One of the major things I want to make sure to check out is the new Majacraft Serenity Wheel. It's being introduced at this year's festival! Here's the schedule, if you want to find out more about it. They haven't leaked any photos, and people who saw it at their spinning camp have been sworn to secrecy, but they have shown some of the yarn that has been spun on it. As you can see, if you click on the "yarn" link, it's been developed to spin art yarns and novelties, and I am going nuts with suspense about it! From what I can tell, all of the Majacraft wheels have the potential to spin art yarns, so I can't imagine what they've done to make it even better!
The other major thing I want to look for this year is kniting bags. I don't know why I've gotten on that kick this year, but for some unexplained reason, I have.
Which probably means that I'll find something wonderful that I've never seen before, and once I've seen it will realize that I can't live without it! That's the way it usually works.
Holly and I have also decided that we're going to take lots of photos this year. He camera just broke (actually, the battery in it broke), so I'm lending her my tiny, carry-it-all-the-time camera (which is older, and has a lower resolution) and I'm going to use my super-duper, fabulous camera
. I want to replace my old camera with this
:
It has a 4X optical zoom, and most cameras only have a 3X zoom. I like the zoom control, too. It's very responsive, and easy to zoom to right where you want it! It also takes the same memory card as the better camera I have. One of the reasons I like it is because it takes AA batteries. That makes it just a little more bulky, but much easier to deal with. You can buy rechargeable AA batteries (and I already have some, plus a recharger), but if you absolutely use up all your batteries, you can buy new ones anywhere. I once went to Pennsic with batteries in my camera, and took one photo, and the batteries died. The camp store had AA batteries for sale, but the camera took esoteric camera batteries that were not available within 100 miles. I know because I spent hours of my time there driving around looking for the right batteries instead of enjoying Pennsic! I took a grand total of one photo at Pennsic that year, and don't ever intend to repeat that!
So, all this is what I'm concentrating on, not some of the other, less happy parts of this post.
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When it comes to the less happy parts of the post, that happened yesterday.
I got to see the results of the CT scan yesterday. It was amazing, and also not really very good news.
The doctor explained (as was pretty self evident) that the lighter parts of the scan showed more thickness or density on the image of my head. He showed me my left ear, which is OK (aside from the fact that it can't really hear well). You could see my outer ear, and the structure inside. It looked just like one of those inner ear illustrations.
Then he showed me my left ear. You could see my outer ear, and then, right inside, there is a big white blob. The bone right inside my outer ear has gone berserk and just grown solid. No wonder I can't hear out of it!
He said that there's an operation they can do which is classified as an exploratory operation. He said they might or might not be able to fix it, but that no matter how the operation turns out, people with Paget's usually have the bone grow back even more aggressively, and wind up with an even worse problem than they started with. He didn't recommend the operation.
He also noted that some sinuses and other parts of the inside of my skull have warped and grown in odd directions.
In other words, it's a strange and twisted place inside my head. Actually, it was strange before I got Paget's, but that's a whole other story.
He said the same thing the other doctor said, which is that I really need to see someone who knows about Paget's and has treated it. He said a rheumatologist would be a good idea. He recommended that I call John's Hopkins and ask for a recommendation from them. He said that they would almost certainly know of a good doctor for me.
Paget's is rare enough that most doctors have never treated a case. I almost said that most doctors have never seen a case, but that's probably not true. I had probably at least 20 doctors comment on my alkaline phosphatase test (which indicated I have Paget's, although it can indicate other things) without having a clue what they were looking at. So, doctors actually see it, they just don't recognize or treat it!
The ENT doctor that I went to also doesn't do hearing aids, so I have to go do something about that myself. I'm thinking of going back to the VA Hospital in DC for that.
I may ask them about Paget's treatment. I won't take them up on it if they still have that same idiot doctor I saw about it before. He didn't seem to want to prescribe anything for me unless it would cause really BAD side effects, but he was happier about prescribing something that would be lethal.
I can't really do anything about this over the weekend, so I'm going to forget about it over the weekend and do something about it on Monday. It's depressing me, and I want to forget it and have fun this weekend.
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There will be a new Doctor Who
on BBC in America on Saturday evening! Plus the usual schedule for tonight and the weekend. Enjoy! I'm too distracted by other things to really pay attention to all this, although I set my DVR to record everything I want to see.I hope your weekend is as fun as mine is going to be!
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Oh, I nearly forgot! I saw this wonderful knitting pattern today, and wanted to pass it along!
And, while I'm thinking of it, I am looking for a copy of a knitting stitch called net stitch. I own a copy of one of the Walker stitch library books (it's the charted book, in the uncharted section in the back) that has it in, but can't find the book (it's around here somewhere), and I was hoping that somebody out there, reading my blog might have a clue where to look. I don't really want to spend money on another copy of a book that's that expensive, especially when I already own it, and I was wondering if it was published elsewhere. I haven't been able to find it on the internet.
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Addition:
I found a photo of the new Majacraft wheel! It doesn't show much, but at least it's a photo.
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Another Addition:
When I found the photo, I put it up there, but I just now really looked at it. It looks like it's double drive! and it looks like you can change the ratios between the flyer and bobbin! instead of having one long drive wheel to drive both the flyer and bobbin, there appears to be a separate drive band for each! I've never seen such a thing on a spinning wheel before! I had a Schacht Matchless wheel, so I've tried double drive and I like it. It helps you spin yarn that is much more consistent. But the possibilities of having the flyer and bobbin driven separately, with choice of ratios is mind boggling! I haven't even seen one in person, and I'm already amazed and impressed!
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