18 May 2006

Busy As Usual

David left Tuesday for AOBA Nationals in Louisville. I think this is going to be the last big trip of the Spring show season, but he's flying me down to be his lovely assistant this weekend - mostly so we can spend a bit of time together. I've never really spent any time in Louisville, and although I don't really expect to get to see much of the city, it should be a fun trip.

Even though David won't be doing much more traveling for a while, I'm going to be off to New Jersey in a few weeks for my birthday present - an alpaca training workshop with Marty McGee Bennett. She also has a booth across from David's in Louisville, so he says he'll introduce me and tell her to pick on me. Before returning from that trip, I will making a stop at another farm in New Jersey to pick up Millicent, the weanling girl 'paca that David & I are buying together.

On the knitting front, yesterday I seemed to be in a sock frenzy. I started a sock in Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch, and when the 2.0mm dpn's became too much for my hands to handle, I switched to casting on for Wick (the saga of which I have yet to tell) slipper socks with 2 circs - one of which is cheap wood that the yarn really wants to stick to. Tonight I brought the spindle with some Madelyn roving that I've started spinning a laceweight singles from and the Jacqueline Fee sweater sampler, which I've left just shy of finishing.

Dr. Death

Work has been okay so far tonight, but death seems to be the primary theme of the evening. Euthanasias are the unfortunate part of working in emergency medicine. I do quite a lot of them. It can be a very depressing thing, but 12 years of this have made me fairly philosophical about death and being the bringer of death.

A few years ago Tricycle magazine had an article on pet euthanasia that had a decidely anti slant and took the viewpoint that euthanasia was doing violence, which is contrary to the Buddhist concept of ahimsa. But what, then, is letting a pet suffer if not violence through inaction? There are very few situations in which I will actually recommend euthanasia (though one tonight fit into that category), but sometimes there are no other good options. In those situations, I'd far prefer to give my patient a release from the suffering that they can't understand.

A Cheerier Note

Getting away from the doom and gloom, I happened to be looking through a section of today's newspaper and there was an article on Maine Fiberarts' new map of member businesses. The photo they used for the article was from an alpaca farm near us where David has two of his girls boarding, and one of them was even in the photo! I tried to find an online version of the article to include here, but they apparently didn't think it had enough web appeal.

And since I can't offer that for your visual pleasure, I'm posting a shot of the yarn I bought from Carol's etsy store. I don't know yet what it's going to become, but I absolutely love it. I was thinking today that maybe I'll take the time to accumulate several colorways from her then turn them into a multicolor sweater.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I saw that same article in the paper. Wasn't it about Sea Hill Alpacas?
And hello from just over the bridge, in Portsmouth!

Franklin said...

Interesting to read about the Tricycle article. I've never read the magazine, but of course now that I'm praticing Buddhism I've heard of it.

I asked my teacher about this and, in typical fashion, did not get a "yes" or "no" answer - at our center, at least, one of the fundamentals is that there are few moral absolutes. He did confirm that his personal inclination matched mine, which as it happens matches yours.