraid.

As I said in my previous entry, I didn't have much time to process what was going on between the CTS diagnosis and my first surgery last time around. Any concerns that I might have had about surgery were completely overshadowed by the suggestion that the tendons in my thumbs were so bad that the muscles had atrophied, possibly beyond the point of recovery, and that I might not regain the full use of my thumbs. Opposable thumbs are good things, I like mine, I wouldn't want defective tendons to drag me backwards on the evolutionary ladder.

I've learned a lot since then and met people who've had less favorable outcomes from their CTS surgeries than I had. I also know that there are some different factors to consider with a repeat surgery. The questions that need to be addressed now are "Why am I having a recurrance of symptoms?" the surgery cut my carpal ligament, the nerve pressure should have been resolved. And, yet, I'm loosing sensation in my fingers and my motor control is suffering. What is the source of the pressure causing these problems? Is it scar tissue? was the ligament release incomplete? Is there some underlying medical concern that was mis attributed to CTS? How will these things be corrected? Surgery? Will therapy do the trick? If surgery, am I possibly looking at implants or vein wraps? I've never had any kind of graft procedure before and I'm a little worried about what might be involved...

And, to change the subject (or maybe not) there's the whole question of how this will effect our decision to have (or not) another baby. The last time around, I made the appointment with the specialist at about the same time that we'd planned on starting our family planning/expansion efforts. The surgeries, and the financial recovery after we saw how much the insurance wasn't covering, postponed our child-making plans by almost 3 years. I'll be 39 in 2 weeks. If we're going to have another baby, we need to start trying soon. We might get pregnant right away, but last time around (between PCOS and my miscarriage) it took us 3 years to have Sprout.

I'm feeling very adrift about all of this. Conflicted. I love being a mom and love having Sprout in my life. I know that she would enjoy having a sibling. She loves babies so much and is so excited by them. There would be an almost 4 year age difference between her and a sibling if we got pregnant right now. But if surgery is a possibility down the road rather than right now, how much harder would it be with an infant and a 4-5 year old? What if I don't need surgery now but I get pregnant and the CTS gets worse? (it's actually not uncommon for that to happen)

Well, I need to spend some quality time with my little girl. This stream of consciousness blogging is just taking me in circles and Sprout wants someone to play with her...

Image Note: An engraved illustration by Gérard de Lairesse from a 17th century Dutch anatomy text.

Give a girl a hand

I started having problems with my hands when I was in college. Pain... loss of sensation... loss of control... As a 22 year old, during a particularly bad period, I went to the campus health center and was told that I was most likely dealing with arthritis. I was a child and it never occurred to me to ask for a second opinion.

In the spring of 1999, after spending an intense period of time working on some hand-built porcelain vessels that I wanted to use for a grant proposal, the problems with my hands reached a new extreme. I felt as though I had lost all fine motor control. When I tried to hold something, my grip was so tight that the item would crush in my hands. A tiny vessel, which had taken hours to build and was nearly finished might be crushed to dust in my hands when I thought that I was gently holding it. At the same time, I would try to grip things tightly and they would slip from my grasp to the floor.

Within a month, I had the first of 6 hand surgeries which were spaced out over a period of 8 months. The diagnosis was Carpal Tunnel, Tendonitis and ancillary nerve damage. From diagnosis to the first surgery, I was so busy with blood tests and surgery prep that I didn't have time to think about what was happening.

Soon I will be seeing a hand specialist for a "pre-surgical consultation." I don't know if we will ultimately choose surgery, and I know that it is unlikely that we would have to repeat all of it, but I'm a little freaked out. I don't want to repeat any of it. I honestly don't know how I'd manage life with Sprout during my recovery. I can't manage life with an energetic, high-needs three-year-old as it is. I've had the number for the physical/occupational therapist for almost a week and haven't scheduled my first appointment because I just can't seem to find a childcare solution. We considered enrolling her in preschool. The problem is that preschool is 3 hours 3 mornings a week. I would spend 1/2 hour of that driving her daddy to work after we dropped her off, another 45 minutes driving to the physical therapist's office, it takes another 1/2 hour to get from the physical therapist's office to the preschool which means that if the appointment is an hour, I have exactly fifteen minutes margin for delayed appointments or traffic problems. I'm not sure it's possible but I am almost certain that the stress will drive me around the twist.

Of course, the way that today has been going, I'm probably going to run away from home. As an indigent living on the streets in the midwest, scheduling medical appointments will probably be the last of my worries. What is it about 3 year olds that inspires them to bite and hit when they don't get their way. It's not like ***We've*** ever modeled that behavior, although I will admit that I really, really wanted to hit her with a rolled up newspaper when she bit me the second time in less than a minute.

The good news is that tomorrow is my bellydance class. It's the thing that I look forward to all week and the thing that really gets me through right now. Between dance class and trying to find my way around Ravelry, I'm starting to remember that there's a world out there that has nothing to do with preschoolers.

Image: Georgia O'Keefe: Hands with Thimble photograph by Alfred Stieglitz